Daisies
Daisies are perhaps the happiest of flowers. Played with by lovers, encircling the heads of dancing children and gracing our kitchens with delightful bunches of assorted colours almost throughout the entire growing season. There are many plants that are called daisies by gardeners. Here’s just a few as noted below.
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Deadheading
Deadheading is an almost universal way of prolonging the flowering life of most of these plants. It doesn’t matter whether they are annual or perennial, deadheading tends to produce more blooms.
Deadheading means to cut the dead flower heads off. If this is done before they set seed (just when the daisy flowers are fading, more flowers will be produced.
Butter daisies
Butter Daisies are bouncing yellow flowers found on Coreopsis plants. The annual species such as Coreopsis tinctoria produce scads of yellow and red blossoms almost all summer long.
The most popular perennial flower (measured by numbers sold) is the Coreopsis verticillata ’Moonbeam’ that produces masses of pale yellow flowers from June until September in my garden. There are several newer varieties of C. verticillata that have larger flowers or more intense colouring and they all share the long blooming characteristics. Coreopsis rosea is one of my favourite plants. It produces masses of pink daisies for a long time in the summer.
Again, there are several varieties of this plant that are well worth searching for. One that is often sold is ‘Limerock Ruby’ but this is not particularly hardy – likely a zone 7 rating. Note that the Coreopsis verticillata and Coreopsis rosea plants do not have to be deadheaded to increase blooms.
Shasta daisies
Shasta daisies are a very heavy blooming plant and if deadheaded, you can hardly go wrong with this one. They do not like heavy clay soils and will indicate if unhappy by dying over the winter. While this is a drastic step on their part, there are few half way steps with this plant. They like it and grow like mad or they die.
Again, there are a lot of varieties from the small dwarfs (12 inches tall) up to the fully double 36 inch tall plants.
Pyrethrum daisies have brightly coloured blooms. They come in a wide range of colours – reds, pinks, whites and can make a garden brighter without trying very hard. The only problem with these is they tend to be quite floppy. Grow them next to other more robust plants so they will have some support or grow a lot of them together so they will support each other.
The foliage is sparse so staking them makes the garden look… well ugly-staked.
I could go on and on about other members of this family. I should tell you they almost always grow best in full sun or very light shade. They prefer a well-drained soil that is high in organic matter and bloom best when they have adequate water.
They do not require heavy feeding – a shovel of compost in the spring will keep them happy.
They are almost disease free in the home garden although the odd beetle or slug will take a bite or three.
They are uniformly easy to propagate, division, cuttings or seed working equally well for most (although the named hybrids are best from division or cuttings).
Now, you know almost everything you need to know about daisies in a few short paragraphs. :-)
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