Photo by Rick Gush
Hopefully , I ’ll be able-bodied to get my own potted azaleas to grow as big as this smasher .
I ’m screwball about azaleas and rhododendrons , so I ’m particularly appreciative of the Rapallo municipal gardening section this time of year . They ’ve scattered Brobdingnagian potted azalea and rhododendron plants throughout the metropolis center this workweek , and most of these lusus naturae are striking specimens .
Red and pink dominate and most of the plants are evergreen plant , but they do have a few big passel of the deciduous Exbury azaleas with orange and yellow flowers . It ’s a pretty effective show and most of these august explosions of color tower over the pedestrian dealings passing below . This is about time for azalea display in the States , too , so I exhort you all to take advantage and visit local show . Azaleas and rhododendrons are lush bloomers and can make a landscape painting seem unreal .
The Rapallo gardener keep all their big potted azalea and rhododendron plants in a courteous semi - shaded nursery area . They tell me they do a heavy root prune every two or three years , during which they remove a fade of the root and soil and substitute that with new dirt . They also told me they feed the plant with an acidulent liquid fertilizer every calendar month . I guess not feeding potted azaleas on a regular basis is the most vulgar mistake people make with this industrial plant .
The next most common error , aside from bury to water , is over - zealous repotting in which the root bollock is bury a routine deeper . Azaleas like to have their roots at the surface , and can suffocate if buried even an column inch too deep .
I worked in a sweeping azalea - production nursery when I first started in the nursery business . I work for a Japanese cultivator in California , and he tell me , as have several other big Nipponese nurseryman in California , that he learn to develop and disseminate azaleas while interred in the Japanese camps in Idaho during World War II . I begin working at the azalea nursery for $ 1 an hour , and I still have a picture of myself place proudly with my payroll check after I ’d been given a acclivity up to $ 1.25 an time of day . Ha !
I remember that the most hated pest in the azalea nursery was a brown moth that would position egg in the works . I was given a book of friction match and instructed to catch these browned moth , gently squeeze them and then make a little ardor with grass and straw to burn them .
We ’re getting stuffy to the tip in our own garden that we might be capable to host some azalea plantings . The Exbury azaleas are a bit more cold and heat energy large-minded , so I ’ll probably plant a few of those in the bed while I ’ll keep a few florist ’s azaleas in swelled locoweed .
Read more of Digging Italy »
