Six on Saturday – 12/10/2024

Categories six on saturday36 Comments on Six on Saturday – 12/10/2024

For a couple of days this week I was enjoying the company of my four sisters, something that has happened only at weddings and funerals since we were kids. A lot more eating and drinking went on than gardening as a result. They are now gone and life has returned to normal, with today spent weeding, pruning, shredding, sowing seeds (Cyclamen graecum and Camellia) and planting bulbs. It looks like the plunge of arctic air that is bringing two or three nights of frost to much of the UK is going to miss us in the south west, meaning our tardiness getting tender things under cover will go unpunished, but there is still a sense that summer is well and truly over and preparations for winter are the order of the day.

Unsurprisingly, it is starting to get a little harder to find six things to feature, at least without bending the rules. Should you be interested in such things, they are in the participants guide, but no-one is going to be waving a big stick if you break them and we always love to welcome new sixers. Onward and upward then, with this week’s offering.

One.
Alstroemeria ‘Summer Heat’. Had I realised that Alstroemeria ‘Indian Summer’ was one of a series, the Summer Paradise Series? I think I may have done, in fact I have ‘Summer Breeze’, another in the series, so I’m sure I knew. ‘Indian Summer’ is just so good, flowering for longer than just about anything else in the garden, so if any of the rest of the series were to turn out to be as good, it would be good news. I don’t think ‘Summer Breeze’ quite manages it, but ‘Summer Heat’, which we’ve only had for a year, just might. I have to grow Alstroemerias in pots to get decent results, otherwise slugs browse on the new shoots and without new shoots, they stop flowering. This one is a nice clear red with a yellow flash. I’m a little embarrassed by the dead shoots that haven’t been removed.

Two.
Salvia ‘Phyllis’ Fancy’. I had Salvia leucantha, which I’m pretty sure is one parent of this one, but it started flowering so late in the year it was pretty useless. In this, its first year, ‘Phyllis’ Fancy’ has done rather better but still didn’t get going until September. It’s very tall too, so not for the front of the border. Maybe I need to get plants very well established under cover, then plant them out to get earlier flowering? Does anyone have any tips?

Three.
It’s only five months since I last put Miscanthus nepalensis into a six, right at the ned of its season in May, when it was still looking quite good having stood all winter. Seven months of display is pretty amazing, that it is right through the winter all the more so. It was catching the sun this morning, with the house in shade behind it. For much of the winter the sun won’t rise high enough to light it up.

Four.
Impatiens niamniamensis is a plant that could have been designed for children. Bright red and yellow flowers that are a daft shape. Absurdly easy to propagate, just snap a bit off and put it in water. The name is a bit more grown up. We bought one last year and took it through the winter in a frost free greenhouse so it wasn’t in great shape when we planted it out this spring. It has flowered prodigiously for months.

Five.
Rhodochiton atrosanguineus was great for us last year but set seed too late to start seedlings before the winter, meaning I sowed them this spring. I had formed the opinion that treating them as biennials was best, sown around June, planted out the following spring. This year I sowed them in the summer and didn’t put the sowing date in my spreadsheet, but the plan was to keep them until spring 2025 before planting them out. Most of the available space is filled with Maurandya in any case. A couple of plants really took off so I planted them to scramble over a lowish Azalea. Clearly they can be grown as annuals if germinated early in the year. The advantage of overwintered plants is that they are flowering when planted in spring, and never stop.

Six.
Impatiens omeiana is available in a number of forms but I am led to believe that this one may have arrived as a mail order plant direct from a nursery in China. Conveniently, I have long since forgotten where I obtained it, but I have grown it both in containers and in the ground and it is lovely provided it doesn’t ever dry out. Unfortunately, it almost always does dry out and thereafter looks miserable if it doesn’t go completely dormant. Not so this year; with no supplementary irrigation it has reached flowering time and is covered in buds. The red leaf colour which it sports earlier in the year has faded but it’s still a handsome plant.

Another week done then. I am building up to new posts on Begonias and my allotment but if it stays dry they might be delayed. 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.

36 thoughts on “Six on Saturday – 12/10/2024”

  3. No, Phyllis Fancy has never flowered earlier than September for me, either – and here I have never successfully overwintered it outside. I kept an overwintered cutting in a pot and it is flowering well now – also very tall, despite it being a relatively small pot, 2 litres perhaps. No idea what the secret is, if there is one! Reading about your rhodochiton makes me want to try it again, although it is probably far too late to sow it now. Thanks for hosting, Jim https://ramblinginthegarden.wordpress.com/2024/10/12/six-on-saturday-after-a-quiet-week/

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  4. Pingback: Six on Saturday After a Quiet Week | Rambling in the Garden

    1. The problem I had with Salvia leucantha was that it barely managed to start flowering before winter brought it to a standstill or a frost trashed it altogether. Do plants from spring cuttings flower earlier, or just grow better? I’ve lost it now anyway, and am not looking to get another.

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      1. The first time I’m tried growing Salvia leucantha from cuttings they flowered in July. This year in September.

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      2. Which begs the question of what it was that triggered flowering in July. As cuttings did they get a shorter daylength and think it was autumn, was it higher temperatures? I’d better ask Mr Google.

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  7. Pingback: SoS: October Gardening ‘To Do’ List – The End is in Sight! – Piglet in Portugal

  12. I love Alstromeria – my mom used to grow them in her yard in southern California, ans I used to buy them as cut flowers that seemed to last a month in a vase. I have never tried growing them. Your red is striking! Also, very nice effect with the sun lighting up the miscanthus. My fave may be the impatiens that definitely appeals to my inner child!

    Here are my six:

    https://wisconsingarden.wordpress.com/2024/10/12/october-12-2024-six-on-saturday/

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  13. Pingback: October 12, 2024 Six on Saturday – Gardening in the Prairie
  17. Pingback: Six On Saturday: Autumn arrives | n20gardener

    1. I was looking ruefully at a couple more Alstroemerias I bought earlier this year; growing them in pots entails quite a lot of work because they grow fast and need big pots, I must be up to seven or eight varieties now.

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  20. Pingback: Six on Saturday 12/10/2024 – A Plantsman's World

    1. With the garden open in the summer, and early August about the latest we can do it before the paths become impassable, it’s hard not to look at late flowering Salvias without thinking we could do better with something flowering earlier. It’s that pressure to garden for the visitors more than for ourselves that I find hardest to resist but I want it to be our garden into which we invite other people, not partly theirs.

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  22. Seeing your lovely Miscanthus nepalensis this week, I note with interest and appreciate your comments regarding the winter sun, and will consider carefully where to position mine when I plant it out from its pot next spring. I’ll be moving the pot around the garden during the winter in order to find just the right spot. I hadn’t also appreciated its long season of interest, so I am delighted I bought it. Here is my contribution this week: https://noellemace.blogspot.com/2024/10/six-things-in-garden-sos-12102024.html

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    1. Sue was trying to persuade me that the Miscanthus was virtually dead in the spring and should go. The price for having the flower heads for so long is that the foliage below looks dreadful.

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      1. I’ve yet to see the foliage in the mature state as the plant is still young, and I’ll also take Sue’s observation about the dead foliage into consideration. I have no problems getting rid of plants that don’t work, but I do find it interesting to observe plant’s habits over a season or two before deciding to try something different. Also I am easily tempted as you know to take on new plants and with the small garden something has to go to make place.

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  24. Pingback: Six on Saturday | Red and Gold – Cornwall in Colours

  25. Gee, I do not know about ‘Phyllis’s Fancy’. I suppose I should, since Salvia, including Salvia leucantha are quite common here. Salvia leucantha blooms a bit through summer, but most profusely for autumn here. It is even later in the Los Angeles region. (It seems like it should be earlier there.) It gets quite large, and might bloom later in the Los Angeles region because it grows a bit larger there than here. ‘Summer Breeze’ alstroemeria looks nice. It is what we know as the old fashioned ‘cut flower’ sort, which I grew as a cut flower crop in the summer of 1986. Those sorts are rare here. Instead, ‘bedding’ sorts are more readily available. I am not so keen on them. ‘Indian Summer’ is the same cut flower sort as ‘Summer Breeze’, but I was never keen on its bronze foliage. These are my six about berries.

    https://tonytomeo.com/2024/10/12/six-on-saturday-berries/

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    1. There were bunches of Alstroemeria for sale at a garden we visited mid-week. They were all wishy washy colours that seemed dull to me and the opposite of what I think of Alstroemeria being best at, which is clarity of colour. Even the pale ones can be quite pure tones with clear markings.

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      1. I noticed that also, although not in nurseries, but in cut flowers. I can remember when a white cultivar of the cut flowers sorts first became available, and it was mostly white with a lot of spots. Then, white alstroemeria became SO spotty that it is no longer white. The buds are reddish or brownish for too long while the petals fold back, and even then, white is the minority of color. Many of them are like that now. I do not see dull color so much, but I do notice overly spotty or brown color. Ours are quite old, with better clarity of color.

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