I ususally don't cut the leaves back in the fall, but last year I had a bed that was over crowded, and needed some thinning. By cutting the leaves back it was much easier to see which rhizomes belonged to which cultivar and made it easier to know what I was doing. That bed bloomed as well or better then ever this year. I don't think it did anything to reduce the bloom.. On the other hand, I had a couple of beds where the darn rabbits ate the leaves down to the rhizome, and although they lived, those beds had very poor bloom. One of those beds is where I had lots of early rot, and lost some all toghether. There were lots of rabbit droppings in the area too, and I wonder if that didn't cause a lot of that early rot. This year I'm going to keep some fence around some of the beds, and get my pellet gun out!
