November 2014 in the Southern Hemisphere

[Jupiter]

Maggi I keep coming back and looking at your poppy. I have a hard time growing orientals here and I'm not going to try any more, so please post pictures as I love them. I have a friend who grows them beautifully deeper into the hills here so I can go there and admire them when the cravings get really bad.

I have a bit of a fetish for Digitalis species and have a little collection here. The first of them flowering now with more to come later;



Digitalis lanata




D. parviflora

[Stephen Vella]

Jamus the colour combination and details on the Digitalis lanata flowers are captured beautifully, love the coffee and white. I grow a few species. I experimented with taking cuttings on Digitalis ferruginea. I don't know if you grow this one but it tends to produce rosettes along the flower stems these all struck. Not sure if lanata does this as well my one plant had been attacked by spider mite as they started to flower and died.

[Jupiter]

That's interesting Stephen, might be worth a try! Do you just pot the cuttings up in potting mix or sand? I have ferruginea, quite a few in the garden this year and I've grown them in previous years. I will have a shot at it. I think ferruginea is my favourite so far, although laevigata is beautiful and very successful here for me. It self seeds like crazy and the patch is growing year by year.

[Anthony Darby]

I like that and it's on the allowed list. http://www1.maf.govt.nz/cgi-bin/bioindex/bioindex.pl Will you have seeds later Jamus?

[Jupiter]

Anthony yes, plenty of seed and you're very welcome to some. It'll be a month or two until seed are ripe. I'll make a reminder for myself in my outlook calendar.

[Anthony Darby]

Thanks. 

[Maggi Young]

I just love  all these Digitalis  - can't help feeling they tend to be a bit overlooked by many people.
I hope the likes of these great photos will open peoples' eyes to the charm and detail of these flowers.

[Lesley Cox]

Seed Jamus? well actually, no!  So far as I can tell it's pretty much sterile and in any case it wouldn't come true. If it sets some I'll certainly sow it (and send you some) but I doubt if it will. I'm puzzled though about a plant I had in bloom last year under the same name and from what should have been a reliable source. It was a muddy pink, dull and not unattractive really but not true. Maybe it was a seedling? maybe not. so far this year it's not flowering.

At one stage a few months ago, 'Patty's Plum' was selling on Trade Me (our version of E-Bay) for $85! Much less now though as it gets around a bit.

[Anthony Darby]

Sisyrinchium "Yellow" and some general shots of the front garden. The roses came with the house. The hollyhock came from seed, and it is flowering for the second year. There are three plants here. The huge six stemmed red one on the back fence and two that are single stems beside the side fence, one of which is hidden behind a rose in "front garden 1", but can be seen in "front garden 2". Today it is a miserable, cold, wet and windy day.

[Lesley Cox]

The rose and hollyhocks look good Anthony. Nice scent too, I expect.
Today and every day for last weeks- wet or about to be wet and cold and windy here too. Thoroughly sick of it. For heaven's sake it's mid/late November and there should be warmth and sunshine!.

[Anthony Darby]

Quite so Lesley. As manager (and scorer) of our school's 1st XI cricket team I spent five hours on Saturday in a howling gale on McLean's College (many high schools are called colleges here) cricket pitch number three. It should have been a 45 over match, but we bowled their 2nd XI (we are div. 2) out for 147 and knocked off the runs in double quick time for the loss of two wickets. I was chilled to the bone. The heavens opened five minutes after the match was over. Nice view over to Waiheke and Ponui Islands, on a sunny day. The red billed gull was looking for lunch the home team is supposed to supply but didn't. He doubled the number on watchers, the other being one of our parents.

[Stephen Vella]

Hi Jamus ..I thought you might grow Digitalis ferruginea, such a great species and so drought tolerant. With the cuttings I just pulled them away from the flower spike with a heel. I struck them in an organic standard mix, water them and place them in a plastic bag and tie the top to conserve moisture and place them in the shade. A week later I open the bag a little to acclimatize them and finally a week later I take them out of the bag and grow on in the shade and then sun.
The ones I did were in September and about to pot them up and will plant them out soon. Cuts out 2 years from seed to flower. They might flower later this summer if I push them.
Cheers

[Jupiter]

Digitalis ferruginea, as discussed above



Echinops ritro

[Maggi Young]

Is it just me or do Jamus' pix of Digitalis ferruginea and , previously, D. lanata look remarkably similar?

[Jupiter]

I know! Labelling mixup? I could have sworn I had it right... I did hesitate Maggi but these are similar looking species. Maybe someone here has some experience and can clarify things for me? Anyone? 

Update: I've done some googling and I'm sure both plants are D. lanata, which is slightly troubling. Either I mixed up my labels or I was sent the wrong seed... I'll have a closer look at other 'ferruginea' plants in the garden when the sun comes up. Maybe the leaves will have distinguishing features which can save me from a long wait for flowers on all of them.