Six on Saturday – 28/1/2023

Categories six on saturday, , , 44 Comments on Six on Saturday – 28/1/2023

I think the main problem I have with this weather is that the forecasters seem to keep on promising that it is about to warm up, then it doesn’t. It would also help greatly if it was sunnier, 6°C in sun can feel quite pleasant but under thick cloud feels raw. Whingeing won’t help, onwards and upwards. Your task, find six meaningful things to point a camera at, in your garden, on a saturday. Then publish them in some fashion and bring the worlds attention to them. Couldn’t be simpler, participants guide is here, should you choose to join in.

One.
My Vitopod propagator sits under the bench in the greenhouse, with a couple of LED lights on top of it. I’ve not really succeeded with camellia cuttings since getting rid of my mist system a few years ago, but after a visit to a camellia nursery I thought I’d move a couple of trays of cuttings I had from an unheated propagator with no lights into this one. Only problem was that they were just a little too tall. So to the attic went I, to retrieve the second tier, purchased but never used. Now my problem is I can only get in by moving the trays on the bench above.

Two.
There are a few Camellias starting to flower around the garden but most are around the perimeter. In the centre much of the herbaceous top growth has been cut down and removed, leaving grasses, a couple of hydrangeas and not a lot else. In poor light even they are a bit of a mess but when the sun breaks through they are transformed. All that remains then is to attempt to grab the camera and get a picture or two. The fleeting nature of sunshine pushes me into rushing when thought needs to go into the shot; what angle, what to include, aperture, focal length and a load more. Almost always the picture fails to capture the reality, let alone enhance it.

Three.
Back in the summer we called in at a local garden centre and Sue, always on the look out for a bargain, spotted a Kalanchoe at half price. The assistant explained that since it had finished flowering, it was unlikely to sell at full price. Money changed hands and off we went with a plant that far from having finished flowering, was covered in unopened buds. You can’t get the staff. An enhanced level of enjoyment was derived from its long lived display in the ensuing weeks and months. When it really finished, I snipped off the dead flower heads and now it is flowering again. Value for money. Looking it up online it looks like it might be Kalanchoe blossfeldiana ‘Lucky Bells’. Good name.

Four.
So good were the apples on the bits of ‘Holstein’ that I grafted onto my ‘Elstar’ tree that I planted a tree of ‘Holstein’ elsewhere in the garden. It has grown well and I have been winter pruning it, working towards a framework I can summer prune and maintain at the size I want it. I acquired a few scions of another variety (possibly ‘Meridian’) which I grafted onto a sucker then moved to somewhere suitable; then decided I didn’t really want another tree so thought I’d graft bits of it onto the ‘Holstein’ and get rid of it. Then when I was pruning ‘Holstein’ I started to think it was very vigorous for a tree on MM106, perhaps it was on M25, in which case I might be planning on keeping the wrong tree. I put three scions of the unknown one onto ‘Holstein’, I’ll let you know how they do. If you fancy trying apple grafting, now is the time. I did a blog on how three years ago.

Five.
Pittosporum tenuifolium ‘Nutty’s Leprechaun’ has just been quietly getting on with it for the past several years. I put it in a winter six three years ago and it’s quite a bit bigger now. I need to prune it, Pittosporum starts into growth early and I really need to stop it getting too big.

Six.
A Camellia to finish. This is another lutchuensis hybrid, meaning it is scented. It also, like several of its cousins, has small single flowers, white with a pink blush. Its habit of growth sets it apart from most, being almost prostrate and very slow growing. I have it on top of a wall and I’m hoping it will hang down. It is also totally pickled with buds, so I’m either going to get an impressive one off display or flowers over a long period. Either will do. Oh, nearly forgot the name; Camellia ‘Quintessence’.

See you next week.

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Published by Jim Stephens

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

44 thoughts on “Six on Saturday – 28/1/2023”

  1. Pingback: Lonely Six on Sunday. 29 January 2023 – Garden Dreaming at Châtillon

  3. Nutty’s Leprechaun’ is a lovely rounded shape – is it naturally rounded, or have you trimmed it? It looks similar to Tom Thumb, mine of which is now only vaguely rounded! Your talk of grafting made me wonder if there anything eIse I could try grafting as you give the impression it is not as hard as it might sound – but I definitely don’t need any more apples! Thanks for hosting. my six are here: https://ramblinginthegarden.wordpress.com/2023/01/28/six-on-saturday-more-bewitching/

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    1. I have pruned the leprechaun! I think it (he?) would be fairly rotund and compact without, but less so. I think apples are at the easier end of grafting; willow, like Kilmarnock willow, is even easier. I have had mixed results with Magnolias, some varieties seem much easier than others, pretty poor results (but not total failure) with Camellia reticulata. I have a very good grafting book so if you had something specific in mind (Hamamelis perhaps) I can copy and send you the relevant entries.

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  4. Pingback: Six on Saturday: More Bewitching | Rambling in the Garden

  6. Pretty Kalanchoe and Camellia flowers. I love the Kalanchoes and am amazed at the variety of flowers they produce. That looks like a relative of one that got loose in gardens here called Mother of Millions. I thought they were very weird Alstroemerias for a while, until I got a closer look. The weather people are doing the same thing with rain here and It never appears. Thanks for hosting. https://theshrubqueen.com/2023/01/28/six-on-saturday-future-fruits-feathered-friends/

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  7. Pingback: #SixOnSaturday: Everything’s under control – My Secret Garden
  10. Pingback: January blues | Mom in the Garden

  11. Weather can be a drag this time of year! This past Tuesday it felt and even smelled like Spring, but no. We then moved back to grey skies and intermittent snow. Today we go back to full winter, with temps in the teens and maybe a half foot of snow by tomorrow. We will be in the single digits next week. I pray for calm conditions. How fun to graft apples – it never even occurred to me that you can make a tree that will give you several varieties!

    I only scrounged up four pictures this week: https://wisconsingarden.wordpress.com/2023/01/28/six-on-saturday-january-28-2023/

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  12. It is difficult to capture a landscape view with a camera. Winter landscapes have shades of golden brown which are fascinating to the eye. When it is sunny the landscape seems to feature its depth. I try to capture it but most often fail.
    Here in Alabama, we continue to await the warmer weather and keep looking for signs that the deep freeze at Christmas did not cause permanent damage.
    Here are my photos for this week. Happy gardening!

    Five for Friday 27 January 2023

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    1. There are lots of good instructive videos about landscape photography on YouTube, make it all sound so easy. There are just so many fantastic images everywhere you look these days, it’s very hard to match them.

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  15. Pingback: Six On Saturday: New Shoots | n20gardener
  17. Pingback: Six on Saturday: 28 January 2023 – My Tiny Welsh Garden

  24. Well pruned apple trees are increasingly rare. It is shameful because the Santa Clara Valley used to be famous for orchards. Arborists here no longer learn how to prune fruit trees. No one seems to care. It is very rare to see one pruned as well as yours.
    Anyway, these are mine, and I got flowers, including common camellias.

    Six on Saturday: Bloom!

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    1. I visited an orchard down here in what had been a Carmelite Monastery some years ago. All the trees were pruned in winter, all the new growth cut to within an inch of the base. Some just regrew and never produced a single apple, some produced decent crops. The climate in Cornwall is sufficiently different from the rest of the UK (for which all the published advice on fruit tree pruning is produced) to need a slightly different approach. I’m suspicious of the notion of a correct pruning method, there are an awful lot of variables at play. My tree is shapely and growing well but it had about six apples last year.

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      1. Yes, the techniques should be modified according to climate. What works best in the Santa Clara Valley is not quite the same for the Santa Cruz Mountains above, just a few miles away. However, the basics of the techniques remain about the same for both situations. I just prune more aggressively in the valleys than in the mountains. Also, cultivars that are most productive in the valleys are different from those that are most productive in the mountains. I grew ‘Golden Delicious’ in the Santa Clara Valley because it does not need much chill. It performs well here also, but not as well as cultivars that appreciate the increased chill.

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  27. ‘Nutty’s Leprechaun’ is such a fun name! I have scraped together a six, mainly from indoor plants. I could do with the warming sun too as our boiler’s stopped working! Hopefully the engineer can fix it today, but it’s a chilly start without a bit of heating and hot water. Here’s my six:

    🍃Here’s The Latest From My #Hampshire Garden For #SixOnSaturday January 28th Hosted by @JamesLStephens #GardeningTwitter #GardeningMakesMeHappy

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