Content
- Cut the iron hat properly
- Wear gloves for all care measures
- The right pruning for the iron hat
- Rejuvenate the plants by division
- Tips
Eisenhut is also good as a cut flower in the vase
Cut the iron hat properly
If the iron hat is sown in a suitable location in the garden, it thrives even without elaborate care. Except for the occasional administration of some irrigation water and fertilizer during the flowering season, only the pruning of the ironshell does some work.
Wear gloves for all care measures
The monkshood is one of the few plants that is not only toxic when taken orally in the body. Therefore, you should not only wear gardening gloves when sowing the poisonous seeds, but also when removing withered flowers and pruning the stems. Also on skin surfaces without injuries, it can sometimes come to poisoning symptoms such as numbness and an unpleasant burning. In order to avoid accidental touches, the already very high-alert monkshood is usually planted in the middle of perennial beds.
The right pruning for the iron hat
The Eisenhut is a perennial plant that survives the winter in the soil. A pruning in the sense of a size limit is therefore not necessary in the Eisenhut, since all aboveground plant parts die anyway at the end of the growing season. Some gardeners cut the iron hat back to ground level only in spring, but the withered stems of the plant do not look particularly attractive. Therefore, the main time for the pruning is more in October, when all the flowers are withered. When pruning the hat, look for the following things:
Rejuvenate the plants by division
If the individual clumps of the Eisenhut in the garden become too big for you, you can dig them up in the spring at the time of budding and share them with a sharp spade. Also wear gloves because the roots of the plant are poisonous. A division every four to five years is also recommended to rejuvenate the plants regularly. If necessary, a division in the fall or in frost-free weather is generally possible between October and March.
Tips
If you want to cut off individual inflorescences of the iris hat as cut flowers for the vase, then you should not wait until the complete blooming of all single flowers. In a cut with about 30% open single flowers to achieve optimum durability in the flower vase.