{"id":7196,"date":"2024-04-07T12:00:27","date_gmt":"2024-04-07T09:00:27","guid":{"rendered":"https:\/\/ch.jfdi.cc\/?p=7196"},"modified":"2024-04-07T12:00:27","modified_gmt":"2024-04-07T09:00:27","slug":"a-lively-time-in-the-garden","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/ch.jfdi.cc\/?p=7196","title":{"rendered":"A lively time in the garden"},"content":{"rendered":"
Plants thrive and flowers bloom as insects buzz about<\/h4>\n
As the early bulbs go over, then other flowers are desperate to take their places. The calla lily bed in my garden, which has been full of leaves for several months now, is sharing its pure white flowers in time for our Easter. Trees are looking fresh with their bright green foliage, except for one or two late performers.<\/p>\n
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Jacarandas last for ages it seems, but if your winter has been wet, you will have a wonderful display of flowers before the new green fern-like leaves appear. Sometimes jacarandas have a second flowering at the end of summer. They are not salt tolerant, so not really suitable for coastal gardens. \nAnother late flowering tree but with the most exquisite perfume is Melia, which keeps its yellow fruits on all winter. Commonly known here as mavromata or black eyed, its fruits are known to be narcotic and the birds leave them on the tree, despite the lack of much other sustenance during the winter. The fruits are also poisonous to humans! \nA favourite in my garden, although somewhat short lived, is Echium webbii. This wonderful shrub growing to perhaps a metre and a half here has tall stems of beautiful blue flowers. \nSome years ago, we were inundated with hundreds of \u2018Painted Lady\u2019 butterflies, which swarmed all over the bush as well as the rest of the garden, giving us so much pleasure as we watched them feast on the nectar. Alas, we don\u2019t see many of these beauties nowadays, which is such a pity, except for \u2018Cabbage Whites\u2019 that tend to feast and lay eggs on my veggies! \nHowever, a little later in the season we do have dragonflies that float lazily over the pool water and rest on the sticks we have put around the edge there for just that purpose. There is always something to look forward to. \nOur wisteria always looks wonderful this month as the panicles of flowers open up and the leaves unfurl. The perfume is so wonderful and not only pervades our garden but the street as well. We often see passersby stopping to admire it. If you are considering buying a wisteria, make sure that it has fluffy flower buds on it. Wisteria can be grown from seeds but they take a very long time, seven years in some cases, before they flower and as a result are often grafted. \nAnnual sweet peas, will be flowering. I enjoy the \u2018Heritage\u2019 sweet peas with their heavily perfumed flowers, the seeds of which I begged from a friend and they do so much better, although their season here is short. The first year I was here I tried \u2018Spencer sweet peas\u2019 but without much success as they really don\u2019t like the heat of our hot summers, whereas in the UK they flower all summer long. \nMy chasmanthe (not monbretia or crocosmia, as they are sometimes known here) have flourished in various parts of my garden. Last year the flower stems grew to nearly 2 metres high, really excelling themselves but needed staking to hold them up. \nThese early flowering plants originally from South Africa, were brought to Europe by Portuguese adventurers in the early 1500s. They belong to the iris family. Their common name is \u2018African flag\u2019. They flower profusely and make seeds that can shed themselves all over your garden if you leave them on the plant and as they fall will germinate very quickly. Occasionally the main plants need to be dug up and replanted. \nThe corms have a netting which should be removed and a hard core on the base, which if removed also helps growth and a garden knife will do that job for you. However, until they have settled into their new spot in your garden, they will not flower, so be warned! (Irises can be a bit like that too). \nI have several kinds of irises. What are known as Dutch irises here,\u00a0Iris zyphium, were named for the Dutch people who hybridised them, as they are actually native to Spain and Portugal! They tend to have blue, yellow or white flowers, which are often used by florists in bouquets. \nIris albicans, which is usually the first to flower in my garden, was very slow this year, but I do enjoy them despite the wait. These are followed a little later by Iris germanica, also known as the \u2018common iris\u2019, although they are not common at all. They are also known as \u2018bearded irises\u2019 as they have little tufts on their lower petals. \nHybrid irises have been cultivated over many years and there may be hundreds. These are very showy irises and much sought after in a variety of colours. All irises should have their rhizomes pointing into the sun, which will bake them, resulting in flowers for next season. Once planted they require very little attention, except some bone meal in the early spring if you can get it, or rose feed will suffice instead. \nAnnuals pop up everywhere and the choice is amazing when you consider that their seeds are mostly like the grains of pepper. There are ones with bigger seeds, like sunflowers of course and some of the harder, larger seeds may need a little moisture to start them off. \nThe bees will love the sunflowers, so it is always good to have something for them to feed on. A popular \u2018bee\u2019 shrub in our garden is Leucophyllum frutescens, commonly known as the Texas ranger, which attracts bees from everywhere roundabout, as does Echium webbii, which I mentioned earlier. \nSummer favourites will be available in the garden centres like dahlias, hemerocallis and canna lilies, which all do well in my garden, although I tend to grow the canna lilies in pots rather than in the soil. \nDahlias, those bushy perennial plants native to Mexico and Central America, are related to sunflowers, daisies, chrysanthemums, and zinnia, all bright sun-loving plants and there is no need to dig dahlias up every autumn. \nDay lilies are native to Asia. Despite the common name, it is not in fact a\u00a0lily, but related to the Asphodel family, of which there are many flowering here in the springtime. Thousands of\u00a0cultivars\u00a0have been registered locally and internationally. Aren\u2019t we lucky to have so many \u2018foreign\u2019 plants that do so well in our gardens here? \nI expect that your summer veggie garden will be showing promise already. There are plenty of plugs in the garden centres these days, so no reason for failures along the way and as you pick them, they are very easy to replace. I love to grow sweet corn, but delay planting here until the end of the month in case we have any cold nights. \nIf you garden on a veranda, herbs in pots are always useful to have near the kitchen door. I find that mint in the garden can roam far and wide, so I plant mine in the garden inside a pot, so that the roots are somewhat contained. \nThere can be one or two problems with tomatoes, blossom end rot being one of them. This is not a disease or anything bacterial, but a calcium deficiency that affects the plant during fruit formation. It can also affect aubergines and peppers. \nThis lack of calcium may be due to low calcium levels in the soil\u00a0or (more often soil that is over- or under-watered). When there are\u00a0wide fluctuations in soil moisture,\u00a0this reduces the plant\u2019s ability to take up calcium from the soil. Usually, blossom-end rot appears\u00a0while the fruit is still green or ripening, so it often affects\u00a0the\u00a0first fruits formed on the plants.\u00a0I usually suggest sinking a plant pot next to the roots of the plant and watering into that. \n\u00a0<\/u><\/strong><\/p>\n
Plant of the Month<\/u><\/strong><\/h4>\nAlyogyne huegelii<\/figcaption><\/figure>\n
Alyogyne huegelii<\/strong> \nThis attractive garden shrub, known commonly as the \u2018Australian hibiscus\u2019 or \u2018blue hibiscus\u2019\u00a0 has been grown in Europe since the early 1800s when it was introduced by Anselm Hugel, along with other plants from South Western Australia, into Austrian gardens. \nThese wonderful early flowerers are much admired by gardeners here. Sometimes regarded as a shrub rather than a tree, it can grow to around three metres. \nIt was first thought to be a hibiscus as it had all the characteristics of a hibiscus belonging to the Malvaceae family. However, the beautiful light mauve flowers, which can last for three or four weeks (much longer than the single-day flowers of the hibiscus) don\u2019t seem to be affected by mealy bugs as the other hibiscus sometimes are. \nAlyogyne is sometimes classified as a \u2018desert plant\u2019, \u00a0one for arid areas as it does not like cold winds or too much rain and is better to be planted in full sun in a sandy soil. It is thought to be disease free, although aphids may be a problem. \nPrune this evergreen shrub to maintain a good shape as it can become rather straggly. Propagation is by seeds or semi ripe cuttings.<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"
Plants are thriving and flowers are blooming in the garden. The calla lily bed is sharing its white flowers, trees are looking fresh with green foliage, and jacarandas and Melia trees are flowering. Echium webbii, ‘Painted Lady’ butterflies, wisteria, and irises are also mentioned as blooming in the garden. Alyogyne huegelii, also known as the ‘Australian hibiscus’ or ‘blue hibiscus,’ is described as an attractive shrub that can grow up to three meters and has light mauve flowers.<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":3,"featured_media":7197,"comment_status":"closed","ping_status":"closed","sticky":false,"template":"Default","format":"standard","meta":{"_acf_changed":false,"footnotes":""},"categories":[1],"tags":[589,403,328,3910,1241,3,4166,201,2459,5378,5380,250,3330,3767,5379,2765,185,961,3331,610,623,720,3121,317,586,1535,4347,2392,494,380,962,457,1306,440],"class_list":["post-7196","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","has-post-thumbnail","hentry","category-other","tag-africa","tag-asia","tag-australia","tag-birds","tag-cold","tag-cyprus","tag-easter","tag-europe","tag-family","tag-flowers","tag-gardening","tag-google","tag-google-news","tag-growth","tag-insects","tag-knife","tag-main","tag-mexico","tag-news","tag-portugal","tag-rain","tag-rest","tag-salt","tag-south-africa","tag-spain","tag-spring","tag-summer","tag-thriving","tag-uk","tag-us","tag-water","tag-white","tag-winds","tag-winter"],"acf":{"keyphrase":"","keywords":"","sourceimg":"","country-category":""},"yoast_head":"\n
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