connecting gardeners

This post should get a much bigger fanfare. Ta Daa..
www.scotsburn.biz connecting gardeners.
Thanks Emmie you win $200.00 worth of garden goodies supplies care of Our Garden Path Nursery in Portland. We won’t rush into arranging this however considering the current weather conditions.
I am really happy with this project. Connecting Gardeners is exactly the message I wanted but I would never have gotten there on my own. Thanks to everyone who has offered suggestions.

Petunia question

Just wanted to let you know that i was a little disapointed that the sassy petunias did not spread like they were suppose to they actually became very leggy and sparse. i have been able to water them because i have my own water tanks, So lack of water was not the issue. Shirley.

Shirley is one of my big successes, drove miles & miles to collect her Sassy Petunias so this is a bit of a problem.

Spreading Petunias are genetically interesting. Unfortunately I don’t have all the details at hand and you would probably be bored any way. Suffice to say that there has been a great deal of breeding work done on Petunias in the past 10 years that has led to tiny miliflora Petunias, a new genus: Calibrachoa and the addition of some rather primal genes created Spreading Petunias. They really can spread dramatically.

This leads me to wonder about Shirley’s Petunia question. Perhaps Shirley is being too kind. Too much water, too much fertilizer and possibly too much shade? I immediately thought of shade. Petunias love the sun. Strong sun and a relatively dry position are very important to keeping stems short and initiating flower buds. This is true of all the flowering plants I deal with you just have to be careful that some plants will scorch more quickly when the environment dries out and the light and heat get too much.

So what can Shirley do? Cut them back and start again. We regularly cut Petunias back and they invariably look better the second time around because they grow back more compact than the first flush. This is particularly true of the spreading types which can be cut over and over.

Are they perennial? Yes Petunias are technically perennial. Severe winters in Europe and the US have led to their use as annuals. In most Australian conditions they will look pretty sad over winter but will then bounce back quite happily. The additional vigour of the spreading types makes them particularly good at this.

By the way. We have some lovely Terra Cotta pots of Plush Petunias in the nursery. I noticed this morning that the white ones are a perfect mound of white flowers, the Red ones are pretty good but their natural habit is obviously a little more rangy than the white.

New Scotsburn Logo

I’ve had some great ideas for a logo tag line, thank you to everyone that has offered suggestions. Emmie has been at it again and come up with a “connections” theme which I really like and my son Ben offered “exersize your green fun muscle”, but there might have to be rules about “family members and employees”…

I have to stop dithering and make a decision… next week. Don’t panic it will happen. We have to have our new image ready for the International Flower and Garden Show at the start of April.

In my Hot 5 before Christmas, I flippantly asked why French Marigolds were French when they originated in Mexico. This has only led to more questions. Serious ones! Why are African Marigolds African when they also originated in Mexico? I love this little irony; the most popular African Marigold varieties for many years have been the “Inca” series. Back to South America although the geography may be a little out. More recently we have been growing “Antigua” Dwarf African Marigolds. Africa in the West Indies. Of course the Americans have to get in on the act. African Marigolds are regularly, but not universally known as American Marigolds. It was seriously proposed in the US senate during the 1960’s that the “American Marigold” be adopted as the US floral emblem (can’t remember the source of that gem but I assure you it’s fact) and searching for the origin of the term French Marigold I notice that they are “American” French Marigolds. It’s no wonder that another popular dwarf African Marigold series is called “Discovery”.

Now, I have as good a collection of books on annuals as most and only one says anything about the origin of the name “French Marigold” and none say anything about African. I have searched the web, to no avail. Just wasted a lot of time. My uncle thinks that the term French refers to the style and pattern of floret. My book says that French Marigolds were introduced to Europe via France (plausible), but a website tells me that they were brought to Europe by the Portuguese in the 16^th C. I can’t find any credible reference to the introduction of Marigolds to European gardening, which is a little unusual.

Does any one know? Does any one care? If you have any ideas please let me know.

What's New?

Sales have been so awful in this weather it’s really not worth doing a Hot 5, although I can tell you that some garden centres are already looking for Pansy & Viola, plenty of others told me “Too Early”.

It is not too early to plant Brassica vegetables! Especially Brussles Sprouts – long term crop. But here’s the trick, watch out for grubs. Cabbage White Butterfly and Diamond Back Moth (tiny, insignificant, massively damaging little beast) have a life cycle of about 4-5 days in hot weather. That means if you want to keep them under control they need to be sprayed twice a week. The good news is that because Brassica vegies are such an important crop economically there are some very good and safe spray alternatives including DiPel™ which is the bacteria Bacillus thuringiencis (Bt). There are lots of arguments over the pros & cons of Bt’s (there are a number of strains), particularly using Bt genes in other plants but in the home garden I think it is a product that is hard to go past for safe use and effectiveness. Yates distribute the home garden packs of Dipel, there is more information available here.

Coping with the heat?

It is Thursday afternoon and a dry cool change has just blown through after the most appalling hot windy day. Like most gardeners, I can deal with most weather it’s just the wind that spoils things.

It’s not only our plants of course, my wife comes home from teaching grade 3-4’s on windy days looking like she’s had shock treatment. “How was your day?” “It was windy!” End of conversation.

We (you and I, not me & Kerry) have discussed favourite mulches previously, but what else helps? I am a big fan of re-wetting agents like Saturaid™ we have sand for soil at home, and bark potting mixes are not much better than sand if they are allowed to dry out.

I remain unconvinced about water holding gel (or crystals) though (can’t think of a brand off the top of my head). I don’t know if I have ever met a gardener that swears by them. Do you? Please let me know if you have trialed gel/crystals, it’s always fascinating to find out.

Correspondence

The coping with heat topic reminds me of a terrific hanging basket we had in the 2008 Great Victorian Hanging Basket competition. The basket was entered by Cecilia Macaulay. Cecilia used nifty little water filled clay balls all connected by tubes to apply water slowly. Interestingly the whole lot looked remarkably attractive; unfortunately I didn’t take a photo of Cecilia’s basket.

Any way, get to the point. Cecilia has sent me a great email idea for our logo tag line “Dependably Creative” but check these out, Cecilia’s emails come with original illustrations.

There are plenty more and some terrific gardening ideas, follow this link to Cecilia’s blog.