over wintering osteospurmum.

cotty1000

hi can someone aid me in my attempts to over winter some bushy osteospurmums.i have successfully kept pelagoniums alive,but two years running my osteos have died around march.what am i doing wrong?

sue

Hi, I have managed to keep 3 of my osteo's from last year. I brought them into the unheated greenhouse and occasionally watered them when really dry. I also covered them with fleece in the evening when frosts were expected. You could also try take some cuttings to overwinter just like the pelagoniums. Not sure if that helps but I hope so...

Pennine Petal

I think it's important to get a decent quality plant in the first place. I pass a garden on the way to work where they are planted at the fron of the garden next to the stone retaining wall. They just leave them there over winter and they are full of lowers every year. The garden is on the Pennine foothills.

Gardening Grandma

I have clumps of osteospermum in my garden which have been there for years, all grown from one original purple plant, whose name I do not know. I live in a milder part of UK though. I defer to Verdun in all things horticultural, but just have the comment that I find white ones are less hardy than purple ones and fancy varieties with twisted petals less hardy than the older plain daisy-like ones. Verdun, Cannington Roy is white, isn't it, so maybe I should give it a go. I cut mature plants back hard in early spring to prevent woodiness and they grow and flourish again. Cuttings of my purple osteo root very easily (even if just stuck in the ground) but they like to be fairly dry and have free-draining soil and sun.

All this is no answer to the question but I'd be interested to know what others have found.

 

Fairygirl

Gardening Grandma wrote (see)

I have clumps of osteospermum in my garden which have been there for years, all grown from one original purple plant, whose name I do not know. I live in a milder part of UK though. I defer to Verdun in all things horticultural, but just have the comment that I find white ones are less hardy than purple ones and fancy varieties with twisted petals less hardy than the older plain daisy-like ones. Verdun, Cannington Roy is white, isn't it, so maybe I should give it a go. I cut mature plants back hard in early spring to prevent woodiness and they grow and flourish again. Cuttings of my purple osteo root very easily (even if just stuck in the ground) but they like to be fairly dry and have free-draining soil and sun.

All this is no answer to the question but I'd be interested to know what others have found.

 

Think you're right about the hardiness thing GG. Up here we look at them as annuals most of the time but Verdun's advice sounds pretty good to me especially when you think of their natural habitat.

cotty1000

i have successfully propagated the hardy low growing osteos,is it a case of the bushy bedding ones i am keeping are just annuals?i thought the bedding ones were half hardy.in any case i will take cuttings and store them in my outbuilding.

would September and softwood cuttings be best?

Gardening Grandma

Interesting, verdun. I had read that they were white tinged with pink, so I expect I'm splitting hairs.

Lilylouise

At the end of last summer I took cuttings from my Osreos as usual and put the parent plants in the cold greenhouse and just about forgot them . When I was sorting the greenhouse out a couple of weeks the pots of Osteospermums looked pretty grim but I noticed lots of new shoots on the bottoms of the stems so I cut the plants back and tidied them up then gave them a feed.Hopefully they will grow into good plants

Pam LL x