March 2014 in the Southern Hemisphere

[Tasmanian Taffy]

Hi Lesley,
I have plenty of Chocolate Cosmos growing in my garden at the moment,when and how do you collect the seed from them.
Cheers John.

[fermi de Sousa]

I made a quick decision last week and headed down to the Ferny Creek plant fair over the weekend.  So nice to catch up with Fermi, Will and Otto, amongst others.  Bought back about a squillion plants. . About half the ute tray.   . No idea where I am going to put everything, particularly as contemplating moving house if I can find the right place.

Glad you got home safely with all that plant booty, Paul!
We can always organise a visit to Lambley on your next visit!
Another plant i bought at Kuranga Nsy is a "forest lobelia" - Lobelia triconocaulis - one for the shade house,
cheers
fermi

[Lesley Cox]

That looks like a really cute Lobelia Fermi. How tall is it?

Of course Maggi, Cosmos seed on the way tomorrow.

John, I'll take a photo of the seed head as soon as there's another ready to pick, probably tomorrow as there seem to be 1-4 each day, on my 4 separate clones. Just about every flower is setting seed. They're not ready one day and look several days away then suddenly they're ready and need to be picked quite quickly as they lose their grip and fall off.

[Paul T]

Fermi, I deliberately made the choice not to visit Kuranga on Monday.  I went and helped out with some watering at the Ferny Creek working bee, then drove straight past the Kuranga turnoff and headed home.  . As it is, I ended up with more than 60 different things from the weekend.   

And good news on the computer front..... Got everything safely retrieved from the laptop hard disk and today went in to look at getting a new one.  Found out eventually that I'd had the laptop for nearly 3 years, almost a year longer than I had thought.  The only reason I know now exactly when I bought it is because we discovered I had purchased an extended warranty when I bought it..... And even more amazingly the warranty runs out in 6 weeks, so it is still covered.  Amazing in that usually things break a week after the warranty runs out, rather than 6 weeks before.  Will find out tomorrow exactly what that means, whether I'll get a credit or have to send it off for repairs.  Either way, it's going to save me some money.  Very, very happy to have found that out, and it was only by accident that we did.   

[Maggi Young]

Wow, steely resistance to plant temptation, Paul - very impressive!

Good news about the "pooter" - must be one of the very few instances of one of these guarantee thingies actually being useful!!

[meanie]

That's a lovely Lobelia Fermi!

[Paul T]

Thanks Maggi.  No idea what I'm going to do with what I brought home, so more plants was probably a bad idea anyway. 

And yes, not often you hear about  the guarantee things being useful.  Then again, years ago I bought a second hand car that had a 3 month warranty.... Car was just on the 100 thou km mark and there were a number of things that apparently went wrong around that mark.... During that 3 months a bunch of things went wrong and had to be fixed under warranty.  At least a couple of thousand dollars.  Nothing else went wrong for the next couple of years, so I was very, very lucky then too.

[Paul T]

Ok, think I have managed to log into tapatalk as me now.  And laptop has been sent off for repairs.  Fingers crossed.

Plant-wise, not huge amounts going on here at the moment.  Haemanthus, rhodophiala, cyclamen, Acis autumnalis, Scilla, dahlias and belladonnas in flower at present.

[Hillview croconut]

Hi There Fellow Forumists,

Few plants stirring down here.

An autumn-flowering Cyclamen persicum
An unfurling Brunsvigia josephinae
A colchicum from Janis, Colchicum laetum. Is this a true species? I have read somewhere that this is now considered a selection of C. byzantium. I give up on the nomenclature of colchicums

Happy Birthday for last Sunday Otto!

Cheers, Marcus

[jandals]

I have plenty of Chocolate Cosmos growing in my garden at the moment,when and how do you collect the seed from them.

Hi John . Been out this morning to take a picture of cosmos atrosanguinea seed that is ready to harvest . The seed can be up to 20mm long . Growing them from seed gives a wide variety of flower colour in the seedlings as shown

Cheers Steve

[meanie]

An unfurling Brunsvigia josephinae

Would love to have the conditions to grow that!

[Lesley Cox]

John, some pics of the developing seed of Chocolate Cosmos.
The flowers, and as Steve says, they vary from seed, some smaller, darker or whatever. The old flowerhead with stiff, developing seed and then the seed heads themselves. Note the little barbs at the outer ends, which catch thistledown and such stuff, a nuisance when you're cleaning them. I usually put my first two fingers under the seeds, on each side of the stems then just wipe the seeds off with my thumb. The old calyces come too and these are easily blown gently away.

[Lesley Cox]

This very nice Pulsatilla vulgaris form is called 'Pink Denim' and is a seed selection from Hokonui Alpines. It comes fairly true from seed and has had 6 flowers since January, all giving good seed. Other pulsatillas are in flower too.

[Maggi Young]

Cosmos atrosanguineus seeds - photos as provided by Lesley for the "Seeds to scale" project:


and another seedhead pic - head with 29 seeds :

[Maggi Young]

Growing them from seed gives a wide variety of flower colour in the seedlings as shown

Cheers Steve

Do all the colour variations still have the chocolate scent, Steve?