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Horridculture – What’s The Point?

This sort of bad placement is unbelievably common, and was even more common about ten years ago, while agaves were a fad. It happens with yuccas and other thorny plants too.

tonytomeo's avatarTony Tomeo

P90403In this situation, the point is that all those pointed tips of the leaves of this awkwardly floppy century plant, Agave americana, are extremely sharp, extremely rigid and EXTREMELY dangerous. Those shorter teeth on the margins of the leaves are just as sharp and rigid, and are curved inward to maximize injury to anyone trying to get away from an initial jab. With tips that impale, and marginal teeth that slash, this is one very hateful perennial!

Another point is that this big and awkwardly obtrusive century plant is on a patio at a Mexican restaurant. Yes, it is in a public place where people get dangerously close to it. On Friday and Saturday nights, this restaurant can get quite crowded. Some within such crowds are inebriated, so are more likely to stumble about and bump into things that are best avoided. Those concrete slabs to the left are…

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Ranunculus

Ranunculus enjoys mild weather through spring.

If their strange tubers got into the garden last autumn, ranunculus should be blooming by now. Although their schedule suggests that they crave winter chill like other spring bulbs, they merely want to disperse their roots early. Then, they can bloom as winter ends, and continue until spring weather gets too warm for them. They mostly finish prior to summer. 

If tubers did not get into the garden earlier last autumn, young ranunculus plants become available from nurseries late in winter. Although generally a spring annual, tubers, which go dormant by summer, have potential to regenerate perennially for subsequent springs. Digging and storing tubers through most of their dormancy might improve their potential.

Ranunculus bloom can be pink, red, orange, yellow, purple, cream or white. Flowers are plump and neatly dense with many papery petals, like little peony flowers. They stand on sturdy stems about half a foot to a foot high. Their finely textured basal foliage resembles parsley, but with a lighter color. Dormant tubers are tufts of short, plump and woody roots.

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Moles Are Different From Gophers

Gophers are more destructive than moles.

Wildlife belongs in the wild. Many of us appreciate it there, and get pictures of it to share with others as if it is rare and unusual. Deer, raccoons, skunks, squirrels, gophers and so many other residents of the wild are not so appealing in home gardens. They all need to eat. None are tactful about it. Some eat foliage. Some eat fruits. Moles eat larval insects.

That seems like it would be beneficial to the garden. In some situations, it is. Not only do moles inhibit the proliferation of grubs that damage roots, but they also aerate dense soil. The problem is that they heave soil as they excavate just below the surface. This activity damages lawns and shallow ground cover. Uninhibited grubs might cause less damage. 

Gophers often take the blame for damage that moles cause. However, gophers are much more destructive. They excavate more substantially, and generate larger mounds. While moles consume mostly detrimental grubs, gophers devour roots and any other plant part within the soil. Gophers do not hesitate to kill the most important plants in the landscape. 

Like gophers and other rodents, moles can not take much time off for hibernation through winter. The weather is just too mild. Although they are less active during cool weather, or while there is less to hunt, they never stop excavating. They merely become more active now because, as the weather warms, they can plan for a family, and find plenty of grubs.

Mole excavation generates distinctive small ‘berms’ of displaced soil within lawns. Such berms extend randomly in no particular direction, but are impressively consistent in form. Mounds of expelled soil are small and sporadic, or may not be evident. Moles often push their way below the surface of firmly rooted turf, without expelling any soil to the surface.

Unfortunately, moles can be about as difficult to dissuade as gophers. The most practical means of repellent is to eliminate the grubs that they crave, which can be difficult without insecticide. Blood meal and bone meal are fertilizers that can supposedly repel moles by their objectionable aroma, but require frequent application. Traps also require diligence, as well as precision.

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The End Of The Cherry Blossom Festival

Well, things did not go as planned three years ago. This grim task has yet to be completed, and there was another ‘last’ bloom.

tonytomeo's avatarTony Tomeo

P90331After decades of spectacular spring bloom, this pair of flowering cherry trees in the picture above must be removed. They have been deteriorating for a very long time. Below the limber blooming branches of the tree on the right, there is not much more than a bulky rotten trunk, one rotting limb, and a short stub of a limb that was cut back to a bit of viable twiggy growth last year. The tree to the left has only a few more viable but rotten limbs.
Through this last winter, it was finally decided that we would allow them to bloom one last time, and then replace them with a new pair of trees of the same cultivar. I will cut them down myself. I do not want anyone else to perform this unpleasant task. Nor do I want such dignified and admired trees to be cut down by anyone…

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Another Bad Picture

Hey! I just recently featured a bunch of Brent’s bad pictures in two ‘Six on Saturday’ posts. It took two weeks to use up just a dozen of all the countless bad pictures that Brent clogs my telephone with. I made the mistake of telling him to not send so many; so must now contend with the resulting proliferation.

tonytomeo's avatarTony Tomeo

P90330KKThis is why one should not ask someone else who is very vain to take a picture of something important. The vain only take good selfies. Others subjects are too unimportant to them to bother getting a good picture of.

Fortunately, I did not ask for this picture. Brent, my colleague in Southern California, sent it to me with all those other pictures that I shared this morning, and the rest of the pictures that I intend to share next Saturday. I think he wanted to show off his magnolia. I do not remember what cultivar it is, or even what species. I though there was a Magnolia soulangeana in this spot, but these flowers do not look right for that.

I think this picture shows off the plumerias better. Brent probably did not think of that because he does not understand how impressive these specimens are to those of…

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Six on Saturday: Rhody’s Roady

Rhody’s Roady is a topic that I wanted to brag about a while ago, but postponed because of Brent’s pointless pictures. Now, there are other more interesting subjects. Well, it was not exactly a horticultural topic anyway. Rhody’s Roady is merely his Buick Roadmaster. It is not actually described within the context of this Six on Saturday, and is only slightly visible in the first picture. However, it did take us on a road trip to the Pacific Northwest where we finally got to Tangly Cottage Gardening. I was supposed to deliver some canna there months ago! Half of these pictures show gifts that I received while there, including two very important items taken directly from their landscapes in town!

1. Cedar Lodge, surrounded by various cedars, pines, firs and oaks, is where Rhody and I stayed initially. Rhody is to the lower left of this picture. His Roady is to the lower right.

2. Western white pine and incense cedar seedlings were too compelling to ignore. These eventually would have needed to be grubbed out from a roadside berm, so came with us.

3. Ilwaco, in Washington, was our next destination. Tangly Cottage Gardening presented me with this potted ‘Coral and Hardy’ Watsonia, and the bagged red and orange cultivar.

4. Allium christophii and schubertii, which were grown for plant sales, were gifts as well! These are my first Alliums! I had postponed trying any for too long, so this is fortuitous!

5. White grape hyacinth may look like the dinkiest component of these gifts from Tangly Cottage Gardening, but happen to be something that I had been wanting for a long time!

6. Nickel the kitty reminded me that I should have taken more pictures. I met both Fairy and Skooter but somehow neglected to get pictures! More can be seen at Tangly Cottage.

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/

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Queen Palm

The elegant queen palm has a slender trunk and a billowy canopy. Grouped trees lean gracefully away from each other.

While Mexican fan palms and Canary Island date palms dominated the palm fad in California during the Victorian period, the queen palm, Syagrus romanzoffiana, was still relatively uncommon. Since then, selective breeding has improved their foliar color and density. They are now the most popular of palms.

Modern queen palms grow a bit faster than their Victorian ancestors to about thirty feet tall, and then grow somewhat slower for another ten to even twenty feet. Their long and arching feather (pinnately compound) leaves are quite billowy. The elegant trunks are generally slender, but often develop constrictions or bulges from fluctuations of irrigation or nutrient availability. The abundant fruit can be messy.

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Palms Need Proper Planning Too

Every species of palm has a distinct personality. All have attributes; but many also have the potential for considerable problems.

California has no more native palms than Oklahoma has with the diminutive dwarf palmetto. The stately California fan palm, which is also known as the desert fan palm, inhabits warm desert regions in southern California. It is what put the ‘Palm’ in ‘Palm Springs’. However, because it likes heat and minimal humidity, it is not so happy away from deserts. The very tall and lean Mexican fan palm is closely related to the comparably stout California fan palm, but is so happy in local climates that it naturalizes and can be invasive.

The queen palm has a leaner trunk, and a broader and more billowy canopy. It rarely self sows, but is so overly popular that it very often gets planted in bad situation where it does not have room to grow. Unlike fan palms that have rounded palmate leaves that radiate outward from the ends of bare petioles (leaf stalks), the queen palm is a ‘feather’ palm, with pinnately compound leaves comprised of narrow leaflets arranged along stiff midribs.

The massive Canary Island date palm is another feather palm, with a broad canopy and bulky trunk. Like Mexican fan palm, it often self sows, so gets into some weird situations. The foliage is so thick that is commonly becomes infested with rats and pigeons. Female trees produce messy fruit that keeps rats and pigeons well fed.

Whether they get planted intentionally or simply appear in the landscape, the main problem with all these and other large palms, is the expense of maintenance, since they can only be maintained by professional arborists who know how to climb such large branchless trees. Without regular grooming, fan palms that are so often allowed to retain long beards of old leaves become fire hazards, and have the potential to drop dangerously heavy sections of their beards without warning. Removal of old deteriorating leaves from the huge canopies of Canary Island date palms is quite an chore!

There are few small palms, like windmill palm and Mediterranean fan palm, that are more proportionate to compact gardens. Windmill palm has a strikingly shaggy trunk and a compact canopy that is easy to groom before it grows beyond reach. Mediterranean fan palm has multiple trunks that grow so slowly that it takes many decades for them to grow beyond reach. Nasty sharp thorns on their petioles make pruning difficult but not impossible.

Selection of a palm that is appropriate to a particular situation is just as important to limiting serious long term problems as the selection of any other tree is.

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Horridculture – All Wet

Goodness! Simply reblogging this is annoying.

tonytomeo's avatarTony Tomeo

P90327Regardless of their individual innate requirements for water, new plants need to be watered very regularly immediately after they are installed into a landscape. As they mature and disperse their roots, the regularity of supplemental watering becomes less important, and ‘drought tolerant’ plants may not need to be watered at all. Maturing larger trees generally get what they need from the landscape around them.
Automated irrigation systems that are designed for new landscapes are designed for what the plants need while the landscapes are new. As the landscapes mature, the irrigation systems may need to be adjusted accordingly. Drip irrigation or bubblers that were needed to water new trees while they were young and confined should be moved farther from the trunks of the trees as roots disperse, and should eventually be removed and capped.
This is very important, since water applied directly to the trunks of some maturing trees…

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Blue Gum

Juvenile blue gum foliage is very aromatic.

This is the primary eucalyptus that earned a bad reputation for all other eucalyptus. Blue gum, Eucalyptus globulus, arrived in California in the 1850s, and grew on plantations for timber. As its timber proved to be of inferior quality, and demand for wood pulp dwindled, the plantations succumbed to abandonment. Feral trees naturalized into adjacent areas.

Although once a common timber and wood pulp commodity, and effective as windbreaks for agricultural purposes, blue gum was never popular for landscapes. Those that inhabit urban or suburban situations were generally there prior to urban expansion around them. They are far too massive, messy and combustible, and inhibit the growth of other plants.

Mature blue gum trees can be significantly taller than a hundred feet, with elegantly high branched form. Limbs that fall freely from such heights are very dangerous. The aromatic foliage is evergreen. Adult leaves are stereotypically lanceolate and curved. Silvery blue juvenile leaves are blunt, sessile (lacking petioles) and more aromatic than adult foliage. Strips of smooth tan bark shed to reveal paler bark.