Six on Saturday – 5/11/2022

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This is my third week of hosting six on saturday and I think I’ve just about got the hang of it. The scheduling thing has tripped me up, and the Twitter link worked one week but not the other. I apologise if anything strange has happened at your end, this week I’m hoping to get it all right.

It was on May 6th, 2017 that Jon, aka The Propagator, posted his first six on saturday, with this preamble:

“Let’s see if we can get a new meme going. It’s a tribe of one at the moment, yours truly. My intention with this is to post on a Saturday,  clue’s in the name, six things going on in the garden. Could be anything –  an interesting plant, jobs that you’re pleased with, a project, patio pots in bloom, neatly striped lawn, a success, a failure, flowers, veggies, fruit, anything at all. Well, almost anything.  Six things, photos essential, pithy remarks optional but de rigueur.”

The tribe of one became a tribe of two in that first week, in that the idea appealed to me and I responded with a six of my own. I had a garden with lots of things in it, none of which merited a blog on their own, so I was trying to be a blogger but struggling with what to say. Six somewhat random items, of my choosing, was the perfect vehicle for producing a blog post of respectable length and content, based on my first hand experience here in my own garden. It obviously struck quite a lot of other people similarly because it’s still going strong. As an idea its strength lies in its simplicity and its flexibility.

There have been very few weeks when I haven’t read every post, sometimes as the links came in, more often over several days, and it is the variety on show that makes it such a pleasure. The variety of plants that people grow for sure, but even more it is the variety of people and the range of circumstances they garden in that fascinates me. I am lucky to have a fair sized garden, much bigger than the UK average, in a climate that enables me to grow a wide range of plants. It’s great to read about people with tiny gardens who are still getting pleasure from them in spite of the constraints. I’m interested in how people are coping with gardens while holding down full time jobs and raising families, how they’re overcoming the problems that come with getting old, how people cope in very different climates around the world.

What I’m saying here is that if you’re not already a participant, but are even slightly tempted to join in, your contribution will be welcomed and appreciated, whether it’s regular or intermittent. Just six things from your garden and why you think they’re worth a mention. Like the main man said, success or failure, it doesn’t matter; the important thing is that if you think they’re worth a mention it’s highly likely there’ll be others who think they’re worth hearing about. You may find it helpful to read the Participant’s guide, which I have replicated from The Propagator’s blog.

Right, to business. My six for the week, where did I put my list?

One.
Boomer. Or should I say ‘Boomer’. Why would you raise a plant and call it ‘Boomer’? Someone did, someone called Mabel Corwin. It’s a begonia (of course!) and Mabel raised it in Vista, Ca. America, according to the International Database of the Begoniaceae. A friend of ours gave me a cutting, which I stuck in a pot having removed a couple of the lower leaves. It rooted readily. The leaves I laid on the hortag granules on the floor of my propagator, having cut through the main veins. They have rooted from the petioles and are now producing plantlets from the cut end of the petiole and the severed leaf veins. This is a plant with a lust for life, though mainly I was just chuffed because after a few attempts, it’s the first time I’ve succeeded with Begonia leaf cuttings. When I was looking ‘Boomer’ up online I stumbled upon a Spanish nursery selling absurdly expensive and desirable Begonias, B. darthvaderiana for 100 € anyone?

Two.
Fuchsias and Salvias are providing 90% of the colour now, Fuchsia ‘Delta’s Sarah’ looking the best it has all year.

Three.
Impatiens auricoma x bicaudata and Bomarea caldasii. OK, that’s two things, but the point is I hadn’t even noticed the Bomarea before I went to take a picture of the Impatiens, which is still looking great in early November.

Four.
Salvia leucantha has, like last year, decided to wait until November to flower, and it’s not properly open yet. I need to get ‘Phyllis Fancy’, of which S. leucantha is one parent, so it has a similar vibe but flowers much earlier. Maybe there’s a trick to getting S. leucantha to flower earlier, does anyone know how?

Five.
Camellia sasanqua ‘Cleopatra’. This is having a somewhat disappointing season, not as many flowers as I’d hoped for and the wind has been relentless for the last couple of weeks so the blooms get damaged almost as soon as they open. It doesn’t look bad from a distance.

Six.
Fieldia australis. One of the many highlights of the Rhododendron, Camellia and Magnolia Group AGM is that several of the members bring along plants to sell; usually rare and choice things at bargain prices. I came away with Begonia emeiensis, B. pedatifida and Fieldia australis. I knew pretty much what I was buying with the Begonias but Fieldia was something I’d never heard of. I recognised it as being in the family Gesneriaceae, which got my attention, they’re mostly choice plants. I was assured that Tom Hudson was growing it outside at Tregrehan, which is not far from here; not that it would have made any difference, it was coming home with me. When you Google a plant and most of what comes up is botanical reference stuff, you know you’ve got something interesting. It’s an epiphytic rainforest plant from Eastern Australia, growing at quite high altitude so perhaps has a degree of hardiness (I’m not risking it just yet). The flowers are about 3cm long, in case you’re not getting the scale of it.

I must look like a man who doesn’t have enough plants, in spite of the colossal weight of evidence to the contrary. A parcel arrived yesterday, from another gardening friend, containing Danae racemosa, Oxalis adenophylla, a Gernium oxonianum var thurstonianum variety and a variegated Smilax. I probably enthused about them in a vase of bits from her garden at a Hardy Plant Society meeting. That’s what gardeners are like, if they grow something they think is great, they want everyone else to grow it too, and not just so they can get a bit back if it dies on them, though there is that too.

Published by Jim Stephens

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

59 thoughts on “Six on Saturday – 5/11/2022”

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  3. Yes, thank you again for organising this Six-on-Saturday, it’s forced me to look at my plants more carefully and to take many more photos than I usually do. I do like that fuchsia, apart from my “hedge” one, I haven’t grown any this year.

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  8. All your plants look a bit tropical, Jim, so green and lush. I know very little about Australian rainforest plants so I had a poke around for some info on Fieldia australis. It looks a beauty. Many plants will grow out of area if they have the right micro-climate. I wish you every success.

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    1. Like a lot of gardeners, I’m always pushing the boundaries of what it is possible to grow. That our winters are getting shorter and warmer rather encourages doing so but I really don’t see it as a good thing to be happening.

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  10. I can send you a small Phyllis Fancy if you like, Jim – just let me know. I have all but given up on the variety though, because of its late flowering and reluctance to survive outside. Even lifting a plant and bringing it inside failed to produce earlier blooms, and one grown from a cutting not only flowered at the same time, but was the same size by the end of the season… 🙄 Well done for your begonia leaf cutting – any propagation is exciting, but this is possibly the most amazing. I think I now have roots on one of my streptocarpus cuttings and I am trying to resist the temptation to tease it out and check! Thanks for hosting
    https://ramblinginthegarden.wordpress.com/2022/11/05/six-on-saturday-going/

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    1. Thanks for the offer but I can get a bit from a friend nearby who has masses. I must ask her again about how long it has been flowering; I’m sure she said it had been going for months. We had several Streptocarpus several years ago and watched them fade away without really knowing what we were doing wrong. We never got as far as propagating them. I’m getting back into Gesneriaceae a bit, with Koeleria and Sinningia inside and Fieldia in the greenhouse.

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      1. How intriguing – do tell us if she has hers flowering for longer. The blogger that first introduced me to PF had a massive clump which in hindsight probably flowered earler than mine ever does/did, so perhaps it’s the location that is an issue… Need to look up some of those g/h species you mention, as I am always on the lookout for something else to add to the Coop. I am still grappling with the streptocarpus and need to get my current ones through winter, as it was a struggle last year and I have lost some since

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  16. It has definitely become a very popular meme, though I have noticed some of the oldies have dropped off, but that appears to be the same with a lot of blogs. Luckily there are always new folk dropping in. Is Salvia leucantha that very tactile furry one? I think I first saw it in South Africa and then in the Logan Botanic Garden in Scotland and had no idea what it was. Sometimes seen in the NT gardens around here, but Salvias aren’t very happy in my soil. I think it must be too wet.

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  17. You are a hero to read everyone’s posts! It is such a popular meme – I found it really hard to get round everyone’s posts. An interesting six, as always. The Fieldia is so pretty – love greeny yellow flowers. I really keep wanting to try Camellia sasanqua here, but I think I might fail. Should have a go. Here are my six: https://gardendreamingatchatillon.wordpress.com/2022/11/05/six-on-saturday-5-november-2022/

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    1. I can think of no reason Camellia sasanqua would fail except alkaline soil. They do pretty well here in our relatively wet and cool climate and thrive in Australia, New Zealand and much of America. They are far happier in full sun and heat than the japonicas and williamsii’s, though I imagine they’d prefer shade in really hot climates.

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  20. Pingback: Six on Saturday, 5 November 2022 – Garden Dreaming at Châtillon

  21. Thank you Jim for hosting. I enjoy the wonderful detail in your posts. It makes me want to be more diligent in posting the scientific names of my plants.
    Our weather here in the American South continues to be favorable. It is warm and mostly sunny. The only negative is the amount of rain but many plants are beginning their dormant season. However, there are still many bloomers.
    Here goes for this week.
    https://mensgardenvestavia.wordpress.com/2022/11/04/november-blue-skies-4-nov-2022/

    Happy gardening!

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    1. I should probably be more diligent in finding common names for plants; having worked in the industry botanical names are what I’m most comfortable with, and there are good reasons for using them, but I know they are alien and off-putting to many. Temperatures here in winter are nearly always above or below the seasonal average, warmer if the wind is from the west or south, colder if it’s from the north or east. Bang on the average is unusual. These days it’s above the average an awful lot more than it is below, so over time the average is shifting.

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    1. I have to press the publish button to get to the option to schedule publishing the post, which makes me nervous because I don’t want it to publish straight away, then because I was jumpy, I double clicked on it, published the post, then scrabbled around to unpublish it. I was so determined to get it right this week too.

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      1. That’ll be why many of us had a 404 error when we tried to follow your initial post and probably confused twitter? You’ll get used to the schedule thingy, I use it all the time. Your manual tweet looked good, it makes it different from everyone else who shares your post to twitter form the blog post.

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  26. A well written introduction, and six interesting items. I’ve never attempted leaf propagation, and I think I shall try just for the exercise, Also that Begonia database is an excellent reference tool and well done to everyone who contributes to building these and stocking them with knowledge. Thanks for showing how well Fuchsia Delta’s Sara is doing. I’ve put in a link on my SOS this week on my experience with growing Leucantha. https://noellemace.blogspot.com/2022/11/six-on-saturday-5-november-2022.html

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  31. Hmm, Fieldia is interesting. I’ve never heard of it so away to Mr Google, and I see what you mean by botanical references. No one seems to be selling it here, so it’s interesting you’ve got one over there. It might grow not far from us on the eastern side of the Blue Mountains.
    Boomer is an interesting name for the Begonia: kangaroo? old person?
    Here are my six: https://janesmudgeegarden.com/time-for-roses-sos-november-5-2022/
    And thank you for taking over the reins and keeping SoS going.

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    1. I was rather pleased to find out that Fieldia came from where it did, I doubt I’ve ever seen it but I can visualize the sort of places it might have been. I wonder whether if I’d seen it flowering in the wild I’d have been tempted to smuggle a bit back; or rather whether I would have given in to the temptation.

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  36. Oh, . . . so these are your six. That is what you meant earlier. Impressive, but embarrassing that you got more flowers than I did.
    Salvia leucantha should bloom during late summer or autumn, . . . shouldn’t it? They bloom later but better if pruned to the ground as they should be. The shabbiest sort that do not get cut back after winter start blooming earlier, but are not very pretty about it. That can be more of a problem in Southern California, where so-called ‘gardeners’ are more likely to shear them like a hedge (seriously!) rather than prune them back to the ground. They are more likely to get cut back here because they look worse with the cooler winter weather. I suspect that in your region, few retain old foliage. I never considered the later bloom to be a problem, because bloom survives the weather here just fine.

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    1. It’s nice to have things flowering late October/November but it has been wet and windy for the last fortnight so everything is pretty skanky. The Salvia put on a lot of soft growth late in the summer and has flopped under its own wet weight. I did cut it to the ground, it’ll grow stiffer and more compact in your dryer climate I imagine.

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      1. Well, yes. I did not consider that. It tends to be more compact in warmer and drier climates, especially if not irrigated excessively. It can be rather floppy in sheltered coastal situations.

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  39. I’m really new to SoS, only joining in this year, but I love the community and I have learnt so much in my short time here. I think that your late flowering salvia might just be one of the unknown plants from my trip out to a water garden which I featured in my post this week. Here’s my six https://wp.me/p2Eu3u-iII (my twitter tip would be to not rely on an automatic post from wordpress, but to post on twitter yourself direct, it’s what I do.)

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