Zonal Pelargonium "Bold Carnival", new plants and a surprise

"Bold Carnival" - Basic Zonal Pelargonium

Bold Carnival, raised by John Gibbons, UK, is a basic zonal with dark peach double blooms.    John Gibbons is a prolific UK hybridiser and uses the pre-fix 'Bold'.   Fibrex Nurseries have a lot of his varieties in their catalogue.

April has been a month when plants have been arriving through the post and personally delivered. .  Earlier in the year I ordered from both Scented Geraniums of Northern Ireland and Fibrex Nurseries, Nr. Straford-upon-Avon.  Both these nurseries plants arrived in the same week, both well packaged and are now growing well in the greenhouse.  

Another package with a plant inside arrived last week – a complete surprise.   I found a beautifully packaged zonartic from Liga in Ireland.  The plant is not yet named – there is a competition to find it’s name, which is all very exciting.  Thank you so much Liga – I will love it and treasure it. I am looking forward to knowing its name when it is decided.  I’ll keep you posted.   Liga has a blog page which has her wonderful photographs of pelargoniums.   She also runs a dedicated Facebok Group - Pelargoniums. At home and garden, species and varieties - for pelargonium enthusiasts

 

Surprise Zonartic from Liga

Before Liga’s surprise parcel arrived, I had a wonderful afternoon with Anne, a Swedish pelargonium enthusiast who was over here on a visit to stay with her cousin Marika,  also Swedish but living here in the UK.  Anne very kindly brought me two zonartics and a Stellar.  These are Vilda Tilda, Lara Marjorie and Sune Tryg.   Thank you so much Anne.  It was a lovely afternoon chatting’pelargonium’, taking a few cuttings for her to take home.   I will update you on all these new varieties.

"Sweet Jess" - Rosebud type zonal pelargonium - and coir plugs

The Rosebud type zonal pelargonium “Sweet Jess” is a recent acquisition for me.   Followers of my Blog will know that I have a penchant for buying pelargoniums with names that have some relevance for me.   My second grand daughter is named Jessica – so of course, I had to have this one, apart from the fact it is really beautiful – as is our own Jessica.  

This dwarf zonal pelargonium, “Sweet Jess” was introduced in the UK by Hodgson in 1996.  The rosebud type flowers are a delicate light rose pink and the leaves are a mid  green with a brown blotch.

As promised in my last blog here are some photo’s of the Coir plugs I recently bought on eBay.

I am really pleased with these.  As you will see in the last photograph, they are much smaller than the coir plugs I used previously.  These were open top and bottom, just in a 'sleeve', so if the plugs dried out on a hot day, the coir tended to fall out.   These new Jiffy plugs are folded at one end so the filling does not fall out.   I have yet to find out if the sleeves rot away.

Cuttings above are: P. fulgidum, P. "W.I. Celebration" and P."Redondo".