• We have mostly herbaceous plants and are preparing for the annual pre-winter cut-back of our garden. Something new we added this summer is a patch of Red Hot Poker (Kniphofias) surrounded by Sedum Angelina.
• Anyway, usually, the first one or two I trim the leaves back neatly to the crown (or until I see green), then I lose all patience and trim them like I do liriope (gather all the brown leaves and crew cut them). I did manage to trim back a somewhat 'evergreen' red hot poker once, but it managed to make itself presentable by summer.

Red Hot Poker Plant Cutting Backdrop

Another inexpensive way of adding to the plant collection for my raised beds is by propagation. My sister explained that there are several ways to propagate plants. So we decided to raid my mum’s garden (with permission).

Red Hot Poker Plant Pruning

Hi All, I have several lovely specimens of toffee nosed kniphofia (red hot poker only cream coloured). Some of the foliage is brown and manky looking others while the rest is quite green and healthy looking. Does anyone know - do I cut all foliage back and how far or just painstakingly cut.

Red Hot Poker Plant Cutting Background

Dividing Red Hot Pokers

This is a method we used on bigger primroses, hot pokers and iris.

To divide the plant we dug it up after flowering and looked at the base, we picked natural points in the plant for example between leaves, ensuring the piece we were removing had roots and had growth on top and then put the plant back and the piece we had divided into a pot and watered so the soil settled.

When you look closely at this hot poker, you can see it’s made up of lots of sections which look like leeks! We just broke off one of these, with it’s roots and potted it up.

The hot pokers we did the end of last year are doing really well and are creating off shoots themselves which we can divide.

Original section on the right, with two new shoots.

Buddleia Cuttings

Buy Red Hot Poker Plants

These are easier (I was scared id hurt the plant dividing it up) We took cuttings from all sorts like Buddleia “buzz”, Clematis, hardy geraniums just to name a few in case mums reading!

To do these cuttings with sharp scissors/secateurs we took sections of fresh growth and cut just below a leaf joint or node ensuring there is enough stalk to place the first joint into the soil to root from and a second joint on top for the new shoots. Try and avoid any flower buds, but if you can’t find pieces without, you can cut them off.

Cutting Back Red Hot Poker Plant

Next you need to remove the bottom sets of leaves, under the soil they would just root and reducing the above ground leaves will help stop the cutting wilting.

These are then placed in pots with the top leaf joint level with the surface. I poked holes with my finger to get them in.

Red Hot Poker Plant Seeds

Then water to settle the soil.

These then go into a green house, or in our case a window sill, and are covered. We like to use sandwich bags as these fit nicely over pots.

Hot Poker Plant

These are cuttings we took the same way last summer all grown up: