Tue 22 Jun 2010
Cutting Back; Way Back!
Posted by jbross under Desert Gardening
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Written by Jeff
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Don’t you just love it when someone gives the gardening advice “Just cut it back to about 18 inches.” My fear is that I will cut the plant back and it will die or no longer thrive. I tremble (not really) whenever I take a robust, healthy plant and cut it down to the ground or close to the ground to reinvigorate it for the next growing season.
That is precisely the position I was in with my snail vine. We went through a lot of trouble to create a nice home for the snail vine. You can read about it [ here: ]
As the next picture shows, the plant did very well and by the fall, one could hardly see the trellis behind it.
October 6, 2009
So you an imagine my trepidation when I was getting ready to cut away all of that foliage. Some of the time the foliage dies back because of cold winter temperatures. We had a mild winter in the desert in 2009-10 and the foliage stayed green and robust. Nevertheless, we did cut it back. (I must admit that I hedged a bit and didn’t cut it back quite as much as experts suggest!)
April 1, 2010
How sad!
April 1, 2010
Slowly but surely the plant began to make a comeback. See the next two pictures.
May 6, 2010
June 3, 2010
The last picture taken recently shows that the snail vine is well underway to return to its previous beauty and prominence in our courtyard garden.
June 21, 2010
Gardening on the Moon, www.gardeningonthemoon.com, originally published this post
