Curious about houseplants
slightly tender you can move them to the conservatory when they outgrow a windowsill or stand them out on the patio for the summer.
Jacaranda is particularly elegant with its precise, geometrically arranged, delicate ferny foliage but it is unlikely to produce the big bunches of blue flowers you see when it’s grown around the Med.
Eucalyptuses also make great houseplants. The few hardy species we see in gardens at home are just the tip of the iceberg. In their native Australia there are dozens of attractive, tender types such as lemon-scented Eucalyptus citriodora. Treat them the same way as Mediterranean plants.
But if you have an experimental turn of mind why not take horticultural pot luck and splash out on even more obscure tropical oddities which you can be quite certain no one else you know will be growing?
You could try the camphor tree (Cinnamomum camphora), an evergreen from whose bark the famous moth-repellent substance was once extracted. Or how about Cubanola domingensis, an evergreen from the Dominican Republic which can produce its enormous scented flowers as a baby on a British windowsill?
Or the Panama tree (Sterculia apetala) whose leaves are a foot across? The African Linden (sparrmannia africana) can be tricky to grow from seed but worth the effort.
Things like these usually “sell themselves” from their catalogue description but they are well outside the scope of your average plant encyclopaedia.
The way to find out more about them – or to see a picture – is by searching the internet or going to a reference library (the RHS Libraries if you are a member) and looking up big specialist books on exotic tropical plants. Well it’s all part of the fun for oddity enthusiasts.
The trick of growing such unusual species from seed is to follow the instructions to the letter – some need MED TO MEASURE: The Jacaranda FOOD is probably the last thing on your mind by this stage in the festivities. But think ahead when making your vegetable seed order and include a few gourmet novelties that taste superb to keep friends guessing next Christmas.
What will they make of a fat, striped fruit that is a cross between a melon and a cucumber?
Carosello di Polignano is eaten raw and green like a normal cucumber but has an unusual semi-sweet flavour.
Grow it in a tub on a warm, sheltered patio or better still in a greenhouse.
Long White cucumbers are just that – albino right through, with a very delicate, non-bitter taste quite unlike shop cucumbers and with thin skins that don’t need to be peeled. You also get a very sowing immediately on delivery while others need special pretreatment.
INDOOR oddities are worth making a fuss of, so unless otherwise advised, sow them thinly on the surface of fresh seed compost then cover them to their own depth with horticultural vermiculite. To water stand them in shallow, tepid water for a few minutes so as not to disturb the seeds then keep them on a warm windowsill out of direct sunlight. Some species take ages to germinate but once you have strong seedlings, pot them up singly into small pots. If you want to keep indoor oddities small, don’t shift them to bigger containers until you really have to – keeping them slightly pot-bound helps to “dwarf” them. And if you want to keep them really tiny you can train them as indoor bonsai. Either way they’ll turn your winter indoors into a tropical voyage of discovery.
AS COOL AS A CUCUMBER NEXT CHRISTMAS
good crop under glass. Cucino produces crisp, sausage-sized baby cucumbers that are perfect for taking on picnics as snacks or nibbling straight from the plant while touring the garden in summer.
It is at its most productive grown under glass but you will get some fruit in a tub on a warm, sheltered patio. And try colourful aubergines such as rosy pink Rosa Bianca or mauve Violetta di Firenze.
Early sowing in warmth and a greenhouse are essential for decent crops.
Easily grown, colourful and tasty vegetables for an attractive small outdoor patch include Rainbow chard, red kale Redbor, golden or purple French beans and red, curly lettuces, all available from several seed firms and in seed racks of garden centres.