Re: Sudden Death Strikes Lavender

Olwen Williams wrote:
> 
> It's Olwen in Marlborough here, at least one time it was Manuka honey I
> used.  I got good strike rates with Lavendar and rosemary that way.
> Would you like some angustifolia seed to try?  I collected heaps.  At
> the moment I have cutting of Claire de Lune lavendar and Lavendar
> Viridis I'm growing.  The Claire de Lune is looking good.  The Viridis I
> only did last week.  I bought one dentata plant (currently about 8
> inches high :-) and pinched seed at a workmates place. I've got 9 tiny
> seedlings waiting to be big enough to find a home outside.

Olwyn
How silly of me, I must have been away with the fairies. If nothing else
I should have noticed your address <G>

I'd love to have some angustifolia seed if you can spare a little
thankyou. I seem to have been a bit too quick deadheading my plants to
keep them healthy and have only seen one natural seedling in several
years.

One point about your sucess with cuttings. What time of year should one
take them  - or doesn't it matter? ( I have a glasshouse) I think I have
only once managed to get a lavender to grow from a cutting and that was
an English Lavender (which Botanica says we should now call L x
intermedia). It was growing in the garden of a local country hotel
(since destroyed by fire) and their gardener who was a friend of mine
gave me a piece. it is a lovely plant extra vigorous and with striking
silvery foliage. My plant is now very old and raggy and I should love to
reproduce it successfully. If I manage to, would you like a plant?
(can't give it a name, I am afraid).

I am sure growing lavenders hard is best for their health. Mine are
growing on a high sun-facing terrace which is part of a natural boulder
bank and has been topped with a layer of rotted tree-grindings I got
from my son's Wairarapa hobby farm laid over paper ( simply to suppress
weeds). I only watered the bed twice during all our long hot late summer
(mainly for the daisy bushes also living there) and the lavenders
flowered like mad right through and were still flowering into July when
the frost struck (Not that they seem to have suffered any damage anyhow
- unlike a fair few other things in my poor garden.).

And apropos of your second posting about seeding in your driveway. A
local wholesale herb nursery near Levin introduced a very nice
angustifolia cultivar a few years ago which had apparently come up as a
chance seedling in a gravel path between their beds. It is called 'Rocky
Road' and perhaps you know it. It is very showy  a distinctly 
lavender-pink colour (Nicer I think than the shriller colour of 'Tickled
Pink').

I have dentata at the back of my bed. Mine came from a friend in
Auckland, whose neighbour had a lot of seedlings she couldn't bear to
throw away. I kept one and sent off the rest to a school gala. They seem
almost indestructable, as they hung about all crowded toghether in a
small pot for ages before I got round to giving them any TLC, but then
grow as though nothing had happened.

Moira
-- 
Tony & Moira Ryan <theryans@xtra.co.nz>
Wainuiomata, New Zealand, SW Pacific. 12 hours ahead of Greenwich Time
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