Posted on by tonytomeo · 28 Comments

Weeds Have Been Very Busy

60323They are weeds for a reason. They grow like . . . well, weeds! By definition, they are unwanted. Yet, they typically proliferate and grow faster than desirable plants. They aggressively compete for space, sunlight and resources. Many weeds start to grow through winter, and get established while other seedlings are just beginning to germinate, or other plants are just waking from dormancy.

Besides staying ahead of other plants, weeds stay ahead of us by growing so much while the wintry weather keeps us inside. Many weeds are really just trying to stay ahead of insects or animals that eat them in the wild. Since almost all weeds are exotic (nonnative) and far from their natural homes, the insects or animals that should eat them are not here to do so. It is an unfair advantage.

Now that the weather is more conducive to gardening, weeds should be pulled as soon as they are big enough to get a grip on. This includes tree, shrub and big perennial weeds like blue gum eucalyptus, Acacia dealbata, coast live oak, glossy privet and giant reed. If simply cut down, they will regenerate even stronger, and will probably need to be dug out. The roots are difficult to kill.

Annual weeds are very different. They will die by next winter without any help. Some will die when they dry out over summer. However, they should be pulled anyway, before they bloom and sow their seed. If the weeds are too abundant to exterminate, they should at least be cut down before their seed develops. In some situations, the mown or cut weeds might be preferable to bare soil.

Burrclover, bindweed and purslane stay so low to the ground that mowing or cutting weeds does not slow them down much. They must unfortunately be pulled, which is a serious chore in large areas! Dandelion and foxtail can get mown once, but they have a sneaky way of coming back lower to avoid losing seed the next time. Dandelion can actually come back next year as a perennial.

Bermudagrass and crabgrass are low growing perennial grasses that spread vegetatively (with their stems), even if deprived of their seed. They are very tough! Spurge and oxalis seem like they should be wimpy, but they sow seed so profusely and so early that, by the time they get noticed, their next generations are already started. Oxalis survives winter with perennials stems and bulbs.60323thumb

Posted on by tonytomeo · 54 Comments

Timmy in the Garden

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Tim Buck II, pronounced like ‘Timbuktu’ in Mali, but known simply as ‘Timmy’, came to live with us while he was just a baby fawn. Mr. Tim Buck Senior left Mrs. Buck to raise little Timmy alone as a single mother. Mrs. Buck then vanished, leaving little Timmy enfeebled on the side of Highway 9 south of town. No one knows what happened to Mrs. Buck. She might have been hit and killed by a car. She might have been eaten by a Mountain Lion. Somehow, she was not there to raise little Timmy.

Traffic was stopped on Highway 9 as little Timmy staggered about, either anemic, or starving from the absence of Mrs. Buck. He could barely walk, and certainly could not bound up or down the steep hillsides to leave the Highway. Most of us who stopped knew that he would not survive, and just accepted it as part of nature. However, we could not just leave him there with a few concerned children also stopped in the traffic with us. I loaded him into the back seat of the pick up and took him with me so that the children would think that he would be taken care of. I expected him to be deceased by the time I got home.

Instead, like a scene straight out of ‘Tommy Boy’, Timmy survived. He got up and was looking at me in the rear view mirror. Now what? Barbecue? I took him home to ask the neighbors.

That was too much help. They gave Timmy goat milk and groomed him of ticks, and a within a few hours, Timmy was bounding about the yard and playing with Bill the terrier, and Melly and Chewy the two cats. By nightfall, the entire herd wanted to sleep in my bed!

Timmy grew very fast and consumed quite a bit of goat milk. He craved more than milk though, and started eating my roses. (This was later in spring.) When I yelled at him to stop, he just looked at me quizzically, and continued eating. The roses did not last long. Timmy then ate the leaves off the fruit trees. Then he ate some ornamental grasses. There was not much that Timmy would not eat. When I tried chasing him off to eat in the forest, he just came right back to play with his friends and eat more of the garden. When I kept the door closed, he just came in the cat door and found his way to my bed. When I took him across the creek and down the road a bit, he just followed me back.

The funny thing is that everyone liked Timmy! He was so nice and polite, even as he destroyed the garden. That was a very bad year for gardening!

By the following spring, Timmy was spending almost all of his time out in the forest. He had depleted everything in the garden, so needed to go farther out to find vegetation within reach. He had grown very fast into a tall and lanky young buck. I slowly resumed gardening in early summer, with only minimal nibbling.

I sometimes wonder how Timmy is doing. I am pleased that he is no longer in my garden. I can enjoy growing roses again. The only thing I enjoy finding in the rose garden more than a nice healthy rose is a bitten off stub where there was about to be a rose.

Posted on by tonytomeo · 12 Comments

Candytuft

80321It looks like sweet alyssum, but is not even close. The tiny white flowers and finely textured foliage work almost as well for similar uses in the landscape. In fact, the plants are most often grown as short term warm season annuals. However, candytuft, Iberis sempervirens, is really a perennial that can be cut back in autumn, regenerate through winter, and bloom for spring and early summer.

One must really examine candytuft closely to see that it is related to cole crop vegetables like broccoli, cauliflower, cabbage and Brussels sprouts. That is why is has an odd aroma when cut back. Mature plants have the potential to get nearly a foot deep, but typically stay lower. They can spread a bit wider than a foot. Candytuft can tolerate a slight bit of shade, but prefers sunny exposure.

If planted closely together, candytuft can form a nice small scale ground cover. It mixes nicely with stones, and cascades slightly over the edges of low stone retaining walls. It is more substantial than sweet alyssum, and works better for permanent planting in borders and along walkways. The barely perceptible floral fragrance of individual plants can be quite appealing in larger volumes.

Posted on by tonytomeo · 14 Comments

Warm Season Vegetables Start Now

P80312The calendar does not always agree with the weather. It really is about time to start replacing aging cool season vegetable plants with fresh new warm season vegetable plants. Earlier warm and dry weather had suggested that it was getting late. More recent frosty weather followed by rain suggested otherwise. Regardless, there is no point in arguing with what the calendar determines.

The last seedlings for broccoli, cauliflower, cabbage and Brussels sprouts (for those who are able to grow them) should be well established in the garden. There should be enough cool weather for them to finish before the heat of summer causes them to go bitter. No more should be planted this late. Also, the last seed for beets should have been sown already. Peas should finish soon.

Warm season vegetables like tomato, pepper, squash, cucumber, corn and bean are the main concern now. Tomato and pepper are most easily planted as seedlings purchased in cell packs. A packet of seed costs as much as a cell pack, but must be sown and grown into seedlings, which is extra work. If necessary, varieties that are unavailable in cell packs can be grown from seed.

The other warm season vegetables grow so fast from seed that there is no advantage to planting them as seedlings here. Some would be distressed from transplant as seedlings. Besides, so many individual plants of each type are typically grown together that it would be expensive to purchase so many cell packs. Squash might be an exception if only a few plants would be enough.

Bush beans may seem like they would be easier to grow than pole beans because they do not require support. However, pole beans can grow on the sunny side of a fence in the background of a vegetable garden, utilizing otherwise useless space. If it would not damage the fence, string can be strung in a zigzag pattern (up and down) between nails pounded part way into the top and bottom of the fence. If the string is held an inch or so from the fence (at the heads of the protruding nails), bean vines would be happy to climb it.

Posted on by tonytomeo · 33 Comments

Bat

P80311KHe or she; let’s just go with ‘it’ – has no name that I am aware of. It might be an acquaintance of Pepe. ( https://tonytomeo.wordpress.com/2018/03/04/pepe/ )

It showed up in a conference room at work, and needed to be removed. The young lady who found it motionless on the floor did not want to handle it, so I took it outside and laid it on top of a utility panel, hoping that it might fly away. After only a few minutes, it was gone. I did not see a cat or anyone else who would have eaten it; so I am hopeful that it flew into a nearby riparian area to find some insects to eat, and to recover from being trapped inside.

I have no idea what happened to it, or how it ended up in such a bad situation. It was on the floor below a skylight window, like a dazed bird who crashed into the glass while trying to fly through the window. However, bats do not try to fly through closed windows. Their sonar informs them that the glass is there, even if they do not see it. Someone I was working with at the time said that it might have been trying to find a way out near the window just because of the sunlight there, and because it was higher than the other windows. Perhaps it just got exhausted while flapping around trying to find an exit.

Bats are mysterious here. I do not even know what kinds of bats live here. They are nocturnal, like Pepe, so they do what they do while most of us are not up and about or outside to see them doing it. Even those who are out at night do not see much of what bats do because nighttime is rather dark. I think that is what makes it nighttime. Bats are dark too, so are not easy to see without sunlight.

I know that the small bats like this one eat mosquitoes. Since mosquitoes follow people about, and bats follow mosquitoes, bats seem to follow people. We see them every once in a while as they dart about. Yet, almost all of their activity goes unnoticed, even if it is only a few feet away. They are small, dark, silent and fast. Even if we are not aware that they are about, and they are not very concerned about us, they make our time in the garden after sundown a bit more tolerable by eliminating so many of the otherwise bothersome mosquitoes.

In other regions, and perhaps here as well, bats interact with plant life as well. Some eat soft fruit, such as prickly pear, and distribute the tiny seeds within. They do what birds do for brightly colored berries. Since bats are not impressed with bright colors, the fruits that want to attract them use sweet fragrance and flavor. Unlike small brightly colored berries that birds eat whole, fruit that is designed for bats is large and squishy, with tiny seeds dispersed somewhat homogeneously throughout the pulp, so that small bats can eat the seeds just by taking small bites of fruit.

Bats also pollinate some types of flowers. Many types of cacti that live in desert regions bloom at night while their flowers are less likely to be desiccated by harsh desert weather, and also while nocturnal pollinators are active. Flowers that rely on moths are smaller and paler, although they are brightly colored and patterned with ultraviolet color that moths can see. Those that rely on bats for pollination are wide and faced upward so that bats can land on them if they want to take their time eating the abundant sweet nectar. Sweet floral fragrance is easy for bats to follow.P80311K+

Posted on by tonytomeo · 11 Comments

Median Landscapes

P80311Medians are nice on the widest of boulevards. They break up the expansiveness of otherwise contiguous lanes. They make a four lane boulevard seem more like a pair of two lane roadways. Berms and other obstacles within medians limit the potential for head on collisions with traffic from opposite sides of the medians. Trees shade and cool some of the pavement when the weather gets warm. Besides all that, medians that are modestly landscaped simply look nice.

Notice that I said ‘modestly’ landscaped. There really is no need to get carried away with landscapes in medians. No one is really looking too closely at them anyway. People are driving past them, and really should be paying more attention to the road ahead rather than what is blooming to the side. Even passengers who are not driving probably are not seeing much of what goes into median landscapes. Color in such landscapes is nice; but no one cares if the color is provided by plants that are expensive and consumptive to maintain, or plants that can more or less survive on their own. It other words, resources should not be wasted on medians. Expensive and consumptive public landscapes should be installed only in parks or other places where they can be seen and appreciated.

Then there are those who must perform the maintenance. It is not safe for them. It will of course be necessary for crews to go out to maintain medians sometimes, and sometimes they might need to block a lane to do what needs to be done; but they should be out there as little possible. They should not be out there deadheading roses, pruning wisteria or planting petunias. They certainly should not be mowing lawns that no one can use! High maintenance features, like formal hedges, fountains, espaliers, trellises, arbors and beds of seasonal annuals, have no business out in medians! Such features require too much attention from those who must interact with traffic to attend to the maintenance.

Turf uses too much water anyway. It is useful in parks and athletic fields, but should be limited to situations where it can actually be useful for something. It is not useful in medians.

Trees are perhaps the best features of median landscapes, but even they are often not well thought out. They should be proportionate to the roadways that the get installed into, and get high enough for adequate clearance above truck traffic. Vertical clearance is not important if small trees can fit between the curbs of wide medians, but such wide medians should probably be outfitted with larger and taller trees. Trees in medians should exhibit complaisant roots that are less likely to damage curbs and pavement.

Landscape design takes serious work; and there is a lot to consider when designing landscapes for medians.

Posted on by tonytomeo · 39 Comments

Look What The River Washed In!

P80224KWhat is it?!?

Is it alive?

Was it alive?

Is it moving?

Should we roll it back into the river?

Can we eat it? Someone actually asked that.

It really is as big and ugly as it looks. That is a size 11 boot next to it to demonstrate how big it is. We can not eat it. There is no need to put it back into the river. It is not moving. It was alive, and still is. It is the distended tuberous root of a wild cucumber, of the genus Marah, which is also known as ‘manroot’ because of how big it can get. That stub protruding from the top (toward the top of the picture) is the remnant of a stem. A few thin roots protrude from the lower half, with thicker root stubs at the bottom.

This picture was taken last winter after the San Lorenzo River flooded and then receded. There has not been enough rain this year to wash more than leaves and a few pinecones downriver.

If this tuberous root had not been unearthed and scoured clean by floodwater, it would have been actively growing through winter. The surprisingly thin and wiry vines appear in autumn and climb with tendrils over shrubbery and small trees. The palmately lobed leaves are rather fragile, and tear easily. Loose clusters of small pale white flowers are followed by weirdly spiny round fruit that ripens from light green to greenish yellow. Each fruit is about the size of a golf ball, and contains a few big seeds. As the weather gets warm in summer, the vines die completely to the ground, leaving the drying fruit dangling from whatever the vines grew onto earlier.

Why can’t the river bring us something useful?

Posted on by tonytomeo · 20 Comments

Six on Saturday: Blackwood Acacia

 

Blackwood acacia, Acacia melanoxylon, happens to be one of my least favorite trees, but it does happen to be rather interesting. Mature trees have no leaves. Really. I don’t mean that they defoliate through winter and refoliate in spring. Only juvenile growth has bipinnately compound leaves. As growth matures, leaves are smaller, and are outfitted with distinctively winged petioles. As growth progresses, the winged petioles, known as ‘phyllodes’, become more prominent, and lack vestigial leaves. Therefore, once mature trees outgrow their juvenile growth, no leaves remain.

I dislike blackwood acacia because it is an invasive exotic species, like Acacia dealbata, but not as invasive. Mature trees sucker profusely from roots to form groves of several straight and vertical trunks. Where they are not a problem, groves of mature trees are rather handsome, but do not last long before they start to deteriorate. Foliar liter has an herbicidal effect that inhibits weed growth, but also inhibits the growth of desirable plants. It also produces an objectionable aroma.

1. Juvenile leaves are bipinnately compound, like those of Acacia dealbata.P80310
2. Leaves become more diminutive with distinctively distended petioles as growth matures.P80310+
3. Adult foliage is comprised exclusively of phyllodes, without leaves. The phyllodes function and look just like simple leaves.P80310++
4. Blackwood acacia flowers are not much to look at. Even in full bloom, they are grungy yellowish white.P80310+++
5. At least the bark is handsome.P80310++++
6. The best blackwood acacia is a dead blackwood acacia.P80310+++++
This is the link for Six on Saturday, for anyone else who would like to participate:

https://thepropagatorblog.wordpress.com/2017/09/18/six-on-saturday-a-participant-guide/

Posted on by tonytomeo · 9 Comments

Purple Leaf Plum

70308Of all the fruitless fruit trees, the purple leaf plum is the most popular here, but probably not for the obvious allure of its rich purplish or bronze foliage that maintains color until it falls in autumn. Purple leaf plum is simply so easy to grow. It does not need to be pruned as regularly as flowering peaches or flowering crabapples do. It is not as sensitive to sunscald as flowering cherries are.

Most purple leaf plums bloom with double or single pink flowers. Old varieties that bloom with white flowers are uncommon. Mature trees might get taller than a two story house, with nicely rounded canopies. Trees are usually pruned up onto single straight trunks, although mature trees in older landscapes might have a few sculptural trunks. Purple leaf plum want full sun and occasional watering.

Posted on by tonytomeo · 4 Comments

Spring Blossoms Precede Summer Fruit

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Cherry blossoms are such an excellent tradition in Washington D.C., as well as in Japanese neighborhoods of the West Coast. ‘Kwanzan’ and ‘Akebono’ flowering cherries in Japantown of San Jose are glorious when they bloom early in spring. They are less common but just as spectacular in Los Angeles. More varieties grow in the cooler climates of Sacramento, Portland and Seattle.

Yet, after all the work the trees put into bloom, they produce no fruit. These prettiest of the cherry blossoms are sterile. They are known as ‘flowering’ cherries, which is a polite way of saying that they are ‘fruitless’. Cherry trees that produce fruit are very similar and bloom about as profusely, but do so with somewhat more subdued utilitarian flowers. After all, they have to work for a living.

Many of the deciduous fruit trees have ‘flowering’ counterparts that are grown for their showy flowers. Purple leaf plums, which are really flowering plums that happen to have purplish or bronze foliage, are the most popular because the foliage is so colorful after bloom. Flowering nectarines and flowering peaches are rare, but not as rare as flowering apricots and flowering almonds are.

Flowering crabapples are the counterparts to the entire fruiting apple group. They are not really sterile, so produce tiny fruits that mostly get eaten by birds. Flowering pears, which are commonly known as ‘ornamental’ pears, are grown more for their impressive autumn foliar color than for their potentially modest bloom. They also produce tiny fruits. The evergreen pear lacks autumn color. Flowering quince is an odd one. It is not even the same genus as fruiting quince.

Fruit trees bloom too. They may not be as colorful, but their simpler and paler blossoms are about as profuse as those of their flowering counterparts. Their stems are usually straighter and more vigorous because they are pruned for fruit production instead of allowed to develop naturally. A few stems can be left unpruned to be cut and brought in as cut flowers when they eventually bloom.

Whether flowering or fruiting, almonds and plums should bloom before pears and apples. There is no guarantee though. Weather can delay early bloomers, or accelerate late bloomers. Earlier frost promoted healthy bloom, but the subsequent abundance of rain is unfortunately ruining flowers that are blooming now. For fruiting trees, this means that much or all of the fruit will be ruined.00414