Clivias

I have three favourite flowers - daffodils - my all time best, sweet peas (in Spring) and clivia's.

Sweet peas - freshly harvested from the garden
especially for this pic :)

We have never had the climate to grow daffs, but sweet peas - I just chuck 'em in some soil, and if they produce, I score.  As for clivia's - they are such easy plants to grow, and so rewarding - year after year.

Back in mid-2012 before we left our town house I ensured that I had some of the seeds from my favourite flowering garden plant - clivia's.  

Their only requirement is dappled shade and some water, and, although I wasn't sure where I was going to plant them on the smallholding, I wasn't leaving without some :) 

As I hadn't dug up any of the existing plants I didn't think the new owner would object LOL

I took some of the seed heads, peeled off the outer sheath - a bit of a messy job - and shoved them in some sand in seedling trays.

Harvesting clivia seeds whilst we were still in our
town house

Thankfully, enough survived for me to plant.

Clivia's a really easy to propagate from seed
- the details can be here

By the time the plants were ready to go in the ground, I had found the perfect spot for them - outside the kitchen door.

Ugly - I definitely had a plan for this area - even
back in 2010 when this pic was taken

This area had taken a lot of punishment during the building, and had become a repository for scrap, and an accumulation of building materials, etc.  An absolute eyesore.  Because it was the only sheltered, shady spot, it also became the place where I shoved all the small pot plants from the town house - until I could figure out where they needed to be planted.

It was a spot crying out for a bit of colour.  Kitchen doors can be such "messy" places, can't they - and which accumulate anything and everything.

Neat and orderly - just like I like it :)

After clearing up all the bits of plastering cement from the ground (why are builders so lackadaisical  when they plaster?), adding lots of compost and a border of left over bricks I got to work.

Planted up with my clivia seedlings - September 2012

This is what the bed looked like in September 2012 - I couldn't wait for the builders to leave site, so climbed in around them LOL  Once I was finished, the area was strictly off limits - except when they had to paint the exterior walls of the house.  Then I "supervised" their entire time there ;)

A pink azalea in a pot by the back door steps,
my worm bin - handy for the kitchen -
my stacked self-watering herb stand with
parsley, basil an garlic chive plants,
lettuces growing above the clivia's, and
the ducks - all four of them ensuring that
no slugs, snails or other creepy crawlies lurk
in the undergrowth LOL

This is what that spot looks like today.

Clivia - stunning, rewarding and
so simple to care for.

I wasn't planning on having the structure with the self-watering repurposed Styrofoam boxes on it, but it turns out that it is too hot, even in my shadecloth veggie patch, to grow lettuce, so this is the only way I can harvest it year round.

You win some, and you lose some.  I reckon I'm winning all the way :)