Salty Sam’s Fun Blog for Children
Number 526
African Plants
Hello Everyone
lf you like gardening, there is a chance that you grow flowers that are not always natives to these shores and originated from a country far away.
l told you about the plant hunters of recent centuries that have helped to make our gardens what they are today in last week’s blog post.
Many of our plants come from countries that have a similar climate to ours and we have quite a few plants from places in Africa.
Some of them are well-known in British gardens and you may like to have a go at growing them.
Remember that plants grow for children just as easily as they do for adults!
The national flower of South Africa is the King Protea.
lt likes to live in full sun and cannot tolerate frost at all. lt likes good drainage and preferably acid soil. lt must have these exact conditions to survive but it is a most spectacular plant if you can grow them.
Pelargoniums are named using the Greek word for stork because their seed head resembles the bill of a stork. These brightly-coloured flowers have been in our gardens for over 400 years. There are many colours to choose from.
They are from South Africa and like hot, dry and sunny positions.
They can be grown from cuttings very easily and like sitting in pots on window sills if you do not have a garden with flowers beds to cultivate.
You can start the cuttings off in jam jars of water.
Agapanthus plants like to grow in pots even if they are put outside. ln this way their roots are restricted which makes them happy.
The flowers are mostly blue but you can get mauve and white ones as well. They grow to be very tall and are really lovely flowers.
Some people keep them in a greenhouse over the winter. You will need to employ the help of an adult to shift your big pots.
When the flowers start dying off at the end of the summer, deadhead by cutting the flowers off right at the bottom of the stalk in order to stop the plants setting seed.
Kniphofias are fascinating flowers. They can be yellow or orange or orange and yellow. They are sometimes called red hot pokers because of the way their colour changes from lighter hues to darker ones at the tip.
Another name for them is torch lily.
They like to be kept quite dry in winter but they like heat and watering in the summer.
lf you don’t have a garden, then you can grow houseplants instead.
Streptocarpus has pretty, little, five-petalled flowers. The plant is also called a Cape primrose. The Cape of Africa is the southern most tip of the continent.
This plant is a native of central, eastern and southern Africa, to be found growing in rocky crevices, often in light shade.
They like good light, but not hot sun.
They like treatment a little different from African violets; l have told you about how to grow these flowers before – check out Blog Post 266.
Water regularly over the summer but don’t let the plant sit in water. Add high potash plant food every 2 weeks. You can get specialized streptocarpus food now because these are popular plants to grow.
ln the winter, don’t leave your plants trapped next to a cold window behind a curtain. Only water the compost when it has completely dried out and remove any leaves that die off.
Pot on in spring if you plant needs more room to grow.
These plants can be grown from leaf cuttings, seed or division – that means that you can divide bigger, older plants into several smaller plants to grow on.
Good luck with your gardening!
lf you like my blog, please support it by telling all your friends and followers about it.
Thank you!
And see you again next Fun Friday!
Love and kisses
Salty Sam
www.christina-sinclair.com
Bill and Bob’s Joke of the Week
Bill: Do you know the easy way to tell which plants in your garden are weeds?
Bob: Yes, if it pulls out easily it isn’t a weed!
Salty Sam © Christina Sinclair 2015
Unauthorized use and/or duplication of material from this blog without express and written permission from this blog’s author and owner is strictly prohibited.
Links may be used to www.christina-sinclair.com
Picture Gallery
Streptocarpus
King Protea
Pelargoniums
Agapanthus
Kniphofias
THE SALTY SAM NEWS DESK
This week, a huge group of volunteers from the town came up to the Rocky Bay Woods which are behind Rose Cottage to do some clearing of the undergrowth.
You will remember that Rose Cottage is where my Auntie Alice lives.
Auntie Alice provided a lunch of baked potatoes with lots of tasty fillings for everyone in her garden and an enormous amount of work got done.
Luckily, it did not rain on us even though the weather was a bit chilly and the hot potatoes we had half way through the day were very welcome. They warmed us up and gave us the strength to go on through the afternoon.
Of course, there were jugs of homemade lemonade and lots of hot tea and coffee available throughout the day too.
Everyone organized themselves into small teams and set to work in different parts of the woods to clear away brambles and bracken.
We cleared large patches of the woods and that will allow other plants like wild flowers to colonize.
Brambles provide food for wildlife.
Deer like nibbling on bramble, bees feed from the blossom and foxes and badgers love to eat the blackberries in autumn; but brambles spread very quickly across the forest floor by throwing out roots from any branches that touch the ground. There are seeds in the blackberries that will grow new plants too. Brambles are very good at growing new plants!
Brambles also provide cover for animals to hide in and bring up their young.
However, it is not a good idea to have the whole woods choked up with them and we were able to clear away some dead wood as well and plant some new trees in the clearings that we had made.
These new trees are what some people might refer to as new blood! They are adding youth and vitality to the wood.
We made sure the trees were protected well, otherwise deer would have come along and think of them as a tasty snack!
There was plenty of dried-up, brown bracken to clear away too. Bracken is a common fern that is spread by underground rhizomes – they are like fat roots, or bracken produces new plants by spreading spores. Ferns have spores instead of seeds.
Unlike brambles and saplings, deer do not like to eat bracken. It is poisonous and not even suitable for cold compost heaps. It can harbour blood-sucking ticks which can even be dangerous to humans. So we wore protective clothing and masks to work in!
In one of the clearings we have created, Captain Jack and I plan to build a hide so that people can come and watch wildlife without being seen.
The animals are more likely to come close to us when they can’t see us.
One of the animals to be seen in the woods will be badgers.
We will need to bring torches with us so that we can find our way in the dark. Badgers are more likely to be around in the dark.
I will keep you updated on our progress.
Brambles can rapidly cover a forest floor
Ferns, brambles and leaf litter
Bracken goes brown in the winter
It is toxic
Lots of fungi live on the forest floor
Sometimes they are very tiny and you need to look carefully to see them!
We planted some new trees in the places we cleared
and they will be very big one day
We planted some holly trees that will feed wildlife with their berries
These trees can grow very tall too
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Quick Quiz
ln which places would you find these famous landmarks?
lt’s the Weekend!
HOW TO MAKE A CAR RUG FOR A 12” DOLL
This is a very useful car rug for passenger to use a chilly day! Or to be kept inside the car in case you doll gets stuck in a snow drift one day in winter.
The rug can pull out to stretch over someone’s knees. There are two sizes to knit and of course you could use pink yarn to match your doll’s car – or any other colour you would like to use.
You can use the pattern from the centre panel on this item to transfer onto the yolk of a sweater or a band across the front of a sweater to make it look more interesting, if you are a more experienced knitter.
CAR RUG LARGE
Using 4mm knitting needles and brown dk yarn cast on 46 stitches
Knit 6 rows of garter stitch
PATTERN
Slip 1, knit 3 (knit 3, purl 2) repeat the last 5 stitches 6 times, knit 3, knit 4
Slip 1, knit 3 (purl 3, knit 2) repeat last 5 stitches 6 times, purl 3, knit 4
Repeat the last 2 rows once
Slip 1, knit to end
Repeat the last row once
Repeat this 6 row pattern 6 times
Then
Slip 1, knit 3 (knit 3, purl 2) repeat the last 5 stitches 6 times, knit 3, knit 4
Slip 1, knit 3 (purl 3, knit 2) repeat last 5 stitches 6 times, purl 3, knit 4
Repeat the last 2 rows once
Knit 6 rows of garter stitch
Cast off
CAR RUG SMALL
Using 4mm knitting needles and brown dk yarn cast on 36 stitches
Knit 6 rows of garter stitch
PATTERN
Slip 1, knit 3 (knit 3, purl 2) repeat the last 5 stitches 4 times, knit 3, knit 4
Slip 1, knit 3 (purl 3, knit 2) repeat last 5 stitches 4 times, purl 3, knit 4
Repeat the last 2 rows once
Slip 1, knit to end
Repeat the last row once
Repeat this 6 row pattern 4 times
Then
Slip 1, knit 3 (knit 3, purl 2) repeat the last 5 stitches 4 times, knit 3, knit 4
Slip 1, knit 3 (purl 3, knit 2) repeat last 5 stitches 4 times, purl 3, knit 4
Repeat the last 2 rows once
Knit 6 rows of garter stitch
Cast off
Please note that the material on this blog is for personal use and for use in classrooms only.
It is a copyright infringement and, therefore, illegal under international law to sell items made with these patterns.
Use of the toys and projects is at your own risk.
©Christina Sinclair Designs 2015
Quick Quiz Answers
The Golden Gate Bridge, San Francisco, The United States
Burj Al Arab Hotel, Dubai
The Eiffel Tower, Paris, France
The Space Needle, Seattle, The United States
The Leaning Tower of Pisa, ltaly
Tower Bridge, London, England
The Brandenburg Gate, Berlin, Germany
The Statue of Liberty, New York, The United States
Parthenon, Athens, Greece
Stonehenge, Salisbury Plain, England
