Good old scadoxus, right on time

Nobody seems to have told our Scadoxus plants about how global warming is stuffing up all the other garden plants' annual timetables. Here they are flowering again, last week of August, just like they did last year and the year before that ...

And what a welcome sight they are, too. Even though they're the stars of our garden, few friends manage to see them at this time of year. It's cold and wintry, and so we don't host many barbecues or lazy lunches outdoors, where our friends might see the amazing scadoxus show for the brief few weeks when it's on each year. 

Slowly but surely, the number of flowering plants is growing. This year we have seven, and judging by the willing growth of the baby scadoxus, in the long run we might end up with a dozen, maybe two dozen with their orange torches blazing with colour as the sunshine reaches their shady spot for a too-brief hour at the end of the day. 

Pammy and I are lucky to share this garden with our scadoxus. They ask very little of us in return, and yet give so much. Some relationships are like that.

My sole contribution is to help their family grow, by harvesting their seeds, propagating them, then planting them out once they have grown into healthy, bulbous babies. All of the babies planted in early winter are sending up healthy green leaves. They won't produce flowers for years, so for the next several seasons they will just grow, produce leaves, then grow some more. They're plants which are not in a hurry, and I like that.

They're also tenacious plants. When I unpotted the seedlings a few months ago, I almost didn't plant a few scrawny little tackers which looked like they were no more than slightly swollen streaks of a root-ling. I'm glad I planted even the most unimpressive babies, as they are all sending up leaves and promising that despite their slow start, they too will end up being a majestic spring flower one of these days. 

Slow progress, chapter 982

I'm only kidding, this isn't really chapter 982, but it is slow progress. I'm just trying to scare off those online gardening browsers whose attention span can only deal with 20 words at a time. You see, what I'm doing right now is using my blog as a diary, just updating the record on how things are going in a very long-term project to raise some flowering beauties from seed. 

Regular readers will be almost sick of this photo by now, but if you're new here, welcome to the wonderful world of Scadoxus, a spring-flowering bulb from South Africa which is the star attraction in our garden when it puts on its show each September.

Right now, our Scadoxus are almost dormant here in midwinter Sydney. No flowers at all, no leaves in fact, just some encouraging signs of growth from the bare older bulbs, which poke out above the ground.

Pictured above, this is what I mean. That red-topped point on this mature bulb will start to shoot up in August to become an 18-inch long, thick green stem, topped by a fist-sized flower head that then takes its own good time to open, usually a few weeks.

Once the fabulous razzle-dazzle of that orange bloom ends, the rest of summer is all green foliage down below, topped with a straggly, messy tangle of fading filaments covering the developing green seeds, only some of which have been fertilised by the bees.

By midsummer some of the once-green berries turn red, to show they're ripe, and that's when I have been picking them and potting them up for the last two years. Around the same time last year I posted about the progress up to that point, and today it's time for the potted up babies, who have grown handsomely, to be transplanted into the ground.

This is one of the babies, from a pot that is just one year old. A small but perfectly formed little Scadoxus bulb.

The two-year old pot was decidedly root-bound, and at first I thought I had blundered. However, with some very gentle wriggling and coaxing I managed to break them all up into half a dozen separate bulbs, each with its own tangle of thick roots firmly attached.

There's seven new bulbs from the two-year-old pot, and five from the one-year-old pot. I think leaving them in the pot two years was a bit of a boo boo, especially as the pot was small, and the one-year-old bulbs seem quite viable. The sooner they get into their natural home in the garden soil the better, I suspect.

Prior to planting I dug over the soil and spaced them out so they have room to grow in coming years, although I have noticed that each adult bulb sends up "pups" which hug close to their parents, so I expect that overcrowding may be the Scadoxus way of life.

Each bulb should be planted with about half the bulb (and all the roots of course) beneath the soil. 

As it's a bulb it carries with it its own storehouse of food, so all I did was water them all in with some seaweed solution, which encourages the roots to grow.

The general position in which the Scadoxus thrive is full, but fairly well lit shade (not the dim, dark stuff). The soil itself is good rich stuff, too, which I am sure helps them thrive. 
Sydney gets plenty of rain every year, so I never water them. 

Even the potted babies (which are in the same, shady spot) only get the occasional watering and no other help from me.

From what I've read about the seeds, the main thing is to harvest and plant them as soon as they turn red, as they don't stay viable for long. So I guess the main tip is to be "Jenny on the spot" and plant them early on.

I am sure that I have worn down even the most loyal readers by now, but if by some miracle you are still with me at this stage of my diary update, the whole thing is "slow progress" because I honestly don't have a clue how many years it will take these babies to turn into flowering adults. I do know that some of the smaller Scadoxus bulbs, which have been here for several years, still haven't flowered, so I truly don't know if I will even be alive to see my babies bloom! Maybe they're like Agaves and only bloom after half a century? Who knows.

I am just thankful to have some lovely mature bulbs here that put on stunning shows every spring. As for the little ones, I'm already deriving quite a bit of pleasure just raising them. And besides: babies are gorgeous, so enjoy raising them to the best of your ability ... but who really knows how one's children will really turn out in the long run? It's up to them.

Springing open

It is nice having a full set of senses – you know, smell, sight, touch, taste and hearing – but when it's spring if you were a poor unfortunate down to just one sense or two, you'd definitely know that spring has arrived.

Take smell, for example. It's the worst one to start with because your sense of smell would tell you that this keen gardener has sprinkled far too much chicken poo under his citrus trees, and it is taking days for the farmyard stench to die down. I know this might seem a tad unsympathetic, but bad luck! The limes and lemons need a feed ...

So let's move on that far more delightful sense of sight, and I'll show you some nice photos of spring flowers doing their thing in our garden at the moment.

Now, this one is an official "Pammy plant". It's her potted Pieris japonica, and it seems like the position we have for it in morning sun, with afternoon shade, is just what the Zen master ordered. Though it's Pam's plant it is of course my sacred duty to keep it happy, and so far it hasn't been too onerous a task, even if it remains a heavy responsibility.

A much lighter and cheerier story is the rebirth of our potted New Zealand Christmas bush (Metrosideros), which always flowers months ahead of the baby Jesus' birthday. A year ago this pot plant looked like it was gone for all money, so I cut off the top three-quarters of it, repotted the stump into fresh mix, plied it with Seasol and soothing vibes, and like Lazarus, it's back!

And it's not just a couple of flowers, either. The whole thing is covered in buds, and we're back in the Kiwi flower business.

And yes, my favourite flowering plant in the whole garden is doing its thing again. Last time I did a blog, which was a month ago, it was about this Scadoxus and its little clump of babies, so I thought I'd slip it down here to Page Five of this blog, just so I don't seem too obsessive about them. But the flowers are all about 90% open right now, and the show is on again.

You can always rely on our succulent patch to have something interesting or weird (or both) happening, and right now the yellow blooms of our Kalanchoe 'Copper Spoons' are the star attraction. 

Finally, good old Geranium 'Big Red' is in bloom not quite "again" ... it's more like Big Red never stops blooming, and so it's "still" in bloom. Every now and then it has a pause-ette for a breather but then it's back in action pumping out the red highlights in no time. What a wonderfully healthy, fuss-free, colourful and happy thing it is. 


And so that's an update on the beginning of spring here. I know that I won't be able to resist showing you more of the Scadoxus once the whole tribe has opened up, and the Pieris japonica deserves a posting, too. I'm hoping to lift my current sluggish rate of one post per month back up to a more respectable one per week, but no promises, mind you. I kind of like this "monthly" pace, it suits my semi-retired lifestyle.

Springing into action

Australians have never been all that flash at standing on formality, so the idea that spring begins on a certain date (such as September 1 Down Under) has never been taken at all seriously by gardeners. Spring began quietly a week or two ago, in fact – you can see it in the way things start growing and greening up after a period of winter slackness – but now it's getting into full swing.

Here, at our place, spring is well and truly underway when our dazzling orange Scadoxus light up the garden with their torches of vivid colour. But this year, we have a newcomer that blooms in a much more demure way at exactly the same time. It's a little groundcover native Grevillea 'Pink Lady', a modern hybrid variety, and for this "mostly photos" posting, I'll start with our newcomer, then move onto the razzle dazzler.

Grevillea 'Pink Lady', small toothbrush type blooms about
3-4cm (1.5 inches) long.

Though "pink" it's also mid green and pale lemony green too.

The fallen leaves from the overhead olive tree give you a
sense of how small these delicate grevillea flowers are.

Planted as a 20cm wide baby groundcover last spring, the
Grevillea now covers a bit over 1m across and is still growing
well, and so far is healthy and happy. Fingers crossed.

Meanwhile, further down the back of the garden, our most striking plants, our Scadoxus puniceus, are in bloom again. Every year I do a scadoxus posting ... they're just such an irresistibly photogenic flower. And this year one of the babies is having its first go at flowering.

Little skinny kid, second from the left, with a decided lean,
but for a first go at flowering, it's doing just fine.

The adults have come through several days of wet weather
slightly bedraggled but still radiant. In the background our
sprouted Scadoxus seeds in the pot are being shown how
its done by the grown-ups.

There's one view of the Scadoxus which is impossible to
capture in a photo, and that's the view from our house.
The deep green backdrop of the murraya hedge is no doubt
the perfect colour to show off the pale green of the
stems, the maroon of the outer petals and the outrageous
orange of the blooms themselves. That colour invariably
catches your eye, even from within the house more than
10 metres away. Its announces "spring" like no other plant.

Nine months later, babies!

No, I know what you're thinking, not the mewling and puking kind. I mean baby plants! 
But it has taken a whole nine months of gestation from planting seeds in a pot to having babies make their appearance. In fact it has taken so long that I had even forgotten about them entirely, until this morning, when I spotted the lush, green shoots of my baby Scadoxus coming up. What a surprise, a thrill and a delight rolled into one little pot of green growth. Time for some photos and a few explanations.

Scadoxus babies, in rude green health.

The appearance (on the right) of this sole flowering shoot
has me a bit confused at the moment. Are all the other leaves
attached under the soil to this one shoot, or is this person
just a precocious youngster willing itself into being a
teenager before it's even out of its nappies? I don't know.

Just in case you're a new reader of this
blog and are wondering, quite rightly,
"what in the hell is Scadoxus?" let me
show you this plant, courtesy of a lovely
painting of them in bloom done by
my Pammy (Pamela Horsnell). These
vibrant crowns of orange bloom every
year in September. The stalks are
about 40-60cm tall and the flowers
quite large, about 20cm across at the top. 

We've had our Scadoxus puniceus bulbs here since 2009. They were a gift from gardening writer Geoffrey Burnie, with whom I worked very happily for a number of years at Burke's Backyard magazine. Geoffrey gave me excellent instructions on choosing a spot and caring for them, and every year they flower in spring. The clump of them has been slowly but steadily increasing in size, and the number of flowering stalks has gone from the original three to about 10 this year (I say "about" as not all stalks flower, the younger ones seem to like having a practice run in the years leading up to their first flowering).

At the end of flowering they form large clusters of seed
which start out green (like this) then eventually turn red ... 

... like this. Nowhere near as many ripe seeds as unripe ones.

My online reading about Scadoxus tells me they are both tricky and slow to propagate, and that's been my experience.

Talk about tricky! It's never worked until this year. And talk about slow! I planted the seed in a pot on December 19 last year, and I discovered the seedlings this morning, in the middle of August.

In previous years I sowed the seed around the base of the scadoxus clump, kept the soil lightly moist and well mulched ... and nothing ever happened.

Last December, I decided to try a pot. The seed were not buried deeply but they were fully covered with potting mix, and the pot was placed next to my potted goldfish pond in a spot which was warm and sheltered enough, but gets almost no direct sun at all. The scadoxus pot received regular but not very plentiful watering, living off the scraps of water which fell down onto it as I routinely splashed water around topping up the water in the goldfish pond and watering the nearby orchids.

That's hardly any kind of scientific "how to raise scadoxus from seed" report, but that's how it happened, and it seems to have worked ... so far.

Now I am faced with the responsibilities of parenthood. How to raise the babies ... so many decisions ... where to put them, what to feed them, when to transplant them into the ground. So here's the plan.

I'm putting the pot out where the in-ground scadoxus are. They
love it there, so it has to be the right spot. It's shady most of
the year, but brightly lit. It does get midday summer sun
but not for long. My job will be to keep the little pot moist,
and maybe move it to cooler, shady shelter if an absolute
scorcher is forecast during summer. As for food, not much,
just a few general purpose slow-release pellets.

The usual way that my Scadoxus increase
in numbers is by sending up baby shoots
around the base of each bulb. This they
are doing very readily, with each
mature bulb surrounded by half a dozen
eager youngsters.

How many babies in that pot, one
or five? I'll find out later.

I suspect my baby scadoxus plants might be several years away from ever producing a superb bloom. The plants which Geoffrey gave me were meaty bulbs as big as onions, so my tiny little slender seedlings have quite a few years to go before they reach that kind of muscularity. And of the four bulbs which Geoffrey gave me, one was smaller than the others and so took two years before it produced its first flower. My bet is that if my baby seedlings ever grow up to flower, it could take six or seven years at least for them to do so, maybe more.

But won't it be worth the wait! 

Every year I do a little posting about our scadoxus blooming, and that should be happening within the next two to three weeks most likely.

This year, however, it's the cute little babies which are stealing the show by getting in early. It might have taken almost nine months to happen, but it definitely has been one of the highlights of my gardening year. Such simple fun!

South African belles

Hey, the Scadoxus are in bloom again, so it must be September. In fact it's the sixth September these South African beauties have blazed away with their hot oranges in early spring (or 'Sprinter' if you read my most recent posting). I planted them in April 2009, they bloomed in September that year, and the good news is that they're producing babies this year, as well as blooming right on schedule.

Who, what? Scadoxus, or Scadoxus puniceus if you must, but
it also answers to Natal paintbrush in some valleys.

In 2009, three blooms appeared on those long green stalks, and
since then a fourth has grown to adulthood to join them.

This year each bulb has started to produce
a set of bulblets around its base, creating a
little forest of future beauties. However,
everything Scadoxus happens rather slowly,
so I'm not expecting our fifth torch next
September, although I'm willing to be surprised.

I did mention last year (or was is the year before?) that I was trying to harvest some Scadoxus seed and get them to germinate, but there's no sign of any seedlings anywhere. Apparently the seeds need to get into moist ground fairly quickly, then stay moistish under mulch, and even then they take months to come up, but only if the planets line up and I've been a good boy, etc. As we've had some very very dry months this year, I suspect it just wasn't the right year for them (although I've been very good – just ask Pam – but it didn't do any good). So I'll try again this time round, but won't hold my breath.

Finally, the next door neighbour to our little
forest of Scadoxus is finally producing its first
flush of flowers. It's a yellow clivia, and the
shy little thing has stage fright. It's been looking
like this for more than week now – forever
'about' to flower, without going 'traa-daaaa'.

I'm prepared to wait until it's good and ready, as it's the beginning of what I hope will be an ever-expanding clump of them over coming years, much in the same way that my Scadoxus family has settled in here so well. 

As both Clivia and Scadoxus come from South Africa, I really like the fact that they not only flower together but they live side-by-side as well. Maybe I should barbecue some boerewors or bake up a batch of bobotie to make them feel at home?

Our torches are glowing

"Crikey, what are those things?" asked the tradie working around the back of our house. He was pointing towards the quartet of dazzling orange scadoxus in bloom at the rear of our yard. With the low afternoon sun catching their vivid tops, for an hour or so every day it looks they are torches on fire. These flowering bulbs have several common names, including Natal Paintbrush, which tells you where they're from, and Scadoxus puniceus will help you find it in a reference book or online catalogue. Every year I do a blog posting about them, and that's what I am doing again.

Even from inside our house the Scadoxus are
the first thing you notice when you look outside.
Perched on fast-growing 40cm tall stalks which
had barely poked out of the ground just seven
weeks ago, in early July, the flower heads
take about two weeks to fully unfurl.  

Then when they do unfurl they'll last another two to three
weeks in this condition, depending on the weather.

They've bloomed much earlier this year, thanks to the mild
warm winter we have enjoyed. Usually September is their time.

The countless hundreds of little pollen tops help to explain why
the blooms look so afire when the low sun hits them.

Pollen falls constantly from the blooms, dusting the deep red leaves.

The vivid flowering is testament to the
health of these very easy-care plants, but
as confirmation the little thicket of baby
bulbs forming around the base of the
older bulbs promises that the scadoxus
shows will just get more spectacular as
the years roll by.

In my previous posting about the succulent Senecio in the hanging basket I mentioned how lovely it is to have plants given to you as gifts – every time I look at them, especially when they're at their very best, I think of the person who gave me the gift of the plant.

Well, by happy coincidence it's the same story with these scadoxus; they were a gift from another gardening writer who I worked with, the lovely Geoffrey Burnie, who is now editing Your Garden magazine. Thanks once more, Geoffrey, your scadoxus bulbs are loving life here in the mostly shady (but not always shady), sheltered spot you suggested I plant them.

African babies

Arriving at work the other day, I found these three people on my desk. They look a bit like papa bulb, mama bulb and baby bulb. One glance at the wonderfully illegible scrawl on the sheet of paper nearby told me that my good friend Geoffrey had left me something delightful to try in my garden, but what?

Bulbs are a bit like ducklings, if you appreciate a good fairy tale, and like swans. Not at their best when a baby, but quite magnificent when all grown up. These are bulbs of Scadoxus puniceus, but they have the common name of Natal paintbrush.

Geoffrey's excellent instructions, once I had decoded his handwriting, said to plant them shoulder deep, about a foot apart, in a well-lit but shady or semi-shady spot. Definitely nowhere out in full blazing hot sun, and preferably somewhere that will get its fair share of moisture. No worries, I've got several candidates to fit that bill.

Hopefully this is shoulder-deep. There is a bit of a ridge-line running around them, just where they change from bulbous bottom to volcano cone top.

All settled in for the winter, they'll send up their flower spike at the end of winter (August), and then the green leaves follow in spring.

Thanks to a quick search of Google images (this one is from the www.bulbsociety.org – thanks!) this is what I should see in a few months' time. Geoffrey says the biggest bulb will definitely flower, so too the middle one (probably, hopefully – I have planted them a bit later than the ideal time) but baby bulb might not do its thing till 2010. He says the flowers are about the size of an orange, scarlet with gold tips, held up on stout stems 35cm tall. Wow!

While I was not actively in the market for flowering bulbs, I'm really glad to add these three to my garden. Sydney is too warm for the traditional bulbs such as tulips to settle in. They can be grown here for one year's show, but they don't come back the following spring. It's even a bit too warm for many daffodils to thrive and survive, although jonquils and Dutch iris do OK here.

But Scadoxus are another thing. They actually like warm climates and should enjoy becoming a resident of Sydney. They're a native of South Africa, and as many South African plants are totally at home here in Australia, due to our similar climates, I'm hoping my African visitors will feel very welcome. Thank you, Geoffrey!