I have split my plants when I bought them. In fact I wont buy a plant unless I can split it and get several from it. You got to look at the base of that plant, if there are several "crowns" then yeah your safe to split it with little or no damage. Now if you only have one "crown" in your pot then I wouldnt touch it till a few years down the road. I think the most splits out of a plant I bought was like 8 out of a 4" pot, I am all about saving some money now. Austinnhanasmom is correct about the reseeding, I have several varities of coreopsis and they all self seed readily. Some bloom the first year from seed later in the season and some will bloom the following year. Plains Coreopsis, Tinctoria Coreopsis is about the worse I have found for reseeding uggg it has set seed in my bermuda grass. I am giving it one more year to get its act together or its compost.

Your welcome Carrie :) I just loved loved that Clarkia/Godetia this year...it just never stopped blooming. They were also self-sown this year...Tiffy (Nicole) if your reading; I hope they will self-sow in your garden too; I just finished getting your Clarkia/Godetia in your package :) Tammy, The Max Sunflower would definitely grow that tall, but I cut them back once the hit about 3' (in a rounded fashion...taller in the middle and going shorter as you do the sides, front and back). When they are cut back they only get to about 6' at the tallest point and are much fuller for it; bloom begins the first week in October. I've been cutting them back since the beginning....the first year I cut them back 2x...once at 12" (just pinched out) and then again at 2.5'. The very first pinch given helps send up lots of new growth at the base so you don't have a tall scrawny gangly 1st year plant...which bloom 1st year BTW. Plants not cut back bloom earlier...like in July. The plants form tuberous roots and in spring you can tell how many stems will be produced by viewing the small reddish eyes (sorta like looking at peony)growing out of it. The cut back to follow will cause more stems to form from each of those shoots/stems.

Yesterday I had the pleasure of going to the Maine Organic Farmer's and Gardener's Association "Spring Growth" Conference. The main attraction was Anne and Eric Nordell, talking about their low till methods. They have written columns on the subject for the last 15 years or so in Small Farmer's Journal, and reprints are available. Their farm is in the zone 5 hills of northern Pennsylvania. Their method is entirely horse powered, so that reduces wheel compaction. Not all of us have that option though. They consider the cover crops to be the main method of tillage. They have twelve fields, a half acre each, and in any one year, six of them are in cover crops. They call this the "Bio-Extensive" method. The purpose of this tillage is to improve deep soil structure. Contrast that with the shallow cultivation used for weed control. There is a rotation that begins with a field geting a year of cover, interupted by a bare fallow with repeated light cultivations to germinate and dispose of weed seeds. There's usually a legume in there somewhere, maybe several, as well as bulk carbon growers. After the fallow, they spread a light (2 yd/ acre) application of compost, then plant a fall cover that will be winter killed, usually peas and oats. One favored method of planting is to broadcast, then hill the soil into 5" ridges, much like small raised beds. The method has to be adjusted to make sure the path also gets cover. The next year, this field would be planted to early crops. Weed control was accomplished with the summer fallow. The cover was winter killed. Even though the field is wet, they're able to get in and plant, because they don't need to work the soil other than scratch the dry (or drier) top of the ridge. They either use a cultivator with a coulter and a sweep to clear a narrow planting zone on top of the ridge, or a coulter and a tooth to clear just enough to transplant into. This moves the mulch left from the winter cover into the paths and lets the soil warm around the planted row. After the crop matures, the field is planted to cover again. That cover will overwinter and resprout in the spring of the third year. Again, there will be a variety of cover crops grown in sucession, separated by open fallow periods to wear out the weed seed bank. At the end of this year, the winter cover may be something that overwinters again. Six weeks before planting a late crop the next year, the cover is killed, usually by just disking. It may get disked repeatedly durring the six weeks leading to planting the cash crop, and by planting time, even without moldboard plowing, the dead cover has been broken up and incorporated into the top inch or two of the soil. This helps rain soak in and reduces evaporation, which helps as they have no irrigation system. And that's four years. Do it again. But there are many variations. Sometimes covers are planted by skim plowing after broadcasting seed into stubble. Sometimes garlic is planted in a furrow cut onto the top of a fall ridge, already a foot tall with winter cover. The order of cover crops and fallow is moved around to deter different weeds (spring versus summer). Sometimes ridges are used and sometimes they aren't. Some paths (garlic) get an extra cover of straw mulch. Some paths get more tillage to control weeds. Some get a line of cover crop planted in them while the cash crop is still growing in the rows around it. And they keep expirimenting. So the system isn't exactly no till, but it is low till, and shallow. They have a very few specialized tools, such as a rolling chopper made by mounting about ten coulter wheels on a disk axle, but do most of their work with ancient horse cultivators, disks, and walking plows. They say they spend about four hours per field per year hand weeding. Dan

im not a huge fan of just allowing the plant to reseed, only in areas to large to worry about. REally if you have a flower bed that you think looks ugle when they dead head, just allow one plant to dead head. One whole plant should be plenty of seed to replace your the complete bed. You will know when the seeds are ready, they will start to fall out,(couple weeks after the flower dries up) but if you cant tell, or dont have time to check, once it gets close meaning the flowers have dried up, cut a small slit in a paper bag and put it over the plant, so it goes over the plant, but just straight up, dont close it over it, when the seeds are ready they will fall in the paper bag, then you can plant them in the fall were you want them to come up in the spring