Six on Saturday – 29/10/2022

Categories six on saturday60 Comments on Six on Saturday – 29/10/2022

Last weekend almost went according to plan. Just a small matter of failing to realise the significance of UTC+0, meaning it didn’t automatically publish at 7:30am but was manually published at 7:35am instead. I’m off to Rosemoor today, for the AGM of the RHS RCM Group. Don’t even bother to work it out, it doesn’t matter. Suffice it to say, don’t expect a response from me until late afternoon at the earliest.

One.
Camellia sasanqua ‘Navajo’. Sorry folks, Camellia season in the northern hemisphere has come round again. First to flower (with the exception of some obscure species) are the sasanquas. Camellia sasanqua is a Japanese species that has been cultivated there for many centuries, so exactly where the true species ends and hybrids start to become involved is far from clear. ‘Navajo’ originated in Japan and was part of a collection purchased by Nuccio’s Nursery in California, but the name was lost and it was renamed ‘Navajo’. It leaves me wondering whether it is still being grown in Japan under its original name. It starts flowering in late October and carries on for six to eight weeks, I have it just outside the front window so I can enjoy it from indoors. It is in full sun and thrives on it, at least in Cornwall. Wasps love the flowers, which seem to be rich in nectar; I’ve often seen three or four on one flower.

Two.
Water works. Earlier in the week I installed two 1000L IBC’s to increase my water storage for rainwater. I’ve more or less got things back to some semblance of order and they are not unbearably conspicuous. The shiny metal bars will tarnish and the whole lot get covered in algae and all the crap that rains down from the starlings and jackdaws that perch in the tree. I did a blog about it if its details you want.

Three.
Plectranthus zuluensis stood up much better than P. argentatus to the heat of the summer but hasn’t really flowered much until the last week or so. I’m grateful for flower this late but unlike P. argentatus, it’s the flowers I grow it for and I’d have been happier if it had got going earlier; it usually does. Another thing we don’t save, just grow young plants to overwinter for next year.

Four.
Kicking around down the side of the house; neglected, usually lying down, are several Chrysanthemums. Somewhere, perhaps on here, I’d seen them looking great and fancied giving them a try. I bought ‘Jolie Rose’ and ‘Marion’ from Cotswold Garden Flowers in May 2020 and added ‘Dulwich Pink’ and ‘Winning’s Red’ in May 2021. ‘Jolie Rose’ fell victim to eelworm and I only just managed to save it by hot water treatment of the last live shoots, three of which are surviving now in one litre pots, but cut down because the foliage was brown and crispy. ‘Dulwich Pink’ and ‘Marion’ succumbed to remorseless slug browsing; I hadn’t realised they were such a gourmet treat for the slimy assassins. This one is ‘Winnings Red’, which I seem to have propagated with abandon, I have six small and one large plant of it. I just don’t quite know what to do with them. It’s a beauty, I have to find somewhere it will thrive.

Five.
Coronilla valentina ‘Lauren Stevenson’ was on the May 2021 order too. It was very wobbly and I had to carefully cane it for the first year but it has done really well and is seldom completely out of flower. It has a lovely perfume too, and is now getting into its main flowering season. One of those plants you wish you’d bought years before.

Six.
Fuchsia arborescens, like many of the species Fuchsias, is both tender and inclined to flower very late in the year. This is a big plant that was overwintered in my polytunnel last year but was still killed to pot level. It was planted in the ground and has regrown but is only now starting to produce much flower. Another that was kept frost free in a greenhouse has been flowering all summer.

I even managed to pull off the trick of posting a link on Twitter last week. Between then and now, Twitter has acquired a new owner, which makes me nervous. It was all going so well.

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Published by Jim Stephens

Gardener, no-dig allotmenteer, camellia enthusiast. I love colour, it cheers me up. Retired nurseryman.

60 thoughts on “Six on Saturday – 29/10/2022”

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  7. Oh well done on relocating your IBCs – I am guessing it can’t have been single-handedly though… They look very neat tucked into that corner. Where are they fed from? The plectranthus looks a pretty thing – is it something that could grow in a pot in a cool greenhouse? Thanks for hosting. I have been able to add the link today – it was clearly a WordPress glitch last week. https://ramblinginthegarden.wordpress.com/2022/10/29/six-on-saturday-observations/

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  8. Pingback: Six on Saturday: Observations | Rambling in the Garden
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  11. Another interesting six from you Jim. I noticed the Fuchsia arborescens in Trengwainton back in September had almost finished flowering. Growing in their walled garden so they are very sheltered. I bought two Coronilla last autumn and have them in pots for now, it looks like they are about to come into flower. Would they do better in the ground? Enjoy Rosemoor if you get a chance to look around – it’s a bit grey down here though the rain seems to have moved eastwards.

    Six on Saturday | October Colours #5

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    1. Funny you should mention the Trengwainton F. arborescens because they had one labelled F. arborescens which looked to me more like F. paniculata and by the most extraordinary coincidence, when I got home I found that a few berries from it had fallen into my pocket when I brushed by it. It seemed a shame to waste them so I now have a seedling which will be a struggle to keep alive over the winter. We did manage a quick whizz round Rosemoor at lunchtime and it stayed dry too, followed by a really good talk by Tony Kirkham this afternoon. A perfect day in my book.

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    1. We’ll have some japonicas out before the end of the year but most flower from about February onward. Can you grow Camellia sasanqua in full sun or does it need shade in your much hotter climate?

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      1. They will tolerate the sun but perform much better with morning sun and afternoon shade. Of course they bloom well before the summer heat. They are the state flower of Alabama.

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  13. I’m impressed with your water saving – a reminder that most of us could probably do more! Coronilla grows like a weed in our garden – it’s very difficult to remove if it establishes where you don’t want it, but it’s worth keeping in check for the long flowering period over winter and the greenery. I’m keen on the plectranthus too – I like the dark stem, lighter leaf combination. Here’s my non-regular offering: https://theoptimisticgardener.wordpress.com/2022/10/29/week-24th-october-2/

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  14. Pingback: Week 24th October – The Optimistic Gardener

  19. Have a great day out. I googled the Fuchsia arborescens, as it was one (of the many plants you grow) that I was not familiar with. Result: A tree fuchsia that grows to 2 metres. What a surprise that was to me and how lovely that must look in the garden. I will investigate your twitter link, I didn’t spot it last week. But all else seems to be going well. The crowd is here! Here’s my link – storm damage and autumn delights https://n20gardener.com/2022/10/29/six-on-saturday-disaster/

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  20. Pingback: Six On Saturday: Disaster | n20gardener
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  25. As always a great post Jim. Something growing over your water storage would also help to moderate the water temperature as well as offering another growing space. . As for Chrysanthemum ‘Winnings Red’, I wouldn’t say no to having a swap for a ‘Picasso’ if you are so inclined. I am going along the route you have taken with Plectranthus zuluensis, and am going to keep the chrysanthemums are overwintered cuttings in pots along the ‘unseen’ side of the house.

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  26. Lovely Navajo and coronilla! We have that coronilla and have found that it can readily be propagated from cuttings, but I expect you already knew that….

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  27. Lots of interesting and unusual plants once again. The Camelia looks like its petals have been painted by a talented watercolourist. The plectranthus is such a pretty shade of blue with the dark stems to set the flowers off perfectly. If you’d shown me photo 6 and asked me to guess I’d have said it’s a Lilac!
    I read your post on setting up the water tanks too. That’s some serious water storage you’ve got there.
    Here’s mine for this week
    https://www.hortusbaileyana.co.uk/2022/10/the-one-where-i-get-round-to-planting.html

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    1. With the glasshouses and all the things we grow in containers, plus any newly planted things in the garden, I doubt a single 200L water butt would last us two days, it’s one of those things where it’s barely worth doing if we don’t go big. I remember as a child coming across a patch of oxeye daisies on a railway embankment where someone had painted the petals in various colours, it’s always stuck in my mind.

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  30. Six on Saturday: Going Bananas


    Firstly, these are my six.
    A colleague and I were just coincidentally discussing the complicated ‘time zones’ of Arizona, which just coincidentally involve a few ‘Navajo’ Reservations. Navajo does not participate in Daylight Savings Time like the rest of Arizona does, but Hopi does. It gets even more complicated than that because there is a Navajo Reservation within a Hopi Reservation within a Navajo Reservation within Arizona! Anyway, ‘Navajo’ is still one of the most popular cultivars here, and might have been the most popular cultivar that we grew for at least a few years in the late 1990s. Nuccio’s used to supply most of our stock plants. They are in Altadena, which is about 350 miles from here, but only about thirty miles from where Brent is at.

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      1. Yes, which is why it is so popular. I suspect that most of the Camellia sasanqua that I see in the Los Angeles region that resemble it actually are it, even if slightly pinker than they should be. (We grew another cultivar with a name that I can not remember that looked something like it, but I doubt it is common in Southern California.)

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      3. So it seems that my observations are not totally inaccurate. Color seemed to be more stable at the farm, but more variable in regions like the Los Angeles region and the Santa Clara Valley. That is why I am not totally certain of the identity of those in the Los Angeles region.

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      4. I remember a flower opening on C. japonica ‘Desire’, normally white with a pink blush at the edges of the bloom; that was an even all over mid pink. The bud had been about to open when the weather turned cold and kept it shut for an extra couple of weeks. It was as if the production of red pigment had carried on in the meantime so the flower opened a much deeper pink than normal. Then there have been other occasions when it has seemed to be linked to higher temperatures while the buds are developing. I ended up convinced that production of red pigment and temperature were related but totally unable to pin down what the relationship was. It doesn’t help that the flower buds develop in July/August and don’t open until February/March. But you have a continental climate, with generally a more clearly defined winter and summer, compared to our profoundly maritime climate where four seasons in a day is routine, so perhaps the connection is more clear cut? The differences in the same variety growing in different places is very often far greater than the differences between distinct cultivars. Someone once asked David Trehane how he told the difference between ‘Jury’s Yellow’ and ‘Brushfield Yellow’; his answer was that he read the label.

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      5. The climate here is actually maritime because of the proximity to the ocean. The climate of the Los Angeles region is both Mediterranean and maritime, also because of the proximity of the ocean. The climates of California are famously mild, but also famously diverse, which is why so much cinema and television broadcasts used to be filmed here. (The diversity of climates produces a diversity of scenery.) So, although the climates here and in the Los Angeles region are innately mild, they sometimes overlap. It is difficult for them to stay separated for long. For example, winter is rather bland here. By your standards, we may not seem to get a winter at all. However, as bland as it is, it is quite variable. It can get cool and dry at times, and very wet with torrential rain at other times, all without getting too cold or too warm. The rainy weather resembles that of the coastal climates. The dry weather resembles that of the inner climates. Anyway, this makes it difficult to identify weather patterns that plants respond to. Angel’s trumpet is beginning to bloom profusely now, while it should be slowing down for autumn. That normally happens in response to warmth, but the weather has been slightly cooler than normal for this time of year.

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  32. Pingback: Six on Saturday | October Colours #5 – Cornwall in Colours

    1. I could maybe train my Holboellia over to the IBC’s, that would cover it quickly enough, but then it would go up the oak tree, which I think would be a mistake, in that the oak tree could well lose the ensuing battle.

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    1. Sadly, the Plectranthus are not frost hardy here, they don’t seem to mind cold and wet but as soon as there’s a frost they go black. I saw Fuchsia arborescens in New Zealand where it had been able to stay outside and grow quite big, just fabulous.

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      1. Thankfully we do not get frost where we are, and the other Plectranthus I have seem to grow well. I can imagine how magnificent that Fuchsia must look!

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  37. Twitter link worked, but I don’t know if many people use it… The main thing is visibility on WordPress. Besides, this morning I had a lot of trouble finding your link which doesn’t appear till 8.35 in France ( logic though ) . Much appreciated the camellia as well as the fuchsia . It still looks more tender to me than the fuchsia arborescens I have here, but it’s worth it. Here is my link https://fredgardenerblog2.wordpress.com/2022/10/29/six-on-saturday-29-10-22/

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      3. I activated the Twitter sharing jetpack switch with identifiers in the general settings and it must also be activated in the article settings (Twitter sharing on). Settings saved for next times

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  38. Pingback: Six on Saturday 29-10-22 – Fred, a French Gardener2

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