I have had for some years now a large pot of Christmas Bells (Blandfordia grandiflora). It has been reliably flowering just on Christmas every year, and in the process getting more congested. Because the pot it is in has curved sides, I have been putting off dividing it for a few years.
As it was well away from flowering time and there was some rushes growing in amongst the Christmas Bells I decided it was now time to split it. The original plant was the result of some splits from mature plants from a commercial grower.
With curved sides to the pot I could either smash the pot to get the plants out or cut some of the roots at the side. I opted to cut the roots around the sides of the pot to allow the plant to be freed from the pot.
Blandfordia has thick fleshy roots that are somewhat similar to many of the exotic garden perennials. The roots were in a dense tangle that made cutting through them challenging.
The results when out of the pot can be seen below, the darker upper part was where I had to cut away the roots from the side of the pot. The roots at the bottom were typical of what the rest of the sides were like.
After getting the plants out of the pot I washed the soil from the roots to more easily see if there were any easier areas to split the plants. It also helped to identify where the weeds were so that I could separate them.
After some examination I decided that I’d need to not be too delicate and used a spade (above right) to separate the plants into two clumps.
After splitting, thick fleshy roots and swollen bulb like bases to each plant can be seen (below left).
The plants were then repotted into pots with tapered sides – this will make any future splitting easier (below right).
I used a mix of native potting mix, coarse sand & pearlite. (the original mix was coco peat & sand).
