Camellias

This is the time of year when garden centres, nurseries and horticultural retail outlets have Camellias for sale.

Camellias enjoy living in woodland and therefore they require a dappled light and ideally a deciduous canopy above them.

Acid soil is essential.

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If you live in a limey area, then it is best to either create acid bed, in the right location, or grow them in containers.

If you are going to have to grow them in containers, then look out for Ericaceous compost.

When choosing your Camellia, it is important to ensure that the foliage is clean on both sides of the leaves and that the leaves have no chewed holes or lines in them.  You want to try and get one which has a nice balanced shape, sturdy and one which has an evenly distributed bud set.

Obviously choosing the colour, is down to the individual concerned.

When you have chosen your Camellia, then it is best to leave it in its pot until after flowering.  So if you have acid soil, you can simply dig a hole in that dappled shade the environment and plunge the plant with its plastic pot still on, into the soil and put the soil back round it, and keep it there until the flowers have finished.  Then it is easy to lift it out of the ground, after the flowers, knock the pot off and replace the Camellia back in the hole.

Expect your Camellia not to produce as many flowers in the next couple of years, after planting it in open ground as the flower buds will only form when the Camellia is fighting for root space with the trees and shrubs that you have planted it near to.

If you are on alkaline or limey soil, then you can choose a large pot of your choice and plunge your Camellia in its plastic pot into your new large tub.  Ensure it has good drainage and Ericaceous compost in it.  The trick is to only pot your Camellia on after flowering, into another cheap plastic pot that is only a centimetre or so bigger, using ericaceous compost.  This ensures that the Camellia is going to be fairly root bound by the autumn and this simply forces the Camellia to bud up well for next year.

If you planted your Camellia, straight into a large pot, into masses of Ericaceous compost, then expect the Camellia not to produce much flower until the roots start hitting the side of the tub or container.  This can take years, so do the trick mentioned above and this will avoid the issue.

Watering is imperative that you get it right for all those who have a container situation on their hands.  You need to emulate the wild.  This means that during the summer months that you water it once every few of days with rainwater, as the sun is warm but not direct.  During the autumn, the leaves on the deciduous trees die and fall off and the woodland shrubs, in this instance Camellias then get masses of rain, so that those of you in pot situations, you need to step up the watering dramatically.

In a nutshell, Camellias are thirstier during autumn, than any other time of year.  They are setting bud, to flower, and this takes a lot of moisture to do this.  Good luck!.