Co-Despot
posts: 141
(10/21/00 9:20:02 pm)
Winter-flowering pansies
Elec Telegraph
ISSUE 1975 Saturday 21 October 2000
No shrinking violas
With a little care and attention, winter-flowering pansies add colour to the darkest days, advises Fred Whitsey
'Cheery,' a winter-flowering pansy
IF they live up to the promise of their name, winter-flowering pansies should be getting ready to dazzle, relieving the gloom of the dreary months to come. Unfortunately, this promise is not always fulfilled.
In the few years since they began to flood the plant market, we haven't had a really severe winter, but we have had enough experience of such winters to make a rational assessment of what might happen to them.
If you are under the impression that these pansies will turn winter into summer, you might be disappointed. Those who have grown them regularly have found they give a flourish of bloom in autumn, a great burst running from March into early summer, but make only faltering efforts in between. But it doesn't have to be like that.
Planted in flowerbeds, as you see them on traffic roundabouts, they are unlikely to give much bloom on winter days. The best places for them are pots, troughs or tubs on a patio, or, better still, in window boxes where they are completely sheltered. Though they will endure some shade, the best flowering is achieved where the containers stand in whatever sun the winter days produce.
Here, too, they can be provided with a drainage layer at the bottom of the container that deals with surplus moisture quickly. I am also persuaded that a generous helping in the compost of Perlite, that fluffy stuff produced by subjecting volcanic rock to alarming temperatures and which you buy in garden centres, helps save the roots from the cold and damp for weeks on end.
The fact that winter-flowering pansies look so healthy in the polythene tunnels of garden centres suggests that a congenial home for them might be bright conservatories and porches, taking the place of the summer geraniums and fuchsias. Then, at the nadir of the year, they would at least give a glowing promise of summer days to come.
Throughout their 15 or so years of existence, winter-flowering pansies - hybrids with a complex ancestry - have not been left alone to preen themselves and glory in their success. Breeders have strengthened the plant's constitution, broadened the colour range and brought forward their great early spring weeks of glory. Thanks to this, and the fact that they flower in autumn, you can acquire plants at this time which are likely to satisfy the most demanding tastes in colouring. This season, the choice has been widened by the appearance of more violas.
These have been found to perform more dependably, shrugging off the threats from particularly cold or wet spells. The strains of viola being brought forward now also start their main flowering season earlier, from mid-February. The flowers are smaller than those of pansies and one must not expect the same colour range or flamboyance. They are simple and sober by comparison, but there are several varieties intriguingly blotched at the heart of the flower.
At the Priory Farm plant centre in Nutfield, Surrey, one of the principal pansy growers in the South-East, Francis Hallowes, the partner in charge of propagation, tells me that the nursery is also producing large numbers of violas. "We find them tougher and that they make more compact plants," he says. "And each season, we are able to get seed of a wider range of colourings. They clearly have a great future."
But Mr Hallowes still recommends pansies for winter-hanging baskets, of which his firm has long been a pioneer.
At the plant-breeding stations, work is constantly in progress on viola-pansy crosses with the aim of marrying the best qualities of each.
During the breeding process, the characteristic scent has not been lost: another good reason for growing these plants in containers. You are far more likely to enjoy the elusive perfume when your flowers are brought closer, as well as marvelling over their fascinating markings.
Growing them
Buy enough pansies or violas to keep a surplus handy. Sometimes a few will look seedy during the winter. Do not coax them on - there is not enough time. Replace them from the pool kept in pots in a sheltered place.
Though plants can be regenerated after their long spring performance. it is better to discard them and start afresh in early summer with a different kind of bedding plant.
Never grow pansies for consecutive seasons in the same container compost or on the same patch of ground; you might encourage an outbreak of "pansy sickness", a debilitating disease.
Raise up all containers on clay or plastic feet to allow the drainage layer at the bottom to function efficiently.
-- Anonymous, March 09, 2001