'Yuletide' brightens holidays, feeds hummingbirds with December blooms
'Yuletide' is an appropriate name for this red sasanqua camellia. Debbie Arrington
What’s the perfect flower for Sacramento’s holiday season? My vote goes to the Christmas camellia.
After all, we are the Camellia City and Camellia sasanqua dependably blooms every December – and then some. These camellias also are tough, drought-tolerant and can thrive for decades with little care.
With distinct golden centers, these camellias started opening locally in October. Due to mostly mild weather conditions, they’ve stuck around for more than six weeks and still look good for the holidays.
As a Christmas cut flower, sasanqua camellias are attractive in a vase or bowl. They’re also intensely fragrant and brighten up a room with their scent and color. As a potted plant, they make a thoughtful garden gift.
My three Christmas camellia bushes are at least 40 years old; they were planted when our home was built in 1980 and still going strong. They’re all 'Yuletide,' a variety first introduced by Nuccio’s Nurseries in Altadena in 1963. With distinctive large single red blooms, Yuletide was registered with the American Camellia Society.
My 8-foot Yuletide bushes right now are covered with dozens of big red blooms, each 4 to 5 inches across. The flowers almost glow against their shiny green foliage – a natural holiday combination.
In the early winter garden, Christmas camellias make the greatest impact. Besides looking fantastic, they support beneficial wildlife. Those pretty flowers feed bees and hummingbirds when few other flowers are available. This month, I’ve enjoyed watching the hummers feast on my Yuletides.
Sasanqua camellias bloom two to three months before their close cousins, japonica camellias, which start appearing in February. With natural hardiness, Christmas camellias can thrive in spots where japonicas struggle. They can tolerate drought conditions and colder temperatures. Although they prefer filtered shade or dappled sunlight, Christmas camellias also can take more full sun than japonicas.
Cold, hard rain will bring an end to Christmas camellia season, usually in early January. That’s when they’ll start dropping their flowers in bunches. Pick up and dispose of those fallen flowers to help prevent petal blight, a fungal disease that turns camellia petals prematurely brown. Otherwise, those spores will hang around and infect the japonica camellias as they open.
As landscape plants, Christmas camellias are long-lived (often several decades) and easy care. After flowering, they need little if any pruning; just remove dead wood and gently shape if necessary.
Then, feed sasanqua bushes with an acid-type fertilizer formulated for camellias, which prefer slightly acid soils.
But don’t feed your japonica camellias until after they finish blooming in March. Feeding while camellias are in bloom (or about to bloom) may cause them to drop unopened buds.
Thinking about a gift plant? Christmas camellias can be found in bloom now in local nurseries. These bushes can be transplanted after they finish bloom and will continue to bring smiles for many years to come.
For more about growing camellias locally: https://www.camelliasocietyofsacramento.org/
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Garden Checklist for week of Nov. 3
November still offers good weather for fall planting:
* If you haven't already, it's time to clean up the remains of summer. Pull faded annuals and vegetables. Prune dead or broken branches from trees.
* Now is the best time to plant most trees and shrubs. This gives them plenty of time for root development before spring growth. They also benefit from fall and winter rains.
* Set out cool-weather annuals such as pansies and snapdragons.
* Lettuce, cabbage and broccoli also can be planted now.
* Plant garlic and onions.
* Keep planting bulbs to spread out your spring bloom. Some possible suggestions: daffodils, crocuses, hyacinths, tulips, anemones and scillas.
* This is also a good time to seed wildflowers and plant such spring bloomers as sweet pea, sweet alyssum and bachelor buttons.
* Rake and compost leaves, but dispose of any diseased plant material. For example, if peach and nectarine trees showed signs of leaf curl this year, clean up under trees and dispose of those leaves instead of composting.
* Save dry stalks and seedpods from poppies and coneflowers for fall bouquets and holiday decorating.
* For holiday blooms indoors, plant paperwhite narcissus bulbs now. Fill a shallow bowl or dish with 2 inches of rocks or pebbles. Place bulbs in the dish with the root end nestled in the rocks. Add water until it just touches the bottom of the bulbs. Place the dish in a sunny window. Add water as needed.
* Give your azaleas, gardenias and camellias a boost with chelated iron.
* For larger blooms, pinch off some camellia buds.
* Prune non-flowering trees and shrubs while dormant.
* To help prevent leaf curl, apply a copper fungicide spray to peach and nectarine trees after they lose their leaves this month. Leaf curl, which shows up in the spring, is caused by a fungus that winters as spores on the limbs and around the tree in fallen leaves. Sprays are most effective now.
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