The Adventures of a SpadeRunner

A seed raising table

Building a dedicated seed raising table has proven very worth while. Just being up and away from pests has hugely increased my success rate in germinating seedlings. It’s not at all fancy, constructed from salvaged bits and pieces, but it’s very effective.

I decided to build a seed raising table after getting seemingly diminishing returns from my sowings, and after trying several formats for seed…

Seed sowing in perlite

Perlite is a good medium for sowing seeds, but it favours a particular style of seed and treatment of seedlings.

I started buying perlite in 100 litre bags for my aquaponics, as it’s a great medium for the pots. As I have plenty I started branching out into using it to extend potting mix, and also as a medium for striking cuttings. I was cautious about it as a cutting medium as I had a…

Salvia ‘Ember’s Wish’

‘Ember’s Wish has abundant coral flowers with contrasting calyces

Salvia ‘Ember’s Wish’ is one of the stand-out cultivars at the red end of the spectrum. Not a pure red, Robin Middleton describes the colour as coral, which is helpful. I think the photos here are fairly true to nature.

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Salvia ‘Meigan’s Magic’

Meigans Magic makes a good backdrop to stronger salvia colours

With white flowers and a bushy habit, ‘Meigan’s Magic’ makes a good contrast behind coloured salvias. The calyces are violet, so they show off the white petals well. Here it flowers in all but the coolest months, and I find it hard to cut back even when the flower spikes are getting very leggy in Winter.

The leaves are…

Blue and white flowers on long spikes

Salvia roscida has a unique form which gives it a particular role in my garden as a hedge, screen or pioneer. It is tall, densely foliaged and upright, which makes it useful as a hedge or screen. Spikes of pale blue flowers are held vertically, above the foliage. As Rolando Uriacomments, the stiff spikes of flowers are reminiscent of Plectranthus. Here,…

Salvia ‘Harmony’

This is a lovely low growing salvia with masses of deep blue flowers from late Summer, and attractive foliage the rest of the time. Salvia ‘Harmony’ is also called Salvia scordifolia by some, but as ‘scordifolia’ means ‘garlic leaf’, I am inclined to follow the opinion that it’s not a real name. Salvia ‘Harmony’ looks great as an edge. Robin Middleton writes that it is reported to have been found…

Salvia naming – good to understand for gardening, essential for science

To avoid confusion, it’s good to understand salvia naming conventions. There are a couple of ‘levels’ of naming, to do with whether a plant is a species as found in the wild, or a garden cultivar. I try to use standard naming as it minimises ambiguity. Species Botanists collect plants and name them in the binomial (two name) system of genus and species. Salvia is the sage genus, and for example…

There are plenty of resources on salvia growing, mainly websites but also books. As growing conditions vary so much, it’s good to consult a reference from as close as possible to your own climate, as well as general reference articles on particular plants. I am listing the resources I mainly use here partly as a bibliography for my posts. I use the standard surname system, indicated below in…

Salvia madrensis is remarkable among the sages for having yellow flowers. This makes it particularly desirable for anyone with a salvia collection, as yellow is an uncommon colour for the genus. It is called forsythia sage in the Northern Hemisphere, less so here where Forsythia is rarely seen. (more…)

Salvia ‘amistad’

Salvia ‘Amistad’ flowering in November (Spring) Salvia ‘Amistad’ is one of the best performing cultivars and a must-have plant for a salvia collection. It has large purple-blue flowers in dark purple calyces, and will flower abundantly for most of the year in warm climates. It is a bushy salvia, about 1.5 m high and 2 m across. Leaves are around 7 x 5 cm, broad at the base and coming to a point,…

Salvia cultivation tends to be straightforward. They are a diverse group and have a matching range of optimal growing conditions. There are a few generalisations though that can be made. As a group, they tend to like deep, well drained soil, and are not overly fussy about pH or soil nutrients. Rainfall for salvia cultivation Salvia ‘african sky’ likes full sun and copes well with dry conditions…

Salvia involucrata/wagneriana, a big showy subtropical sage

For sheer size and winter colour, Salvia involucrata/wagneriana varieties are outstanding in our subtropical garden. This is the original sage in our collection. When we first moved into Hill House there was a well established patch growing at one of the entrance gates. It’s well away from the current house but nicely placed on the driveway to announce the house paddock with its big pink flowers…

Biochar pit trial for soil amendment

A biochar pit is a way to turn waste wood into useful soil conditioner. Biochar. Large pieces like this need to be broken down to be most useful in the soil This Winter with the return to burning season I have been making some more biochar, this time burning the wood in pits. The aim is to make optimal use of our waste timber, from camphor laurel we have cut to clean up the block. Biochar is said…

Pineapple sage, with its brilliant red flowers, scented leaves and neat shape, is a wonderful plant for the garden. The botanical name is Salvia elegans. I got my first pineapple sage plant as a scrawny slip from the $2 stand at a local nursery. I had never heard of it before, but the scent of the leaves made it seem like like a good addition to the herb garden. When it grew to a good-sized bush…

Salvias, six months on

Six months after buying my first serious lot of salvias, they are looking great. They have flowered through an unusually harsh summer with some weeding and a few waterings to keep them from wilting. On the back of that success I have recently acquired another 26 to expand the collection. The first twelve When I first decided to try salvias it was hard to know which ones to order. Fortunately Sue…

Choosing a (working) dog

When we moved here, one of the attractive aspects of life away from the city was to have a dog. I’d had dogs most of my life, but since we had been living in an apartment with lots of restrictions on pets, we had gone a number of years without one. Choosing a dog breed Our original plan was to adopt a rescue dog, but most of the advice pointed to a high chicken death toll from an adult rescue dog…

Salvia ‘amistad’ makes a pretty Spring show

Salvia ‘amistad’ was the first of my new salvias to make an eye-catching show in the garden. Very soon after planting, it put on good new growth through August (late Winter), and followed with spikes of beautiful flowers. (more…)