After a slight frost this week which knocked back the coleus and a couple of Colocasias, we began lifting the Exotic Garden on Friday with the help of the design students from Easton College.
Although it’s always sad to dismantle a garden in full bloom it’s also very exciting to bring in the harvest. The students began lifting the Cannas. They had bulked up enormously, (the cannas, not the students) so we’ll have lots of the more unusual ones available next year like Musifolia and Ehamanii. We simply put them into pots with very little soil, reduced the height by about 50% and placed in a frost free greenhouse until early spring when they’ll be divided and re-potted. Thank you Easton College Design Students!
Next were the Ensetes and Colocasias. Again, we left very little soil on these but placed them in pots, in our newly bubble-wrapped greenhouse where they were joined later in the day by the Cyperus papyrus and Brugmansias. This greenhouse will be maintained at between 8 and 10 degrees centigrade but it’s so well insulated it hopefully won’t cost too much to heat. We’ve bought a couple of thermostatically controlled fan heaters. The fans run continuously, even when they’ve reached the desired temperature. It’s very important in the winter to keep the air moving to prevent mildew rotting the plants.
Because of these heaters, we haven’t felt it necessary to dry out the Ensetes by leaving them lying on the floor as we’ve done in previous years – a method that’s always worked for us in the past, apart from last year when it was exceptionally cold and gloomy and most of them turned to mush.
Despite taking out all these large plants the garden still looks pretty good with plenty of foliage colour and flowers. We’ll dig up the Gingers, Dahlias and Iresene next week and by then it will look pretty sparse.
The newly bubbled area looks super-tropical and cosy – the plants should be happy and I’ll probably spend quite a bit of the winter months keeping them company.
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