I am sorry to here this. I absolutely love my 'Spiderwort' (Sweet Kate); I love everything about it and it does its stuff even in shadier conditions and in clay soil.

In zone 6 my spiderworts look gorgeous initially but then after awhile turn mushy and yellow and I have to cut them down to the ground. They always come back the next year full of vim and vigor but I wonder why they do not stay viable longer. For those who grow them, do you find they do better in sun or part sun? dry or moist conditions?

Perhaps you will not have any problems w/ yours, rouge- you are in a much colder zone and my soil is all sand.
Lida, when I cut mine back, they are soon blooming again. Even the ones I planted in shade along the driveway are doing well- and they are not getting any care.
Here the soil is sand, it is fiercely hot during the summer but very humid. Since, I did not have any problem w/ them the first 5 plus years, I assume something has changed- they caught a disease, a pest is infesting them, perhaps they got fertilizer and don't like it... I hope someone who has dealt w/ this problem will respond.

I'm so jealous of your problem. I'm one of those people who regret bitterly I have ever planted them. For me they thrive on dry, wet , sun , shade and everything in between and any combination of those. No winter can kill them. They NEVER go dormant for me, so I can never really relax and take a deep breath.

In my zone 5 I have spiderwort planted in part shade/part sun and an area of full filtered shade. The soil is clayish, retains moisture quite well but is not wet. In both places it does exactly as lida's does. When the flowering becomes sporadic, I cut them down to the ground. New foliage emerges, but it too quickly becomes ratty. I keep threatining to shovel prune them, but I do love those bright white flowers.

I am confused wielaw about your post. Why don't you like them?

Hi rouge. I do not have big problems with the looks of the flowers or the whole plant while blooming(although if very rainy, then they splay around). It is the fact, that they are one of the most difficult plants to prevent selfseeding for me. A flower blooms 1 day and closes by noon (or so). In case the flower gets pollinated, the process of seed ripening begins(according to my observation; I may be wrong with the details, but it seems like I'm right), while a lot of flowers are still to follow. So you have many 'flowers' on a stem with very different stages of developement. And I do not have time to remove individual flowers. Then you find hundreds of seedling which pop up in the middle of other plants, impossible to remove without digging the whole thing up and washing the roots of the 'host'. If you cut the whole plant down early, then you have an ugly 'hole' in the bed for a period of time. I had some mutants with double flowers, but they were producing the seeds too. I began the process of eradication 3 years ago, a small piece of root will regenerate, not to mention the millions of seeds still germinating here and there. And lastly, if your garden space is very limited, there are plenty of plants that are prettier without being a nuisance. So no reason for me to keep tradescantias, they are not THAT attractive to make my life impossible to live without them.

wiselaw it is my understanding (and my limted experience) that those spiderworts with the golden foliage eg. "Sweet Kate" and "Sunshine Charm" are not (big) spreaders.

Lord, I've never been able to keep Tradescantia alive for more than a summer! Except for Tradescantia virginiana. That was a big mistake. I ripped it out a few years ago and still find the seedlings in the most inconvenient places. They absolutely LOVE growing right, smack in the middle of daylilies where they can go unnoticed for quite some time because the foliage blends right in.

An evil plant for sure.

Kevin

Rouge, my advice is : if you absolutely have to have Tradescantia, keep one clone. I have a suspicion that some of them may be selfsterile. I had one clone for many years without any seedlings. The misery started when I bought another.

I have the usual one w/ blueish-purple flowers. I planted them in front of my roses- to hide legginess. They are popping up everywhere, but I am not tired of them yet. The color is a wonderful contrast w/ red, cream, etc. Since they are becoming numerous, I started relocating the ones I didn't want to the bank by the driveway- figure it will help prevent erosion. They are also the "unkillable" plants I give non-gardeners so they can experience success.
Still no answer on the foliage turning brown- but I never had it happen before last year. Maybe I will dig up the ones that look bad and put some of my volunteers in their places.

I find this one of the most difficult plants to discuss because there are so many different ones and it seems like only experts can tell them apart. The same species can have different color flowers, frustrating. Anyway, my lawn is full of these (blue flowers that can look purple in different light, probably T. virginiana or ohiensis) and I mow around them until they start to look really ugly and/or stop flowering. Then I mow them and let them grow back. That's coming soon already this year, sometime this week. They usually grow back beautifully again if there is enough moisture.

It sounds like some people just don't like this plant enough to accept its' ugly phase, which all perennials have, IMO. That's cool, to each their own. Seems similar to bulbs going dormant to me because they do get ratty and discolored. I don't think I would want them in a flower bed, but they work well for me in the lawn.

I don't know if they are really a type of grass or not, but they "act" like grass. So I might recommend treating them more like a grass, cut them when they are ugly so they can grow fresh new foliage and flowers. If you have several stalks, maybe you cut one this week, one next week. Any leaf that has turned brown or yellow is no longer photosynthesizing sustenance for the plant, so there's no reason to not cut them off.

Brandyray,I have one answer for most of the problems: something wrong without an OBVIOUS reason - look at the roots.

Purpleinopp, there are actually some plants which do not have an ugly phase. Examples: Smilacina racemosa, Uvularia grandiflora, Aconitum carmichaelli, well grown Hostas and others. Futhermore, there can be a difference in the degree of the ugliness in the ugly phase. And lastly, there can be a difference what a plant shows in the pretty phase vs ugly phase. After being cut down Delphiniums are not pretty, but while they bloom they can take your breath away for a while. I doubt anybody gets soft knees looking at a Tradescantia.

wieslaw my 4 'Sweet Kate' spiderworts have shown no signs of invasiveness. I am hoping that this is further confirmation that the lighter/yellow foliaged spiderworts are much better behaved.

Rouge, the plant itself is not invasive in the sense of uncontrolable spreading by runners or agressive growth .It stays nicely clumped. It's its seed that CAN be a problem if unwanted. IF you love it and it behaves for you, keep it by all means. I loved it too to begin with(I had one which was REALLY BLUE), but gradually as I needed space for other plants which I loved better, its faults began to grow bigger and bigger.

wieslaw Here is a quote from a gardening column in a newspaper:

Growing to about 45 cm high by 30 cm wide, 'Sweet Kate' is a cultivar of our wildly invasive native spiderwort. Unlike its parent, though, it doesn't spread all over the place.

Googling shows similar descriptions of its relative ease of containment.

Yes. Very impricise quote indeed. Many words, but without saying what they exactly mean. One is just as wise before as after reading. If they mean that Tradescantia X andersoniana sends runners: do not believe a word.

Okay, wieslaw, how would I know if there was something wrong w/ the roots? I dug up a large clump tonight, I will take a look at them tomorrow and see if I notice anything, but I don't really know what to look for...

Brandyray: Firstly , in many cases there can be a larva of something just munching the roots(or many larvae). Secondly, you can easily see a difference between healthy and rotten roots. Healthy are kind of dark yellow with white tips. If the roots are more or less fine, there must be something wrong with the place(some poison? lack of something?). In case of Tradescantia you can shake the soil off the roots or wash them clean, and plant it another place. If it does not solve the problem, throw it into a garbage bin.

I agree the problem could be with roots. I wonder if voles eat Tradescantia? They were the culprits that progressively wiped out a bunch of my perennials in the front garden, like Echinacea, Baptisia, helianthus 'Lemon Queen', all the Sedums, Salvia 'Black & blue', a few Hostas, and many of the Phlox paniculatas. Also, almost all the bulbs except Daffs. They would yellow and look progressively worse, as the voles destroyed the roots.

If voles do eat Tradescantia, that might be a case where they're doing the gardener a favor!

Thanks for correcting my opinion.

Many of our spiderworts are looking 'droopy' along with yellowing foliage. The blooming period was 'brief' to say the least. We are in GA; I am thinking of cutting them all the way back and letting them try again?????? So many of them are just 'laying down'?????

This happened to mine after I put miracle grow on them it got completely worse.

Not sure this will help so many years later. You have ’rust’ a fungal infection common to this plant.