hey searching for buds.. is common to any plant you wish to cut back ... just a simple lesson for a newbie ... there is less fear.. if you can see what you are doing ... past that.. it was just a curiosity as to what the plant is.. because it looks nothing like the shasta daisy's my parents grew in the 60's and 70's .. nor me.. in the 80's and 90's .. that is not to say they havent come up with new versions.. but it is key to learning .. to actually know what plant you have ... link below to my recollection of a shasta daisy .... if you google the term .. that flower is a vast majority of the pix offered.. but there are others ... including some doubles ... google comes up with no pix on Margarita Darling - Darling Shasta Daisy .. and Darling is a dwarf.. which is nothing like yours ... whats that all about. ... at this point its simply a mystery .. but it is still daisy.. and the snipping rules hold ... somewhere back down the line.. your plant started as a seed ... and it is not out of the ordinary.. that you might have some weird mutant.. no matter what the tag says ... enjoy it ... ken Here is a link that might be useful: link

I would use the pre-planting time to do a nice job of getting the soil in healthy shape. Then if it turns out to be rainy and cold, you can still do a nice job of setting the plants out in ideal conditions. Also: http://puyallup.wsu.edu/~Linda%20Chalker-Scott/Horticultural%20Myths_files/Myths/Vitamin%20B1.pdf seems GW does not want to cooperate in letting me link today, so you get to copy the link. Sorry about that.

I do a pretty hard deahead because the Shastas I have are quite tall, and tend to flop over. I do get some secondary flowering, but I think that's from volunteers, because you can't possibly get all the seeds. At the end of the fall,sometimes earlier, I cut them all back to about 6 inches. I do not really expect a second bloom, so I have some sort of annual in front of them to hide what's left, because it ain't pretty!!

Nope- no need to cut them down. Like the above poster said, the basal foliage will be evergreen. I have grown about a dozen Geum over the years (lol, 2006 was 'Year of the Geum' in my garden, I went crazy over them that year!). I find that Geum coccineum is quite easy to grow in comparison to G. chiloense (such as 'Mrs. Bradshaw' and 'Lady Strathden'). If you plant is still blooming then you have a happy Geum on your hands. ;-) I doubt you will have any troubles with it unless it is a very wet winter and the place you have it in has poor drainage. But, I find the chiloense are bothered by winter wet more than any of the other species/cultivars I have grown. CMK