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Sally Nex

Tag Archives: camellia

Karma camellia

25 Saturday Apr 2015

Posted by sallynex in chicken garden

≈ 2 Comments

Tags

camellia, frost, frost damage

Hmm.

I’m never quite sure about camellias. On the one hand, when they look like this, they’re fabulous.

camellia1

But they all too often look like this.

camellia2

This is classic frost damage: something to which camellias, or some varieties at least, are particularly prone. You don’t need much: this one is in what I call the chicken garden I look after just down the road from me in south Somerset, where we have only very mild frosts – in fact I didn’t even notice the one that caused this damage.

It ruins the display completely: not just browning the petals but throwing them to the floor like a lot of used tissue papers. The odd thing is that another pink variety next door, with larger flowers, came through all but unscathed. So it’s clearly something to which some types are more prone than others.

camellia3

This one came with the garden so nobody quite knows what kind it is. Shame, or I would have been able to warn everyone off it. It’s small-flowered and a rather saccharine shade of pink: not my favourite.

As you’ve no doubt gathered by now, this is a plant I find hard to love. But nonetheless I have been assiduously dead-heading the worst offenders and take off a bucketful of browning pink petals every time I visit, in a (largely vain) attempt to keep it looking moderately acceptable for a day or two at least. I shall be roundly glad when it’s finally finished.

I am very gently trying to persuade the owner that its display is so liable to tarnish and never quite look what it should that it should become an ex-camellia in fairly short order. She’s quite in favour of a quick and humane end to the misery but I’m not so sure her mother is. Oh dear: I fear we’re stuck with damp brown used tissues for some time to come.

Camellia problems

25 Monday Jun 2007

Posted by sallynex in Uncategorized

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Tags

aphids, camellia, pests and diseases, sooty mould, spraying, woodland garden

I was up in the 3/4 acre woodland garden I look after the other day, and cutting back a camellia which was overhanging the pathway quite badly (this is the kind of thing I spend most of my time doing in this particular garden – the amount of green waste I remove from there has to be seen to be believed!)

I noticed pretty quickly that behind the curtain of fresh green leaves there was a problem. All the older leaves were covered in a sticky, black sooty mould, which not only looked nasty but also couldn’t have been doing the shrub much good.

I wasn’t quite sure myself what was causing it – I thought aphids of some sort, since this is what causes it on roses (the aphids secrete honeydew, which drips on the leaves below and is consequently colonised by the fungal sooty mould). I was a bit unsure about this since I’ve never heard of aphids attacking camellias to any great degree.

Anyway – I came back and looked it up, and thanks to the dear old RHS I discovered we almost certainly have not aphids, but Camellia cushion scale.

I have to go back and check whether there are yellow-brown scale insects near the veins (or indeed “white waxy egg masses”). But everything else fits.

The good news is, this is just the right time of year to control it. I’m going to have to spray; I’ll try the organic version first (Growing Success Bug Killer or Vitax Organic 2in1) and if that doesn’t work, I’ll zap it with the very un-environmentally friendly Provado. My client tells me he has a backpack sprayer in his garage (the shrub is about 15ft tall) – so time to tog up and do battle!

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