Category Archives: my garden

gardening, my garden

walk on by

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Yellow, white, blue, lavender, pink…The front garden is crazy strident right now and I like it. The floral chaos is concentrated along the sidewalk in front of the house, where the plants present themselves at eye-level for anyone walking by.

If you were to check passports on the plants you’d find a number of California origin mixed in with others from Mediterranean climates. Here’s the gloriously sprawley Nuttall’s milkvetch, Astragalus nuttallii, from the California Central Coast, with a South African arctotis hybrid.

The deep violet chia, Salvia columbarae, hails from around here. The bright yellow Jerusalem sage, Phlomis monocephala, from Turkey. The chia is annual but reseeds itself efficiently. After the plant dies back, its seed heads stay attractive for several months. The phlomis starts to drop its leaves in summer’s drought but never goes entire bare. As it does that, the leaves turn more and yellowish- grayish-green in color.

To help control the floral chaos, I’ve planted incorporated a lot of each of these two plants, along with several of the milkvetch above.

The locally common bulb, blue dicks, Dichelostemma capitatum, with the salmon colored South African bulb, Homeria collina behind it.

A yellow crassula picks up on the yellow theme as you walk by.

A couple years ago I broadcast some seed of Southern California’s Phacelia parryi but never saw any make it to maturity. Just a week ago I noticed this, one of the last flowers on a small plant that has come up from that old broadcast. I probably would have missed it if it weren’t up at eye-level.

I tried shooting a walk-by encounter of the front garden using my cellphone’s camcorder feature. Unfortunately the result looks like it was shot with a, well, cellphone, and I’m too embarrassed to share it. Too bad. Gardens are best explored in time and space and not in still photos. Videos could give you a sense of exploration still photos can’t. Well, I love a project, and getting a decent walk-by sequence will be another item on my ever-growing punchlist.

gardening, my garden

almost useless weeding advice

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I’m sure you’ve read those earnest but wacked letters sent to advice columns, letters where the writer wants to share a piece of housekeeping ingenuity that you look at and find yourself gobsmacked by the total uselessness of the advice being offered. These letters might begin something like, “Dear Heloise, you know, I never throw out corn tassels anymore because I realized that I could use them to make wigs for my pet iguana…” (I might be making this one up. Maybe not. It doesn’t really matter.)

Both John and I had read in one of the papers a while back that you could use boiling water to control weeds. Inspired one day after making a pot of pasta, remembering what he’d read, John drained the pasta water out onto some weeds that were growing in the cracks out on the patio. Not long afterwards the weeds croaked. Somehow it all seemed to make sense.

So…at the risk of sounding too much like like Heloise…I pass on this piece of gardening advice.

You’ll have to think this method through a little before applying it to many situations in the garden. This works if you want to kill everything, like in the middle of hardscape, but probably isn’t a good idea if there might be roots of a desirable plant nearby. Also, it really does take a lot of boiling water to polish off some stubborn plants. It’s not a particularly effective or method. If you salt your pasta water to the point of seawater you might not want to introduce all the salts near fragile plants. And the hot water might even stimulate some dormant seeds into growth, since the method is almost exactly the “hot water method” that’s referred to in manuals on seed propagation.

Still, if you find yourself with a big pot of boiling water that you’d otherwise dump down the drain and have a patio full of weeds nearby, this might be just the thing to do.

While out weeding I’ve been noticing that some of the plants growing up in the cracks aren’t the standard nasty beasties that have been plaguing me over the years. These are in fact some California natives, seedlings of parents I’ve planted in the garden in places where I wanted them. The seedlings are trying to start up a new generation in places where I really don’t want them, but I’m having a hard time pulling them out.

This one’s Clarkia rubi­cunda ssp. blas­dalei. I think I’ll let it flower before removing the plant. It’s an annual, besides, so I should be able to indulge it for a month longer, to let it fulfill its biological destiny.

San Miguel Island buckwheat, Eriogonum grande var. rubescens, one of several I’ve noticed recently. I like the plant, but I’m afraid its choice of location sucks. I think I’ll be able to pull it out soon.

California sagebrush, Artemisia californica. I really hate to pull up anything with a species name of “californica,” but once again its choice of location totally sucks. So far–for over a year now–it’s avoided getting doused with pasta water or getting yanked out of the ground. But a plant in the wrong place is a plant in the wrong place.

I have to admit it. This plant, in this spot, is a weed.

gardening, my garden

diversity

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In the last post I mentioned that I was making hybrids with some of my pitcher plants. The process is a little klunky, and it typically takes a minimum of three years for plants to approach maturity. So why bother?

Here’s why I bother. Below are siblings from a single cross made by Rob of The Sarracenia Project blog, some plants of which he sent me a few months ago. It’s one cross, but just look at all the subtle–or not so subtle–variations from one plant to another. Traits from one parent combine with traits from the other. Sometimes one parent dominates, sometimes you see a perfect fusion of the two. Although the plants aren’t yet mature, they’re starting to show the characteristics they’ll carry on to adult-hood.

The parents are Sarracenia Bug Bat–photos of which you can view [ here ] at the really swell Carnivorous Plant Photo Finder site–and S. Diane Whittaker, viewable [ here ]. This is a complex cross, but the species that push their presence forward most are the extravagant S. leucophylla [ photos here ] and the stern and slightly sinister S. minor [ photos here ].

I don’t know about you, but I like to just stare at the plants and observe how the family traits express themselves. Additionally, most hybrids look different as the seasons change. Right now the final three are my favorites, but I’m looking forward to how these plant will develop though the summer and fall. Thanks for the hours of fun, Rob!


gardening, my garden

a garden sewing project

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Last year a visitor to the garden was asking about the little bags that were on some of the flowers. It looked like it was time to explain the birds and the bees to the curious visitor.

That was Year One of my making some hybrids using Sarracenia, one of the two North American carnivorous pitcher plant genera. Most of the plants live outdoors and get visited by various insects. The little bags were condoms against larger insects getting to the flower and delivering pollen from a different flower than I’d intended to be used in a hybrid. In the South, where most of these plants originate, the flowers are pollinated by a large bee that isn’t found here in Southern California. But I looked at the layer of protection as insurance against some other insect getting to the flower and doing its own experiments with plant breeding. I wanted these flowers all to myself.

When I was shopping at the fabric store I was a little distressed to find that the mesh fabric I was interested in was labeled “petticoat liner.” I thought I was a fairly open-minded and liberated male, but I felt a little shy going up to the counter with a bolt of the stuff, sort of like the first time you go up to the pharmacy counter with a box of condoms.

The clerk sensed my discomfort and supportively asked what I was going to do with the fabric. I explained. “Interesting idea,” she said. “I use big pieces of it to cover up my fruit trees to keep the birds out.” Oh good. A fellow gardener. This person understands. I left the store feeling much less stressed.

These bags aren’t the most virtuosic sewing projects you’ll encounter, just a long rectangle of fabric that’s been hand sewn up the sides to make a long tube. I use paperclips to hold the sheaths in place, but with a little more effort you can sew in some ribbon or string to make something resembling gift pouches that you can open and close easily.

It’s good to make at least a couple different sizes to accommodate the different bloom sizes found in this genus. This season I ran out of larger bags and ended using an actual gift bag left over from the holidays. Its white-gold color stands out pretty emphatically in the garden. If you were starting from scratch, a darker color would recede into the garden more gracefully.

These bags don’t provide protection against smaller pollinators. After doing a little more research it appears that the gold standard for material for hybridizing bags seems to be reemay, the breathable spun polyester that’s used for floating row covers in the garden. Scientific papers frequently cite Reemay bags being used in controlled pollination situations. That stuff is bright white and really stands out in the garden. Fortunately these bags only need to be on Sarracenia flowers for two to three weeks, so you won’t be defacing your garden permanently. Still, while your plants are wearing them, you might have to do a little more explaining to people visiting your plant collection…

gardening, my garden, photography

i won, i won!

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After two rounds of judging it’s now official. My image of a chalk dudleya (Dudleya pulverulenta) is the winner in a contest looking for an image to use to promote the upcoming California Native Plant Week, which this year is April 17 to 23. The competition was held by the San Diego Chapter of the California Native Plant Society, and the winning image will be used locally in publicity and on t-shirts and who knows what else.

Woohoo! I’m jazzed!

To the right is the winning image, Chalk Dudley, Budding Out.

Down below I detail the steps I took to turn a snapshot into this final photo.
Continue reading i won, i won! →

gardening, my garden

from the desert to the coast

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Sunday I went for a little plant walk out to Anza-Borrego Desert State Park. It’s been a good year for desert flowers, but it’s not one of those spectacular seasons when the ground pulsates purple with sand verbena or gold with brittlebush. Some of the ocotillo were in bloom, and the desert agaves like this one (Agave deserti) were sending up their pink and green stalks.

Lots else was in bloom. But as I review the photos from the trips I’m finding that I’m staring at a pile of images of plants I don’t know the names of. I’ll share more of the pictures than this first one once I get them a little better organized and the plants matched up with my list of names.

Since it’s Garden Bloggers’ Bloom Day I’ll share with you some plants from my garden that I do know the names of. Some of these are old friends that have been blooming for a while, and I’ve been sharing over past Bloom Days. But a lot of these are just coming into bloom for the first time this year.

I thought the blooms on this carpenteria were finished a month ago, but the plant has surprised me with a robust bloom spurt, bigger than the first one.

Unlike the carpenteria, this old friend, the tree coreopsis, won't be blooming again for another nine or ten months.

Many of these plants survive in the garden with minimal added water. The climate in this area is dry in a coastal-influenced sort of way. I might water once or twice a month in the summer, but the frequent morning overcast and occasional fog helps keep the plants hydrated. Additionally the plants in the garden have enjoyed a slighter higher than average rainfall so thoughts of the dry summer ahead aren’t in the minds of these plants. Spring is here.

This Salvia Bee's Bliss has been in the ground for over two years, but only now is it starting to take off.

Black sage, Salvia mellifera.

The local annual chia, Salvia carduaceae, with the exotic Phlomis monocephala in the background. The chia is one of the coastal plants that also can get to be pretty common in parts of the desert.

Here's another combination of plants, the lavender pink of the stinging lupine with the strident gold of the crassula relative behind it. The contrast is pretty strident to my taste, but hey, spring isn't all about subtle plays of one color against another...

Last month I showed this orange mimulus seedling. That time I got it in focus.
From the same parents that lived in this bed comes this other monkeyflower, this one velvety red with almost black detailing.


And here's another velvety red mimulus seedling. You might confuse it for the previous one, but the flowers are subtly different.

Nuttall's milkvetch, looking full and flowery, close to its seasonal peak.

Verbena lilacina looks better for me with a little more added water than some of the plants around it. But it survives even when I forget.

The pale Verbena lilacina 'Paseo Rancho' was just starting to bloom last month. It's starting to wake up for the spring.

Some parts of the garden get treated to more frequent watering.

This California buttercup, Ranunculus california, comes up reliably every year in an area of the garden where lawn meets unwatered gravel.

Blue-eyed grass, Sisyrinchium bellum, appreciates a moister spot as well.

Geum Red Wings, a pretty, informal plant.
Hummingbird sage, Salvia spathacea, is a California plant from moister places than my garden. Even in semi-shade it looks best with water two or three times a month.


And these last two of these go about as far from desert plants as you can get without getting aquatic plants. Both of these grow in my bog gardens, with their feet in standing water most of the year.

Sarracenia flava var. maxima is one one of the first plants in the bog to put out flowers. The common description of the scent is 'cat piss,' but I think that's a little too harsh a description. The flowers are nice, but most people grow these for the pitcher-shaped leaves.

A couple more sarracenias, a different S. flava in the back, and a hybrid of S. flava and S. alata up front.

Head over to Carol’s blog, May Dreams Gardens, to check out all the other bloggers celebrating Garden Bloggers’ Bloom Day!


gardening, my garden, plant profiles

the humble coffeeberry

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Fill in the blank:
California coffeeberries are __________

  1. versatile in the landscape
  2. important members of the ecosystem
  3. boring as dirt

Coffeeberries, Frangula californica (aka Rhamnus californica) are common plants in California native plant gardens. The plants stay green and leafy all year and provide a welcome evergreen background for other species that go through more extravagant bloom-and-bust cycles. They’re tough plants, and you can find clones that tolerate higher water parts of the garden as well as areas that subsist on natural rainfall.

The species produces berries that progress from red to purple to black over the course of the summer. Any plant that produces berries is likely to be an important food source for wildlife. Earlier in the season, in flower, it keeps pollinators happy.

An unknown cultivar of coffeeberry--in bloom! Look at those amazing flowers! (Don't go wetting yourself in excitement, now...)

But until recently, I’d viewed them as fairly uninteresting plants, and I’d have answered “3” to the fill-in-the-blank above. I had none in the garden.

That changed a couple years ago with the introduction to the garden of several plants of two different clones. In the wilds the typical form can get pretty large–fifteen feet tall in the shade, and more, and even wider. But garden selections let you have smaller coffeeberries that won’t need constant pruning to keep them at a reasonable size.

A closeup of the leaves on 'Eve Case'

I picked a couple plants of the classic ‘Eve Case’ cultivar, which has reported garden sizes of four to ten feet, depending on water and sun exposure. It’s a fairly informal plant, with fairly coarse leaves spaced fairly far apart on its stems. “Woodsy” would be an apt description for it.

By contrast, the leaves of 'Tranquil Margarita'

I also tried the cultivar ‘Tranquil Margarita,” which is offered by Las Pilitas Nursery. The nursery’s website gushes about this one: “It is the most beautiful coffeeberry I’ve ever seen. (At first I didn’t realize it was a coffeeberry!) Leaves are clean, shiny and rich looking. The whole plant looks like it belongs next to an English Tudor in London.”

A still-young plant of 'Tranquil Margarita,' looking a little more mannered than 'Eve Case'

Hyperbole? I think not. In describing plants for a California garden, saying a plant could look great in a Tudor garden could almost be seen as an insult. But I really really like this plant. So far it’s been a good, clean grower, nice and upright. For me it’s been faster than ‘Eve Case,’ but a gopher attack on the roots my Eve’s doesn’t render this a scientifically meticulous comparison.

There are at a few other cultivars that are out in the marketplace. Most common is ‘Mound San Bruno’–or ‘Mount San Bruno’–which grows fairly low and wide, with a pretty dense habit and typical fairly coarse leaves. ‘Seaview,’ a parent of ‘Eve Case,’ is an older variety that is reported to be a good, taller groundcover. (I haven’t observed any of this cultivar. There’s also a version of it called ‘Seaview Improved.’) ‘Leatherleaf’ has thicker, darker leaves than the typical form. ‘Little Sur’ gets mentioned occasionally, but I don’t see it listed on lists I’ve consulted. It’s probably one of the smallest versions.

There are probably other varieties and cultivars out there. If you have space you can always grow the unadulterated, unselected form of the species and earn bonus points for supporting genetic diversity.

So there you have it, the humble coffeeberry. I don’t think anyone would call it the sexiest thing with leaves, but as I get older I’m more and more attracted to plants that are sturdy and subtle over flashy and disposable horticultural one night stands. Treat the plant with respect and it’ll be there for you for many mornings to come.

gardening, my garden

february bloom day

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I’ve just returned from a week away and haven’t had a chance to inventory everything that’s blooming this month. Besides, you’ve seen a lot of it already. Here are a few snapshots from today of what’s new or what’s changed.

Carpenteria california was looking great for the last two months. Now, the petals are all dropping, and this is as close to anything resembling a flower left on the plant.

I keep thinking the narcissus are finished blooming, but I found this yellow one blooming beneath the jade plant. Bulbs--you gotta love how they're these little surprise that pop up where you forgot you planted them...

This verbena lilacena was blooming last month, but it's looking even better now.

Here's the pale Paseo Rancho clone of the previous verbena.

Stinging lupine, Lupinus hirsutissimus. No, the photo isn't upside down. For some reason the plant is. It started growing up, and then did a U-turn and headed for the ground like an errant missile. I somehow suspect gophers had something to do with it.

Here's an upright spike of the previous lupine...

Spharulcea ambigua, desert mallow, starting to bloom.

Looking very much like the previous mallow, this is S. munroana. For some reason this species is supposed to be a better garden plant than the previous speceis. In my gardne the plants are virtually identical, and if anything the basic desert mallow does better for me.

A seedling of a Mimulus aurantiacus hybrid. Its color is definitely lighter than the scarlet ones found locally.

Ranunculus californicus

Bulbinella frutescens(?)--Edit, February 25: Actually, according to Oscar Clarke, it's Bulbine bulbosa. Thanks for the assistance with the ID!

Euphorbia lambii

Blue dicks, Dichelostemma capitatum

Rose-scented geranium (pelargonium)

Among the edibles in bloom, this is rhubarb. This is my first attempt at growing this plant that supposedly doesn't like anything warmer than Zone 8. I'm not sure that I really like rhubarb, but I was curious to see how it would do, particularly since my local trusty nursery was selling it.

Flowers on another plant--apricot--that likes colder climates than mine. Unlike rhubarb, I know that I love apricots, but I really can't grow them well. This year, maybe because November was so insanely cold, the tree so far has a few dozen flowers on it. Still, I won't count my apricots until they're picked.

Astragalus nuttallii starting to come into its own. Some species are called locoweed, and not much more than two pounds is supposedly enough to kill an average cow. Don't think less of me when I tell you that one of the reasons I planted this species was to see if it might help me control the gophers. I can't say it's done anything to reduce their numbers.

Not everything is peaking, of course. Here's chalk dudleya in bud. Check back in a month or two to see it in bloom.

Thanks as usual to Carol at May Dreams Gardens for hosting this fun garden blogger meme. Take a look [ here ] at what else is blooming in other gardens around the country, around the world.

My prediction: a lot of the colder-climate gardeners will be posting on the Valentine’s Day flowers they gave or received. I hope you all had a god one. Middle age has struck and I don’t look so hot in my Cupid outfit anymore. You’ll have to settle for flowers delivered this way…

gardening, my garden

remounting the big staghorn

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A view of the patient, unmounted, after it blew over in the winds.

Last week saw some pretty fierce winds in Southern California. The damage at home was the toppling of a potted kalanchoe–no big issue there–and the falling over of a big staghorn fern we’ve been growing for the last couple of decades. In falling over the plant detached from its mount and was a green and brown heap on the ground.

A large specimen staghorn is a thrilling sight, and two decades’ familiarity has given me a certain attachment to this plant. (It’s the botanical part of the graphic at the top of my blog pages.)

In nature these plants are epiphytes, attaching themselves to tree trunks or branches for support in the way many tropical orchids do. There are reports that orchids growing this way are referred to in Central America as “parásitas,” through they, like the staghorn, use the host trees for support only and are in no way botanical vampires that suck the living essence from their hosts in the way mistletoe and dodder do.

Remounting a staghorn fern isn’t ridiculous complex, but task gets harder when the plant and support each way weigh forty pounds or more. Here’s what we did.

The failed back mount of the staghorn: The rotted boards you see are its second mount, which detached from the other mounts and was probably why the plant detached from the board when it blew over.
The back side of the staghorn, showing the original foot-square board which was still in fairly good condition--good enough to screw into to help support the forty pounds of fern. Some people report using plywood for the backing, but the layers of plywood will peel and look ugly unless you use the kind made with with waterproof adhesives.
The first pieces for the reengineered backing board. Working on the fairly regular surface of the brick patio was almost as good as assembling a project on a sheet of graph paper. I hardly had to do any measuring to keep things square. (And are those weeds growing in the cracks? Say it isn't so!)
The most recent backing boards were cedar, and still in good condition. Good enough to recycle for the project.
A little wreath of new sphagnum moss laid where the plant was going to be attached. (Actually I moved the moss higher on the board so that the plant would have more room to grow down below. It's the lower shield growth of the fern that actually attaches the plant to the support as it grows.)
In additional to the moss, we snuck this banana peel behind the plant. John saw something on the web where someone suggested incorporating a banana peel as a source of potassium to help the fern develop roots. Gardening seems to be about 40% hard work, 40% patience, 10% science, and 10% luck, magic or voodoo. This detail seemed a little like the voodoo part, but I figured it couldn't hurt.
The staghorn was attached to the new backing in several ways. Two lengths of plastic-coated electrical wire cinched around the least fragile parts of the plant. The most delicate new growth down below was attached using a length of pantyhose. I also ran two screws from behind into the intact original mount.
...a detail showing how the electrical wire and pantyhose tied into the screws that secured the backer boards to the support.

And here we have the finished product. The particular backing board is designed so that the backing can stand on the ground and not have to have the weight supported from behind. You could just make a placque without the legs if you want to suspend the plant from a wall or fence. In a few months all of the backing board should have turned to a uniform silver color.

It was a project I was dreading, but it probably took two people less than two hours to accomplish. That includes the trip to the Home Despot to pick up some additional sphagnum. So in the end: not really a project to dread.

(And let me say thank you to Big Edna for the use of the pantyhose!)

gardening, landscape design, my garden

hiding from the neighbors

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We have new neighbors immediately behind the house next door. One of their first acts was to erect this gonzo back deck.

The previous owner was a house-bound woman who for the last twenty years of her life lived mostly indoors. Her back fence stopped at the property line and was six feet high. We never saw her, she never saw us.

The new owners, a young couple, apparently didn’t care for the big dark fence getting in the way of their view. And they apparently didn’t think their back yard was large enough since the new deck juts out many feet into a city easement. I’m sure they have a great view of the ocean. But using the equation, I can see them = They can see us, I’m certain they also have a tremendous view of my back yard.

There are a few islands of privacy. This black bamboo provides a little bit of screening–if you’re standing in just the right spot.

But this view from the bedroom window shows that the isn’t much privacy from much of the garden. I planted a Dr. Hurd manzanita in front of the bamboo, before the new neighbors moved in. Once it hits its twelve foot target, it’ll help provide some shelter. But being a manzanita it’s taking its good old time getting larger. Had I known we’ve have this privacy issue I’d have planted something faster growing, maybe a desert willow.

A few things get in the way of planting more large plants on the property line. There’s a buried drain–not the best thing to plant a small tree over. This is also the the southern edge to the property. A tree would provide some shelter, but it would also shade a garden populated with sun-loving plants and homeowners. Also, the previous owners of our house installed a large fishpond in what would be the most welcome spot for a small tree.

We’re still trying to think of what to do. Until we have a larger plan in place, we’re letting some plants get taller than we otherwise might. This mystery shrub came with the house. Although it’s growing too close to a fence to let it get very large, we’re still letting it grow taller. There’s one of these plants in the canyon nearby and the best idea I have is that if it’s native it might be a Pacific wax myrtle (Morella (formerly Myrtica) californica), but I think the ID is incorrect because Calflora shows its native range ending to the north, in Los Angeles County.

Here’s a closer look at the foliage. Later in the year it has tiny white flowers with an insanely powerful fragrance–gardenias on steroids, maybe. Feel free to send me any ideas for this plant’s identity. It’s probably wishful thinking on my part thinking this is a native instead of an escapee from one of the local gardens.

[ EDIT, January 24 ] Well, I knew you guys would come through! Maggie and Bahia have pointed me in the right direction. Thinking that it was a local native was definitely wishful thinking on my part. The mystery shrub is a Victorian box, Pittosporum undulatum. The fact that it’s escaped into at least one spot in the local canyon makes me think that this is destined not a long-term plant, particularly when you consider that it can get massive size for a suburban lot, not to mention it’s ridiculously close placement to the fenceline.

The California Invasive Plant Council describes its problem potential this way: “Infestations in CA are small. More problematic on north coast.” Not the worst plant, but I could definitely do better.

The privacy problem could be worse. The neighbors spend almost no time outdoors, and much of that is in the relative privacy of darkened evenings.

Still, gardens are as much about fantasy as they are reality. It’s not that we’re doing anything particularly scandalous in the back yard, really. But if we were, we wouldn’t want the neighbors to see!