Honesty - time to cut it down. Honestly.

Well, we've all enjoyed the Honesty this year, it's been a great year for it: but there comes a point where you have to admit that autumn is over, it's winter now, and it's time to cut them down.

 

The timing of this varies from year to year - this photo, left, was taken on the 3rd December a few years back, and they were very much still earning the name "Silver Pennies" (except that in the UK, the penny is a teeny tiny little coin...) as the weak winter sun shone through the silky membranes of the seed pods...

This year, however, by September they were already starting to look a bit battered....

...and by mid November, they were positively skeletonised!

I fail to see any beauty in this sort of thing, left, so out they come, and onto the compost heap they go, hi ho, as all the seeds are long, long gone.

And although I say "cut them, down",  what I really mean is "pull them up by the roots."

"What!" I can hear you screech, "But I want them to flower again next year!!"

That's ok - Honesty are biennial, which means that the seeds from this particular plant will germinate next year, but they will only produce a small, leafy plant: the following year, those small leafy plants will grow to full size, flower, and produce these pods, before dying off.  They do their complete life cycle over two years, and that's it.

But they will be back: once they get well established, as these ones are, you will find them popping up all over your beds and borders, because they are prolific self-seeders.

Careful weeding is required! But once you have learned what a first-year Honesty plant looks like, it is easy enough to leave them where you want them, and weed them out if they pop up in places where you don't really want them, such as the very front of a border,  in and around your roses, in the lawn, etc. 

(Actually, the normal mowing regime will take care of the ones in the grass, you don't need to worry about those ones.)

So once they have appeared in your garden once, you are likely to have them for ever more!

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