Six on Saturday - 16 October 2021

1. If you go to a food festival and find a garlic stall that in addition to selling various garlic themed jars, but also bulbs for planting, how can one resist?  I bought a purple 'Rhapsody Wight' from The Garlic Farm on the Isle of White.  I was only mentioning to a friend about my growing garlic, and how succedssful it had been, and that I keep the biggest cloves to grow on. I promised her for next week, a few of my best cloves for her to try.  Now I shall be able to slit this bulb with her, giving us each two types to plant in the coming week or two.

2.  Serrutula tinctoria seoanei was moved to the front edge early in the spring, and it has settled in nicely.  That area of the bed is where there are also various marjorams growing and those have just been cut back, leaving a little more bare earth than I would have liked. The very large Teucrium has also been removed. 

3. Just along from there I have planted out small divisions of Alchemilla erythropoda: dwarf lady's mantle.  It has been dry for weeks, and I'll have to keep an eye on these and give them a good watering every few days till they are established, after which I find they are pretty resilient. I had to clear out Eryngium Bourgatii: Mediterranean Sea Holly which just died after flowering. Maybe it is one of the short-lived eryngiums having flowered for five years, I liked both its leaves and early flowers.  Empty spaces mean new opportunities to grow different plants, or move plants from other areas of the garden.

4. The Pelagoniums are being prepared for overwintering  by having foliage chopping down  etc.  Here  two pots of Pelargonium Ardens are ready to be moved to the shelf in the shed.  This is the first year that having had rain and continuing watering that they have flowered right through.  I had to cut flowering stems and leaves off.  Again I had to stop myself propagating this as I would soon run out of space.

5. When I inspected a few succulents growing in a trough by the front door, they all dropped off, into my hand and emptying the soil, I found the nasty little culprits: small fat grubs of the vine weevil. Shall I cry?  Maybe best not to admit it.  I have cut the stem of one of my favourites: Echeveria purple pearl and will pot up it some fresh compost, and keep the succulent in the conservatory. It was cut during the week, and yesterday the bottom of the stem was nice and dry and ready to go into some fresh compost. I have had this one since early 2018, however I had set some leaves a few weeks ago planning my 'succession planting', I may plant out a succulent bed for the summer next year.

This Jade Money is still in its original moss ball, and get the occuasional watering with house plant food.

It sits in this pot on some pebbles on the utility windowsill mostly.

But if a plant like this one has been growing in a little moss even since it was a tiny piece in moss gathered from a local bank, do I really need soil?

Crassula Kokedama 2018

6. I love trees and large shrubs in the Autumn, whether evergreen or deciduous.  I suppose that having a plant that has to grow all through the summer to flower late in the year has a whole summer long of growing and exposure to slugs and other pests.  Maybe that is why on the whole I go for the spring ephemerals.  I have a love/hate feeling about this little plant that always flowers in October. Should it go into the bin after it has flowered? I have said this each year for at least five!!! I would rather have something that is slug proof and will enjoy the fancy leaved cyclamen hederifolium instead. 

But then I am a ditherer and most likely will continue with both, all and probably more! I bet the Prop is definetely not a ditherer or he would not be on his 100 miles endurance run/walk race today. He still manages to gather us together with all our Sixes.  I reckcon he was a Centurion or such like in a previous life.