Annoying though @Nollie That tends to be the problem here too - big swings in temp at various times of year, although we don't have the higher daytime temps through autumn. Maybe you'd need to take the cuttings earlier in the morning when they'd be more viable. Difficult during the day when they'd get too hot and dehydrated though. I initially grew mine from seed, so maybe that would work for you? I can never be bothered with it nowadays, and the cuttings work well enough - if I remember to do them of course
It's a place where beautiful isn't enough of a word....
I live in west central Scotland - not where that photo is...
I'm surprised anyone bothers with cuttings, re Verbena bonariensis, as they seed prolifically near the parent plant.. I have a load appearing now, and a lot more next Spring.. one just transplants the seedlings.. I've spent the last few years trying to be rid of them, but up they still pop, then I decide to keep a few..
Only newly planted penstemons seem to flower for me, so treating them as annuals seems a good bet. Even still, it wasn’t a phenomenal year for those. A few spikes.
VB don’t self seed for me either. Once, in five years, I found a single seedling but it was in the crack of a stone step and couldn’t get the roots out! They are cheap enough to buy so I can’t be bothered fiddling around and trying to keep cuttings or indeed seeds alive. I’m clearly as lazy as my penstemons 😆
Mountainous Northern Catalunya, Spain. Hot summers, cold winters.
I had good results with penstemon cuttings but they took months to grow to a decent size. Basically doing almost nothing the first year and only growing and flowering well in the second year, so I can't imagine growing them as annuals. I don't feed penstemons but they are close to roses, so they get to some rose food.
Regarding VB, I like the smaller version ('Lollipop') and I assume that the seedlings would revert to the species type, so I grow this one from cuttings. I strongly prefer it to the standard type.
Ah, if only Omori, not here! While I’m sure many of you envy my sunny weather sometimes, I envy you the choice of perennials in GCs. The Raven were my last dispatch from the UK pre- Brexit. The ones I previously got from France were lousy tea-bagged specimens. VB is a startling new innovation here, give it another ten years and you never know..
Mountainous Northern Catalunya, Spain. Hot summers, cold winters.
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That tends to be the problem here too - big swings in temp at various times of year, although we don't have the higher daytime temps through autumn. Maybe you'd need to take the cuttings earlier in the morning when they'd be more viable. Difficult during the day when they'd get too hot and dehydrated though.
I initially grew mine from seed, so maybe that would work for you? I can never be bothered with it nowadays, and the cuttings work well enough - if I remember to do them of course
I live in west central Scotland - not where that photo is...
I live in west central Scotland - not where that photo is...
I don't feed penstemons but they are close to roses, so they get to some rose food.
Regarding VB, I like the smaller version ('Lollipop') and I assume that the seedlings would revert to the species type, so I grow this one from cuttings. I strongly prefer it to the standard type.
Penstemon as an annual..