Just a thought about planting winter green in the plunge

[mark smyth]

Doing some shopping just now an idea popped in to my head. Does anyone grow winter greens actually in the plunge and not in pots? This may help with over watering. I lost some last year because of this but only one this year

[SteveC2]

I can think of a few negatives to this;
Would you have to use the same compost, watering routine throughout?  I don't think it would be that easy / practical to have wet and dry areas.
Harvesting would have to take place before new tubers became detached and would have to be done very carefully or misidentification would be rife.  Ophrys bombyliflora for instance produces new tubers several cm from the mother plant.
It would be expensive to have to change the entire content of the plunge rather than just repotting.

I think I will stick to pots in sand and learn to keep my hand off the watering can, although I know that this is easier said than done

[Tony Willis]

From a display point of view it sounds quite attractive from a growing aspect a pretty awful idea. In pots I lose an odd one to over/under watering an individual pot but if they are all in together then it would be easy to get it wrong and lose them all. Like Steve says they would soon become mixed up.

[mark smyth]

Thanks for the input. It was just a thought so they will stay in pots. I noticed today another has a spike coming. Forgotten which already

[SteveC2]

And my biggest problem with wintergreens is that when I lose one I'm often unsure if it was over / under watering that was to blame!

[mark smyth]

Very true Steve

[Alex]

I have a Pterostylis tuber growing directly in my plunge - don't know how it got there, but it has remained solitary for 2 years unlike equivalents in pots, which go mad. Some plants on a similar Mediterranean cycle love growing in plunge sand, however. I dug a self-seeded Corydalis macrocentra the size of a tennis ball out last year, no exaggeration, twice the size of its pot-grown counterparts

[SteveC2]

Pterostylis tubers are the houdinis of the plant world.  This year I have them in three non-Pterostylis pots and they are not seedlings as all pots are freshly repotted.  No idea how they got there, although I did have some bird activity in the greenhouse in August and September.  They uprooted most of my Disas, presumably in search of grub in the moss, so maybe they threw a few Pterostylis about as well.  I know it sounds unlikely but if this is not the case then something supernatural becomes chief suspect.
I can see a few plants loving the damp sand, after all pyramids grow by the coast in little more, but again not all.