[Music]
gerber is a very popular flower see
Stace most of you will have seen them in
a supermarket as cut flower or as house
plants to grow on the windowsill and
increasingly you'll hear about them
there's a garden plant a variety gerbera
Garvey Nia in the sweet Series is
proving quite Hardy but if you are
buying a plant and even moreso buying a
bunch of flowers look in the center of
the flower because if they're young
there'll be just a very small circle of
opening female flowers in the middle and
then as they age it becomes domed and
brown and so these won't last anywhere
near as long as the young ones and when
it comes to the gardenia once the
flowers start to fade as this one is
done we don't cut them we just bend and
twist a bit to snap them out like that
if you're actually snapping some out to
arrange it in water indoors then you
still do it the same way but cut that
end piece off so that it takes up the
water much more easily
now the other thing of course if you
have them in containers is watering if
you come home after a day or two away
and see plants like this
just check the weight this one is very
light and if I take it out you can see
the compost is very light in color and
very dry they can however well like this
if you overwater them
I don't have one that's over watered
although this one is very wet and it
might take it out of the boat you can
see the compost is very much darker
heavy and wet the roots still alive so
it's fine it just needs to be left
without being watered for a day or two
until when you pick it up and wait is
light and that indicates that it wants
watering again now if you want to get
the best from the sweet series of Hardy
gerbera then plants like this and the
one that I've just taken out can be
repotted and the easiest way to do that
is to report
the empty part in what I describe as an
upside-down sandcastle if you haven't
got a spot quite square you can tip it
out and do it again without any damage
to the plant and once you've got the
hole in the position and the size you
want then it can be just dropped neatly
into the hole and there it is a way to
go way to grow I should say there is one
little problem
not a serious one and that's called leaf
miner little tiny insect tunnels through
the leaf not the end of the world but
can be a bit disfiguring and if you turn
the leaf upside down you can actually
see the little creature there and by far
the best means of control is to just nip
it with your thumb and that will stop
that
they are fantastic plants and the
gardenia series for example 2 4 6 8 10
11 flowers on that one plant and if I
was to pick them then in 10 days or so
there would be another half dozen or
more flowers and they'll keep flowering
right through to November
if you want to overwinter them well then
they can't be very wet in heavy soil if
they're in free draining soils or in a
pot close to the wall of the house we'll
have a bit of protection
then they'll stand to minus-12 and if
they're in heavy clay and it's wet and
we get a tough winter like me they don't
like that