Published at 11:09, Thursday, 20 October 2011

LAST weekend I was able to complete the last of my spring bulb planting; this also included potting up a few prepared hyacinths. unfortunately it’s far too late now for Christmas flowering as they should have been potted up before mid-September, nevertheless I’m sure they will still be a welcome sight in the New Year.

Hippeastrum Lemon Lime: Plant now For Christmas

However, a bulb that I hope will be in flower for Christmas is my hippeastrums (amaryllis), which take between eight and 10 weeks to flower from planting. Although these are quite large bulbs, they are easy to grow and produce quite large flowers in a range of colours, including both single and double flowering forms.

Hippeastrum are perennial bulbs from Central and South America and there are many hybrids available of which a number have been developed to bloom at Christmas time. These include Merry Christmas (large red blooms), Ragtime (a fiery red double), Cocktail (scarlet with a white center and a green heart), Basuto (deep vivid red), Desert Dawn ( salmon ), Milady (large pink), Razzle Dazzle (cherry red with large white stripes), Summertime (rose pink with white centre veins), Wedding Dance (very large white), and Rozetta (rose pink and white centre).

For the garden you can plant a hardy form of Hippeastrum (down to minus 7 degrees) called amaryllis belladonna which produces large pink blooms that are also very fragrant.

Tidying the garden and leaf fall is producing a lot of green waste which all can be composted. I advise shredding any prunings and collected leaves as this will help them to decompose more quickly.

The compost heap should be at least four feet in diameter and three feet in height: if the heap is too small if will fail to heat up to start the composting process. Also you will need to turn the heap occasionally to ensure composting consistency and for every 10 bags of green waste collected you will end up with one bag of compost in 12-18 months’ time.

Whilst I was planting the spring-flowering bulbs I was pleased to see the wonderful autumn colour of my parthenocissus henryana (Chinese Virgina Creeper) which covers the side of my garage wall. When the sun shines on the leaves they glow with a brilliant red colour which is stunning, though it was certainly in need of some cutting back as this is a vigorous plant which can grow up to 10 metres tall.

My Japanese Anemones have just gone over, and needed to be cutback hard to the ground. Although named Japanese Anemone, the three main species – hupehensis, vitifolium and tomentosa – come from China! They were erroneously called Japanese Anemones after a particular form of anemone was first recorded near Nagasaki in 1695. However by the time the first plants reached the West in 1844, they were already known as Anemone Japonica, though most of the modern varieties seen in gardens today are descended from anemone x hybrida.

My own favourite is Anemone x hybrida Konigin Charlotte, which is also known as Queen Charlotte.

Published by http://www.whitehavennews.co.uk