Elijah Blue Fescue Grasses - Ready To Divide - September 2023

A couple of years ago, I planted some Elijah Blue Fescue grasses in the IB2DWs bed along with some other blue-colored plants like Cat's Pajamas Nepeta.   Those grasses have never thrived, but they seemed to have survived over the years - despite that being what I'd consider a 'hard-to-grow' area.  Between the poor soil, the adjacency to the driveway and the lack of irrigation, it isn't a great growing bed.  But, like I said...these seemingly have survived.  

But, like all grasses, it appears that Elijah Blue Fescue grasses suffer from center rot.  And need to be divided every few years.  How can I tell?  Have a look at one of the crowns of the blue fescue grass below - with three distinct tufts of blades emerging from the edges:

Here, below, is a look at another one of them where you can see the center of the grass is brown'ing out and showing no growth:

Everything that I've read on the Web tells me that these need regular dividing and that I need to dig these up, split them and replant them this Fall.   There's some debate about Fall vs. Spring dividing, but whenever you do it (I'm going to mine in Fall), it appears that we'll see some rejuvenation post-division like I've seen with my other ornamental grasses.  

I have three of these currently and I'm thinking that I'll take that one and divide it into three.  And the other two likely into two-or-three segments.  That'll take the count from three to (at least) seven or (maybe) nine Elijah Blue Fescue grasses IB2DWs.

I've done similar 'Candidates for Fall Dividing' posts in the past and have a couple of things that I am planning on dividing in early October:  These Blue Fescues, the pair of Serendipity Alliums in this same IB2DWS bed, some of the Karl Foerster Grasses, the Everillo Sedges,  some of my Japanese Ghost Ferns and the Fanal Astilbes in the kitchen window bed.