Gardening

[Karl]

OK - so does anybody know anything about plants????

We have a large old Tree Fern which I bought my wife for Mothers Day this year. This is the first winter we will have had the fern and, with the onset of frost, I am concerned about when to wrap the blighter up in its fleece. Does anybody know when/how?????

Or any pointers to good gardening websites?

I don't want to lose the brownie points scored with SWMBO by letting the bugger get killed by frost.

Cheers

Karl

 

[oddsocks]

try this link for a start..

http://www.angelfire.com/bc/eucalyptus/treeferns/

My wife's the gardener but we don't have any tree ferns but got the above link from google

 

[Mike.C]

Karl, We have had 3 of them (Dicksonia Antartica) up here in Scotland for about 5 years and they have been fine, and it really gets cold up here.

You want to cut the fronds off (some people leave them on, but they can get frost damaged) and wrap it up now with fleece, but before you do, get a ball of straw about the size of the crown (where the fronds come out) and gently push it down into the crown, this will protect it from any frost. Then get the fleece and wrap it a few times around about the top 12 or 18 inches of the trunk and cover the straw and crown.

The main thing you want to protect is the crown because if it gets frost damaged it will either kill it or effect the following years fronds growth.

If you have a dry week or so in the winter (some hope), give the trunk a light mist with some water.

By the way which one do you have? If it is the Dicksonia it is pretty hardy and unlike some tree ferns it prefers a shady and cool position out of the sun, so it is ideal for most parts of the UK, and will take -10C at least.

As I said above some people leave the fonds on, but they can easliy get frost damaged. We remove ours because as well as the frost, there's less chance of the wind knocking the whole thing over in the winter. (It also gets very winding up here :roll: )
Dont worry if you do remove them because new ones grow each year at the rate of a several on inches a day, yet the trunk only grows about one inch a year, a very strange but lovely plant :lol:

If you need to know anything else just ask.

HTH

Cheers

Mike

 

[Woodmagnet]

Excellent advice Mike. :wink:

 

[Karl]

Thanks for your replies guys.

I am 99% sure it is Dicksonia (can't find the card which came with it when we bought it). Mike - will follow your nicely detailed instructions.

I did a job a few months back for a client who had bought the same tree fern as ours, but a smaller specimen (ours is about 3ft to crown, his about 18inches). He said that he didn't see the point in spending twice as much on the bigger plant because his would "soon" grow to that size, and that he was looking forward to sitting under it in a few years. D'oh. Leaflet says it only grows an inch a year !!!!

Cheers

Karl

 

[Mike.C]

Your welcome Karl.

Karl wrote,

I did a job a few months back for a client who had bought the same tree fern as ours, but a smaller specimen (ours is about 3ft to crown, his about 18inches). He said that he didn't see the point in spending twice as much on the bigger plant because his would "soon" grow to that size, and that he was looking forward to sitting under it in a few years. D'oh. Leaflet says it only grows an inch a year !!!!

:lol: He will be waiting a long time before he will be able to sit under it :lol: The first one we bought was 6 foot, and the only reason we spent that much was because of that very reason, we didn't want to wait years until it was a reasonable size, but we found out later that anything from 3 or 4 foot high has 4 or 5 foot fronds on it at the height of the season, so the next one we got was 3 foot, and it looks every bit as good. We have also got one that is around 20 inches

Cheers

Mike

 

[LyNx]

I would leave the fronds on, as these will still supply the fern with Nutrients. I live in a bit of a frost pocket and all i do is place some straw (or dead fronds) in the crown. This is the area that needs protection from the frost.

 

[Mike.C]

As I said some people leave them on and others remove them, it all depends where you live. For instance up here the winds get so bad that even with the fronds wrapped in fleece the wind will damage them, which is not to bad if they are snapped half way up the frond, but if the damage is in the crown itself, that is a different story.

Cheers

Mike