Costus Propagation

Costus are my favourite plant.

Out of my 40 plus collection my favourite  has to be Costus barbatus also known as comosus or more commonly as ‘Red Tower’.

Costus make for a bold tropical foliage effect in your garden and Comosus more so than most.

This Costus originates from Costa Rica and is for the most part cold tolerant but not of frost, perhaps in the really cold places it could be placed in a protected spot.

It will grow in full sun or shade but best in an understory location with filtered light.

It is not fussy about type of soil it will grow in.

The leaves when stroked underneath feel like the softest velvet, and no I do not have a fetish about this plant.

When in flower it has quite large red bracts with small yellow flowers protruding, these yellow flowers are edible and have a beautiful refreshing taste.

As with most Costus they are not affected by pests or disease.

This is the only Costus flower that actually tastes good; they are also very nice in a salad.

The red flower bract can last for up to six months.

To propagate

It is easy to propagate.

When the stem has finished flowering cut the old flower head off and strip the fibrous matter from the stalk with a knife, then cut the stem into several pieces leaving at least three notches or segments showing, cut the bottom straight and the top at an angle, this is done so you know what part of the stem is top or bottom.

Place the cut stems in a pot using good quality potting mix, you can put several in one pot if you want or you can lay the stems flat in a foam box, the new shoots will appear on most of the notches.

You can just put the whole length of the stem under some compost and wait for the new shoots to appear; also you can just split the rhizome if you wish.

With the Asian type Costus known as Cheilocostus (Pink Shadow, Speciosus) the propagation is much easier as they throw off lateral shoots which can be cut off and planted straight into a pot.

January 2012 Garden News

January started off very dry then came one of the worst heat waves I can remember. It really affected the garden and all plants and lawns were stressed out from the heat.

I started to wonder if we were going to have a January without rain.

Then behold the clouds came and well and truly opened and dumped over 400mm (16 inches) of wonderful rain.

All our tanks are now completely full (107,000 litres) and because the rain had been constant without any real heavy downpours the sub soil was able to receive the moisture.

It’s all good news.

I attended an ‘Open Gardens Australia’ meeting at Kenmore and offered to have the next meeting at our house where there’s plenty of room.

Next month starts to get very busy with three bus tours coming here.

The beehive gingers are quite spectacular this month; they one of my favourite plants.

The black lily grub is a pest at the moment; they love Hippeastrums, Cliveas and Crinums. I have to spray all of these plants with a systemic insecticide otherwise nothing would be left.

We were very lucky to see John and Genny Catlans Amorphophallus titanium prior, flowering and after. This was probably the only time we will get to see this wonderful plant in flower.

I also finished the retaining wall, what a shocking job, the worst part was removing the old vertical sleepers with a crowbar.

At the end of the month Channel 10s ‘Totally Wild’ came here to film and it was all about the garden and our grand children. We are looking forward to seeing the segment in the next couple of months.

Amorphophallus titanum 'Corpse Plant

We consider ourselves very lucky to have seen this magnificent plant in flower here in South East Queensland.
The growers are our friends John and Genny Catlan who are the best plant people we know, what they do not know about propagation is not worth printing.
We travelled in torrential rain and traffic jams to see this plant in flower and believe me it was well worth it.
A truly magnificent plant.
The measurements at flowering were 2.1 metre high and 1.2 metres wide.

There was not a lot of smell as it was pouring with rain but if you got close boy did it stink of rotten flesh.
By the way that's me holding my nose and at the bottom is John Catlan with his baby.
The flower lasted from the Tuesday morning until Saturday.

http://www.goldcoast.com.au/article/2012/01/26/385191_gold-coast-news.html

Garden News December 2011

Judy and I hope all our blog readers had a great Christmas and we wish one and all the best for the coming year.

The year 2012 looks like it’s going to be another busy year with garden presentations and bus trips already booked.

Since we opened we have bought two car loads of new plants and I have refurbished two gardens, taking out some common plants and putting in rare gingers ect.

Next year will be the last year we will open with ‘Australia’s Open Gardens’ it will be our 11^th consecutive year and it’s getting very hard to find help as a lot of our friends are quite frankly getting old.

We still intend to open for bus tours and garden clubs; we do have to charge a small $2 dollar admission fee to pay for the public liability insurance that we have to take out.

I am replacing the old retaining wall in the front driveway at the moment; it’s over 20 years old and is looking its age. The hardest part of the job is getting the old upright sleepers out of the ground, it’s a crowbar job chipping away at the old cement, painful but it has to be done.

My new mower is brilliant, mows in half the time, well worth while getting.

After exhausting virtually all our rainwater prior to the open garden we have now had some good rain and the tanks are again filling.

The sweet smother turf I planted in all the shady spots has took off and it’s great to finally see green lawn in areas that have been barren for years.

Mr Possum is back for the mango crop.

All the best and happy gardening for 2012. 

November Garden News 2011

November is of course our busiest and biggest month as we open our garden for two days to garden lovers through ‘Australia’s Open Gardens’.

This year was our 10^th opening.

The weather was not kind to us this year as we have had no rain and very hot temperatures for almost four weeks leading up to the opening, in fact it has been the driest November since records began.

We just watered and watered almost using our 107,000 litre storage, amazingly the garden actually looked very good and colourful.

The highlights were the Caladium and Day Lily showing. See Caladium video. http://youtu.be/2C6z8HOiAuE

We had some very good publicity leading up to the opening especially from the Brisbane
'Courier Mail', a three page spread, that’s unheard of.
http://www.couriermail.com.au/life/whatson/ian-and-judy-wintles-giving-garden-open-to-public-this-weekend-in-birkdale/story-fn8zvh1s-1226197878376

Family and friends start to arrive early to help us during the two days, without this help we could not do it.

The Saturday of the opening was hectic with people ready to come through the gate at 8.30am, these were the plant lovers who know Judy has some rare and well looked after plants for sale.

We also had two busloads arrive, one from Bribie and another from Bundaberg.

The caterer’s did a great job and all Saturday it was hard to find an unoccupied space.

Sunday was also a good day but steady throughout the day.

Overall we received more than 1000 visitors (a record attendance), all of whom enjoyed the garden, with nothing stolen and no damage to the garden.

The caterers made almost $2000 for their Church and the raffle raised $1200 for disabled sport.

We will do it once more and then have a break as it is so much hard work getting ready, then cleaning up.
We will still take bus tours through the garden and by appointment.

After the cleanup we head up the coast for a three day break at Mooloolaba, what do we do?

We visit our garden friends and come home with a car loaded with new plants.

The hot weather continued throughout November and the garden is looking dry and stressed, hopefully it will rain soon.

Courier Mail Article

A great article in today's Courier Mail.
http://www.couriermail.com.au/life/whatson/ian-and-judy-wintles-giving-garden-open-to-public-this-weekend-in-birkdale/story-fn8zvh1s-1226197878376
What a difficult lead up to this years Open Garden. No rain for a month and 30 degree heat almost every day. We have used up almost all our stored rainwater. The garden is looking good, not perfect but no-one who comes on the weekend should be disappointed. It's a real pity we did not have a bit of rain, I have had to waste so much time watering when I could be doing other gardening jobs and helping Judy prepare the 1000s of plants she has prepared for sale. If you want nice plants at very reasonable prices then you should visit us.

 For example Bromeliads that retail for $30 are here for $10 and Blood Lilys which sell for $44.00 a bulb are just $9.00, that's just a small example.
My other web sites are to be found at:
http://www.gardenproductreviews.com/
http://smg.photobucket.com/albums/v160/Ianrobert/?src=wap
Hope you enjoy the blog, I lost a lot of photos due to a Google stuff up but am slowly putting them back on.
Happy Gardening.

October 2011 in the Garden

What a busy year it has been, I have given 17 power point presentations on 'Smart Sub Tropical Gardening' and 'A Passion for Plants' to various garden clubs in SE Queensland. We have also have hosted 12 bus tours through the garden, have I enough energy to get through an Open Garden?
October is the month when I start to plan this year’s Open Garden. I send out flyers to all Garden Clubs and leave some at local Garden Centres, libraries ect, all in all I give out over 4000 in the hope it will attract visitors for our opening, I also write to all news organisations in the hope that they may be interested, it worked last year as we appeared on Channel 7s 'Great South East' and so far this year the Courier Mail will be doing a story on 18 November, just at the right time.

Another Queensland ‘Open Garden’ Co-ordinator has resigned, they do not seem to last too long in the job, so here we are just a few weeks from opening with no-one in Queensland except me to promote our open garden,  people say I do too much promotion, well if I did not do it who would?

We welcomed the 'Cordyline Society' bus trip to our garden, it was a little wet but they enjoyed the garden we also hosted the 'Redland’s Camera Club' who spent quite some time in the garden with their cameras.

I gave a presentation to the Geranium Society at New Farm and another very special presentation to preps (five year old's) at Moreton Bay Girls College, this was a very satisfying talk, I took in some fruit and some composting worms which the girls loved. The next day I received drawings by the girls of my visit.

We have had a couple of rainy days, 17mills and 27 mills, every little bit is appreciated.

The Jaboticabas are all fruiting like crazy, so much fruit.

What a year for the Hippeastrums, I have never seen them look so good.

I bought a new ride on mower and am very pleased with it.

The Day Lily's are all coming into flower, what a great plant they are.

Someone said to me regarding so called ‘Global Warming’ that one thing about the weather that we can be sure of is that next year is going to be different from this year and so on, how true.