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.
Tutorial on growing standard fuchsias - Part
1: My plan over the next few months of 2002 is
to write a tutorial in monthly instalments, this will explain how to grow
a standard using both text and pictures. The first task in this project is to choose a
suitable cutting. For the purposes of the exercise we've chosen a cutting
of Waveney Sunrise, one of my favourite standard fuchsias. In the picture
on the left is the cutting as it was a few weeks ago at the beginning of
March. Please note that we chose a strongly growing, upright cutting.
The plan is to grow this on as quickly as possible. We are aiming by the
end of the 2002 season to have the stem at the length we want, and begin to create the
head of the standard. Some cultivars often throw three or even four
sideshoots, if you can select one of these, all the better, a bigger and
better head will be the result.
This second picture is of the same plant after a
couple of weeks of tender loving care. As you can now see, it is growing strongly and the foliage is
looking clean and fresh. At this time we do not feed the cutting, we want
it to search for food and moisture and make new roots into the compost,
thus filling the pot with roots. When it has lined the sides of the pot
with roots, we will move it into a larger size pot. We are aiming to
create
a very large root system which will support the standard throughout it's life. The
larger the root system, the better the final plant will be.
Here is a picture of the plant that was
taken on Sunday,
May 19th. The fuchsia is still growing strongly and it will soon be ready for moving into
a larger pot. Please note how clean and fresh the foliage is. To grow a
good plant it's important that we keep it bug free. There are many
products on the market that will achieve this. I spray my own young plants
with one of these proprietary insecticides at the first sign of attack.
In the second picture on the left we demonstrate the way to remove
the sideshoots. These must be removed so that the plant will put all it's
strength into growing upwards. We take hold of the sideshoot between
finger and thumb and gently turn it to one side to remove it, trying not
to leave any small pieces behind. We must not remove the leaves on the
stem, the plant needs them,.the leaves will be photosynthesising
(manufacturing food to support the plant.)
This picture shows the plant after it has
been tied to a bamboo cane for support. A standard fuchsia will spend all
it's life tied into a cane. The tying in ensures a good straight stem, a
sign of a well grown standard. Place ties every two to four inches, not
too tightly as this could damage the stem, just tight enough to hold it
securely against the cane. The first bamboo cane is a thin, short one,
this will be progressively changed for longer, thicker ones as the plant
grows. Note that we use wire ties to begin with, and will move onto the
softer, gentler velcro ones when the
plant's stem thickens. (to be continued next month..)
Finally, a picture of some of the Regal
Pelargoniums that are in bloom. They always look great at this time of the
year and put on a spectacular show of flowers.. However, in July and
August they generally stop throwing new blooms. One way to make them
flower later is to cut them back after this first crop of blooms, the new
growth will then flower at the end of August or beginning of September.
The red and white one towards the left is called Fringed Aztec, and the
pretty pink one next to it is named Virginia.
Send
to
Alfie Geeson
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Copyright ? 2000 Fuchsia Land. All rights reserved.
Last modified:
April 24, 2009 08:25:28
to
Alfie Geeson
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