Red-leaf Radicchio

What's not to love about a red-leaved radicchio (or Italian chicory), lettuce-like in shape, size and use? I've had four in one of my big pots near the back door, for simplicity when collecting a few leaves at dinner time.

Not surprisingly, the plants bolted when the hot weather really began, but were nicely upright - and I thought I'd collect seeds - until they started flopping over the path in a very undignified manner. They've now been tidied up.
Luckily there's more in the edible patch, where I'm happy for the plants to flower away, and where I'm less troubled by a bit of drunken falling over. I'm determined to collect seeds! (Blue flowers in the orange-and-red veg plot. Oh well. They are pretty.)

But for a little while we had, atop stems a metre high, unexpected, sweet flowers of sky blue just like the blooms of its brother, green-leaved chicory (Cichorium intybus, that so-called coffee replacement (bar humbug) in times of deprivation). Who knew they were related? (I knew that chicory has blue flowers, but didn't know that it was closely related to the red-leaved radicchio, so different in colour and shape.)

So I pulled out the errant radicchio, and topped up the potting mix in the large pot. I added lettuce seed, covered lightly, and watered well...especially during the hot days we've had (up to 41 degrees here, with northerly winds) and shaded them a little with bracken stalks.

 

Often I have a bit of fun with my sowing...as you can see. Within the 2 round pots (the other two are square) are water-well pots, hidden when the lettuce grows.

Thankfully, these 4 pots, near the back door, only receive morning sun, hot as that is.

Planting lettuce seed in January might sound crazy, but I am an optimist!

 

Jill Weatherhead is horticulturist, writer, garden designer and principal at Jill Weatherhead Garden Design who lives in the Dandenong Ranges east of Melbourne, and works throughout Victoria. (www.jillweatherheadgardendesign.com.au)

Some Hardy Perennials

Both garden and I wilted on the recent oven-like 42°C day.

Well, most of the garden. Some plants are extraordinarily resilient, taking heat & dry soil with aplomb. (Here we have tank water only...so the garden gets almost zero watering...in a Mediterranean climate.)

Blue salvia (probably Salvia chamaedryoides `Marine Blue', pictured above), is holding up well, and should flower right through the warm months (up until late autumn), like the rest of its tribe. Both the salvia and the nearby Phygelius are looking at me, saying, superciliously, `What Heat?' - and both attract myriads of birds seeking nectar. (Phygelius might be a bit messy to have near the house, but the constant avian activity that we can see through our windows makes it worth the pain.)

Bloodroot (Sanguinaria canadensis, above) is surprisingly happy in pots - these are kept watered - and I'm looking at them afresh. I'm preparing a talk on poppies and, to my surprise, bloodroot is in the handsome poppy family. Every single species in Papaveraceae seems to have the prettiest of flowers (and sometimes, as here, wonderful leaves)! Like all the other wealth of poppies - which grow from the cold Arctic to the heat of South Africa - bloodroot produces a fluid - latex - which contains alkaloids (interesting ones in the opium poppy).

Cut a stem and out comes the fluid, orange in this case but fancifully named as blood-like.

Speaking of poppies, my Papaver `Lauren's Grape' (pictured in my last post) is setting seed and I've carefully cut off three seeds heads, as they've ripened, with the ring of pores open to release - it seems - thousands of tiny seeds from the pepper pot-like seed heads. Don't pick them green! - the seeds will not be ready. I've only had the one variety growing so the next generation may have, again, that wonderful purple.

 

 True lilies (Lilium, top), too, are flowering their heads off.

I love it when the garden gives you a truly wonderful  surprise.

Jill Weatherhead is horticulturist, writer, garden designer and principal at Jill Weatherhead Garden Design who lives in the Dandenong Ranges east of Melbourne, and works throughout Victoria. (www.jillweatherheadgardendesign.com.au)