Fuchsia
Family: Onagraceae
(Evening Primrose Family)
Genus: Fuchsia
 Fuchsias
may seem like a strange choice for September Plant of the
Month, but they do look lovely right
now, and they will shine through the entire month. Perhaps
some of you want to know more about them, particularly how
to keep them safe through the winter so they can bloom again
next year. I have another motive as well. A few weeks ago,
I was interviewed about growing fuchsias in Whatcom County.
I must have told the reporter more than she needed to know,
since only bits of my answers to her questions were included
in the article. So to set the record straight, here’s the
rest of the story…
Just
about everyone is a fan of fuchsias. Their flower form is
lovely—reminiscent, some say, of tiny ballerinas—and
the colors are luscious. Many people enjoy them in hanging
baskets, alone or combined with other plants with similar cultural
requirements and from the same side of the color wheel. There
are too many fuchsias to mention even all of the species, much
less the hybrids. Suffice it to say that they were first discovered
in Chile and have been cultivated throughout the great gardening
centers of Europe since the early 1800s. There, fuchsias are
widely used as substantial shrubs, often combined into hedges
or screens. The flowers, while beautiful, often appear simple
when compared to the very-doubles we see here, with row upon
row of ruffled petals in the corolla—the lower part of the
flower, below the flared-back sepals. These hybrids, all named
and mostly derived from F. fulgens and F. magellanica,
have enjoyed immense popularity in the west, so much so that
a fuchsia gall mite traveled like blazes through specialists’ shows
in Central California in the mid-1980s. The trade, badly damaged,
was rebuilt on the strength of resistance to the mite, which
was why for a few years, starts in the spring were often limited
to F. ‘Dark Eyes’ and a few other resistant varieties.
The range of available varieties is much broader today…but
if you do spot the characteristic misshapen leaves and webbing,
run directly to the garbage and dump the entire plant. The
very best solution is to burn it, immediately…but I’m not going
to advocate starting any fires with fuchsias in our county.
Appreciating
warm days and cool nights, the fuchsia hybrids thrive here
on the Pacific coast, from central California
to British Columbia…from last frost to first. Keep them evenly
moist, feed them a half-strength solution of an all-purpose
liquid fertilizer every two weeks—remembering, of course, never
to feed a plant that’s been allowed to dry out. Remove the
berries—in fact, it’s better to remove the spent flowers regularly,
before the berries have a chance to form—and pinch the stems
back after flowering to promote bushiness. Pinching early in
the spring will prevent legginess as well, but remember that
flowering may be delayed. To keep your beautiful fuchsia basket
over the winter, whack all the branches off even with the edge
of the pot and pick off whatever leaves remain, on the plant
or over the soil. Do this at the end of September or just before
first frost, whichever comes first. Put the sad-looking, sheared,
and no doubt embarrassed fuchsia in the garage or a shed; wherever
it will stay cool but not freezing, and won’t get more than
a little indirect light. Ignore it all winter, except remember
to give each pot about a cup of water on the first of each
month until mid-March. Start then to give your fuchsia a bit
of light and a bit more water…even set it outside—but not in
the direct sun—on warm days. By late April, you can start pinching
back the new green growth and by Mothers’ Day, you may have
forgotten you ever gave it such a bad haircut and it will suddenly
be too beautiful to be embarrassed any more.
If this is all too much trouble, investigate
one of the so-called hardy fuchsias: F. ‘Riccartonii’,
or one of several varieties of F. magellanica. Planted
in a protected area of your garden, these will survive even
the occasional hard freeze, particularly if they are protected
with five or so inches of sawdust. The tops will die back,
but in the spring you should see tender new shoots, heralding
the possibility of glorious red-and-purple blooms from mid-summer
to first frost. |
