Daisies of distinction

Press, 28 October 1977, Page 9

Daisies of distinction

In a few days time I expect to see the first flowers on my mutisias — after a wait of four years. If you don’t know what a mutisia is, let me hasten to tell you that it is one of a family of aristocratic climbing daisies from South America. Their leaves are holly like, and their flowers ari .pink or orange — clear, vibrant pinks and oranges — and produced with gay abandon. Like clematis, they are gregarious. They love company and given half a chance, will ignore the most enticing fence or trellis to clamber through a nearby shrub. They are vigorous, hardy, " and drought resistant, appear to have no insect enemies, and in short are to all appearances paragons of plantliness. In all respects, that is, but one: they can not be bought. If you are tempted after reading this to dash to the nearest garden centre for a carload of mutisias — don’t bother. They are not only immune to pests; they are immune to commerce, too. There is only one way to propagate them, and that is by seed. They cannot be transplanted, so they must be grown in containers. Cuttings will not strike, and few of the suckers that a mature plant produces will survive a shift. But I make no apology for mentioning them. Anyone with patience and a cold frame can do as I did, and riase them from seed. Patience is necessary because the seeds take from six to 12 months to germinate, depending on the time of sowing. This is because, like the seeds of many other hardy plants, they must undergo vernalisation — that is, they require a cold period, followed by a warm period, so that certain chemical changes can take place in the seed to enable it to germinate. In practice this means that seeds sown in autumn should germinate in spring; but sometimes they will go through two winters before making an appearance. The late E. B. Anderson, a great Eng-

lish gardener maintained that no seed pan should be tipped out in less than two years. It was from E. B. Anderson, too (in his book, “Seven Gardens”), that I got the vital tip on how to grow mutisias. A Chilean correspondent told him, Anderson wrote, that in the wild mutisias grew on the hillsides and never in the valleys. So they need sharp drainage. Now this is a direct contradiction of the advice frequently repeated in gardening books, that mutisias like cool, moist places. But it works. The critical time in raising mutisias occurs a few weeks after germination, when the seedlings must be picked out. I have already mentioned their resistance to transplanting; but it must be done, and if it is to be successful it must be done at the right time. This time is when the weather is cool enough to prevent their becoming dessicated. but warm enough to ensure that they receive no check. If you find the right combination of luck and common-sense to get the seedlings through this period (I am convinced skill has nothing to do with it), that I see no reason why you should not enjoy your mutisias for the rest of your days. And if you do ever see mutisias on sale in a garden centre, you might understand why they are so expensive. The survival rate from germination to flowering size is about 30 per cent; the seedlings grow very slowly when young, and after two years may be less than a foot high. But after that they find their feet, so tb speak, and shoot up quite quickly. You can expect to see flowers four to five years after sowing the seed. Pumpkin problems Pumpkins are peculiar critters. For some people they spring up everywhere, like Cinderella’s coaches, ahd grow with a fecundity that makes rabbits look positively sterile. For others, however good a diet they are fed and however favourable their aspect, they sulk,

hang their heads, and drop their fruit like willow twigs in a nor’wester. For the last two years my pumpkins have failed; last year, from three plants, I got three pumpkins, the biggest of which was no more than 12cm across. I blamed the weather, of course. But I have my suspicions that the real reasons lie elsewhere. For example, in the fact that I have been buying pumpkin plants instead of sowing seed. After all, three pumpkin plants don’t cost much more than a packet of seed, and if you sow seed you always end up with many more plants than you need. I have always thought of this as an unassailable argument. But now I am having second thoughts. The nurseryman is in business to make a profit, and if he is to do that he must grow the varieties that are easy to handle and quick to grow into a saleable plant. He will consider their fruiting, I suppose, because if his plants are failures the customers won’t come back next year. But this is, I believe, of secondary importance. No-one from whom I have bought pumpkin plants has ever asked me later whether I got a good crop. Again, I think the process of “hardening off” as it is carried but in many nurseries is suspect; the costs of production these days are such that that a transition period from nurseryman’s glasshouse to customer’s garden is brief. Too brief, sometimes: I think the reason why my pumpkins failed last year was that when they were planted out they were too soft, and by the time they had stopped shivering and found their land legs, autumn was upon them. So this year I am raising my own. The variety is a new one, “Spirit.” a bush pumpkin described in the seed catalogue as a heavy cropper and said to occupy no more space than a bush marrow. In the catalogue its small orange fruit, photographed in colour, really looked mouth-watering. Move over Cinderella.