Six on Saturday – 11/1/2025

Categories six on saturday34 Comments on Six on Saturday – 11/1/2025

It’s a measure of how lousy the weather has been this last week that I’ve spent most of it inside decorating. As in painting walls. I hate decorating. I popped out between coats on the last wall to see if anything was happening in the great outdoors and came up with the selection below.

The selection below being my contribution to Six on Saturday, a meme started by The Propagator, who passed hosting duties down to me when he tired of never being able to take a week off. All it entails is to post a picture or two of half a dozen things happening in your garden today onto a platform like a blog or some such. There’s a participants guide here.

One.
My first choice is a houseplant, which tells you all you need to know about conditions outside. I didn’t even take the picture with my proper camera, just the phone. This is Phlebodium aureum ‘Blue Star’, which I bought because I admired it in someone else’s house. It has grown prodigiously and proved to be very accommodating, meaning it seems fairly indifferent to spells of dryness, takes a bit of direct sun but is also happy in shade, doesn’t need (or get) very high temperatures. I gave one to a gardening friend for her 83rd birthday today. It was smaller than mine.


Two.
Talking of gardening friends, another has gone off somewhere warm until mid February leaving watering and general care of her house and polytunnel plants in my care. When I read and failed to recognise the name on this one, then got told who’d given it to her, I brought it and a couple of others home with me. Pilea insolens. Interesting arrangement to the veins of the leaf; not sure what else it has going for it.


Three.
One of the many plants that spent summer outside but is now back in a greenhouse for winter frost protection was Begonia carolineifolia. I bought this as a small plant a couple of years back and it has grown prodigiously. My thought turned to propagating it and I cut one of its compound leaves into individual leaflets which I pushed into perlite, they’re growing away. When I brought it in I knocked off a small side shoot, by which I mean six inches long and at least an inch thick. Cuttings wasn’t an option, so I chopped it into 1.5 inch pieces and pushed them into the granules in the base of my propagator. When I checked this morning this is what I found. They’re all rooting and shooting. The parent plant is in a 20L tub.


Four.
The big plant is sharing space with another big begonia, Begonia luxurians. This also spent all summer outside, came in when frost threatened in December. It’s 1.4m tall and in a very heavy pot which it needs to stay upright. I have one the same age in the ground outside still, cut down to 60cm and wrapped up, I’m reasonably confident it will survive, a statement that may come back to haunt me. The glasshouse has a 500 watt heater set to 3.5°C min and 4.5°C max.


Five.
OK, outdoors. It’s not just that nothing much is happening but the light is so dull on a grey drizzly day like today. I haven’t done Pittosporum tenuifolium ‘Nutty’s Leprachaun’ this year yet, in fact not since autumn 2023. It almost disappears in summer behind annuals and Fuchsias, then reappears when they all get cut down. It doesn’t seem to mind. Soon it will be sitting in a sea of primroses, forget-me-nots and bluebells; well that’s the theory.

Six.
Camellia ‘1001 Summer Nights Jasmine’ is likely going elsewhere. It’s not paying the rent. It has a smattering of flowers between October and March, small single things, though a good bright red. I don’t think it’s what they said it was, but that’s a long story. I think it’s straight Camellia azalea, the species that was supposedly one parent of the hybrid. It can go to the National collection if I can find a spot for it.

At present the forecast for next week looks a little better so I might at least get out of the house. We’re also just about the only bit of the country not getting frost, so that’s a positive for my electric bill. I’m trying to be positive here. I look at LA and a hot dry climate loses some of its appeal, not that it had much to begin with, for me. 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.

34 thoughts on “Six on Saturday – 11/1/2025”

  1. No matter what the weather throws at you, you always manage to find enough to post. My camera’s tucked away for a good few weeks yet to come, the garden has been too slippy for me recently. We’ve had frost all this week, and I love to capture the frost on plants, but I don’t want to risk a fall. Spring will be here soon, so I’ve been told! The colour of the Pittosporum is quite marvellous, and what a name! Just perfect!

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  5. Nice pictures as always! The greenhouse pictures have me excited for my planned trip to the Botany Greenhouses – I want to squeeze it in next week before the undergrads are back from break. I like the color of the camellia, and it is dainty, but a shame that there are not enough of them to make a statement.

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  6. Pingback: January 11, Six on Saturday – Gardening in the Prairie

    1. Your misplaced faith in my house plant culture shamed me into watering the plants on the window ledge beside me, which I’ve been meaning to do for a couple of days. I should maybe get more indoor ferns, I’ve run out of space for outdoor varieties.

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  8. Pingback: Six on Saturday: 11 January 2025 – My Tiny Welsh Garden

    1. The thing is,there are more and more people and they build everywhere (it seems). I grew up in Southern California and this is so common (ok particularly bad this series of fires, but totally expected given the two rainy years followed by a dry one). It is a cycle exacerbated by the number of people now in harms way with each wildfire. the area is full of canyons, like fiery fingers, the canyons reach into nearly every neighborhood. with the wind carrying embers across roads that might otherwise act as a fire break and everything bone dry and desert plants being somewhat resinous, it is surprising that it does not happen more often. I am surprised that in the

      I remember in the 1970s, living in San Diego, I was around seven, I think. There were fires burning north of us in an area that at the time I thought of as very far away, maybe a 40 minute drive. I recall being at the beach and trying to play, but I could barely breath, the Santa Ana was blowing all the smoke west. It was not such a big deal, because few people lived there compared to now. In 2007 my mom had to evacuate a fire in north San Diego county when an area that in the 1970s was open land, Her house was undamaged, but many homes were lost. You get used to it somehow, like earthquakes.
      Here is an interesting data visualization of all the times that Malibu had burned over a hundred years ending in 2018. It will be a miracle if any insurer will insure homes after this one though. They are losing their appetite for such risk.

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  10. Pingback: Six On Saturday: Frost on frost | n20gardener

    1. Perish the thought you have my measure. My Begonia list (I’m a compulsive list maker as well as collector, the two do rather go together) is well out of date at 47. Several will have died but probably rather more acquired. The blue skies haven’t arrived yet, can you wish harder please.

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  13. That Pilea is an interesting houseplant with a different foliage that the one I also have.
    Bravo for these begonia stem cuttings, they seem to have started perfectly and the rooting on the clay balls is a very good idea.
    Finally, a Must have with this begonia luxurians which is a really nice plant. I’m looking for one here, but it’s expensive so I’am waiting for a more interesting price in the spring https://fredgardenerblog2.wordpress.com/2025/01/11/six-on-saturday-11-01-25/

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  14. Phlebodium aureum ‘Blue Star’, which I bought because I admired it in someone else’s house. It has grown prodigiously and proved to be very accommodating, meaning it seems fairly indifferent to spells of dryness, takes a bit of direct sun but is also happy in shade, doesn’t need (or get) very high temperatures.

    This sounds like my kind of plant. I was looking for something that grows in the shade. PErfect

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    1. You’d be able to grow it outdoors presumably, assuming you don’t get frost. It’s a tropical/sub-tropical species but seemingly tolerant of a wide range of conditions so long as it’s not too cold.

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    1. I was checking maps online this morning trying to see if Nuccios was in the Eaton Fire area. Looks like it was. Don’t suppose they have overhead sprinklers, it’ll all have been on drips lines. Let me know if you hear; the media here are more exercised by Paris Hilton et all.

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      1. Information is dreadfully lacking. It is frustrating. With all the modern technology that allows us to zoom in to identify flowers that are growing in gardens in just about any urban area in America, we should be able to get more precise information about our homes within fire zones. If I remember correctly, Nuccio’s had broadcast irrigation like we did. Of course, that was decades ago, and such irrigation can not prevent the fire from cooking the infrastructure and vegetation until the irrigation is no longer operational. Saran gets hot enough to melt.

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      2. Hi

        I’m a long time lurker. I don’t know if you have seen the Camellia Lovers Worldwide Facebook Page but there is conversation on there regarding Nuccios. It would appear that the nursery buildings have been lost but not the plants yet.

        Fenella

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      3. I haven’t seen the Camellia Lovers thing but had heard about how they’d fared through other camellia-world networks. Having been a nurseryman for many years and having experienced a fire on said nursery that destroyed the main nursery building/shop, my heart goes out to them. If they now have to endure seeing the stock that survived die for want of water it will only prolong and deepen the agony. People invest so much of themselves in businesses like nurseries.

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