Tag: cyclamen

  • Caring for cyclamen indoors

    Caring for cyclamen indoors

    Cyclamen ready for holiday decor. (Photo by Fanghong from Wikipedia Creative Commons)
    Cyclamen ready for holiday decor. (Photo by Fanghong from Wikipedia Creative Commons)

    Potted cyclamen plants with elaborately marked ivy-like foliage and bright red, purple, pink or white flowers are easy to grow, making long-lasting ornamentals for the winter holiday season.

    The parent species of these hybrids grow wild throughout frost-free Mediterranean regions. They can be found in dry, rocky scrub in southern France and Spain, and abandoned olive groves in Lebanon, Sardinia and Corsica.

    Of the almost two dozen cyclamen species, C. persicum is the most adaptable to hybridizing, and plant breeders have produced extra-large and double flowers with wavy petals, picotee bi-coloured edges and delicate fringing. The foliage has also been improved to display more elaborate patterns in bright pewter and dark green. Even when the plant is momentarily out of bloom, its decorative foliage carries the day.

    Indoor cyclamen come in three sizes that can be generally described (in my terms) as jumbo (up to 16 inches/40 cm), large (10 to 12 inches/20 to 30 cm) and small (8 to 10 inches/20 to 25 cm). Sometimes there’s a smaller size, referred to as mini, or miniature (6 to 8 inches/ 15 to 20 cm). The smallest plants are descendants of Wye College hybrids, a perfumed miniature strain bred at University of London in the 1960s. Scent genes in cyclamen are notoriously quixotic and not every mini is perfumed. I notice shops more often give space to the showy larger cultivars, and you might want to grab up the minis if you find them.

    Cyclamen know how to look after themselves outdoors, but rely on us to provide the right conditions when making a home indoors. The important factors are a cool location and moderately moist soil. They’re happy with bright indirect light, and prefer to avoid the warmth of direct sun. Consequently, a bright north or east window is ideal. Cool air temperature is crucial, and they’ll flourish in a location that is 50°F to 60°F (10°C to 15.5°C). The broad range of acceptable temperature is 40°F (4.5°C) at night and 68°F (20°C) during the day.

    Cyclamen want soil that’s consistently moist, but never saturated. (They’re vulnerable to fungus diseases when kept too wet.) If allowed to dry out while in active growth, the foliage and flowers will dramatically wilt. I lift the pot every day to judge its water content by the weight of the pot. If it feels light, I set it in a basin of warm water to soak up a good drink and avoid wetting the plump tuber at the soil surface. Then, I allow the pot to drain thoroughly before setting it back in its permanent place.

    When purchasing a cyclamen, check that it is moist and look for a generous number of flower buds just under the foliage; buds extend their tightly closed pointed petals just above the plant crown. Those buds will soon be rising, and more will form as the season progresses. Removing spent flowers (and preventing seed formation) encourages continued bloom. A half-strength water-soluble fertilizer with a higher middle number, such as 5-15-5, applied once a month until late winter will help to keep flower buds coming.

    Cyclamen have a natural dormancy period, starting in spring, when temperatures begin to rise in April. The flower production will slow down, and some leaves begin to yellow. When half the leaves are yellow or bending down, it’s time to cut off all the foliage and put the pot in a cool, dark place for a summer rest. Check the pot every week and provide a bit of water to keep it from completely drying out. In August, bring the cyclamen back out into light and begin watering. New foliage will grow and you can expect another winter season of bloom.

    I’ll warn you, cyclamen are addictive. If you have interest in growing C. persicum from seed, have a look at some of the hybrids and species in online seed catalogues (see Chilternseeds.co.uk and parkseed.com), where you’ll find seed for large hybrid plants, as well as a selection of the small scented miniatures. One is never enough.

  • Flowers in a cold season

    Flowers in a cold season

    Brightly coloured cyclamen (Photo from Pixabay)
    Brightly coloured cyclamen (Photo from Pixabay)

    A few years ago I had a small bay window installed in a living room wall, and it was a smart gardening decision. Now I have a cool, bright northwest exposure for flowering winter plants that provides light on three sides. Pots of forced tulips and hyacinths are happy here and their blooms last significantly longer in the cool window, with a daytime temperature of 18°C, going down to about 13°C at night.

    Now that we’re close to mid-winter — although you wouldn’t know it from the mild temperatures — I feel the urge to shop for a potted azalea, and perhaps some fancy cyclamens. I’ll look for an azalea with coloured buds, but few open flowers, and a cyclamen with many pointy flowers still tightly furled and low down under the patterned foliage. Plants with their flowers mostly still in tight bud will open in the window and last for six to eight weeks in the cool air. Warmer air deeper into the living room would rush them into bloom, and perhaps even cause the cyclamen to collapse from heat exhaustion. But the window projects out into the cooler climate outdoors, and these plants love it.

    Deadheading spent flowers from azaleas and cyclamen also extends their indoor life. The stems of spent cyclamen blooms also need to be removed; do this by running your finger down the length of the stem to where it attaches to the corm, and snap or cut it off there. Monitor your plants’ moisture levels  frequently; the azalea in particular will require frequent watering. Their roots fill the pots and leave little room for soil to hold a reserve of moisture. The cyclamen also likes to be evenly moist, but is vulnerable to tissue rot and shouldn’t ever have saturated soil. I give these plants a low dose of fertilizer with every watering, and that seems to keep them happy.

    Pots of forced bulbs can be recycled for garden use. Keep the foliage growing after the blooms are finished, providing water and fertilizer until spring daytime temperatures are above freezing and you can get them into the ground. Azaleas can be kept growing, but it’s unlikely they’ll ever repeat their massive flower display. Fancy cyclamen foliage will continue to be decorative into early summer, even when the flowers are finished. When the plants seem to flag and the leaves die down, it’s time for a dry rest in their pots, stowed away in a cupboard until autumn.

  • Understanding blue hydrangea

    Understanding blue hydrangea

    Blue hydrangea (Photo by Heather Hayden)
    Blue hydrangea (Photo by Heather Hayden)

    Now in the fullness of summer, my neighbourhood is burgeoning with bright pink hydrangeas, but not a blue one is to be found. They have handsome foliage and hortensia-style flowers, broad corymbs of large showy clusters, and also some of the lacecap forms with masses of tiny fertile flowers on the inside of the blossom and larger infertile flowers ringing the outer edges. These beautiful shrubs are bigleaf hydrangeas (Hydrangea macrophylla, Zone 7; Zone 6 with winter protection), and you may recognize them as the same plants sold in small pots in spring, around Easter time and then again at Mother’s Day. The potted hydrangeas are sold with white, pink or blue (ranging to purple and lavender) flowers and are grown in controlled greenhouse conditions. I’ve noticed that the blue-flowered plants always sell out first—everyone wants blue hydrangeas.

    My grandmother had blue hydrangeas in her Zone 7 garden on the shores of the Atlantic Ocean (the shrubs are tolerant of salt air and mist), growing in acidic soil with a pH of about 5.5. The issue of pink versus blue hydrangea flowers is quite technical. Aluminum ions are what make blue flowers on bigleaf hydrangeas. Acidic soil has lots of free aluminum, but the alkaline soil in southern Ontario has very little.

    While in the greenhouse, the small plants in pots are fed with regular doses of aluminum sulphate, which is thought to combine with an anthocyanin pigment, delphinidin-3-monoglucoside, to suppress pink and induce blue coloration. Bigleaf hydrangea will bloom with blue flowers in acid soil, white flowers in neutral soil and pink flowers in alkaline soil. This changeable flower colour is found only in H. macrophylla and its related species, mountain hydrangea (H. serrata, Zone 6). Other white-flowered hydrangeas, such as H. arborescens ‘Annabelle’ and H. paniculata ‘Grandiflora’, are unaffected by acid or alkaline soils.

    Aluminum sulphate can be purchased at garden centres and fed to bigleaf hydrangeas, but it’s a risky business (an overdose can burn roots). The plants must receive it regularly (possibly twice a month), and the residual effects are eventually toxic to the plant. It’s more effective for containerized hydrangea shrubs, where the aluminum solution can be more effectively retained. In outdoor garden soil, the aluminum is leached away and flower colour may tend to a lavender-like mixture of blue and pink.

    If you’ve purchased a small blue hydrangea in a pot for a holiday occasion and then planted it out into the garden, in subsequent years it has probably turned pink. Or, if you’ve purchased a bigleaf hydrangea shrub at a garden centre, such as ‘Nikko Blue’ (H. macrophylla ‘Nikko Blue’, Zone 5), it also may be producing pink flowers.

    So, are blue hydrangeas a disappointing prospect? If you have patience and interest, perhaps it’s worth an experiment or two. Purchase a holiday pot of blue hydrangeas next spring, and put it into a larger and moveable container. Purchase the aluminum sulphate and read the dosage instructions very carefully. The blue hydrangea can be an accent plant, placed in a garden bed; or it can be a patio plant near where you sit outdoors. Keeping it in a container will prevent the aluminum sulphate from running off into the soil. Don’t prune, as flowers are carried by new growth on old wood. In autumn, take the plant into an unheated garage or cold basement room, put the container into a large plastic bag with the top folded over, but not sealed (to allow for air circulation). The soil should be just damp through winter, so check for water need every two weeks. Put it out into the garden next spring and begin treating it with aluminum sulphate again, and enjoy the blue flowers.

    Now, one last idea. Some of the newly available Japanese mountain hydrangeas have potential for blue flowers. I’m going to try one of these shrubs next spring, possibly double purple H. serrata ‘Miyama Yae Murasaki’ (Zone 6), plant it into the garden, and give it the aluminum sulphate treatment. Although the flowers may not be purple, I might achieve a deep lavender—and that’s blue enough for me!

     Surprise visit from cyclamen

    Late summer garden cleaning has revealed a small treasure. Scattered about the feet of a Japanese maple, I found little groups of Cyclamen hederifolium, which have sent up their sweetly scented flowers in advance of the fancy marbled leaves to come later in autumn. I grew these from seed! They were easy to get started indoors, but not many of my seedlings were successful adapting to the garden. I guess these little guys found just the right spot. I’ll order more seed this autumn, and make them a winter project. 

     

     

     

     

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