Pineapple sage attracts spinebills and honeyeaters into the garden
At this time of year articles begin to proliferate describing plants you can grow that will lend splashes of colour to sombre autumn and winter days. As usual I am gaining much pleasure from the bright red flowers of pineapple sage (Salvia elegans). So too are the eastern spinebills who flash their tawny throats at me as they fossick for nectar. Also dog’s bane (so named because it’s ability to repel some dogs), Plectranthus ornatus, has been sporting its strong, mauve flowers for months now and will continue to do so right through winter. Really for me the colour highlights in late autumn and winter come from all the plants I haven’t planted, the ones that turn up whether you want them or not.
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Corn salad has mild, almost melt in the mouth leaves
The lovely autumn days entice me into the garden where I have been madly weeding and cutting back the prolific summer growth. I love this time of year when the soil is still warm, so plants are still growing, but the intense heat has gone. Two plants that come into their own now are corn salad and landcress. These are both annuals (landcress is sometimes biennial) that self sow around my garden providing salad greens right though autumn and winter.
Corn salad (Valerianella locusta) is also known as lamb’s lettuce, and has a delicate very mild flavour with soft leaves that almost melt in the mouth. The leaves are pale green and rounded and grow in small clumps. You can pick the leaves individually or cut whole plants just above the ground, they will re-shoot. Plants only reach about 30cm in height. There are cultivars with golden, extra large and darker green leaves. Grow corn salad in temperate and cold regions from seed sown in autumn, winter and spring—in hot weather it goes to seed almost immediately. I find that mine goes to seed in spring, then disappears until autumn when the plants appear again in a dense clump. Read more
