Six on Saturday – 15/2/2025

Categories six on saturday46 Comments on Six on Saturday – 15/2/2025

After weeks of dry cold weather we now have slightly warmer damp weather. There’s been a sense of things being held back but whether it has warmed up enough to get them moving again remains to be seen. Yet again it was a struggle to find six things to mention and I’m sorry if some of these are meagre pickings.

Six on Saturday is a meme started in 2017 by The Propagator. The idea is to record six things happening in your garden on a Saturday and post them to a blog or a social media platform, then put a link in my comments so that others can find it. There is a participants guide here.

One.
The risk of frost seems to have gone for the time being so I have uncovered a couple of plants in the garden I’d had wrapped up. This one is Podachaenium eminens, which I am trying to keep alive in hopes of it shooting from below or just above the ground. I took some cuttings too, which are making prodigious growth in the propagator, so I’m not going to lose it. I cut open the bottom of a plastic bag, put it over the plant, filled it with leaves then inverted another plastic bag over the top.


Two.
I went up to Mt Edgcumbe on Thursday for a day as a volunteer in the Camellia collection. They’d been given a new plant to put in the collection and have given it to me to grow on for a year to get it a bit bigger for planting out. It’s a variety I’d never heard of called C. japonica ‘Francis Eugene Phillips’ and I hope Mike Chelednik doesn’t mind me using his picture of it. It has no buds for this year, hopefully it will flower next spring.


Three.
On Wednesday there was just enough warmth in the sun to get my Crocus tomasinianus open; no such luck today (Friday).


Four.
Cyclamen coum are flowering but not very prolifically. Beggars can’t be choosers, here’s the best I could find.


Five.
I mentioned last week that the slugs are already pretty active and I came across a YouTube post by Robert Pavlis about using a yeast/flour mix to lure them into a trap. I’d seen similar recipes before but I have found his to be one of the more reliable online sources of information so I gave it a try. I put sugar in as well as flour and yeast. It’s a thumbs up from me. I’m not showing you the bottom of the pot, you could be eating your breakfast.


Six.
I took a shoot of Camellia ‘Minato-no-akebono’ along to a talk about Camellias I gave to St Mabyn garden club mid week. I don’t think there was a person there who wasn’t surprised by how good its fragrance was. On top of being very pretty and flowering for 2-3 months in the middle of winter. Shame the light was so bad, it’s a prettier pink than the photo suggests.


Sue’s back on Monday so it’s a good thing it’s warming up. 30°C to 9°C is bad enough but it’s been 5°C or less for weeks. They’re even promising us one sunny day next week! There may be more flowers in a week’s time. I seem to have ended up with a spare one this week which I will carry over.

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Published by Jim Stephens

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

46 thoughts on “Six on Saturday – 15/2/2025”

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  2. Newbie here and excited to have found you! I am sure I will participate from time to time and look forward to getting to know your space and that of other plant enthusiasts! Hope you have a great week ahead!

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  7. I suspect there will be a lot of people checking out that YouTube link Jim – I certainly will! I know we can’t expect February to be particularly mild, but this time last year we were in double figures and even made it to 18 degrees one of the days! Sadly that is not going to happen in 20225 and Sue will be in for a shock on her return… I like the idea of a fragrant camellia, especially one that flowers for 2-3 months and in such a pretty shade of pink – how fussy is ‘Minato-no-akebono’? I wonder how well it might grow here, as I have been considering on for the ex-holly corner.

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      2. I can’t find anyone listing it. I gave Jeremy Wilson of Strete Gate Camellias http://stretegatecamellias.co.uk/ some cuttings last year or the year before so he may have a plant. I don’t think he ever got his mail order going though. I may have cuttings in my propagator, I’ll have a look tomorrow. Stervinou in France list the somewhat similar Koto-no-kaori and wholesale to some nurseries in the UK, there’s a form to fill in to find out the nearest. https://www.stervinou.fr/en/

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      3. Hmm, sounds as if a search is likely to prove fruitless. Perhaps I should just ask if you could recommend a fairly readily available variety in an interesting pink, flowering over as long a period as possible, fairly compact and ideally with a fragrance? Am I asking too much…?

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      4. You’re probably asking too much. It’s the “fairly readily available” that is the stumbling block. In the main wholesale growers haven’t cottoned on to lutchuensis hybrids so they’re not readily available in garden centres. Trehane Nursery are listing ‘Fairy Blush’. I’ll email you a fuller reply, I don’t want to put libellous stuff in the public domain!

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      5. Thanks Jim, I knew it would be asking too much to have all those attributes, so it was a bit tongue in cheek! Thanks for your email, which I will reply to shortly

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    1. It will be interesting to see how that Camellia performs here. Very often we see pictures taken in much warmer climates and when they flower in our cooler conditions they are quite different. In particular the stamens often become petaloid in cooler climates.

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  14. Pretty camellias (as usual). I think I would have liked some of the scented ones here, but I don’t have any shelter. I have used yeast (with sugar and water, but not flour) and it does work, but not as well as beer traps! Slugs definitely prefer beer. I used nematodes last year, one in April and another in September when the slugs breed. I am hoping that has made a difference.

    Six on Saturday | Another Year Begins

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    1. I must try side by side beer and yeast traps (I’m never going to run out of slugs for such trials) and see which is better. I also wonder whether a yeasty beer like a cloudy wheat beer would work any better than other sorts.

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      1. This could turn into an interesting trial. Cheap lager vs Doom Bar. Wheat beer vs Guinness. Fresh yeast vs dried. It’s definitely the smell that attracts them.

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      1. Thanks for letting me know. Are you getting any message when you try to open the page? I’ve just had a look – the last comment was at 10:56am and yours above was 10:58am. I hope it’s just a blip, but if you don’t mind, maybe you could try again when you have time and let me know if there’s still a problem. The home page is: https://notesfrommygarden.co.uk if you try that first. Thanks! 😊

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  26. When is the last frost day? A slight bit of frost is technically possible here. I sort of believe it just because it can get so cool overnight. Cyclamen coum looks good. I have seen it only in pictures, but have not seen it fill in completely. It seems like it is supposed to be sporadic. Yours actually seems less sporadic than most, and it also seems less sporadic than Cyclamen hederifolium. Crocus tomasinianus (or however it is spelled) is also rad. These are my Six.

    https://tonytomeo.com/2025/02/15/six-on-saturday-scion-exchange/

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    1. Where we live there isn’t a meaningful last frost date in that it can be any time from new year until the end of May. I was pleased to find a 2yo seedling of Cyclamen coum ‘Porcelain’ with a flower on it in my tunnel this morning. I didn’t have my camera but that could be one for next week. As a species it’s a bit dumpy; somewhat lacks the grace of many other species.

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      1. Some coastal climates in or near Los Angeles lack a meaningful frost date because they lack frost. At least your climate gets some. In any climate, the last frost could be any time prior to or a bit after the average last frost date, because the average last frost date is merely an average. I am unfamiliar with cyclamen that are not Cyclamen persicum, but I believe that I still prefer Cyclamen hederifolium. Cyclamen coum appeals to me because it is reliably perennial, but I get the impression from those who are familiar with it that it is less interesting than Cyclamen hederifolium.

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