Want! Got! Kaput!

Oh, crap!
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Crapcrapcrapcrapcrap!
It being about 100F when I brought the two Leucadendron 'Ebony' home, I did what I normally do, which is what most gardeners in Southern California do with new baby plants at those temperatures.  I put them in the shade so they wouldn't get fried.

WRONG!  A couple of days later they started to go kaput.  I  thought they had been somehow damaged before I bought them, and expressed the damage a few days after the fact, but apparently they were supposed to be set into full blazing sun, baby potted plant or not.  

I'm mortified.  Thinking over my mistake, I remember the guy at the garden center when I bought the Leucadendrons two weeks ago. 

He looked like a substitute weekend/holiday weather guy for local news.  He mumbled something about "full sun", but I didn't catch it.  It didn't click.    My belief is that the guys at the garden center who really know what they are talking about in regards to plants look like panhandlers who've been living under a bridge for the past decade.  Weathered skin, deep tan, dirt-stained hands, sun-bleached clothes that have been washed a million times.  Jed Clampett.  They do not look like substitute weather guys straight out of a college where they majored in Social Studies.   So my attention was not caught.

I was pretty fogged up by my recent illness, too.  But I'm still mortified.  I brought the plants back to the garden center (guarantee!) and a guy who looked like he'd been living under a bridge for the past decade said I should have left them in full, blazing sun, that it was the shade that was killing them.  Then he gave me two fresh ones that had been sitting in, yes, full, blazing sun.  On concrete.  Against a pale block wall reflecting yet more blasts of heat.
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Plants humiliate us whenever they get the chance.  This is why we love them.    
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Comments

  1. I normally put new plants in the shade too before I put them in the garden. I'm sorry that your plants died but so pleased that you have been given replacements, so a happy ending after all.
    xoxoxo ♡

    ReplyDelete
    Replies
    1. Yes, I felt fortunate to be able to get new ones.

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  2. Wow! There's a lesson there for all of us. If that's the kind of treatment Leucadendrons like, there is probably no chance one will thrive here for me in the dark, wet PNW. At least you managed to acquire two more.

    ReplyDelete
    Replies
    1. Well, not sure--perhaps established plants in the ground are less touchy.

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  3. Oh man...this sucks! I wonder how mine will fare when we don't have blazing hot sun? (that's what, like 9 months of the year?)...

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    Replies
    1. Well, I would recommend full sun, though South Africa surely has cloudy days as well. Just not full shade.

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  4. Hate it when that happens. At least you managed to get replacements

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  5. You totally nailed the ethnography of nursery people. I planted mine -- in the garden! -- in full sun, and it loved the abuse. Nice guaranty.

    ReplyDelete
    Replies
    1. Yes, the guarantee saved me. Why didn't I plant mine right away? I have one in the ground so far, sprouting new growth already, while the other is still waiting (in full sun).

      Delete

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