Hellebore Archives - Oceanside Garden

New Year Bloomers

With an increasing array of South African and Australian plants in the garden, the number of plants that we can expect to bloom at this time of year is significantly increasing. I just dodged the rain showers to take stock of what is blooming today.

The new year starts of with Grevillea ‘Neil Bell’ continuing to bloom, as is the Correa. Both of these plants appear to want to bloom year round. Some of the other Grevillea really want to open up, but they will probably wait for a warmer day to do that.

In the greenhouse, a newly acquired bulb has started blooming – Lachenalia quadricolor. This is such a delightful little plant and I hope I can get them to increase over time.

Also blooming in the greenhouse is an unknown variety of Echeveria. (looks like it might be Echevaria shaviana)

A couple of Hellebores have started their display ‘Winter’s Song’ and ‘Snow Fever’. Other Hellebore are getting ready, but these two have already been at it for a couple of weeks.

Down in the Tuxedo garden, the Leucanthemum continues to put out cheery blossoms. A few other plants that should have died down continue to have a few blooms, such as the Gaillardia, and some of the Fuchsia. The rosemary also believes that the entire year is the right time to bloom.

The first of the Galanthus woronowii (snow drop) has just opened up. The common name for this is the Green Snowdrop. I know it looks white, but when it open up a little more, it should have a green trip inside. No page for that one yet, but stay tuned. Also putting on a display at the moment is a silver leaved Cyclamen of an unknown species.

Well, that’s the list unless there were things that were hiding from me as I did my rapid walk-around. Happy New Year everyone.

Calendar

January 2020

After a very dry period from October through December, January became a catch-up month when it comes to rain. With just a few hours left to go, we have recorded a hair over 20 inches of rain for the month and that misses a couple of hours of rain one night when power was lost.

Back at the end of October 2019, the interior of the greenhouse was still coming together, but as soon as the propagation bench was in and operating, I couldn’t resist taking some cuttings. I scoured the garden for anything that looked like reasonable semi-hardware material and prepared some Lavender Silver Anouk, Grevillea Pink Lady and Neil Bell, Callistemon Dark Red, Woodlander’s Hardy Red and Veridis, plus a few other things like some fuchsias that I wanted for baskets next year. With all of the cuttings I used a rooting gel in a peat/perlite mix. Did some wounding on the stems.

While they had bottom heat, the mist system was still not installed, so they got daily misting and a transparent storage box placed over them to keep as much humidity around them as I could.

So far, the Lavenders have rooted with 100% success and are potted up. Yesterday I did the Callistemon Woodlander’s Hardy Red and they were 100% as well. Today I potted up the Pink Lady Grevillea and was very pleased to have 5 out of 7 cuttings rooted. This is plant that the nursery I originally bought it from has had difficulty with over the past year and they didn’t get many of their cuttings to set. It still remains to be seen if I lose any from the transplanting and they will need one more potting up then before they would be planting size, but I love that they have some new growth buds on them already.

There are signs of rooting in the other Grevillea and Callistemon as well, but will leave them a little bit longer before potting those up. To say I am pretty pleased in an understatement.

1/14 Temperatures have dipped to almost freezing (the low was 33.6 at just after 9am this morning). We have had rain, sleet, snow and hail. It has been cloudy and sunny. We have had a rainbow, and a wind gust up to 38 mph. All in all, an interesting day this is certainly not normal for these parts.

I built and installed a mist system in the latter half of this month. While It isn’t really necessary at this time of year, I wanted to get it up and running so that the greenhouse is somewhat self sufficient while we are away for a week in February. I had all of the bits, but needed to connect the water supply up to the greenhouse and get it built. One thing I learned is that with the recirculation fan running, a lot of the mist gets blown away from where it is necessary, so I need to install another relay to turn off the fan while the misters are operating. I think that should do the trick. The relay has arrived, but I have been hobbling around a bit for the past week, so it hasn’t been done yet.

Seeds

There are lots of seeds popping up this month. There are signs of life from Arisaema ciliatum (Cobra Lily), just today, the first Banksia baueri poked through (Possum Banksia), Banksia spinulosa (Birthday Candles), Crassula coccinea, Fuchsia procumbens (Creeping Fuchsia), Grevillea eriostachya – another one showed itself just today (Flame of Orange Grevillea), Grevillea nudiflora, Hakea francisiana (Red Spike Hakea), Leptospermum scoparium (New Zealand Tea Tree), Leucadendron discolor, Leucadendron salignum, Protea scolymocephalon -yet another new one for today, Protea venusta, Watsonia meriana var Bulbillifera (Bugle Lily) and Watsonia borbonica (also know as Bugle Lily).

Plants

One by one the Hellobores have been bursting into bloom this month. It started with Winter’s Song, that actually started to bloom in the last week of December, and now the others are either in bloom, or the buds are opening up. The unknown white heather has been a mass of blossoms all month and Grevillea Neil Bell has been providing sporadic flowers all month. Grevillea Pink Lady is full of buds and that will be a mass of bloom before long. The Camellia (Nuccio’s Pearl) is getting ready to open.

The Weather

	High	Low	Average
Temperature	63.0 F	33.3 F	46.5 F
Dew Point	54.9 F	26.4 F	44.8 F
Humidity	99 %	28 %	94 %
Precipitation	20.02 in	—	—
Wind Speed	38.3 mph	0.0 mph	3.6 mph
Wind Gust	54.8 mph	—	5.3 mph
Wind Direction	—	—	SSE
Pressure	30.27 in	29.19 in	—