Foxglove Babies

Foxglove plants are delightful in the garden. I started mine from seeds. (What do you do with a thousand sprouts? - That's another story!) It was a pleasure to find that my plants had made babies, but what to do with them? This is how I split mine to make new plants.

Last spring after my foxglove plants finally finished blooming, I realized that they had produced babies all around the base of the original stalk. I didn't know what to do with them and just left them alone while I tried to get advice. (See photo 1.)

Our summers here are hot, so I did not want to experiment until the weather cooled down some. In October, though it was still warm, I dug the plant up, cleaning off the dirt so I could see the bare roots. As you can see from the photo, the central stalk had become woody, and the babies had started developing roots of their own, but everything was all entwined. (See photo 2.)

I cut the stalk with my clippers so that I could keep a portion of the stalk with each baby. (See photo 3.) After separating them, I planted the babies in areas where they could be kept watered regularly until well established. Our weather was still quite warm, so at first they wilted badly, but by the next day they began to revive. (See photo 4.)

Next time I would prefer to do this in the spring, before the weather gets hot, so that by fall they would be ready to transplant to a permanent place. I found that they prefer a moist place, but they aren't crazy about getting their leaves soaked. I have a partly shady spot under a bush with a soaker hose underground, which seems to be ideal. (See photo 5.)