Six on Saturday – 24/8/2024

Categories six on saturday40 Comments on Six on Saturday – 24/8/2024

My sixth item last week was a picture of a pile of packages that when put together will be a new tunnel on my allotment. Progress this week has been patchy, with weather and lack of the right tools slowing me down somewhat. The garden in the meantime is running riot, or going to seed, probably both. Somehow, in spite of the mounting chaos, there seems to be a lot happening. The things I didn’t use last week, thinking I’d hold them over to this week; well I don’t need them. I have too many for this week too. Too bad I can’t carry over pictures of Dahlias, or a mention of Fuchsia gall mite, until January when talking points are hard to find.

Tis six on Saturday you see, and that calls for six things happening right now on this Saturday, not one from six months ago. Them’s the rules, as laid out in the participant’s guide. Pictures of six things, but not necessarily six pictures, posted on social media and with a link posted to my comments section below.

One.
The tunnel. By Tuesday of this week it looked like this with the metalwork pretty much complete. The action then moved back here because I needed a flat surface to build the doors and door frames. Now I have to get them back up to the allotment in a very modest sized car, along with the rest of the timber. The tunnel behind mine is on my neighbour’s plot and mine is much the same model, but 15 feet long rather than their 25 foot.


Two.
There really does seem to be a lot going on in the garden and narrowing it down to six involves choices. How about Impatiens auricoma x bicaudata. This is one of those plants that is easily rooted in a jar of water, so we raise new plants every summer, coax them through the winter, plant them out in early summer and let them get killed by the first frost, which is usually sometime in November, by which time they’re 2-3ft tall. They thrive in the ground in a shady spot, flower for months and even produce viable seed, from which we’ve occasionally raised seedlings that are similar but usually inferior to the parent plant. One such is flowering in the greenhouse and is pink, a keeper for now.


Three.
Gentiana asclepiadea. Sown in November 2019 and if not flowering for the first time, the first time it’s looked remotely good enough to get into a six. I had three or four plants but seem to be down to one. Out of flower they do look awfully weedy.


Four.
Hydrangea paniculata ‘Early Sensation’ is a bit of a puzzle. It’s no earlier than the other two H. paniculatas I grow and compared to many, perhaps most, of the varieties that have come along in the last twenty years, it isn’t sensational at all. Which is not to say that it’s no good at all, and it’s at the back of a border where arguably a better variety might be wasted. Perhaps the name is wrong.


Five.
Eucomis ‘Pink Gin’ came out on top in a Wisley trial some years back and I’ve not come up with any reason to dispute that decision. I have it in the ground, it comes back each year bigger and better and like all the Eucomis has a long flowering season and interesting foliage, making it excellent value for money and the space it occupies.


Six.
Plectranthus ‘Santana’ is another tender perennial that we picked up somewhere and wouldn’t want to be without. Dead easy from cuttings and fast growing, so like the Impatiens earlier, one for carrying over from one year to the next as small rooted cuttings taken late summer. I suppose it will flower; if it’s done so in previous years it passed me by. It was a bit straggly when it was planted out but has filled out beautifully. Gets Brownie points for not appealing to slugs too.

Hopefully the rain will blow through overnight and tomorrow will be a nice day so that I can get on with my tunnel. Doors next, then base rail, then sheeting. Will I be reporting on a finished job next Saturday. That would be excellent but seems unlikely. It’s all a bit stressful, I shall sleep better when it’s complete. Have a good week.

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Published by Jim Stephens

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

40 thoughts on “Six on Saturday – 24/8/2024”

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      2. Once a plant has been in a pot for a couple of years the feed level in the compost will be zero. Liquid feeds will base their recommended application rates on that assumption and will probably recommend a weekly feed or some such. A lower rate at every watering might offer a small advantage. You can also use controlled release fertiliser, Osmocote or similar, which is available formulated as thimble sized clusters for the purpose. You just push a couple into the surface of the compost and it feeds the plant all season. You can use the loose granules in the same way, they’re just less convenient. Then you can get fertilizer in powder form that you sprinkle on the surface and it releases nutrients over two or three months. Some of these things are only really available to commercial growers though.

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      3. This is really helpful Jim, reminding me how important feeding can be. I have to say that my clematis feeding regime (as Thorncroft Clematis suggest) has paid dividends, so the eucomis should now benefit from your wisdom…and perhaps other plants in the coop too

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  8. What a great display of Eucomis! Is there a trick to getting them to flower? Every year we have several put up leaves, but after the first couple of years … nothing more than that??? Plectranthus Santana looks a super useful plant, especially with it’s ease of rooting. I’m making a note!

    Here are my six: https://wp.me/pM8Y1-9cL . I mostly stuck to the rules 😉

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    1. Impatiens auricoma x bicaudata is an odd one. I had to look it up but found that it is not what I thought it was. A few of the genus are sometimes seen in coastal gardens. If someone finds one that performs well, it gets shared with neighbors. Because of the climate, I notice more there than in the Santa Clara Valley.

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    1. Tools are always a problem with jobs like the tunnel, you don’t want to splash out on an expensive tool you’ll probably never use again and struggle to make do with the ones you’ve got.

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    1. We have tried other Eucomis in the ground and still have E. autumnalis and E. ‘Zeal Bronze’ surviving but growing poorly and not flowering. E. ‘Pink Gin’ and E. pole-evansii are the only two that have thrived on being left in the ground. We have several others in pots that go into the tunnel for winter, so dry but no frost protection.

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    1. I need to get the tunnel finished quite soon so I can get stuff in for the winter, and some food crops like mizuna. The Plectranthus is in sun most of the day, not that there’s been much sun for it to be in lately.

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    1. Sue just ticked me off for being ungrateful about the hydrangea! Some of my Eucomis flower spikes have flopped under their own weight; they’d grown very tall with an abundance of water.

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