November 2012 in the Southern Hemisphere

[Lvandelft]

some more

[Lvandelft]

The man on picture 9 is young Christian Kress, now owner of Sarastro Nursery in Austria,
who did a practical year at our nursery after finishing his learning period in Switzerland

[Lvandelft]

We had more than 25 years Hovawart dogs at the nursery. These are originally German
estate guard dogs and lovely family dogs.

[Lvandelft]

Fascinating, Luit . What a lot of work is represented there!

And we enjoyed the work very much

By the way, we let the glasshouses completely demolish during the last week  , which means only gardening outside in the future  .

[ArnoldT]

Luit:

Is that because of Global warming?

[Hillview croconut]

Now that's polystyrene box city! I thought I had a few but this effort is ridiculous.

Great to see what other people do.

Thanks. Marcus

[Mini bulb lover]

Paul - The camera I'm looking at is the Nikon P7700.

Luit - I love all the old photos of the nursery. What great memories.

I have an alstroemeria that has either self sown, reverted to original stock or created a sport (if that's at all possible). You can see the original red / pink in the background and the new yellow flower in front. I've had the clump growing for about 20 years and last year was the first time the yellow flower appeared in the middle of the clump. It's the only alstroemeria I have and I haven't seen any growing in my neighbour's gardens. I like it whatever it is. I like the soft blush of pink on the inner petals and the more vibrant red / pink on the outside.

[Paul T]

Luit,

Absolutey fascinating!!

Jon,

It could be a sport or perhaps you had some seed set and one of those has flowered.  A seedling could easily be a totally different colour to the parent.  Nice flower.

[arillady]

Marcus,
A friend uses half potting mix to half Coles brand non clumping kitty litter for rose cuttings in summer which are placed in big ziplock bags with drainage holes and placed in good light out of the sun. She has great success. I did hear of someone else recently who used only kitty litter and had success.
Poly box city here too - yes I hate it when you are using a very old one and it breaks. 12 pots fit into the size that I like to use as the box then fits nicely into a watering tub to absorb water from below.
Luit what a huge nursery you had. Now I know why you have so many different and unusual bulbs.
Marcus I will need to visit Hobart to hand over to the next HRIA National Executive Membership Secretary role in early January. I am thinking around the 15th, 16th,17th at this stage. Will you be around somewhere then?

[Lesley Cox]

Good Lord Luit! Poly boxes stretching to the far horizons. Were these originally fish boxes or were they used in the first place for something else, or even made specially for plants?

[Lvandelft]

Hi all, I’m very glad you liked my memory pictures  We don’t have so many pictures, because we were to busy with the plants and didn’t have the time even to think about making pictures

Luit:

Is that because of Global warming?

Arnold, it’s more for economic reasons. Breaking down the glass houses will save me money, while Global  warming only will cost more, one way or another 

Lesley, you will remember that clay pots always had to been dug into the ground.
When we first started with plastic pots in the mid 60s, we could save a lot of time because we only had to put them on the soil, but water them more. The advantage was that we could deliver the pots with less weight to customers like garden centers  who could keep them easier alive and sell them.
When visiting once a huge nursery where they grew masses of ground carpeters like Berberis and Cotoneaster in plastic pots on black plastic sheets, we saw some plants standing in some wooden fish boxes which were looking more compact but very healthy.
Back home we kept thinking and found out that cucumbers were exported in poly boxes with HOLLAND prints on the sides. During the production of these boxes there were always a lot of misprints and we could acquire them very cheap because the Plant was not too far away from us. I still remember that many nurserymen laughed about our silly plant production in these boxes, but we kept some open days and after 5 years most nurseries did grow plant like we did

Here a picture from an old journal of one of the first German potting machines  we used in the 60s.

[Lesley Cox]

Here are a few things in flower now, as you see, everything is in "packing-up-to-move" mode, in pots and boxes. Still lots to do and even the trays that are ready to go are now needing weeding so I'll have to put a few days aside for that. I don't want weeds to seed into the pots as the problem is just transferred to the new place.

I'm endlessly intrigued each year as I do a new batch of seedlings, from Saponaria pumila (which I've had as pumilio.) The true plant is first then a seedling from the same batch. Another, yet to open fully, has much deeper, almost red flowers.

I've always struggled with Meconopsis quintuplinervia in my dry garden but two plants I bought at last year's Frit and Small Bulb Grp meeting have flourished in this year's wet spring.

Aurinia saxatilis 'Dudley Neville' has biscuit-coloured flowers and goes well with apricot and orangey things. Maybe still better known as Alyssum. I lost my DN but retrieved some seed from the dying plant. This has fortunately come exactly true to colour, though it's not shown well here.

Rupicapnos africana is doing surprisingly well considering the wet but it was always best in a sandy/gritty mix, on the top of a drystone wall in a previous garden. I hope for some seeds as it's not long-lived.

[Lesley Cox]

I'll try for the other 4 pics but twice I've had an error message that my file is too big, the maximum attachment allowed being 500KB. Under the area to write the post, it says max of 10 at max of 500 each, and also says max of 500KB in total. Surely there's an extra 0 missing in there?

I've tried to post just 5 pics and all are less than 300KB each.

[Lesley Cox]

Now I have a message that there's a server error and to try again later.

[Ian Y]

I'll try for the other 4 pics but twice I've had an error message that my file is too big, the maximum attachment allowed being 500KB. Under the area to write the post, it says max of 10 at max of 500 each, and also says max of 500KB in total. Surely there's an extra 0 missing in there?

I've tried to post just 5 pics and all are less than 300KB each.

Sorry Lesley, we had been making some additions and did miss a 0 when we reset the upload limit. We have sorted it now so it is back to how it was before 10 files of 500kb per post.

Cheers
Ian