Six on Saturday – 19/11/2022

Categories six on saturday, 51 Comments on Six on Saturday – 19/11/2022

There’s a demon out there, lounging atop his fluffy white cloud, watching and waiting. I walk out the door, he turns on the tap; I go back in, he turns it off again. Do I thwart his childish games by donning waterproofs and staying out, or by staying in until he gets bored and goes away?
We’ve had a lot of rain lately but Colliford reservoir, our main source of water here, was only at 18.2% a week ago. It’ll be interesting to see this week’s figure. It’s a big reservoir but, in the context of Cornwall, it’s high up so doesn’t have a very big catchment. I’d give them some of mine if there was a way to do it; like exporting surplus power from solar panels to the grid.

Enough of such meanderings, time for Six on Saturday, six things from your garden, happening around now. I did a rehash of the hows, whys and whens, it’s here. Please join in; at this time of year, we northern hemispherites need all the help we can get.

One.
Our local garden club has wakened from its long covid slumbers and is starting up again in the new year. I’m going to kick things off by talking about how I try to keep my garden interesting all year round. I posted this montage of things that were flowering on Wednesday on the club’s Facebook page, by way of a taster. Six by six too, should further justification be felt necessary.

Two.
Almost everything in the previous image has been flowering for a while, happening now, but not new. Not so the fourth flower along on the top row, which was only half open then and is fully open now. It’s Camellia ‘1001 Summer Nights’ Jasmine. Not everyone engaged in marketing is an idiot, but whoever came up with that name surely is. If you believe the hype, it’s the first of a new wave of summer flowering Camellias, but opening its first flower in mid November doesn’t quite fit the narrative. Next year perhaps.

Three.
Fuchsia ‘Cotta Christmas Tree’ or ‘Cotta Bright Star’. We have three plants, two labelled ‘Cotta Christmas Tree’, one with no label. We used to have both varieties and they are quite similar; I think these are all the same and probably ‘Cotta Christmas Tree’ but there are small differences and I’m not totally sure and there are probably more important things to worry about and I should get a life.

Four.
When I bemoaned the paucity of subjects for sixes, Sue said “Aeoniums“. She has a point.

Five.
Another year, another Camellia season, another batch of conundrums over identities. The ideal way to check a plant’s identity is to take a bit of the plant in question and compare it directly to a verified specimen of the thing you think it is. You can often see at a glance that it’s not the same thing. If it’s very similar you can compare every possible characteristic. If the reference plant is half way round the world, or even 100 miles away, high resolution photos may be the best way to go. I try to take such pictures in my “studio”. Some results are better than others.

Six.
Oaklings. I started writing a blog about our one big tree, an English oak, Quercus robur. Never finished or published it, which is not unusual. It has dropped all its acorns and is slowly shedding its leaves, which I will use to protect tender plants that don’t get lifted. The acorns start to germinate almost immediately, so I’ve tried to pick a lot up before they root strongly into the ground. The longest root was already about 6 inches. I found and removed a couple of 2 year old seedlings; not a lot more root growth and at least twice as much growth in year one as in year two. If conditions are not ideal they will tick over with very little growth for many years, waiting for the right moment, like when the parent tree blows down.

That’s yer lot for this week. I’m starting to think about alternatives to six flowering plants; favourite gardening books, garden ornaments, foliage perhaps. What do I do to keep my gardening mojo alive during the winter, and can I get a picture of it?

Published by Jim Stephens

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

51 thoughts on “Six on Saturday – 19/11/2022”

    1. The one you saw at Mt Edgcumbe is no longer. Sadly it succumbed to the dry summer, woefully inadequate staffing levels and a volunteer conspicuous by his absence. Mine is I think the same variety.

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    1. It’s hard for me to imagine a garden covered in snow for months, it is so far removed from our experience. So even if it doesn’t change I’d love to see one set of six just to know what you are having to endure.

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      1. Sure, I have some nice icicles now that the sun is out, you can see them. there are some lovely snow/ice effects that happen sometimes. Hoping it warms up a tiny bit, it is like January out there today, and not even Thanksgiving!

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    2. I think I got started on Six on Saturday with a series of snowy pictures, because I was feeling so sulky about dealing with multiple feet of snow for months when the English (and some other) gardeners were going on about spring flowers in early February! For example: https://dameeleanorhull.wordpress.com/2019/01/22/winter-garden/
      and see also: https://dameeleanorhull.wordpress.com/2020/04/15/wordless-wednesday/
      I guess the snowy series came later: https://dameeleanorhull.wordpress.com/2021/01/02/six-on-saturday-this-is-winter/

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      1. When you don’t get a lot of snow you forget how short a time it looks good for, before looking dreary. There’s a lot to be said for living in a place that doesn’t get much (or any) if you don’t like the stuff.

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      2. I feel your winter pain – I do love snow, measured in inches, but I am quite done with it by March, and in Wisconsin, that is still winter. Before I moved to WI, I interviewed for a position in upstate NY, and when I heard that they generally got 11 feet every winter, I thought, no, not for me. Beautiful in summer though!

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  7. Pingback: In the Coop on Saturday: A Few More than Six | Rambling in the Garden

  8. Dear Jim, I found your picture of the ‘studio’ interesting, and also the invite to use other topics related to the garden for the forthcoming dark months. I’m not posting this week as I spent a wonderful morning listening to Fergus Garrett speak at the Somerset AGM. Came away with some inspiration there!

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    1. I bought a second hand copy of “Succession planting for adventurous gardeners” by Christopher Lloyd after seeing Fergus at Cornwall Hardy Plant last year. It’s pretty much the transcript of the talk Fergus gave.

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      1. Yes I read that book too, and I agree, except that during that talk I began to appreciate that they use perennials in effect like annuals, changing displays continuously and changing planting schemes almost seasonally, but I have been out into the garden and looked critically, and can see what plants may go better together, so my move around will continue and bear what I observed in mind. His take on compost for potting etc in the garden too was interesting, or at least supported what I have been doing.

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      2. I don’t recall him talking about compost, I may have been at overload by then. Our conditions are quite different from theirs; I grow a different palette of plants; but the overall approach has much to recommend it.

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  11. The montage is fabulous. I used to do a post every month from the George V walk in Hayle highlighting all the different plants, you have excelled yourself with 36! ‘Cotta Christmas Tree’ is very beautiful and much more interesting than an actual Christmas tree. And I have to agree with you about silly names, but Red Undies and Frilly Knickers did make me smile. Why would anyone give a plant those names? Gardening books and maybe gardening techniques. Sue’s cacti and succulents – BTW does she water the aeoniums at all during the winter?

    No six from me for a while. But if you fancy seeing the George V blooms I’ll leave you a link to the last post. If you scroll down you’ll see a gallery from each month. (The actual posts did have names of the plants I was able to ID).

    Changing Seasons – December 2019

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    1. Just looked at the George V pictures and they are fabulous. Highly recommended to anyone with a moment to spare. The Aeoniums get a very occasional drink, they don’t like total dryness as well as just about every other succulent she grows, nor quite such low temperatures.

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  14. Pingback: Six On Saturday: Keeping my head down | n20gardener
  15. Pingback: Six on Saturday: 19th November 2022 – My Tiny Welsh Garden

    1. Begonia ‘Red Undies’ is one I succumbed to. I named (unofficially, it’s unregistered) a Camellia I raised ‘Yojimbo’ which would mean nothing to most people but I like to think it’s a grown-up play on words. There may be some hidden significance underlying ‘1001 Summer Nights Jasmine’ but it’s lost on me.

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  20. Pingback: 🍃Late Autumn And Early Winter Flowers For This Week’s #SixOnSaturday Post. #GardeningTwitter #Flowers | Rosie Amber

  21. Six on Saturday: Zinnia


    Goodness! You got a lot more than six! I see the Yucca near the middle of the montage. Is that yours, or from the garden of someone else in the club? It and the Agaves and cacti in your #4 can make more of a point than the soft Aeoniums. English oaks are rad, but very rare here. I have not seen one in many years. I believe that they resemble our valley oaks, but are not as big and obtrusive. Oregon oak also resembles valley oak, but smaller, but I do not believe that it looks as refined as English oak. Anyway, my #6 is most excellent of all!

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    1. At some point this winter I will post six exemplary winter trees, a guest post from the park I go to. They have some great English oaks, and a couple of fair Sequoias, for England. And yes, it’s our Yucca, flowering for a second time.

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      2. We only grow fair Sequoias here, whereas we grow excellent Sequoiadendrons, at least until they stick out of whatever canopy they’re part of and get hit by lightning. The tallest are around 200ft, which isn’t bad for a species introduced in the 1840’s.

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      3. Not all of them are ridiculously tall. They stay much lower if they need not compete with taller trees. They get as tall as they do in the wild because they live amongst so many other rather tall trees. The tallest coastal redwoods here are getting close to three hundred feet tall, which is still almost a hundred feet shorter than they were prior to harvest a century ago, but much taller than redwoods that I grew up with in the Santa Clara Valley. Because of the relative warmth and aridity there, some of the oldest trees are barely half as tall. They could be shorter than average trees in your region. Old giant redwoods are uncommon there, and are a bit shorter. Young specimens are rare, both because the trunks get so broad, and also because they do not perform well.

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  22. Your ‘Cotta’ fuchsias kept reminding me of panda cotta, which is a very nice dessert!
    I’m a bit envious of your succulents. Not having a greenhouse I can’t grow succulents that aren’t frost hardy (although last winter we didn’t have much frost at all) so I have only a small number. I bought four small ones at today’s growers’ market, so fingers crossed. Couldn’t resist them!
    Here are my six: https://janesmudgeegarden.com/sos-16-november-2022/?_thumbnail_id=3506

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  25. Pingback: SoS, 16 November 2022 – Jane's Mudgee Garden

      1. So you can control your camera, focal length ISO etc remotely? – If so, that’s brilliant. I think I can do that with mine too but haven’t really experimented. I lent my whizzy camera to my daughter for her A level and it’s come back to me needing a bit of a service!

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