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Plant-A-Day 2020 (Day1) Clivia Miniata Tubular Cultivar

2024 Update–I believe this cultivar is still alive and a few others of this particular cross have also bloomed and they are all beautiful. My dream of having 50 blooming Clivia plants has yet to materialize. I had about 25 this spring, so halfway there. Many of the plants need to be potted up and moved into better-draining potting mix. I am hoping to get all that done this summer.

The new year and new decade start today! I decided that I would highlight a new plant every day in 2020, and then going forward, I can revisit the same plants and compare them year-over-year.

The first plant I will highlight is a Clivia miniata cultivar–a seedling from a cross called “Quail x Nakamura.” It gets day-one status because it has the audacity to be blooming on New Year’s Day!

Here are some photos of the flower and the plant from this year.

I’ll have to estimate the history of this plant, as I haven’t kept notes on it and my eBay history only goes back so far. I think I bought the seeds about eight years ago. I have several seedlings from this same cross from purchases made from an eBay seller, but the others have yet to bloom. The first flowers appeared two years ago on this plant. It did not bloom in 2019.

Here are some photos of the plant in flower in 2018:

Notes on this plant:

Waiting six years for a seedling to bloom is all worthwhile when the seedling has wonderful, different, interesting flowers like this clone. So many of my clivia seedlings have flowers that aren’t that different from the Clivia miniata type plants–it has been very disappointing.

This plant has about 13 leaves currently. I repotted it after it bloomed in 2018, which is likely why it didn’t bloom in 2019. It has not produced any offsets.

I plan to keep it potbound and am hopeful that will cause it to send up some offsets. It is in a two-gallon pot currently.

The flowers are much more subtly colored this year, possibly due to the lower light from it being winter! The scape has close to 20 flowers this year.

For Clivia care, I’ve found that planting them in 1/2 potting soil and 1/2 fine-to-medium orchid bark is a great mixture. They seem to grow best in medium, indirect light. I put organic food on top of the pot once in spring and again in summer. All of the adult plants are put out under the Douglas fir tree starting in April or May. I clean the pots up when I move them out and shred any dead leaves or flower stems onto the top of the potting soil. Repotting takes place at this time, too. Ideally, the Clivias all end up in two- or three-gallon pots.

The Clivias are watered regularly throughout the spring/summer/fall. I start watching temperatures in October. They can take temps down to frost, but I usually pull them into the greenhouse when I see the high 30s. I don’t water these plants once they are moved into the greenhouse until February or when I see flower spikes.

My Clivia dream is to have about 50 blooming plants lighting up the early spring greenhouse, with dozens of different cultivars in various colors and shapes. I have enough plants to make this dream come true–but giving them the right amount of attention to get them all to bloom has eluded me thus far. Some of the seedlings are just getting to blooming age now, so maybe 2020 will be a good Clivia year.

Seeds In The Mail

I joined the Pacific Bulb Society, which I’ve found to be an excellent organization with extraordinarily knowledgable growers and scientists and a robust web gallery and wiki page. Find their home page HERE.

One of the perks of being a member is that other members donate seeds and bulbs from their plants and then the organization offers them up for a nominal fee. I sent a long wish list when the last offer was published. It is probably just as well that only three packets of seeds were sent. I’m very excited about these species, though:

Tulbaghia violacea–I had seen these around all over and they seem fragile, somehow; but I saw a well-grown pot of them on Bainbridge Island last year and then saw another nice one when we visited Arliss and Mike in Arizona. If I can get these seeds to grow I’ll put some around the garden and in patio pots, and possibly send some to plant sales or down to Arliss and Mike.

Tropaeolum brachyceras–I want to try this vine to grow up the Pod sculpture Leon has in the driveway bed. If I have extras, I’ll put a few around the garden and then send some off to plant sales.

Cyclamen graecum –if I can get these to grow, I’ll grow one or two in pots in the greenhouse and the rest out in the garden. It is pretty amazing how big the tubers can get!

I will try two different methods with these seeds. I’m soaking half of each type in water now and I’ll plant them tomorrow in the window on heat with LED lights. The rest of the seeds will go into a little moist soil in plastic bags in the refrigerator and I’ll start them in the spring.

Along with a re-emergence of my seed addiction, there has been a bulb relapse incident. After getting all the bulbs from John Scheepers planted I felt like there weren’t enough bulbs for the pots I have ready, so I looked online and found another vendor and ordered more tulips, hyacinths, daffodils, iris, and more. I’m a little worried they won’t be top-notch bulbs this late in the season, but we’ll see when they show up.

Camano Island and Autumn Colors

I went up to Camano Island last weekend to Karla Matzke’s gallery and sculpture garden. I wandered around the garden and got the following photos of some nice plants Karla has in the borders around the garden.

  • Last leaves on Karla’s Aralia elata, and the attractive seed stems in a light pink-mauve.
  • Another view of some seed stems.
  • And a close-up here. I did pull some seeds off the stems. I don’t know if they are viable at all, but I’ll give them a try.A
  • A brilliant barberry shrub in one of Karla’s borders.
  • More brilliant shrubs around the sculpture park.
  • This smoke bush at Karla’s had seeds, so I picked a few out of the “smoke” and will try to grow them.
  • Fall color on the smoke bush.
  • This Yucca stood out on a short, sunny day.
  • Heleborus argutifolius, I think–Karla has several of these perennials that look almost shrub-like as we head into winter.
  • Another huge hellebore.
  • Some glorious yellow maple leaves sparkling in the afternoon light.
  • Intersting sculptures among the sword ferns.
  • More yellow foliage.
  • A red-leaved Japanese maple in Karla’s border.

Bulbs Planted

Brother Tim came over today and we planted all the spring bulbs that arrived this week from John Scheepers. I highly recommend this bulb retailer–I’ve never been disappointed with their bulbs. All of the below photos were borrowed from their website. Hopefully, I’ll have my own photos come spring to share here.

I planted the below bulbs into the easternmost edge of the memory garden. It was over 200 bulbs–and only planted a small area with no leftovers for pots/forcing. I’m going to have to order some clearance bulbs for my pots.

Here are some photos of the process.

  • We planted species tulips along the edges and hybrids down the middle.
  • Snowdrops were planted between tulip groups and Corydalis “Beth Evans” was worked in, as well.

November Updates

My brother and sister were kind enough to help out in the garden last weekend. We pruned some roses, trimmed back the dame’s rockets, raked, shredded and mulched with some leaves, and mowed the lawn!

I had spent time loading all the pots into the greenhouse the day before which worked out perfectly since we had two nights below freezing last week. The greenhouse is stuffed really full. I’ve committed to organizing it better next year so there is more room for clivias under the shelving, which will leave a lot more room for a path in the cold months and a functioning workstation for potting and checking things out.

Today, I cleaned the orchard garden up a bit, pruning back some roses and berry canes. I noticed that the old camellia shrub along the fenceline has tripled in size in the last few years and is stretching out into the main garden and towards the street, as well. My Felco pruners clipped back a bunch of it but there is a LOT more to prune to get it back to a comfortable size. I’ll tackle some more of it tomorrow.

My other project today was to clean up the potting bench area. I emptied a bunch of pots with soil left after the resident plants had moved on to their next lives. Then I took the time to organize all the empty pots, stacking them by size. For the clay pots, I put some soil in them in preparation for the bulb delivery slated for Monday or Tuesday next week. There are a few more things I can do to straighten up the area, but it already looks better than it has for years! More work tomorrow will include sawing down the bitter cherry suckers that have sprung up all over the yard.

Lastly, I wandered around the yard to see what dared to be blooming in early November. The witch hazel that I have near the street in front of the orchard bed is in full bloom. This is the shrub that grew up from below the graft of the cultivar I had originally purchased. IT so graceful and actually very beautiful when it is in bloom, so I’m glad I’ve never cut it back.

  • Witch Hazel
  • More Witch Hazel
  • Geranium nodosum
  • Mixed-up rhody
  • Abutilon
  • Verbena bonariensis
  • Coreopsis
  • Chaenorhinum
  • Geranium
  • Geranium
  • Geranium
  • Erigeron
  • Geranium
  • Geranium
  • Oregnaum
  • Kniphofia
  • Fuchsia

There were a few items blooming that I didn’t get decent photos of: two kinds of salvia are blooming in the memory garden, along with a few of the catmints. The asters just a very few flowers left on them, but they have some great seed heads that I hope the birds take advantage of.

Arizona Visit

Leon and I spent a few days in Arizona last week, mostly in the Prescott area. We also visited the Grand Canyon–my first time seeing it! Here are some photos from the trip.

  • Elk resting near the Grand Canyon
  • Interesting decaying log–likely Juniper.
  • I
  • More interesting wood.
  • Leon and I near the Grand Canyon.
  • GC lookout.
  • Watson lake near Prescott.
  • Back to Grand Canyon
  • I found some big beetles at a convenience store.
  • Lots and lots of big beetles!
  • Wildflowers were still in bloom.

Some October Updates

Here are some random photos from the past week or so:

  • I think these are Nerine bowdenii growing on King Street near the I-5 overpass. Very strange place for these rare-ish bulbs to be blooming.
  • I have a few gesneriads growing in my window at work. including the Deinostigma tamiana in the rear, the miniature African violet, and the Sinningia seedling with a large bud in the foreground.
  • I’m anxious to see what this flower looks like when it unfolds–it is from a seedling I started early in the year.
  • The bud looked white when for a few days, then colored up to a deep reddish pink.
  • Autumn leaves are extremely colorful this year–here are some of my favorites from my walk home from the bus.
  • Close-up of maple leaves.
  • This Japanese maple in a neighbor’s yard has unusually colored autumn foliage.
  • This is one of the big maple street trees starting to show color.
  • This Scheflerra tree was donated to my workplace by a for-profit corporation. It came in much bigger than this and bushier, but with a hideous case of scale. I pruned every leave off and scrubbed the branches. It is just now leafing out and starting to look pretty good. I haven’t seen any scale yet, but I know it will be back!