Hello all! New native plant gardener here. I’m in SW Ohio USA, and I’m on my second year with a native garden and really enjoying it! The plants have been gorgeous, and we’re getting a ton of monarchs on our milkweed.
My question for y’all is about how to avoid the flopping that my blazing stars are doing. They’re in a west facing garden next to the house and I think they’re reaching for the sun, and then they just flop over and lay on the ground.
I’m thinking of maybe putting some more grasses on front of them, like the ones in front if the black-eyed susans, to help support their growth. But wondered what y’all think might help.
by hatmansaxplayer
15 Comments
I’m also in SW Ohio and have several blazing stars. My front yard beds are all south-facing full sun. The ones I planted 4 years ago all put up fairly short straight flowers and are pretty compact. The two I added 2 years ago look like yours. They are rangy and curly and I love them. I think it’s just the varietal you got.
Free spirits. My ox-eye sunflowers got fresh like this, too.
Grow with some native grasses and dont water established blazingstar it helps reduce floppyness.
Native grass is a pretty good idea if you don’t want to use stakes or a trellis or something like that. I’ve heard Black-eyed Susan’s would’ve actually been great to plant with the blazing stars for support. Coneflowers would be good too. Hopefully you can get them how you like!
In their natural setting they live in narrow sunny spaces between tall grasses – I think reaching for the sun in the limited space gives them the look we see in the prairie.
Often native plants, when planted in a manner that gives them more access to sun and water than their natural environment would, grow too large to support themselves. Naturally they would almost never get this large. The presence of some tall grasses can also help prop them up but this resource difference is the biggest factor.
https://preview.redd.it/kjcyasv57vkf1.jpeg?width=2160&format=pjpg&auto=webp&s=6eea1a3580b5f4f5a41457a679427cfe5309e219
Plant densely, leave last years stems, plant some blackeyed susan’s next to them
https://bustaniplantfarm.com/shop/liatris-punctata/
Is it this kind? There’s a note saying rich soils can cause flopping.
They’ve been drinking 😆
Mine look like this too! They also don’t have supportive grasses planted around them, but they’re south facing almost full sun so it’s not like they’re reaching for more light… and they flopped in many directions not just towards the sun. I think they got too tall and just keeled over under their own weight.
I planted mine this year, early summer and have been making sure they have enough water all summer to get those roots nice and deep and survive the heat until then. Mine flopped terribly too. I think next year will be better when I’m not watering as much and things start filling in around them.
Too much water, and there’s no support species to hold them up.
My floppy ones are salvia but someone suggested they might be getting too much water. Turned out to be true in my case even though it hasn’t been rainy. But the salvia is a few feet away from a down spout and I would water it. I cut it short after the first blooms were spent and left it alone, no more watering. Seems to have helped.
They are just massive floppers. Sometimes because of reaching for the sun, but mostly they will do it if the soil is too rich. It can help if you grow them between grasses or something that grows dense and sturdy. They fit into small spaces without getting crowded out, that’s kinda what they do. Grow up thin and tall and snake their way through plants. Rather than waste energy getting bushy, they just grow taller than other things and get light that way.
But honestly, sometimes nothing will really help. You can’t change all the soil they are in very easily, especially with other plants in it. And besides that soil is great for a lot of other plants. Nice thing is, it’s very easy to dig up the corms and just move them someplace else. Sometimes they just need to find their happy place.
I generally just move them rather than try to fix it, because it’s not like I like everything totally neat and tidy but something about the snake-y way a flopped liatris looks grosses me out a little. But it’s up to you. Somehow flopping like that doesn’t seem to bother them. They can just keep coming back year after year like that. So you don’t really have anything to lose if you want to try some corrective measures and give them another year or more and see what happens.
They should be called Lazy Star since they’re always lying down. I planted little bluestem next to mine and they still lay down and grow under the grasses and bend up towards the sun.