Grow Your Own Magazine

Sorry not sure where to put this...?

I have a plant in the garden that looks like a huge leafed lambs ear though the leaves just grow from one central point rather than 'rambling' and apparently a 6 ft spike with yellow (?) flowers grows from the centre of it.

I can't think of the name of it though...? Can anyone help. Actually think I may have found it and it might be a Mullein?

It seems to be sick...it's been growing beautifully for the last 4 months and now it's gone flat...yes, flat! All of the leaves have just flopped literally in one day onto the ground and now it's just lying there...sick....like it's had a stroke or something..!

I water my garden every evening and I gave it some chicken poo a couple of days ago to see if that would help but it's still lying there...looking at me with a sad face! I want to help it but I don't know how...and I can't think of the name to Google it and see can I get help! I'm a rubbish nurse!!

It's a mullein and it's a biennial. The first year you just get the rosette of hairy leaves, the flower spike comes in the second year. This means that if your mullein has flowered this year it's had it. However, they have huge amounts of dust-like seed and you are sure to get more plants but they won't flower till the year after next. I have them in my garden and the only place I shift them from is the veg plot. I can see one out of the living room window as I type! I really love them. I know there are different types but I'm not aware if any are perennial. Mine certainly isn't. I think it's just come to the end of its full and happy life with you, Curvy Vixen. May it live on in its descendents!

__________________
Earth laughs in flowers. Ralph Waldo Emerson

www.vegheaven.blogspot.com

Updated November 30th - Mr Stinky's Excellent Adventure (and a Christmas Cake)

It's only 3 months old Flummery and it hasn't flowered at all... I love it and would love it to have flowered..

I did a bit of research yesterday online and found that they would rather be underwatered than over watered so may dig it up carefully and put it in a pot! It seems dead anyway so I can't do it any more harm

If it hasn't flowered it will flower next year. Don't pot it, leave it in the garden. The first year it just grows its central leaves. They might well collapse over winter. It should shoot up again in spring and send up a spike.

__________________
Earth laughs in flowers. Ralph Waldo Emerson

www.vegheaven.blogspot.com

Updated November 30th - Mr Stinky's Excellent Adventure (and a Christmas Cake)

Okay I'll leave it there...lying in it's little stroke like space Thanks Flummery!

Ours get eaten to nothing in Spring by mullein moths. In fact that is the only reason we grow them, for the moths, but once the moths have pupated and gone, the leaves re-grow and the thing flowers as if nothing has happened.