Category Archives: my garden

gardening, my garden, plant profiles

deciding on a small tree

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dead-tree-fernThe record heat in October and November finally did in the Australian tree fern that I’d been nursing. The plant grows in full sun in its native environment, and was supposed to be able to survive full sun in coastal California. But two months of the hottest and driest weather this past year took care of what little will to live the plant had left.

The fern served as a focal point in the garden, and its passing left a big void and a sad stick of dead trunk. It doesn’t help that the neighbor’s basketball backboard lines up almost perfectly with the dead trunk.

We toyed briefly with training a small vine up the dead trunk, celebrating life and death and renewal and all that, but we couldn’t think of something that would look great as the main focal point of the space. So we were faced with coming up with a suitable replacement.

We started with some basic requirements:

  • The tree should max out in the 12-20 foot range and be not too broad–There’s a young tangerine tree nearby that we wouldn’t want to shade.
  • Some plants immediately nearby would appreciate some shade, but others are quite happy with close to full sun; a tree that could be trained to have an open branch structure would work well.
  • Something with a graceful natural form would be terrific–no big green popsicle-looking shade trees, please.
  • The plant should be pretty easy to find locally, and couldn’t cost too much.
  • This being drought-prone California, a tree that would be able to get by with much lower water requirements than original the tree fern would be a must.
  • The “look” of the tree would have to complement Mediterranean, tropical or just plain odd-looking plants.
  • Though not an absolute requirement, a native plant would be nice.

The short list came down to four trees or large shrubs.

Ginkgo biloba
Pros: Both John and I have always loved ginkgos, particularly their distinctive foliage and incendiary yellow autumn coloration. And their history of being a living fossil is cool. There are strains that range from little round shrubs to massive shade trees, with a couple options in the 12-20 foot range that could be trained with multiple trunks. Though not desert plants, they can make do with fairly low amounts of water.

Cons: Availability, mostly. Local sources carry the itty bitty bonsai-friendly subjects or the big shade trees, nothing in between. The tree grows really slowly, so getting a specimen of the small varieties would be a challenge. The final look of the plant, too, might not be perfect for the location.

AgonisBlack peppermint willow (a.k.a. Australian myrtle willow), Agonis flexuosa ‘Jervis Bay Afterdark’
Pros: Striking dark dark dark purple (almost black) leaves, and a neat weeping habit. The bark is shaggy and attractive. Rapid growth to its target size. Drought tolerant.

Cons: The plant seems to develop a dense shade-tree look as it matures–maybe too dense for the spot. The literature says this form only gets to sixteen feet or so, but it’s only been around for a decade. Call me distrustful, but I’m just suspicious that it could be more maintenance than I want to sign up for to keep it small. Mature trunks seem large in scale to the plant. There’s a bamboo nearby, and it might be just too much wispy, willowy foliage.

[ Image from Metro Trees ]

Crape myrtle, Lagerstroemia x fauriei
Pros:Several clones are available locally in boxed specimen size for not too much money–instant gratification! Gorgeous summertime flowers. Interesting exfoliating bark. The fauriei hybrids resist mildew better than the pure species.

Cons: Their colors would look really similar to a pair of nearby bougainvilleas. The rigid forms of the trees would definitely pull the garden in a formal Mediterranean direction.

Dr. Hurd manzanitaDr. Hurd manzanita, Arctostaphylos x ‘Dr. Hurd’
Pros: Perfect eventual size (ca. 15 feet). Fairly fast-growing for a manzanita (though no speed demon). Dramatic red-brown stems with large light green leaves. Drought-tolerant, but also more tolerant of garden water than most manzanitas. Flowers in the winter.

Cons: Sporadic availability locally, and possibly only in small sizes. I’m worried that the spot might be just a little over-wet for even this manzanita.

[ Image from San Marcos Growers, who grew my plant ]

So what was the decision? I put a five-gallon manzanita on order and it hit the nursery a few days later. It’s more of a Charlie Brown shrub at this point and will take some patience and a few years to get to its final size. If it survives the amount of water it gets, if it attains the size I want, if it behaves well with its neighbors, it could be the perfect plant for this location. Check back in five years and I’ll tell you how it’s worked out…

Coincidentally Saturday’s Los Angeles Times had a whole page spread on manzanitas a full eight days after I put mine in the ground. I felt so much ahead of the Times…

art, gardening, my garden, plant profiles, quotes

hot lips

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I’ve heard salvia connoisseurs talk down about this plant, Salvia microphylla ‘Hot Lips,’ mostly because it’s getting to be so commonly available in areas where it grows easily. But of all the sages in my garden this one has been the best performer.

Living in a sunny spot with dry-to-average garden water, the plants are covered with these flowers year-round, hitting a peak in the fall.

salvia-hot-lips-grid

Common or not, the flowers make the plant really interesting. Most are two colors, a combination of scarlet and white, with no two flowers exactly alike. But often you’ll get flowers that are almost all white or all red. I’ve heard that cold weather seems to bring out the white, and that syncs up with what I’ve seen. But at the same time you’ll often still have multi-colored flowers–all on the same plant.

The growth habit is like a lot of sages, meaning the plant has the lines of a chocolate truffle left on a warm dashboard. For me, so far it grows about 30 inches tall by 60 wide. It’s supposedly hardy down around 20 degrees, but don’t expect many flowers when the frost starts up.

If you can grow it, this could be a good candidate for your list!

gardening, my garden

view into the january garden

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front-window-aloe-viewThis is one of the reasons why people live in a Mediterranean climate like San Diego, suffering the frequent 70-plus degree daytime temperatures. Here’s the view out the front room window onto this huge, mounding pile of blooming aloe. I think it’s A. arborescens, one of the more common species that you see all over town. (There’s a little epidendrum orchid blooming just outside the window, but who’s going to pay it any attention with the aloe going off in the background?)

aloe-bloomsA closer look at the flowers…

aloe-and-agave-leaves…and a closer look at the leaves of the aloe (serrated edges, much softer than they appear) and the agave (straight edges).

For some people, it’s not winter without seeing snow. For me, it’s not winter until I’ve seen the aloe. Okay. I’m ready for spring now.

gardening, my garden, rambles

expressive irrigation

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Only a couple areas of the garden are on automatic watering with dedicated sprinklers. The rest of the garden has to depend on rainfull and the gardener dragging a hose over to whatever needs to be watered. I’m sure that reduces how much I water because I’m very conscious of how long I’m standing there with the hose and how moist the soil appears to be getting.

hoseartIt’s been warm for the last couple of weeks, and a month since the last rains, so I’ve been doing a certain amount of watering. But I’ve also been making little line drawings with the hose…

sprinklerartAnd how many of you have this same sprinkler head? I try no to anthromorphize things too much, bust this sprinkler always seems to be staring back at me quizzically.

gardening, my garden

quaking and shaking

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The morning was warm so I went up onto the deck to soak up a little of the January sunshine. While I was up there I noticed the wind shaking the leaves of one of the potted plants growing up there.

This is Euphorbia cotinifolia, a shrub in the same genus as the exalted poinsettia and the lowly and weedy spurges. Species like the quaking aspen tree (Populus tremuloides) get all the glory for having foliage that quivers in the wind, but I thought the maroon leaves on this plant were doing a pretty good job of it.

This turns out to have been my first YouTube video upload. John’s little digital Instamatic has a movie mode that lets you capture moving snapshots. The quality isn’t what the perfectionist in me would like for it to be, but like other snapshots I think you get the idea what’s being photographed…

gardening, my garden, plant profiles

an easy outdoor orchid

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Orchids can be finicky creatures, especially when you try to grow species that aren’t adapted to your growing conditions. If you’re lucky enough to live in an area with infrequent freezing temperatures (the warm end of zone 9B or in zone 10 or higher), many of the reed-stemmed epidendrums can be as easy to grow as anything in the garden and can be as inexpensive as most other plants. But these also make easy houseplants if you have a nice south-facing window.

epidendrumtwocolorsIf they bear more than a passing resemblance to the flashy florist cattleya orchids it’s no coincidence–They’re closely related members of the Cattleya alliance of orchids.

The parent species for these plants originate in Central America, where they can sometimes be seen growing rampantly. Epidendrum radicans and E. ibaguense are tough and prolific, and will tolerate temperatures down to the high 20s.

To get the species themselves, you’ll have to go to an orchid nursery, but their hybrids can be had in many good garden centers or nurseries. Colors come in everything from the parent species’  orange and red, to pink, salmon, rose, purple, lavender and white. The plants bloom almost the year round and will grow two to five feet tall, depending on light and watering. They all make great starter orchids or good plants to use for landscaping.

Light

Epidendrums are happiest in bright light, from dappled shade to several hours of full sun. They will survive in full sun, but the plants will be short, and the leaves may scorch on the hottest days. They’ll also grow in heavy shade, but the plants will grow tall, and you won’t see any flowers.

epidendrumplantThis is an example of plant that has been grown in fairly deep shade. The plant grows big, loose and floppy, and it only flowers on the stems that receive some direct sun.

Water

Low to moderate garden water is a good starting point for these epidendrums. They will tolerate quite moist conditions, and they can be surprisingly drought tolerant. But they look best somewhere in between.

Soil

You can grown these in special orchid mixes if you like, but mine have been happy stuck into average-to-sandy garden dirt. Plants grown in orchid mixes will require more watering. Any loose potting mix would work well for plants in pots.

Propagation

epidendrumkeikiFlowering stems, when they reach the end of their flowering life, usually produce new plants near their tips. Orchid growers call these keikis, Hawaiian for “babies.” These little plants will send out long white roots before long. Cut the rooted keikis off when the roots are two to four inches long and stick them where you’d like another plant, being careful not to break the brittle roots. The plants will often start blooming within a year. Additionally, epidendrums can be dug up and divided every few years.

If you get deeper into epidendrum species, you’ll also find species with brown, green and almost-blue flowers, some of them bicolors, some of them with outrageous spotting. If you have the collector gene in your DNA, you’ll find 1500 species to choose from. These specialty epidendrums don’t necessarily have the same lust for life and tolerance for cool temperatures as the common reedstems do, so be sure to do some research before sticking them in a garden bed with your perennials.

gardening, my garden

greener gardening practices

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I think that these days all of us are trying to go green in many aspects of our lives as we try to reduce our demands on the world’s resources. Gardening has the shiny green patina of communing with nature and being kind to plants and animals that make up this green earth. But so many modern gardening practices consume big piles of the resources that we depend on, and others contributes significantly to environmental pollution.

Since it’s early in the year, the time that we many of us make resolutions, I’ve outline some areas that I’ll be trying to work on in my own garden. I’ve gathered them together below and categorized them into the three big Rs of going green: reduce, reuse, and recycle.

Reduce

  1. Fewer annuals: The semi-twisted logic of planting annuals, nurturing them for six months, and then yanking them out when they’re all bloomed out to replace them with other seasonal annuals to enjoy for maybe just a few more months is starting to bother me. It’s a certain amount of work on my part, and the energy that must go into the production of bedding plants adds to what guilt I feel. I doubt I’ll give up on annuals entirely. But I’ll try to rely on them less, mostly as temporary fillers until something with year-round interest can take over. Alternately, a lot of annuals reseed, so that you can plant them one year, and they’ll return reliably in future years. Allysum, zinnias, melampodium, celosia, poppies and many ornamental grasses are just a few of the plants that reseed reliably.
  2. I’ll think twice before I pull out a plant. Is a plant really ill or dying? Or am I just bored with it?
  3. When I do decide that a plant has to go, I’ll work on using more plants that are better adapted to my environment. Living in San Diego, this means using more Mediterranean-adapted plants and plants native to the area. This will reduce needs for supplemental water, plant food and insect control.
  4. It’s more work, but I’m starting more plants from seed these days. Shipping a packet of seeds across the country takes way less energy than shipping the bed-full of plants that many packets will give you. Direct-sowing the seeds into the ground can save on transportation costs for potting mix and pots. Another bonus is that you can treat yourself to plenty more varieties than would be available at the local nursery.
  5. In addition to buying more seeds to grow, I’m saving more seeds from the plants I already have. For species and open-pollenated heirloom plants, the seed should come true to the original. For hybrid plants, the seedlings can be an adventure, some of them coming looking like their parents, others coming out to be interesting mongrel mixes.
  6. Grow more edible plants. There’s the push to buy locally grown produce, fruits and veggies that have been grown within a hundred miles of your house. Why not grow food yourself and drop the transportation costs to zero? I’ve got various herbs overwintering in the garden, and seeds for various plants are now in the ground or already germinating: kale, beets, amaranth, miner’s lettuce, plus whatever plants of romaine and New Zealand spinach will come back from seed. Several of these have terrific ornamental value, so they’ll get to live with the more decorative plantings.
  7. I want to learn more about how to prepare the edible plants I already have. For instance, the cattails growing in the pond in the back yard are often listed as being one of the staples of the native American population in centuries past. Some of the local succulent population of the genus Dudleya also were used for food, and in fact one of the species is called edulis. (With a name like edulis, it’s gotta be good!) Maybe those and other plants in the garden could be relied on for occasional interesting meals. Even if some of them might be a little too weird for regular consumption, eating, like gardening, ought to be an adventure.

Reuse

  1. It’s not perfect horticultural hygiene, but I try to reuse pots whenever possible. Unfortunately I usually end up with more gallon pots than I’ll ever be able to use a second or third time. Many nurseries will take them to reuse. And then I found that our almost-local native plant outfit, Las Pilitas Nursery, will also donate 10 cents to the California Native Plant Society for each pot that is returned for them to reuse. (That would explain the Lowes and Home Depot pots that I’ve seen at the nursery!)
  2. For those situations when I decide a plant isn’t right for one spot, I’ll try to see if there’s another location in the garden where it would work better. Or may I know someone who’d be dying to do some plant rescue…
  3. When I buy seeds, I sometimes end up with more than I need. I’ll share them with interested folks, and it could be an way to get more native or drought-tolerant plants into people’s gardens.

Recycle

  1. Stores often have last week’s bulbs on sale for not much money. If they’re bulbs adapted to the climate, this is a great way to save some of these plants from the dumpsters. And if you’re into dumpster-diving or cruising the back alleys of garden centers, you might pick these up for free. Most of the narcissus in my yard came through these mark-downs.
  2. I’ll have to admit that I’m a failed composter. I just don’t have the magic combination of time, space and discipline (in all honesty it’s mostly the discipline where I’m lacking). But the city fortunately has a greens recycling program for those of us who don’t have this down. Kitchen scraps are already making it into the bins, and I’ll try to be be even more fanatical with anything green in the garden that would compost.
  3. If you’re not doing it already, recycle lawn lawn clippings into mulch. Last summer I convinced John to put the onto the veggie garden instead of dumping them in the city greens recycling. This way they’re still getting recycled, only they don’t have to be trucked to the landfill to be turned into mulch.
  4. Even if you can’t find someone to reuse your plastic pots, there are some emerging uses for them that might become available to more parts of the country. I’ll keep my eyes open in case there are interesting local recycling opportunities, like the one where pots would be melted down for “landscape timbers.” (The link goes to an great program in Missouri.)
  5. Broken clay pots make great covers for drain holes in pots around the garden. They allow the water to drain out, but also reduce the amount of potting soil that you lose.

Like many new year’s resolutions, I know I won’t stick to them fanatically. One of the things that draws me to the plant world is the sheer variety in all the cool plants that I can invite into my garden. I’m a collector at heart, so saying no to a new and interesting specimen is one of the hardest things for me to do. I know that that’s going to be one of the hardest goals to stick to. Hopefully, putting it out in a public space like this post will provide me a little gentle pressure and reminder of what I intended to do.

gardening, landscape design, my garden

recycling concrete

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One of the easiest ways to reuse broken concrete is to stack up the pieces to make a low garden wall.

recycledconcretewalloverview

My house came with an expanse of dangerously uneven, cracked concrete that needed to be removed. One option would have been to haul it off to the landfill. But turning the scraps into this little wall for a raised vegetable garden ended up being a greener solution.

The hardest part was breaking up the concrete into manageable pieces. (We used a sledgehammer). And lifting the twenty to sixty pound chunks into place made for some hard work. But it was basically an “easy” job in that it wasn’t particularly technical and didn’t demand too many brain cells.

If your soil is especially unstable, the concrete could be set on top of a foundation. But for almost all soils, and for a low wall like this one–about twenty inches tall–don’t bother. Try to stagger the joints between pieces from row to row to make the wall more stable. Work to nest the pieces together as tightly as possible to minimize soil loss out the sides if you’ll be using the wall for a raised bed.

If you would like a softer look, you could also plant little succulents or compact rock-garden plants into the crevices. Creeping sedums, alyssum, low varieties of thyme or trailing strawberries would be good, easy choices for a wall that has a sunny exposure. You could also plant low-growing bulbs or annuals in front of the wall.

recycledconcretewalldetail

The result is definitely on the rustic end of the spectrum, more “cottage” than glam or glitzy. But you’ll feel better about not filling up the landfill. And in the end the project could be easier than loading the chunks into a truck to haul them away.

gardening, my garden

my new year's plant

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If there’s a plant that says New Year’s Day to me, it’s the common jade plant, Crassula ovata. The reason why is a little embarrassing, and I’m trusting you not to tell anyone else.

Growing up, my family would spend the morning of New Year’s Day gathered around the television setting, watching the Rose Parade. Overtaken by misguided jags of inspiration, I’d make my own little parade floats out of little cardboard boxes and whatever flowers were available.

jadeflowers

My family lived in the same valley as Pasadena, though inland a few miles. The two locations essentially shared the same climate profile, something around Zone 9B. Don’t believe the propaganda about the Pasadena area having gargantuan fields of roses blooming everywhere in January. Yes, you’ll find roses, but not in the same number as other flowers.

Instead, at my parents’, the plant that was dependably covered with flowers on New Year’s was the jade plant. They had a couple plants in the back yard that were about as tall as I was, and they supplied more than enough little starry white flowers to completely cover my artistic creations.

jadeplant

Now, all grown up, I have a jade in the front yard. This year, with the bizarrely warm fall we had, the plant was confused and started blooming in November. Here’s how it looked yesterday. Not totally covered in flowers, but with plenty of flowers to go around–unless someone needs to build a major float.

So, with that photo, let me wish you a happy New Year’s! May 2009 bring you piles of flowers and interesting plants and good times with people who care deeply for you!

my garden

pretty isn't everything

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Many years back I planted a rose geranium plant (Pelargonium graveolens) and was close to pulling it out. The leaves had that interesting rosy, grassy rose-geranium scent, true enough, but the plant was sprawling, leggy, and in its underwatered spot looked nice only a couple months a year.

What gave it a reprieve was the recipe in the Chez Panisse Desserts cookbook for rose geranium pound cake, a delicate, subtle cloud of a dessert where even a tiny slice kept you captivated with its hard-to-guess source of flavor. And the little ruffled leaves that you baked into the top of the cake were an awesome decoration.

The kitchen remodel a couple years ago involved a bulldozer in the garden–usually not good news for the plants under its treads. The original rose geranium got squashed and dug up, and its original home is now a slab of concrete in the dining area. (Check out the funny description at Las Pilitas nursery for Penstemon Margarita B.O.P., a really cool plant that suffered a similar fate, though fortunately not until after it had been propagated. I never knew what the “B.O.P.” stood for until I read the note.)

Last weekend I finally bought a replacement. The small plant looked identical to what I’d grown before, but this one had a different species name on the label, G. capitatum ‘Attar of Roses.’ The Dave’s Garden writeup shows bigger, almost ivy-geranium-sized flowers on the plant, and the description puts it at half the size of what I had before. And the scented geranium list at Herbalpedia says there are at least 50 geraniums that have a rose scent.

Based on what I’ve seen from the plant, however, I’m skeptical that my plant is much different from the previous one. I’m not taking chances. It went into the ground where it’ll be screened by a few other herbs.

Here’s the recipe in case you get motivated. Also check out the Herbalpedia list above where you’ll find sixteen other recipes, plus lots more ideas of what to do with scented geraniums.

15-18 small rose geranium leaves
1 1/4 cups unsalted butter, softened
1 1/3 cups sugar
3/4 teaspoon vanilla extract
3/4 teaspoon rose water
1 tablespoon plus 1 teaspoon Cognac
6 eggs
1/8 teaspoon mace
1/2 teaspoon salt
1/2 teaspoon cream of tartar
2 2/3 cups unsifted cake flour

Butter and flour a 9-inch springform pan or a 10-inch bundt or tube pan. Rinse and dry the rose geranium leaves and arrange a dozen of the in a ring around the bottom fo the pan, undersides up. Arrange the rest in the center.

Cream the butter until very light and fluffy. Beat in the sugar and continue beating until the mixture is fluffy again. Beat in the vanilla, rose water, and Cognac. Add the eggs one by one, beating to incorporate each one thoroughly before adding the next one. Beat until the mixture is smooth. Mix the mace, salt and cream of tartar into the flour and sift the flour over the butter mixture in four portions, beating just until each one is mixed in. Carefully spoon some of the batter into the pan to anchor the leaves in place. Pour the rest of the batter into the pan and smooth it. Tap the pan on the counter to force out any air bubbles.

Bake in the center of a preheated 325 degree oven for about an hour and a quarter, or until a toothpick inserted in the center comes out clean. Cool. Turn out of the pan and optionally dust lightly with powdered sugar that’s been stored with a vanilla bean. (I like it just fine without this step.)