Category Archives: my garden

screening with wood, screening with plants

May 30, 2009 James 13 Comments

I showed the almost-complete version of this front porch screen earlier, but that was before we applied the final stain to the wood. Here it is in the really final version.

As long as we were staining wood, we got up to the deck and attacked the railings with the same stain. It had been more than a year since we’d done it last and things had faded. You can see the before and after pretty clearly in these pictures. (This project used an oil-based stain for hardwoods. They make a water-based stain that claims to last seven years, but it ended up flaking off this oily ipe hardwood on the small project we tested it on. Total disaster. Save it for softwoods.)

How do all of you react to exterior wood that’s aged to a silver color? This project is still on the new side for us and we wanted to keep it looking as it did when we first finished it. Staining all the tops and bottoms and sides of the wood is a lot of work, though. As we get less able or motivated to keep up with details around the house, I’m sure we’ll let things assume more of a Gray Gardens look.

But back to the front screen… After the project was complete there was a gap between where the screen ends and the driveway. While I’m not one to put up castle walls and a moat between us and the busy street, a little more privacy seemed like a good idea.

Before, we had a couple low lavenders in front of the screen: Nice enough and they survived with virtually no summer watering. But they weren’t much of a privacy screen. Yank. Out they went.

In their place is this new Ceanothus ‘Tuxedo.’ I’d done a post on some garden ceanothus not long ago, and I couldn’t stop thinking about the near-black foliage of this variety. With the lavenders gone, there was a perfect place for it.

Okay, stare at the picture of the little gallon plant and ask the obvious question: “Wasn’t the idea to install a plant that would screen the view from the street?”

Ceanothus tend to be rapid growers. This selection is new to the trade this spring, so I’m not sure exactly how rapid it’ll be. Still, I expect that it’ll approach its target size of six feet by six feet before too long. I’ll post more pictures as it fills in.

gardening, my garden

basil season

May 27, 2009 James 5 Comments

I love my drought-tolerant herbs, but I couldn’t imagine summer without one that likes a little more water to do well: basil.

Last year, I shared that when I buy a bunch at the grocery I usually cut off the ends of the stems and place them in some water on the counter. Basil hates being refrigerated, and this often keeps the bunch fresh for as long as you remember to refresh the water.

It’s a nice countertop bouquet. But often the stems will begin to root in the water. After a couple weeks or so, once the stems are approaching an inch long, you can transplant the little plants into the garden.

Give them a little shade the first few days to ease the transition out into the real world. If the cuttings are transplanted when the nights are 55 to 60 degrees or warmer, they’ll take off and give you enough basil so you won’t have to buy any more basil for the rest of the season.

You probably won’t know the exact variety of your basil, and you won’t have access to all the varieties you might find in an herb specialist’s catalog. (The Thyme Garden, for instance, lists 29 different basils.) But for all-around tomato-friendly summer cooking, the basil you’ll find in the stores works great.

Last night we had dinner at a local Vietnamese restaurant that served us an interesting kind of mint as part of the meal. We didn’t eat all of it and I pocketed what was left, thinking that what works for basil is sure to work for mint. Since mint has such an ability to take over your garden and your life, however, the new plants will have to adjust to life in pots.

gardening, my garden

herbs for a dry garden

May 24, 2009 James 5 Comments

Is there anything better than fresh herbs from the garden?

For years I had herbs in my fairly dry veggie garden. Some of the herbs herbs thrived. Others sulked. Some died.

Fortunately, if you’re trying to cut down on watering, you still have a huge number of herbs to choose from. For instance, many of the plants that you think of immediately when you hear the word “herb” originate in the Mediterranean, and many of them prefer less moisture than other garden plants.

Below, I’ve listed some common herbs that have done well for me dry spots, along with others that I’ve seen doing well in quite dry conditions. There are lots of other selections, but this list can get you going with more than a summer’s worth of recipes.

Rosemary (Rosmarinus officinalis): You can pick from forms that sprawl, form a shrub, or grow straight up in spires.
Sage (Salvia officianalis): European Garden sage comes in lots of versions in leaf color (green, golden, tri-color or purple) and flavor (“sage” flavor, pineapple, or grape).
Oregano (Origanum vulgare)
Marjoram (Origanum majorana)
Thyme (Thymus spp.): Some thymes, including many of those sold for ornamental groundcover use (such as T. serpiphyllum) are only slightly scented or not at all. The culinary bush forms generally have more scent and flavor, and they come in a wide range, including lemon and lime. They also tend to be more tolerant of dry conditions.
Lavender (Lavandula spp.): There are several lavender species, as well as plenty of hybrids and varieties. All are at least somewhat drought tolerant. Some extremely so.
Scented geraniums (Pelargonium spp.): Take your pick of rose, apple, cinnamon, nutmeg, pineapple, lemon, lime, apricot and others.
Wormwood (Artemisia spp.)
Mexican oregano (Lippia graveolens)
Fennel (Foeniculum vulgare): Beautiful and tasty plants, but they’re considered invasive in many locations (including the entire California floristic province). Research before you plant! There’s an attractive bronze version that’s reputed to be less invasive. Still, I wouln’t plant it if regular fennel is a problem in your area.
Nasturtium (Tropaeolum majus): With edible, peppery leaves and flowers, some people consider this an herb. As with fennel, above, it can be invasive. Don’t plant it if it could escape. (Many of the moister hillsides here in San Diego are covered with the stuff.)
Lemon grass, both West-Indian (Cymbopogon citratus) and East-Indian (C. flexuosus): Sources tell you these plants like water, but I’ve found that they don’t mind going dry occasionally, especially if they’re given some shade.

Good eats!

gardening, my garden

some bloom day blooms from seed

May 15, 2009 James 6 Comments

Today’s Garden Bloggers’ Bloom Day post features five plants I’ve raised from seed. I’d consider most of these in the “pretty easy” to “really easy” categories, both to germinate and to grow.

Three of these came up from seed that I sowed directly in the ground last October. I basically made little furrows a quarter to half an inch deep, sprinkled in some seed, and watered them in. I provided some supplemental watering the give them a head start, and then let the occasional rains take care of getting the plants established. Now that the rains are probably over for the year, I give them occasional sprinklings to keep them greener and flowering longer.

This first flower is Clarkia williamsonii, which is an annual native to inland Central California and Orange County. The Seedhunt listing described the flowers as being “gaudy.” A flower that’s gaudy? Sold!

The next images are of another clarkia, Clarkia rubicunda ssp. blasdalei, native to coastal Central California and El Dorado County. The first is a freshly opened flower, the second a flower that’s on it’s second day.

Until this morning I’d never noticed with these that the fresh flowers have the stamens all bundled up, and that they don’t extend until the flower is older, after the anthers bearing the pollen are starting to dry up. You can see the stamens as the white four-pronged appendage in the center of the second flower. It’s a clever way to prevent self-pollination and keep the gene pool diverse.

Another easy annual is baby blue eyes, Nemezia menziesii. What you see here is pretty scrappy and well could be the last flower of the season. Although this is an easy plant, I’ve decided that it’s better suited to a garden spot that might get more than bi-weekly supplemental water.

I’ve been showing lots of California poppies this spring. This will probably be the last of the garden pictures of the common orange form. The flowers this time of year are starting to get smaller as the plant’s water supplies dwindle. Also, here near the coast, the plants start to mildew heavily, leaving them crippled. (You can see some of that as the whitish background foliage.)

Better suited to coastal areas is this yellow coastal form of the species, Escholzia californica maritima. The strain I’ve got starts to flower later in the year than the typical orange form, but the plants show much better resistance to powdery mildew and will continue flowering later into the year.

Unlike the first three plants I showed, the poppies are perennial, so the same plants will continue to come back one year to the next. But one nice thing with all these species is that they’ll come back from seed as well.

Check out all the other Garden Bloggers’ Bloom Day photos by checking out the listing at May Dreams Gardens.

art, gardening, my garden, places

first tomatoes and artichokes

May 12, 2009 James 2 Comments

It’s hardly May, and I have my first tomatoes of the season already, this gorgeous pair on a seedling of the heirloom Cherokee Purple.

Okay, I cheated a little. These are actually hothouse tomatoes. Some seed I planted in the greenhouse last spring didn’t germinate until last fall. Transplanting the plants outdoors in November would have meant certain death for the little tomatoes, but I didn’t have the heart to pull them out. One of them set down roots through the drainage holes of the pot and just kept growing. Although the greenhouse is too shady and unheated, the plant survived. And now I have these first two tomatoes, with more on the way.

I’ve never used the greenhouse for anything as practical as growing veggies, so this will be an interesting experiment.

The first artichokes of the season are also on some plants that were almost accidents. For years we had a clump of an especially good selection growing in the veggie garden. But a room addition on the house put the garden in shade, and the plants went into decline. I dug them out and was going to toss them, until I decided to try a couple stems in the back of a new raised bed. The combination of more light, more moisture, and fresh compost-rich soil worked their magic, and the plants are now looking as good as they ever have.

I like to think that I earned some bonus points for showing some mercy and not tossing the tomato and artichoke plants into the greens recycling. But in the case of the artichoke, at least, it’s another life lesson in trying to find the right location for an underperforming plant.

Are there any plants that you’ve had similar experiences with? Any “rescue plants” that ended up rewarding you as much as others you’d planned for?

art, my garden

a garden sun-catcher

May 5, 2009 James 3 Comments

Here’s a sculpture that sits outside the kitchen window. Made out of chunks of colored glass that have been mortared into a steel frame, it’s perky all day long. But when the light casts the perky shadows on the wall behind it, the sculpture turns into a bright celebration of the afternoon sunlight.

John used to work with Diane Dandeneau, the artist who created this sculpture as a prototype for a some outdoor objects she was interested in making.

Where you put a piece of art in the garden is almost as important as the piece you select. Diane’s sculpture is currently set against a greenhouse wall, which is a pretty busy background and doesn’t really do it justice. But until we find the perfect spot, we can still enjoy, either when we’re near it in the garden, or while we’re looking out the window.

gardening, my garden

milkvetch update

May 2, 2009 James 4 Comments

I wrote earlier about a little patch of Nuttall’s milkvetch (Astragalus nuttallii), a new California native groundcover I’m trying out. Last time, I was pretty enthusiastic. Now, after eight weeks with less than a quarter inch of natural rainfall, I’m a little less excited.

At this point, at the end of April/beginning of May, the plant continues to be interesting up close: a mix of reddening stems, small green-gray leaves and dramatic red-tinged cream-colored pods.

When the seeds have ripened inside the pods, they rattle in a really interesting way. You can see why many Astragalus are called “rattlepod”:

But the down-side about this plant, I’m finding out, is how it looks from a distance. The red stems, whitish pods and green leaves all give the impression of a brown, dying plant. Just squint while looking at the next image and you can begin to see that it’s not the most kempt looking selection for one of the first things you encounter.

This introduction might work well in an informal area, mixed in with big plants that will take up the slack when this one takes a vacation. A spot that gets occasional garden water also might keep this plant looking nicer, longer. But since I planted it at eye-level, right at the front sidewalk in a spot that gets no supplemental water all summer, I’ve decided it’s probably not the right plant for this spot.

So…I’ve cut it back pretty heavily, and it may be out of this spot if it doesn’t look a lot better quickly. That’s the fate of a lot of California natives: They look great during the cool, wet growing season, but look less wonderful during when it dries out and get hotter, which unfortunately also happens to be the season when people want to be outdoors, enjoying their gardens.

Don’t let that discourage you from planting natives, however. Some of the buckwheats I’ve planted next to the milkvetch are still green all over and are about to begin their long season of flowers and dramatic dried seed heads. And there are many other options for plants that look good throughout the year. It’s just a matter of finding the right plant for the right spot in the garden.

gardening, my garden

first epipyllums of the season

April 23, 2009 James 6 Comments

There are gardens zones that I consider to be mainly my spaces, and there are others that I consider John’s. The pond/shaded patio area is largely his garden playground, and he has a number of potted plants, including several different kinds of epiphyllums, the orchid cactus.

For a couple months now, we’ve been watching buds develop on one of the epis. The plants aren’t labeled, and there are enough of them that you forget which one is which. As we watched the little buds we had no idea what color the flowers would be. Judging by the sepals on the outside–red, maybe?

Oops. It’s actually a pure white inner flower when it opens. Here you can see the white petals are ringed with red-tinged, yellowish/greenish sepals.

When a plant gets several on them at a time, it would be a traffic-stopper if we had traffic in the back yard… For a cactus, epipyllums are on the wimpy side. Like, you have to squirt water at them every now and then. And they don’t cope well with freezing temperatures. And they like mostly-shaded conditions. Other than that, they’re pretty easy–and spectacular starting about now..

gardening, my garden

from shower to flower

April 19, 2009 James 7 Comments

Earth Day is coming up on Wednesday. What environment-friendly changes will you be trying to make?

Last year we installed a tankless water heater, a move that has saved us at least 30% on our gas bill. But it still takes a while for the heated water to make it to the bathroom. In the past, we let the cold water in the pipes go down the drain until the water got to a proper shower temperature. But now the water is going into a bucket that we’ll use to water the garden. (A prettier–or at least cleaner–bucket not formerly used for pulling weeds and mixing potting soil is next on the agenda…)

The next logical step for water conservation would be to install a gray water system to reuse washwater. Regulations in California have been complex enough so that only 41 households have done it legally in San Diego County, and only 200 state-wide. State senator Alan Lowenthal from Long Beach has introduced a new bill, SB 1258, that would mandate a review of existing codes to make it easier to design and install legal gray water systems, a piece of legislation that is being called the “shower to flower” bill.

It’s a good start, and one worth supporting.

Related reading:
San Diego Union Tribue: New watering source is surfacing (March 23, 2009 article)
Los Angeles Times: A solution to California’s water shortage goes down the drain (April 19, 2009 opinion piece)
The text of SB 1258, marked up with comments and suggestions for further improvements by Oasis Design.

gardening, my garden

dressed to weed

April 17, 2009 James 11 Comments

Sunny and warm: a perfect morning for cats and gardeners. The cat had her chores, mainly to stare at interesting things in the garden, and I had mine.

Task #1 was to deadhead the arctotis (African daisy) that has been blooming for several months. This is the “before” on one plant…

…and the “after” on another. Arctotis goes on blooming regardless of whether it’s been deadheaded or not. But the plants looked like they were winding down for the year, and I was hoping to extend their season a bit.

The plants are attractive, but I thought the bucket of trimmings was pretty cool, too.

Chore #2 was to weed one of the patches of bromeliads that we’d let loose in the back of a raised bed. The plant has rigid spines like teeth on a sharp saw blade, which makes weeding tricky, and forces you to ask yourself, “Do I really want to do this?”

John started on the task and ended up with bloody forearms. Not happy. He went for the pitchfork, thinking we could lift the clumps, weed under them, and then set the clumps back. These are plants with almost no roots, and that would have worked fine.

But I proposed another idea. I have these long cordura motorcycle gauntlets that I use when I ride my scooter when it’s cold out. They protect your hands, but also your forearms. Would those work for the garden, too?

I suited up, first a thick long-sleeved sweatshirt, and then the gauntlets. Okay, it’s not particularly haute couture, and it’s not a look I’d want to inflict on the world. But it worked.

Why all this effort? Well, the flowers are pretty stunning right now in an unrestrained, tropical way. And the plants are surprisingly drought-tolerant.

Weeding around them seems to be the main challenge. But now we’ve got an easy solution…

(Addition, May 9, 2012: Thanks to Kathryn who commented with a probably ID. Tracking down her lead led be to the Florida Council of Bromeliad Societies’ Bromeliad Species Database, where the best fit seems to be Aechmea distichantha v. glaziovii. You have no idea how much it bothers me to have a plant that I don’t know the name of, so it’s one more down, a few dozen in the garden to go…)

[ Lost in the Landscape ]

Category Archives: my garden

screening with wood, screening with plants

basil season

herbs for a dry garden

some bloom day blooms from seed

first tomatoes and artichokes

a garden sun-catcher

milkvetch update

first epipyllums of the season

from shower to flower

dressed to weed

an artist loosed in a garden