My amaryllis broke so I made a cut flower

I hate disappointment, which probably sounds odd because its not an emotion anybody exactly enjoys, but I really do not cope with it well.  The other day a very sad thing happened that brought with it considerable disappointment and really really spoilt my day.  I came home from work, and was in a really good mood, went into the living room while filling in the family on my day, and stopped short.  There, on the floor, by my dogwood christmas tree was my prized amaryllis that had been in full beautiful bloom and at absolute peak perfection.  Only it was in pieces.  If it was acceptable to cry over a plant I would have.  Anybody who read my previous amaryllis post will know just how besotted with it I was.  How I didn't end up carrying it around showing it to people I don't know.  Ok, I admit, I did do that a little.

You can see the major bend in the stem like an elbow that is not meant
to be there.  The flowers also took a beating getting to the floor so they are a little bruised

My beautifully big bud hanging, lifeless

The damage was, alas, severe.  The flowering stem had bent in two places and while still attached, was well beyond working functionality.  The second unopened bud, and the part that killed me the most, not to mention the amaryllis, had clean snapped through and was dangling by a fleshy thread.
To begin with we just couldn't understand how it had gone from being happy as larry on the sideboard to on the floor.  The blame was squarely placed on the cat getting up and barraging about on the sideboard like she does sometimes.  Luckily for it, before skinning commenced we realised that maybe it had, with four whopping flowers, become top heavy and collapsed.  Maybe this is why it needs a stem as thick as a baby's arm!  And still manages to fall over.  The situation was probably not helped by the mother rather excessively watering it.  It virtually had a bath.  The mixture of unstable roots and poor albeit beautiful design I feel did it in.  The motto of this story is stake amaryllis.
To begin with, apart from picking it up off the floor I just couldn't bare to deal with the wreckage.  But then the mother came home and that lady never lets a plant go without a fight.  Her weapon of choice?  Cello-tape.  She can perform miracles with the stuff.  Between us we held the flowering stem back upright and cello-taped copiously the bends to stabalise and provide support whilst also joining in the stick thats been holding up an orchid for some time.  This method has in the past saved a crooked hazel sapling after my father accidentally stomped on it once, so there is method behind the madness.  However, it did not save the flower which gently wilted and died over the next few days but ensured we got to enjoy it upright while it did.

Despite major reconstructive surgery the flowers rapidly wilted

The cello-tape joinery

The bud stem was in my opinion, done for.  But then I remembered reading that you could have amaryllis as cut flowers.  Straight onto the internet I went to check how to care for your cut flower.  It turns out that baby arm of a stem is completely hollow and filled with water.  The internet recommended that I never let my stem be empty of water, filling it up and wedging cotton wool in the end if it ever had to be taken out of water.  Great to know that when the broken bud has at this point spent a good few hours empty and dry.  Nevertheless we snapped that final fleshy tendril and stuck it in a vase.  I thought the bud may not be developed enough to come out but over the next few days it did indeed flower.  I was thrilled.  The four flowers never opened as wide as they did on the plant and where therefore not as impressive, definitely not helped by the rather short stem that had been left attached to the flower after the accident, but I loved them anyway.  Any kind of flowering was better than just throwing the bud away.

The second bud beginning to flower from its new location in a vase

So while we didn't completely manage to reverse disaster, we did salvage something from the wreckage, and learnt that my other amaryllis will need support and a firm stabalising pot to sit in to prevent this happening again.  I have read that amaryllis bulbs can be kept for future years but that feeding should start while the bulb is still flowering.  Clearly this happened slightly earlier than I was planning so I never actually managed to feed it but my task now is to read up on how to care for an amaryllis for the rest of the year while I wait my next showing.  

The second bud flowered to a certain extent but seemed to struggle with hoisting the flowers into the correct position and opening fully

Fuchsia round-up 1: Bland's New Stripe, Angie and Eva Boerg

Last month I wrote a little post saying that I was throwing out all my thirty-odd varieties of fuchsias, but rather than let all my experiences of growing these little beauties go to waste I will be doing several of these fuchsia round-up posts over the next few weeks.  Just because I am moving on to pastures new doesn't mean others don't want to grow them.  Hopefully if you read this so you will be a little more prepared on what you are getting.  I have found many times that i have bought a variety to discover it looks nothing like what I thought it would when it finally blooms.  I had really hoped to be able to have  a picture of each variety but some of mine really gave pathetic shows this year and I didn't manage to catch some of them.  One of the inevitable problems of buying plants on the internet I guess, I always think the blooms are going to be nice and big and turn out to be really unimpressive.  So here we go with the first three varieties:

Bland's New Stripe- An original member of the team from the first year I properly got into fuchsias.  Unfortunately I bought it at time when I would buy virtually anything under the 'fuchsia' umbrella, as this really isn't my cup of tea at all.  Its predominantly the traditional red and purple colours of hardy fuchsias that I don't particularly like, apart from some streaking on the purple of baby pink.  Probably this is because it is actually a hardy variety where as I normally only buy non-hardy types.  Largely I found that my plant resembled pictures I have seen on the web, although I have seen the red sepals tightly curled up and away from the purple where as mine generally just stood up straight on end like they had experienced a terrible fright.  Average sized, roughly two inches long not counting the stamens, there is no frill or excitement of any kind.  If I may be so brash as to say; I find it boring.  I really don't know what came over me when I bought it.  If you wanted a hardy fuchsia for the garden that is a little different, this may be a good one.

Bland's New Stripe- The baby pink streaking down the purple petals is where the 'stripe' element comes from I guess,
other than than its much like a regular hardy fuchsia.  I didn't do an 'up the skirt' shot of this one as there is not much to look at

Angie- Ah little Angie.  This I would probably describe as a real do-er, it was the first one out last year and flowered continuously for months.  Described as a 'bush' variety they aren't wrong.  There is no spreading or trailing, no long unruly shoots.  Angie is most definitely a bush, and an extremely small one at that.  Everything about Angie is miniature, she only grew about 8 inches tall, the leaves are tiny and the flowers are only about an inch long and less than an inch wide.  But in her favour this tiny bush was always covered in blooms but like all good reliable do-ers, Angie is a little underwhelming.  Her purple and white with the merest splash of red doesn't exactly set me alight and she is so small she doesn't have the presence to make a statement across the patio.  But for reliable flowering that won't get out of hand, she's your girl.  Unfortunately Angie never managed to get her picture taken, poor girl.

Eva Boerg- I think.  Most of the labels wore off so its not 100% definite but this seems the most likely candidate

Eva Boerg- Another purple and white variety, and again unfortunately in my opinion, not the most exciting.  When I bought it as a plug plant the image on the packet showed a really dark plumy purple but as I have regularly found when the fuchsias actually come out, the colour of my plant was a little different.  More like a mid pinky purple it is pretty, but still not what I thought I was going to get.  While you might be thinking you've clearly just identified the wrong fuchsia as Eva from the pictures, I remember thinking this when she first flowered.   Eva is what is known as a 'single' flower so is fairly small with no frills.  Like I said, its quite pretty with faintly blushed pink sepals and is my favourite of the three featured here.

The 'up the skirt' shot, fairly open petals, overall 'nice'

Flowering amaryllis

The enormous bud split and the four buds like little aliens started making
 a break for freedom

Freshly released and already red but still tightly furled

My favourite plant discovery this winter without doubt is the amaryllis, I am in love.  I know they are not remotely subtle, which is usually my taste, but at this time of year its nice to have something bold and brash brightening up the room.  I bought one of my amaryllis at just the right time, with already a huge stem and a cracking bud atop it.  The bud immediately started to pop when I got it home.  The amaryllis flower may be an elegant and beautiful thing when its fully in bloom, but the way it unfurled from the bud was not pretty.  The whole process was much like a butterfly emerging from its chrysalis. Despite the bud being ginormous, it was still impressive how much flower was actually packed away into it.  Four rolled flowers struggled out of the one bud, then flopped out horizontally in opposite directions from each other.  Finally each flower unfurled and fully opened into its final lily-like form.  The whole process took several days.

The four individual flowers lowering like helicopter blades into their final positions

This is what I like to call the donkey shot, the first flower down starts to unfurl

Oh what a flower it is!  I knew I would be impressed, and it didn't disappoint.  Each flower is the size of a hand with a lovely open face and long stamen covered in bright yellow pollen contrasting with the vivid orange petals.  These stamen are really rather lovely, just like all lilies are (and yes I know that technically amaryllis are not actually lilies but they look it).  I looked up on wikipedia to make sure that what I wanted to call stamen actually were called that, and funnily enough the example given on wikipedia are amaryllis so they are obviously a great example of a good stamen.  Bold and brassy this plant most certainly is, demanding attention.

So excited about that second bud!

Look at those anthers!  They couldn't get any more pollen on them if
they tried

Although the colour of this amaryllis, which I unfortunately don't know the variety of, is undoubtably lovely in these dark dull days, I personally think it is the form that makes it so striking.  I don't know why an amaryllis feels the need to grow such a long and strapping stem but it gives the plant great structure, commanding attention.  The way the four flowers face away from each other helpfully gives it no bad side, and a lovely symmetry.  The genus name for these bulbs is Hippeastrum which comes from the greek words for 'knight' and 'star' and refers to the star shaped weapon knights used to wield which is such a cool thing to be named after.  The formation of the flowers reminds me of the loudspeakers on school sports pitches that I have seen in films,  Like little floral gramophones.
Having said that it is the form that is impressive there is something about the colour that I can't get my head around.  When put in the light, these orangey red petals are actually glittery.  Not pearlescent or iridescent as you can find in nature although I can't think of a flower that actually has either of these two qualities off the top of my head, but actually glittery with a golden yellow sparkle present right across the petals.

Now you can clearly see the little yellow glittery dots in this picture right?

So now the first flower is out my attention is turned to the second spike that is rapidly making progress. This plant literally grows before your very eyes and it wont be long until its out.  I can't help but think of triffids, not because this plant looks remotely menacing, but because of how fast it grows and how thick the stems are.  My other amaryllis is also making progress so I will update in due course.

Merry Christmas

How did this time of year come round again? Unlike many people I am not a terribly christmasy person, I wasn't designed for parties and am too keen on maintaining some kind of waistline for all the food.  I was actually on a christmas night out on Saturday and was in a club thinking, why am I not at home in my pyjamas?!  But the good news is the winter solstice passed on Sunday so I do see this point in the year as a corner and now we are moving back towards lighter evenings and nicer weather.  I can not wait.  I hate getting back from work in the evenings and spending all night cooped up indoors like a caged animal, faced pressed to the window glass, desperate to be out amongst marrows.  Not that I have marrows.
However, I will rally and have a glass of something nice on the day.  I thought I would share with you a christmas tree, a real one this time not one made of dogwood, but not just any christmas tree.  Behold, the biggest living decorated tree in the UK:

35 metres of light, so pretty in the dark, excuse the quality I couldn't get it any clearer
 because of the lack of light and I wasn't enjoying the threat of being run over

A giant redwood standing 35 metres tall is decorated from a cherrypicker with 1800 lights for the whole christmas season.  It stands tall and bright light a beacon across the fields and is visible from the nearby road.  Pilots flying into the nearby airport can even see it from the air and use it to help guide them in. Im lucky enough to get to see it quite often and its always impressive.  I thought it would be nice to get a picture to show you, but the problem is Wakehurst Place, the location of this tree is shut by the time its dark and I get out of work so I had to try and take it from the road.  As usual, there was me, hastily parked up and stumbling up a steep grass verge in the dark to get my picture.
Unfortunately the tree is not as impressive in pictures as it is in real life because it is difficult to grasp the scale of it, but you can see a few other trees in the foreground to give you some idea, and Im about 100 metres away, it would take a good 7 minutes to walk to the tree so that shows you the size.
Anyway I wish all my readers a very merry christmas, I hope yours is full of joy, and probably plenty of food.  Now bring on spring so I can post nice pretty pictures again rather than bulbs!

A winter sweet pea planting

Re-hydration in action, look what a little water can do

I would not normally even consider sowing sweet peas in the winter.  Monty Don, that great stalwart of British gardening and a man I would gladly marry in exchange for access to his greenhouses, once conducted an experiment on his show Gardeners World to see whether sowing in winter gave you some great advantage.  Apart from slightly earlier flowers, he concluded that it did not.
However, in my case I can see other advantages in winter sowing.  Anyone who read about my efforts last spring will know that on the whole it did not go well.  For such a simple thing to grow, after all sweet peas are often touted as the beginner's flower, I managed to make a right royal mess of the whole sowing process.  I made some fundamental errors that I guess we all have to make to learn, but that I will endeavour not to repeat this year.  By sowing in Winter it will free up germinating space for another batch in spring, thereby giving two bites of the cherry.  Or possibly two opportunities to mess it up.

Seeds in a glass jar post soaking

In an effort to ensure germination across the board I have followed the backs of the packets to a tee, although I remember covering last years with newspaper until they germinated and I have forgotten to do that this year.  Oh well.  The packets said soak the seed overnight in water before planting, so thats what I did.  Only I remembered I needed to do this only after I was already in bed so I actually got back out to soak my seeds, such dedication.
I soaked two seeds of each variety of the eight that I have.  There is limited space in my germination area so I didn't get too carried away.  The packet said use warm water, I guess that gets the process started, so I placed the jar by a radiator to try and keep the water warmish all night.  A nice little layer of paper over the top to stop sneaky midnight drinks by the cat.  I was surprised how fat the seeds actually got over night.  They went in looking like very dry black peppercorns and came out in the morning about a third bigger and beautifully smooth, like they had enjoyed a round of botox overnight.
Being devoid of a greenhouse my germination spot of choice is the handy windowsill in the internal garage.  Space, as I said, is limited by it being a small window and also the current home of my narcissus and hyacinths.

I always find an empty washing up bowl great for putting holey damp pots in so your brother's stuff doesn't get ruined when you rest all your seedlings on it

Im hoping that they will germinate fine in there as it is an internal garage so it never gets too cold so they won't freeze, but it also isn't heated giving me long straggly seedlings.

Growing narcissus in pebbles

The pebble method, clean, reusable, whats not to like?

I thought I had covered the planting of narcissus in every which way that was possible, but it turns out I have not.  While on the internet researching how to plant narcissus, the mother stumbled across a video in which a lady planted in pebbles.  Thinking about it now, I do not know why she was on the internet researching that in the first place!  She knows how to plant them, I doubt the theory has changed a vast amount, a narcissus is fairly constant in what it likes.
Anyway in this video this nice American lady plants narcissus in nothing but pebbles in a glass vase.  Planting in bulb fibre is hardly messy, but planting in pebbles is definitely a cleaner, less fuss option.  Also unless you have a packed winter planting schedule, more than likely you end up with half a bag of bulb fibre kicking about, superfluous to requirements.  I imagine that if you plant in pebbles you just turf out the bulbs when they are done and keep the pebbles for next year.  After the first year investment in pebbles it becomes a cheap planting option, which appeals to me greatly.

The bulb ideally does not want a furry coating of mould, this was probably the worst affected bulb

Unfortunately I lacked all the necessary ingredients for this method- bulbs, pot and pebbles.  The mother's bulbs were already safely tucked up in their bulb fibre, chilling in the garage, so I thought I would just make a note of the method and try it next year.  However, if you watch the video, the lady says to save some of the bulbs for successive planting through the winter months.  That being the case I couldn't see why, if I could get hold of some, I couldn't still plant them.  Bulbs aren't aware when they were bought after all.  Luckily I got hold of some narcissus 'ziva' from crocus.co.uk and at 20 per cent off no less as the season was getting long in the tooth.  Apparently it pays to buy late!  The pot and pebbles were purchased the same day as my Amaryllis bonanza.  Unfortunately the garden centre did not appear to sell pebbles specifically for 'that narcissus pot you have planned' so I bought really small grade pea gravel.  And this is where the theory on it being a 'cleaner' method falls apart.  Being largely intended for a pathway the pebbles were covered in sandy dirt so after digging them out of the bag I had to give them a good washing.  In December, in the freezing cold, joy.
While the lady said you could keep the bulbs, I doubt she meant tucked up in the jiffy bag they were sent in for several weeks.  When I got mine out I discovered they were gently moulding, oops.  Clearly this was not a good sign, but I didn't have anything to lose in planting them, they will either grow or they won't.  The mould was on the outside layers of the bulb so I just peeled the bulbs like onions.
The lady planted her bulbs in a glass vase, and I now know why.  Its very difficult to tell when you have put in two inches of pebbles, or how much water to put in when you can't see the level.  In the first pot I nestled my bulbs in first, then added a few extra pebbles to secure them and then poured in some water.  Problem is, I couldn't tell how high the level was and if its over the bulbs they will rot.  So I had to pluck one out and check the level and then replace them.  The next pot I thought I would be really clever and put the water in first, but then I just couldn't get those bulb bums nestled nicely in the stones.

So the motto of the story is; get a clear glass vase.  I will be keeping my peepers peeled all year for some.  Then I will have two other pots to plant something else in, yay!

Dogwood christmas tree

Look its me in the bauble!

We normally buy a real christmas tree, they are just so much nicer than fake ones and smell amazing.  Plus if you are going to go to all the hassle of decorating it, you might as well get a nice one.  However, we don't have anybody coming for christmas and real trees are expensive, shockingly messy and I do find taking the decorations on and off a bit of a bore.  I know, what a bah humbug.  Every January when Im waging battle with the hoover on the billion pine needles its left behind, I think maybe next year we won't have one, just have a little rest from all the christmas fun.  Well that year is this year.  Nobody was that fussed so we decided; no tree.
And we were happy, until a friend of the mother's told her how she had constructed herself a sudo-tree out of yellow dogwood branches that she had strung lights through and it was all very pretty.  The mother was rather taken with the idea of this and it so happens that we have a dogwood in the garden.  Ours is a far more christmas appropriate red rather than yellow, which can't, in my opinion, have looked that christmassy.

Please ignore all the other stuff in this photo, our living room is for living in, nobody
is under any illusions it is going to appear on a pinterest board any time soon or, between the covers of
Elle Decoration.  The point is the Dogwood is pretty, I think all white lights might be better but mine, alas, are coloured

Always up for a challenge I agreed to help attempt to make a dogwood christmas tree, although I actually ended up doing most of it.  So there I am, on a bitterly freezing cold day in December standing in the border wearing my gardening trousers which are far too big and therefore slip down to reveal an inch or two of flesh beneath my coat.  Literally freezing my posterior off.  We were looking for youngish stems as they remain bright red rather than the aged wood, and with good branching.  I managed to find about four good stems.  The mother tried to coerce me into giving the dogwood a prune at the same time but I was like its freezing, it can wait.

Moody bauble

We put the stems into a large jug that the mother's had for years and is quite substantial and so is unlikely to fall over, but just in case I also filled the jug up with pebbles to weigh it down and secure the branches in.  Or that was the theory but I found the branches had a mind of their own and flailed around until we ran some thread around the bottom of the stems tying them all together and adding a little stability to the mix.

Random giant nut

For decoration I kept it simple just attaching a red or gold bauble to the end of some of the branches and stringing lights up and down the branches.  I think the decoration needs to be kept simple, it seems a complete contradiction to use plain simple stems and adorn them with a thousand baubles and tinsel.  How a pair of giant nuts crept in I don't know but I guess they are vaguely appropriate?  We went for height as the branches are not dense and it doesn't take over that end of the room, but it does add a christmassy touch to the room with the fairy lights.  And no pine needles.  Taking this down should be a breeze, although the mother has plans to get a cutting off one of the stems for that friend with the yellow one, apparently she can see the appeal of red as well.