Hello and welcome to this weeks SOS.

The weather has been particularly dry the past couple of weeks and the temperature has been mild so some plants in the garden are starting to wake up and are more advanced than this time last year. However as we all know winter weather always has a knack of coming back with a sting in the tail. The weather forecast for the next few days is more of the same. This weekend I will give some of my semi hardy succulents a gentle sprinkling of water for the first time in 4 months.

Here is my six.

1. Digitais Stewartii

I sowed these seeds last March and they have been a relatively slow grower. They are starting grow faster and I will plant them in the garden in March. This digitalis is supposedly a hardy perennial which is rare for a foxglove. It will produce tall spikes of orange flowers up 2 metres year after year.

2. Dry trough

As regular readers of this blog know I planted this trough a couple of years ago and put in more gravel than I usually do and it has been a great success. Mostly filled with Sedums, Saxifraga and Thyme at the moment most of it is dormant apart from a couple of Saxifraga that are starting to come back to life. By spring however this will be full of no shoots and rosettes and will look more alive.

3. Senicio Angel Wings.

This plant has performed greater than I thought over winter. It is supposed to be slightly semi hardy but it is doing great at the moment. It is planted in a large plastic pot just in ordinary compost with no gravel or sand to aid drainage. I thought I had lost it last year because due to the wet summer we had as the leaves were stripped of the white velvet outer shell by an invasion of molluscs. All that was left was a green transparent leaf which you can see evidence of at the bottom of the photo. I had taken a few cuttings as backup last year and these are doing well as well. Hopefully this year it will flower this year.

4. Iris Reticulata Katharine Hodgkins

The first bulb to flower this year this is a favourite of mine. This plant has a little bit more subtle colouring than other Reticulatas. The light blue veins always look like they have been painted by water colour and each petal has an exotic yellow and dark blue splodge at the end of the petal that looks like it has come from a tropical fish

5. New Rose Shoots

I wrote in my blog at the start of the month that my roses last year was blighted by black spilt. So seeing as the weather was mild I took the opportunity to prune some of the damaged leaves and stems off last weekend. As you can see this Iceberg is already producing new shoots.

6. Aeonium cold frame

The vast majority of my Aeoniums are looking really healthy and I have decided to reward them with a sousing of water this morning. Aeoniums a dousing with a bucket of water. There is one Aeonium that is giving me cause for concern and that is my Aeonium Velour which Main Rosette seems to be getting munched. I have checked for any critters again and again but I can’t seem to find anything.

That is my SOS.

I am off out to spend a couple of hours in the garden then I am off to see my home town team Berwick Rangers play East Kilbride in the Lowland Scottish league. My local team has been going through a bit of a turbulent time over the last couple of years and was relegated from the main divisions last year. However after a board meeting during the week new appointments have been made to the board and I know a couple of them so I think it is a good time to go back and watch matches as I don’t want the only English team that plays on Scotland to disappear.

If you want to write one it is not that difficult. As always to find out how six on Saturday works please follow the following link The Propagator. The don of Six on Saturday.

Until next week goodbye.