I grew Amsonia hubrichtii in my old garden for years and it never developed a fleshy crown like that!! I'm not sure what to make of that......I'm not at all sure planting above grade would produce that effect. It shouldn't. And it can grow for many years without requiring any division, so that center portion should not be an indication that your plant needs dividing - especially since it is also sprouting from the center - unless you've been growing it for a very long time!! btw, that's the first time I have ever heard of 'fairy ring' used to describe the dormant/dead center portion of a perennial requiring division :-) Usually that phrase is reserved for a circle of lawn mushrooms.

You could even remove healthy leaves and go deeper. If the seedling is tall enough you could lay the buried part in a trench and gently, I said GENTLY, bend the top upright. This exposes the roots to warmer soil. tj

Gretahoney, In the North, planting the rose with its graft 4" below soil level will not hurt the rose in the least. It will help the scion to survive our severe winters. If the scion (top, grafted on rose), dies over winter from the cold, the 'cake's all dough'. The root stock may survive and begin to grow after the top dies, but that's no consolation....you have to dig it out, start all over again, and plant a new rose in its spot. I'm glad your root stocks are short and their roots emerge right below the graft union. Those are the highest, best quality produced grafted roses for growing up North. Lower quality roses have long root stock shanks, 6-8" in some cases. It is easier to have successful graft takes with long rootstocks shanks. The fine art of grafting roses with short, 1-2" shanks, is dying out fast. Long rootstock shanks are fine for warmer climates where winter protection is not necessary. Long shanked roses in warmer climates are often planted proud, with the graft well above soil level. Now, about mulch touching the crown... If the mulch is deep (3+"), and compact, like: composted manure, mushroom manure, or sawdust, you should keep it away from the crown. Moisture, coupled with poor air circulation could cause problems. It w generally a good practice to maintain a ring of soil, about a hand's width wide, all around the rose's crown with any kind of mulch used. Then the mulch begins beyond that soil ring. Loose, chunky mulch that is airy and dryer is less problematic. I use medium pine bark mulch (its my favorite mulch), about the size of a domino, the table game, not the pizza pie! It creeps up to a rose's crown frequently in my garden, but is so airy and not soggy, it does no harm. I move it back a bit if I can reach it easily, but really don't have to. I would suggest starting out in spring with all your roses mulched with soil rings around their crowns. Then, if you used dense, moisture retentive mulch, keep that ring open. If your mulch is not dense, and airy, just forget about any further adjusting until next spring, unless the mulch shifted badly into that soil ring for some reason. Moses

I think I messed up with planting my dahlias. I've usually only grown a couple at a time, and only tried digging and saving once or twice, since I never had much luck. And, I never potted them up - just put directly in the garden. Last year I grew flowers for my daughter's wedding, and planted about 100 dahlias, so I decided to try to save them. I had a pretty good return rate - almost too good! The spring was very cold, way too cold to plant, but the dahlias were sprouting in the basement. So I started potting them up, and also put many in flats with some potting soil. I had a limited amount of potting soil and thought I could get more tubers in the mix this way. And the ones in the pot were very shallowly planted. They did great, but now when I'm going to plant them out, I realize all the growth is right at the tuber level. In other words, when you plant bare tubers, you put them a few inches below the soil level. But if I transplant these with the foliage at the same soil level as in the flats and pots, the tubers are barely a half inch below the soil. Is this okay? Should I bury some of the foliage? Or will that damage the plant? I had let them grow longer in the pots because they were more protected from slugs. Most of the foliage is anywhere from about 1 to 4 inches tall, and I've been planting them out with the larger foliage to again, protect from slugs. I guess I should have planted out earlier or planted more deeply to begin with. I have many that are still just in the eye stage and I'm trying to plant those now, at the proper level. Of course now with those I have to worry about slugs. Always something, I guess. My goodness, I could go into the dahlia business I have so many.... :) Dee