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Salvia Amistad

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, mid green and covered with tiny stiff hairs. Amistad was discovered and introduced by Argentine salvia expert Rolando Uria. It is believed to…

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Salvia cultivation; what are the best growing conditions?

Salvia cultivation overall tends to be straightforward. They are on the whole undemanding plants with a few pests and a few basic needs. There are a few generalisations 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. Of course the more you get to know them the more you see that they are a diverse group and have a matching range of optimal growing conditions, which you can use to your advantage in siting…

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Salvia involucrata, a big showy subtropical sage

For sheer size and winter colour, Salvia involucrata varieties are outstanding in our subtropical garden. This is the original salvia 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 big pink flowers from autumn to spring.

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Biochar pit trial for soil amendment

A biochar pit is a way to turn waste wood into useful soil conditioner. 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 to be a soil conditioner that lasts for centuries, better than just burning wood to ash or leaving it to rot. I made two biochar pit fires and have been very…

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Salvia elegans, pineapple sage

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 and was covered with red flowers through the first winter, I came to realise its true worth in the…

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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 Templeton at Unlimited Perennials offers sets of 12 of her choice which she selects for your conditions, so I…

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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 (there are rarely pups available for rescue from our local pound). We…

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Salvias, a new garden theme

For the past couple of months I have been establishing a Salvia (sage) garden. They seem to be an ideal plant for our conditions, and I’m hoping they will have the potential to fill the bank under the house with colour and interest. Usually with Salvias you think of the eye-catching red and blue bedding types, which are always available in punnets for seasonal colour, but the variety of forms and colours goes way beyond those two, and collections of more than a hundred types seem to be standard with…

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