Six on Saturday – 14/9/2024

Categories six on saturday32 Comments on Six on Saturday – 14/9/2024

Friday evening has come round again and it’s time to put finger to keyboard and knock out another Six on Saturday. Should I be concerned that today is Friday 13th? I’m not, whether I should be or not.

The temperature dipped to 3.8°C last night, which is pretty chilly for Cornwall in September, but looks to be going back up again in the coming week. A lot of the garden has already got the message that the growing season is winding down, the flowers are fewer, the seed heads are forming. I’ve been spending more time on my allotment than in the garden but there too, growth has slowed to a crawl. The main reason for wanting the summer and autumn performance to go on as long as possible is that it shortens the time until the next growing season gets under way.

The Six on Saturday participants guide is here, we’d love to hear from you and get a peek into your garden. Right, to business.

One.
One of my sisters paid us a visit a while back and we visited a local plant outlet where I saw and expressed a liking for a plant labelled Streptocarpus ‘Pretty Turtle’. I recognized it as something I know as Primulina, having been growing another form for a few years. Primulina is in the family Gesneriaceae, which includes Streptocarpus, Saintpaulia, Gloxinia and many other genera, many regarded as a bit tricky. Primulina seem to be fairly easy so long as they’re kept out of direct sunlight and not overwatered. It has interesting foliage and has been flowering for several weeks. It’s not hardy but will take temperatures a few degrees above freezing so is likely to stay in the conservatory.


Two.
Out the front, our Yucca gloriosa ‘Variegata’ put up a couple of flower spikes two or three weeks ago. Now, just about every time I look at it I see another spike appearing. I’ve now counted ten, nine of which are visible in this photo, the other is on a basal shoot coming up behind the plant. I seem to remember struggling to get an angle with a background that wasn’t hideous last time it flowered.


Three.
Fuchsia gall mite has started to appear on some of the Fuchsias we grow. Unfortunately there are several big bushes on the bank at the back of the garden, more or less on the boundary line but mainly on the other side of the fence from us, and they had quite a lot in them until I went snipping yesterday. My strategy, that has worked reasonably well for several years, is to maintain a high level of vigilance and remove to the dustbin every sign of it that I see. My hope is that by removing it very early that it won’t have had much chance to spread further. Unfortunately it mainly appears at the tips of the shoots where the flowers are but I’d rather sacrifice a few flowers than have the pest stop them a week or two later having spread much further. Here, so you know what it looks like, are some pictures of it. I take it off several inches below the infection.


Four.
I went to take pictures of Dahlia ‘Danum Torch’ and while I was looking through the viewfinder a yellow butterfly appeared seemingly from thin air. Looking now at the first pho I took, it is in flight at the top of the picture. Ten seconds later it has settled, folded its wings and is hard to spot. It almost never opened its wings and only for a split second when it did. It’s a Brimstone.


Five.
I had enough seedlings of Cyclamen hederifolium last year to think it worth trying them amongst the stems of our big bamboo. They do very well right under our massive fastigiate yew so I figured they’d have a fair chance of growing OK. Seems I was right, so far at least. Good colour form too. They’d have been corms about 2cm across, two or three years old.


Six.
Solidago ‘Fireworks’ is flowering its head off and I’m trying to make the best of it having decided I’m fed up with it and it has to go. It has a very short and not very spectacular flowering for around two weeks having occupied a sizeable patch of ground in a prominent position with its very undistinguished foliage since the spring. I seem to recall that as a young plant the flower racemes were much longer but now they seem very ordinary. It’s going, as soon as it’s finished flowering. Selinum wallichianum is likely to be one replacement.

It’s going to gradually get harder to find six things to write about but no doubt a good few of you will take up the challenge. I do the occasional talk to a garden club and one of my subjects is how we try to keep the garden interesting all year round. I count myself lucky to live somewhere that has neither cold enough winters nor hot enough summers to make having something happening impossible. I reckon the end of February is the lowest point and six months from that in both directions is the end of August, which probably is the peak time. Which means the trajectory is now downwards.

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Published by Jim Stephens

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

32 thoughts on “Six on Saturday – 14/9/2024”

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  10. The streptocarpus is interesting. I have not seen that one before. I am torn about goldenrod. I like the bright pop of yellow and it blooms late, but it can be aggressive. I don’t want to leave the seeds to fly everywhere. Bad enough I missed a few milkweed pods and some seeds are loose in the garden. It is OK – I would like more A tuberosa in the new section and can transplant any volunteers. Here are my sixish

    https://wisconsingarden.wordpress.com/2024/09/14/september-14-2024-six-on-saturday/

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    1. The main (only?) merit of Solidago ‘Fireworks’ is that it’s sterile. If I’m going to grow things that are only in flower for a couple of weeks they need to be worth the 50 week wait.

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  12. Pingback: Six On Saturday: Harvest | n20gardener

    1. The other Primulina I already had has similar but not quite so good foliage and is a reluctant flowerer. This one seems excellent,I just have to get it through the winter and I must look up propagation too.

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    1. Is the Yucca spotting a disease that hasn’t arrived here yet? I’m a bit concerned now, need to do some research. Gall mite has a real grip here now. Sadly a lot of people just seem to let it run riot, which is silly as they get no flowers and the bushes look awful and it spreads to other people’s plants. Better to dig them out if they’re not going to try and control it.

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  18. HEY! I got ‘Fireworks’ goldenrod also! I thought I had something special! Well, it is special to me. It was a gift from Tangley Cottage Gardening, and is my very first goldenrod. It does not look like yours, of course. I neglected to water it when the weather got warm and arid earlier. Are you familiar with Yucca recurvifolia, and if so, are you aware that it is now Yucca gloriosa var. tristis or var. recurvifolia, or some other variety of Yucca glorious that some validated botanists designated?

    Here are my six.

    https://tonytomeo.com/2024/09/14/six-on-saturday-fire-season-2/

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    1. I couldn’t say I’m familiar with Yucca recurvifolia though the name rings a faint bell. Did I see a big clump so labelled at Kew a zillion years ago? I think I may be caring ever so slightly less about the names of things as I get older; I do still like to know the names of the things I grow myself and I care about getting them right. But just growing plants and growing them well seems these days to be getting relatively important, or future generations are going to have very detailed, very accurate and very long lists of plants that have become extinct.

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      1. Oh, I am unfamiliar with what grows a Kew. It could be a common variety or species or whatever it is there, but with one of those new names. I doubt that future generations will know what to do with detailed information that was in use only a few years ago. Nomenclature was developed to simplify botany, but has lost its standardization. Species designations are becoming obsolete. Cultivar names are replacing them. So much of what is being introduced are hybrids that can not sustain themselves without intervention. Some are sterile because of their extensive breeding, and if those that are not probably should not be breeding anyway.

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