Helebores
simoncalley
Posts: 4
in Plants
As a reasonably new gardener I would like to know when is the best time to plant new Helebores ready for some spring colour.
Do I plant from seed or new plants?
Please help
Simon
Last edited: 04 September 2016 10:30:11
0
Posts
You can grow from seed but it will take you three years to a flowering plant.
Hayloft sell seedlings , they will take two years of growing on to flowering size.
The best way to do it is buy plants in flower in large pots in January, or February. As they are variable from seed, that way you know exactly what you are getting. Some exceptional plants are micropropagated, expect to pay £30upwards a plant.
In my opinion , the best plants for gardens are Ashwood hybrids. If you can get to their nursery near kingswinford in the west midlands on their open days in February, you get to pick the cream of the crop.
Look on Ashwood nursery website for more details.
Thank You fidgetbones
Patience is the name of the game then and buying plants for next year.
Simon
Hayloft have offers on hellebore plugs at the moment. If you go to their website and choose BBC GW magazine from the drop down menu they have ten plugs for £10 + p+p but I warn you...you'll not be able to stop.
http://www.hayloft-plants.co.uk/search.aspx?publication=BBC%20Gardeners%20World
Like everything else in this world, it comes down to your time v your money.
Thank You to plant pauper and Verdun for your kind and knowledgeable advice.
Simon
As you are novice gardener I would like to give you a word of warning
regarding Hellebore. Personallly I would buy plants as growing from seed is a slow process. I live to rue the day I harvested my Hellebore seeds withouth wearing glove. It resulted in a very severe painfull reaction on my fingers. This is how the story goes. I picked the seed pods from my Hellebore, most of which where brown and dry and ready to burst open but quite a few were still green. Never the less I still picked the green ones and popped them all open by digging my nails in the side of the pods. I had quite a large harvest of seed and it took about 2 hours to de-seed the pods. A lot of juice came out of the fleshy green pods. Half an hour or so into my task, I noticed a little tingling on my hands and fingers. Ingnoring this I finished the job, washed my hands and settled down for evening. The tingling accelerated to burning, so I soaked my hands in a bowl of cold water which only gave a little relief. During the night my fingers and hands were on fire and I was unable to sleep because of it. The next day the pain was almost unbearable and large blisters started to appear all over by fingers and under my nails. I can only liken this to having taken a cast iron casserole dish out of a hot over without wearing oven gloves. My nails felt as though red hot needle had been shoved into them. My hands took about a week to recover from the pain and about 2 weeks for new skin to grown back to normal. I like to feel the wind in my hair and get the dirt under my nails and only wear gloves if I'm cutting back thorny stuff............but now I've learnt my lesson
Thanks for the warning Jane, I will be very careful when handling those nasty little blighters.
Simon