Amazing fuchsias

Why not? I'm sure they don't want to have us spread too thin, but the more people who see them will love having fuchsias. Up until a couple of years ago, a hanging Fuchsia basket was a traditional Mother's Day gift from me to my mother. I will always have that association.

I'm with you - I'm always astounded by the big beauties, but I tend to like the simpler fellows more, too.

Kathy

Pedricks Corner
i do not understand your statement

Yes Strever, you are correct. I meant to say that they were not listed as one of the most popular cultivars. And when I requested they be added, I was told that they would be once their was enough interest expressed in them. So I set about adding all of the varieties that I grow which were not here then. It had been a few months since I looked at the Plant Files, as I work two jobs and spend 10 hours a week commuting. I was very, very happy to discover it there this week-end when I went to go see if I could find examples of the 11 new varieties I purchased this Sunday. They are just little starts, so it will be some time before I see them bloom.
I hope you will be interested in a fuchsia forum :-)

Just learned about hardy fuchsia this year. Bought may first one a couple of months ago. It is still small but looks healthy and is growing. Can't wait to see it bloom.

Fuchsia's grow very fast this time of year, you should feed it every two weeks with a balanced food. I don't do time released, because you can't know when they have actually run out, since how often a plant is watered, depends on the weather.
I have one big bush I hope to have a photo of in bloom soon, that was just a cutting last year and is now four feet tall!
But the biggest and oldest fuchsia I have is Magellanica. If I didn't keep it pruned, it could get up to ten feet high. Mine is 15 years old and the trunk has a beautiful bark which I think ads to it's beauty. Here is a close up of a few flowers. It is a covered with these right now and a female Anna's hummingbird stays close to it all day!

Thanks! Will be sure to feed it!

Shadyfolks, are you still in the neighborhood?
I am eager to hear how your experiement worked???
I would be more confident with a success story from zone 5.
I tried a couple zone 7-rated magellanica's (sp?) in my yard, but no luck.
I don't do well with overwintering them in the garage either.
I had written them off, but I might try again, if anyone near my zone has had luck.

Hi Weerobin, in the Pacific Northwest Gardening forum, a member called Rarejem posted some photos of how their fuchsia's are coming back up from the base after freezing to the ground in zone 7. It is in the thread I started there recently called, "Who would like to see a Fuchsia forum!?"
I am not surprised yours didn't make it in the garage, fuchsia's hate being cooped up. But I do hope you give them another try. Have you tried packing the base of the plant with a thick layer of mulch like hay or alphafa? I have even seen tender bushes covered in burlap bags and tied around them for the winter.
Of course, since I am a collector, I would have to keep trying if I lived in a zone like your :-) I can't imagine my yard with out at least a few fuchsia's in it!

I am still hoping more people with upright fuchsia's in their gardens will come a post photos for all of us to see!
Doss, I went to one of the sites in your post up above, The Earthworks Fuchsias. They have a great selection! Would you believe they only have 10 out of my 60? I was really surprised. I like their rating system and wanted to tag my list with it. Maybe I will buy from them when I get a chance to increase my collection again. My goal is to have a least 100.
Here is a photo of Gafley Lyle, which has grown up into my cherry trees and is now hanging down out of it. I just LOVE this little shady corner out my front door. To me, they look like little iced jewels hanging in the dappled light.
If anyone wants to see a photo of the full bush of my Duchess of Albany, I am going to post it in the California Gardening forum to show that she can handle full sun.

What do you do about fuchsia mites or don't you have them?

Doss, yes, there are fuchsia's right down the street from me with severe mite damage. And since the hummingbirds spread them, if I don't protect mine, they will get them also. My take on it is this, most of the fruits, vegetables, and flowers gardeners want to grow have one weakness or another that must be dealt with if we want to grow them. Like roses. I have to spray my roses or they will die from rust and mildew. I have to use snailbait, or snails will destroy my veggie garden. I have to spray my peaches and nectorines while they are dormant, or peach leaf curl will destroy them. I have to kill the ants, or they will cover my other 12 types of fruit trees with aphids to milk......
So I spray on a bi-weekly schedule for both insects and diseases. Since fuchsia's, like roses, can also get rust and mildew. I try to be very careful and responsible. As I love my hummingbirds and butterflies. I use the minimum strengths and only spray in the late evening when they are not out and about.

What do you use?

Ortho Garden Disease Control and Ortho Malathion Plus can be mixed together and used in the same spray. I have tried to use friendlier products like Safersoap, etc. But they are not as effective and require more frequent spraying.
I never used to spray anything, as I grow most of my own food. I have food allergies and budget restrictions, ha, ha! Why should I pay $4/lb for snow peas when I can grow my own? And mine don't look like someone walked on them.
I even grow my own potatoes, onions, garlic, and celery. Cheap vegetables, but even cheaper when they are right outside your back door. I don't want to be eating pesticides. But after suffering huge losses to diseases and insects, I decided I had to if I was going to have anything to eat at all. And by then, I was down to only 12 fuchsia's because all of the rest had died from the mite. Magellanica, Lycioides, White Wonder, Voodoo, and Mood Indigo are amoung those survivors.

Thanks PC. I've been using Bayer shrub and tree which has been working pretty well. I called them and they said that it wouldn't bother the hummers or the bees. I didn't know that you could get malathion anymore.

Yes, you can. But I am interested in what you are using. Especially if it doesn't harm the bees!! I had a bumper crop of fruit last year, but the year before that, all of my fruit trees were in full bloom and no bees showed up!!!! That was before I started to spray on a regular basis, so I know it wasn't the Malathion. It was scary.
This year there are lots of bees, but the recent rains ruined my cherries. They all molded. I will look at the Bayer products next time I need more. The little containers I have had lasted me for over three years now, but I will be running out by mid summer.

The Bayer Shrub and Tree is a systemic and only needs to be done once a year too.

I was looking for a systemic when I bought the Ortho stuff! Now I am definateley going to get Bayer Shrub and Tree. In fact, I am not going to wait until I run out of the other stuff. I feed with a syphon feeder, so I could just use that to disperse the Bayer. I never did want to have to use a spray! Thanks!
I just got back from buying 14 varieties of hardy uprights to add to my collection and it would be really nice to water them into their new containers with the Bayer instead of spraying them.
Ha, ha, I only found 7 of the 80 I had on my list from the Northwest Fuchsia Society website. So the other 7 are complete unknowns. They have names, but no descriptions. But I was stoked to find one I had been looking for, for a long time, Sundial! It is a double and both the sepals and the corolla are red orange! Meanwhile, I will be wondering what in the world Sea Forth is going to look like. I will have to cruise more sites.....LOL

Sounds as if you are having a wonderful time PC. Your garden will be really beautiful with all of those fuchsias blooming.

I certainly hope so! Yes, I am enjoying my garden this year, but it is a bitter sweet joy. The economy is huring so many people, including me, and I could lose it all very soon. Spending time on improving the garden, taking care of my fruit trees, and planting my veggies, is sort of like hope in action, ya know? If I plant it, then I will be here to enjoy it!? I didn't have to spend money to get the new varieties. I traded 15 one gallon Jerusalem Artichokes for them. I have about 150 of those and I am hoping most of them sell at the flea market this week-end.

On a lighter note, where are all the photos of fuchsia's here!! We need to be sharing photos and building up the fuchsia portion of Plant Files in DavesGarden! There are at least 1,000 varieties available. We should have them all here, ha, ha! Here is a photo of my Voodoo.

I've never really been that interested in fuchsias before...I think because I just like more subtle colors in my garden, which consists mainly of different hosta varieties. However, today I happened to be at a nursery and I looked up and was really taken with this one...I just didn't have the guts to buy it because I didn't know where I'd put it. The name was "Blacky", I think.

Hi Noreaster, I am not as familiar with the hanging baskets as I am with the uprights. That is a pretty one though! My personal experience with hangers as a grower, is that since they are confined to such small containers, they are prone to short lives once they go home with someone. Look at how much bigger the plant is than it's pot. That is definately the product of a controlled enviroment in a greenhouse and would require close monitoring.
I confess to having several varieties that can go either way. Upright or hanging, depending on how they are pruned. Quasar, Grace McCarthy, Garden News, and Voodoo. I have them in 10-15 gallon containers that have high sides, so the parts of the bush that want to spill over can do so. And they make a great show! Best of all, they have lots of room for a big root system and can handle extremes in weather. They will live for decades this way if I don't let them get too big. My Voodoo has rooted through the bottom of the pot into the ground and has been where it is for 8 years. I will add a picture of it below, plus one of Temptation.
As for colors, I hope you take a look at more varieties, as the size and color range is huge. My favorites are the little flowers, with a touch of white or orange tones. Lie Gafley Lye and Magellanica in the posts up above :-)

Couldn't find that photo of Temptation as a bush. So here is the Duchess of Albany instead :-)

Thanks, Pedricks. Sounds like it was good I passed on that- it sounds like a lot of work! I did buy a small, pale pink one to try in one of my containers this summer. I will most likely just treat it like an annual though, because of our climate and the fact that I don't have room to store anything else over the winter.

I love fuchsia's, so it isn't allot of work to me, ha, ha! And my yard is filled with hummingbirds every year, since they love them too!
Some people spend more time and effort on their loves, like roses, than I have to on my fuchsia's. But then, there certainly is something for everyone out there! My sister-in-law, out in Indiana, was able to sell a special hosta she grew in her yard that was the result of cross pollination. A large commercial outfit paid her enough for it to enable her and my brother to vacation in Hawaii. I hear hosta's are big out there, but I don't have any interest in them. I'd rather grow ferns for low growth in the shade :-)

Hi Doss,
I went to replace my Ortho products yesterday and took a look at Bayer.
Unfortunately, the number one problem with using the systemic Bayer is that it also included fertilizer. I feed on a regular schedule of every two weeks during the growing season.
The number one reason I can't rely on time released fertilizers, is that how much a plant has used is so dependant on what stage of growth the plant is in and what the weather has been during that time period. And thus, how often it has been watered. So there is no way to know when it has run out.
From a production standpoint, not knowing when my plants had run out, would be too risky. And since I work with thousands of cuttings, I can't fertilize them right off the bat, but they must be protected from insects and diseases.
There was a Bayer systemic product without the fertilizer, but it did not list mites as one of the insects it helped fight. The only Bayer product which did list the mites, is a spray.
So I will have to continue spraying, and dipping cuttings to prevent fungus and mildew, but at least I don't have to mix two different Orthos now, as the one Bayer product does it all.
It says it "highly effective against mites," I certainly hope so, because I passed up a new bottle of Malathion for it :-)
I will let you know how it goes......

Do let me know how it goes. This was very interesting
http://www.nwfuchsiasociety.com/mites.htm


This message was edited Jun 2, 2009 1:18 PM

Let's hope I chose wisely, as if I haven't, then my ship is sunk.
I will certainly let you know how it goes.
Very interesting article. I remember the delima when the large commercial nursery I once worked for, wanted to try the microscopic wasp that feeds on the mite. The problem was that they couldn't spray for the mite while I they had the wasp, as that would kill the wasps. It wasn't until considerable damage was done, that they made the hard decision to go back to spraying.
When the nursery stared out, there were no residential areas nearby. As time passed, the houses got closer and closer, until it got to the point that they couldn't even plow fields for bulb crops without notifying the public.
Spraying insecticide then became even more of a nightmare situation....
My peach and nectorine trees have a horrible case of Peach Leaf curl this year because a family with a baby moved in next door just when it was time to spray, so I couldn't. But at least I know from experience, that if I feed them well and deep on a bi-weekly schedule, they will grow faster than the Peach Leaf Curl can spread. They are already covered with a set of new healthy leaves. All of the damaged ones fell off and have been disposed of.
If you have ever googled Pedricks Corner, then you've seen my blog and the header. That is my specimen true dwarf Peach. It is over 30 years old and has never, ever, needed to be pruned. Yet is it only four feet high. It puts on a show I look forward to every spring!! This year I have finally been able to get some of the seeds to sprout and they look like they are going to hold true to form.

I went to your website. You are having just too good a time! Glad that it's fun to build it and that your cuttings are doing so well. When do you plan to go into business? Great tree too. Glad that it is surviving the Peach Leaf Curl. Spraying can be a problem. One of my maples has a fungal disease but I won't spray it because there's too much danger of getting it on me while spraying high.

I just got my website listed here on Monday. What you saw was the blog I have been keeping along the way :-) The nursery is here under Pedricks Corner. It has a space in the name instead of none, like my member name.
I haven't mentioned it because I wasn't sure if there might be some kind of rule against people with a business listed here, also writing in the forums. So I need to be careful. I honestly want to interest people in trying upright hardy fuchsia's again. As a landscaping plant, they can be so stunning. Before the introduction of the fuchsia mite, they were in yards every where!
I don't know why some people who google Pedricks Corner only get my blog. A yound college student I work with gave me some clues tonight, so I am going to check into that. Meanwhile, if you want to see the real website, you can go the Garden Watchdog and look up Pedricks Corner. You will find a link there to the site. I would be very interested in any input people have on how to improve it. Just bare in mind that it is not done yet. It is functional, but needs more. Once I get the general list of all upright fuchsias I can find finished, I need to add a page of general information on fuchsias and the history. Then a map with zones. Which fuchsias are hardy to which zone. Which ones on the list are also on the list of ones I have for sale..............work, work, work! Ha, ha, yes, I am having a blast! I just hope I can keep this boat moving forward.

I'll be looking for your zone information, etc. I have looked at your fushia's but couldn't find any zone information. Although they are hardy, I know they may not be hardy for all zones. I bought my first hardy fushia this year. I put it in a protected area next to my back door. It is growing and looking good. It is a Cape Horn. Supposed to be hardy in zone 7b.

A friend of mine is even going to help me with making a link for each fuchsia I have listed for sale, with the zone map. So people can see right away, if that particular fuchsia is good for them. This morning I get to work on that honking master list. It is at 617 right now.
The trouble is, ALL fuchsias thrive were I am ;-) !
What I do though, that none of the other do, is I grow all of my fuchsias outdoors. Not a single one, stock or cutting or young plant, is in a greenhouse. I want my plants to be strong from the get go! From the decade I spent working in a large commercial nursery, I know that greenhouse grown plants often go home to gardens and then go into shock. At the very least, they get burned the first time they experience direct sunlight. I want my plants to be successful.
So I know my fuchsias are able to withstand freezing temperatures. If they can't, then they are no longer here to propigate in the spring.
Which fuchsias are hardy in which zones, is information I am getting from fuchsia societies. And I am learning allot along the way :-) I am thrilled to see how many zones they can actually be grown in.
By the way, did you now fuchsia berries are edible? The smaller and darker ones, seems to have the best flavor. One of my goals in collecting so many varieties, is a search for the best tasting berry! To date, the collection is at 80.

PC I went to your website and it's really beautiful. Great job! The one thing that I had trouble with when I was looking for upright fuchsias was an estimate of their final height. Some of them can get really big as I'm sure you know and some are small. It would be great if you could find that information and post it with the photos when you do the zones.

Great price point too.

Thanks Doss! I have never built a website before and it has been an intense learning process which continues ;-)
Not all of the sources I used to complete my list (so far) of upright fuchsias which I need to repost there, have heights listed. So I debated adding that info. Since it would be there very every variety.....but I may still go back and put what I can in.
And it can be deceiving. They list Lycioides as only being 2 feet tall. But both of mine are taller than me! Maybe because they freeze where they have them.
The page I have for photos of full sized bushes is supposed to give people a visual idea of how tall a particular variety can get, as well as what kind of form it takes. Both of which can't be guessed from the close-up photos every where!!
I am also hoping that the page I intend to add for customers to show off their success, will give us all more idea of what is possible for each variety.
And.... I am hoping we will get a fuchsia forum going here at DavesGarden so we can really get some "home grown" information!

You're welcome! I wish you much success in your new business.

Fellow Fuchsia Fanatics! I just posted a photo of a fuchsia I am going to call Marion, until someone tells me her real name! Please take a look at the California Gardening forum and my thread, "Let's Get A Fuchsia Forum Going."
This is one of my reasons for getting one going. We can help each other identify the ones we don't have labels for.
Plus, fuchsias are beautiful in shade or partial shade, but they can really kick it up a notch out in the full sun if properly cared for. And they aren't limited to the Pacific Northwest and/or California. So we really need one place we can all share information. What other plant not only has thousands of varieties, but the foliage is as unique to each variety as it's flower?
Meanwhile, here is a new photo of my Gypsy Prince :-)

Here are two of my reasons for hoping to get people interested in a fuchsia forum. Identification of varieties we all have and may not know the names of. Sometimes it isn't enough to go to the fuchsia societies and look through page after page of photos. Does anyone recognize either of these fuchsias? For now, I am calling them Marion and Larry. Larry was just a cutting in April of 2008. When I see a fuchsia I don't have, I will stop and ask for a cutting. Marion isn't growing quite as fast, but she is a beautiful shade of orange. I'll post Larry first. I thought he could be Voltaire or Jupiter, but I have both of those now also and he is different from them.

And here is Marion

Marion now has her real name! She is actually "Orange Crush!"

I am still hoping a waiting for enough people to get together for a fuchsia forum. I am sure I am not the only person who loves them!
There is allot of conflicting information out there.
There is even conflicting identification information.
Most important, there is not one place with a list of all fuchsias, with a photo for each, and detailed information on each. The kind of list that is being created here at DavesGarden. FindThatFuchsia has the best list, but most of them have no photo.
Their descriptions often conflict with those provided by the Northwest Fuchsia Society, which so far, has the best society website I've seen. Please feel free to correct me if I am missing out on a better one. Fuchsias.net has lots of photos also, and I've used it to comfirm the identities of a few fuchsias which have labels but didn't appear to match the photos at the other sites.
Since fuchsias change colors as they open, it can be difficult to match them up to the photos at the websites.
I am sure we have all experienced the let down and irritation one feels after making the purchase of any plant, getting it home and growing it, only to discover it is NOT the one on it's label because either a previous customer pulled a tag out and put it back in the wrong pot, or the plant nursery mislabeled it.
I now have seven fuchsias whose identity cannot be confirmed!
Either their names cannot be found at any legitimate source, or now that they have bloomed, are obviously not what their label says!
So I will be hoping that more people looking for information about that fuchsia in their yard and what it's name may be, will be looking here and asking questions in the forums.
And we will get enough people interested in a fuchsia forum, to warrant having one here!

Does any one in Ga or Z8a ob grow fuchsias. I had them in California but have not been successful here. Elaine