This
story takes four children: Amanda, Peter, Laura and
Jason from New York City to a small town in west Texas
and describes good times and bad times as they grow
from childhood to adulthood
STOP
PRESS
Virginia Bickel's
newest book
Come September has just been released. Order it now!
In Virginia Bickel?s second book, she turns from
historical fiction to mystery. Come September is the
story of Daniel Lindsey?s quest to identify the young
woman found unconscious in front of his store, and to
find out what she was doing on Mesa Street, in El
Paso, Texas. She brings to this genre her skill with
character development and dialogue. You won't be
disappointed.
Please click on the thumbnails to view the pictures full size.
The mission was started on Monday the 3rd
of April in the year 2000. On that day I took the cuttings that
will hopefully provide show winning exhibits for the two delegated flower
shows in August of 2001. I
took cuttings of Waveney Sunrise (a particular favourite of mine, makes an
excellent standard) Gordon Thorley, a very good upright fuchsia named
after a local judge, Come Dancing, an old favourite, Herald, another old
variety, Star of Pink, which can make a large bush, Pink Marshmallow and
Phyllis, another two old, but good varieties. The photo is of all the
cuttings outside on a garden table.
I will be taking lots of photographs of the cuttings as
they develop and keeping this information up to date week by week. When
preparing the cuttings I take small tip cuttings when I remove them from
the plants, these consist of the fresh, green growing tip of the current
years growth, together with one pair of leaves. I always find that the
smaller the cutting, the quicker it will root.
I root the cuttings in pots or trays of peat based
potting compost mixed with perlite. These are well watered in to help the
compost settle around the base of the cutting. The pots or trays are then
placed in an electric propagator and covered with the clear plastic cover
to retain the humidity. They are not watered again and are usually rooted
in between 21 to 28 days. The photo is of a tray containing cuttings of
Come Dancing, Gordon Thorley, Herald, Pink Marshmallow and Phyllis.
This is a shot of a three leafed cutting of Waveney
Sunrise that will be grown on to make a standard. A cutting with three
leaves instead of the usual two produces more branches and thus is much
more bushy. This cultivar makes an excellent standard.
A small pot of cuttings taken from Star of Pink, another
favourite of mine, this particular fuchsia can, given the right growing
conditions, be grown into a very large pot plant. I have a couple of
plants of this that are now five or six years old, they are still covered
in blooms every year.
This one is my favourite fuchsia of them all. I've won
more prizes with Waveney Sunrise than with any other cultivar, it makes a
first class bush, standard or basket plant. It is also reasonably hardy in
the area (East Midlands) in which I live. I'm hoping that these small
cuttings will produce large plants ready for the shows in August 2001.
April 19th 2000
Disaster! The mission suffered a setback
today. I had been working in the greenhouse when a visitor knocked at my
front door. I left the plants and went to talk to him, forgetfully leaving
the plastic cover off the heated propagator. The cuttings in it (shown in
the second fuchsia picture on this page) were badly damaged by the bright
sunlight, and many will not recover. I may save about 50% of them, so will
have to carry on with a reduced number of plants. The cuttings of Waveney
Sunrise and Star of Pink that were in the small pots are still fine, and
they're looking good. Lets hope that this is the first and last snag that
we hit in our pursuit of a first prize. With a bit of luck we will soon be
back on track.
Send
to
Alfie Geeson
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Copyright ? 2000 Fuchsia Land. All rights reserved.
Last modified:
December 23, 2006 20:40:53
to
Alfie Geeson
with questions or comments about this web site.
