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Pink Flowering Currant

80404We tend to think of currants as being from Europe, Russia or Eastern North America. The pink flowering currant, Ribes sanguineum glutinosum, is actually endemic to canyons and riparian sites of the coastal ranges of California. Because it is an understory species that lives in the partial shade of large trees, it is quite tolerant of shade, and even prefers a bit of shade rather than full sun.

Mature specimens might reach first floor eaves, and get as wide as six feet. Aging stems of maturing plants should be pruned out to promote growth of new stems. New plants should probably be staked loosely until they disperse stabilizing roots. Although tolerant of drought, pink flowering currant is happier with occasional watering, and will actually tolerate poor drainage through winter.

Pendulous trusses of tiny pink flowers bloom like small wisteria flowers late in winter or early in spring. They are mostly done by now. Small and sparse currants get eaten by birds almost before they get seen. The deciduous foliage turns only soft yellow before falling in autumn. The handsome and slightly aromatic palmate leaves look and smell almost like those of a scented geranium.

Posted on by tonytomeo · 25 Comments

Houseplants Might Enjoy Some Weather

80404thumbThey were not always houseplants. They came from somewhere else. Most came from shady tropical forests, which is why they have such big dark green leaves, and are so tolerant of shady home interiors. They are pretty good sports about tolerating the domestic lifestyles that we subject them to, but they would really prefer to be thousands of miles away, growing wild back home.

Home interiors lack the sort of weather that the natural environments of houseplants get. The majority of houseplants would prefer rain, humidity, occasional breezes and perhaps more warmth. Some succulents may not miss the rain, but might crave heat and more sunlight. Regardless of what houseplants want, that can not get all of it in the comfort of our homes. They want to get out!

Unfortunately, that is not an option. Plants that have adapted to the relative darkness and protection from (shortwave or SUV) ultraviolet light in the home would roast if suddenly exposed to direct sunlight. (Windows block SUV light.) They would get battered by wind and damaged or killed by frost in winter. Those that become outdoor plants should be transitioned slowly and methodically.

However, there are a few times a year when the weather is not expected to get too cold, hot or windy, when houseplants can come out to the garden to get very lightly rinsed with a hose. Taking them out immediately prior to a light rain is even better. Rain is gentler and more sustained than a brief and coarse hose rinsing. Both techniques rinse away dust and residue from insect activity.

Rinsing does not eliminate mite, scale or mealybug infestations, but temporarily eliminates the residue from such infestations, and somewhat disrupts their activity. Mites prefer dusty plants to clean ones. While plant are outside, it would be a good time for any necessary repotting, or to apply horticultural oil to control mites or scale. Mineral deposits can also be scrubbed from saucers and the bottoms of pots. If hosed during sunny weather, houseplants should be shaded by a larger tree or awning.

Posted on by tonytomeo · 25 Comments

Fertilizer

P80325‘Fertilizer’ is a polite term for ‘recycled vegetation’.

‘Recycled vegetation’ is a polite term for something else.

This is not a synthetic type of fertilizer that gets tossed about or poured on. It gets added to compost and allowed to compost some more before being spread out as a mulch over the surface of the soil, just before chipped vegetation gets dispersed over the top. Alternatively, it sometimes gets mixed into the soil. It is quite useful. You can’t beat the price.

It is recycled differently from the compost or chipped vegetation (from a brush chipper). It is recycled through a horse, or more specifically, two horses. As the picture above suggests, it begins at the front of the horse, and ends at the rear of the horse, which is not pictured.

The horses happen to be quite efficient at recycling vegetation. They do it all the time. They are probably doing it right now. I would describe the process, but I do not know how it works.

Three times weekly, on Mondays, Wednesdays and Fridays, some poor sucker must go to where the horses live and work to collect the binned ‘fertilizer’, and deliver it to the compost pile. By the time it gets mixed into the compost, and composted more, it is not recognizable. Otherwise, it might be a problem in the parts of the landscape where it gets dispersed with the compost.

The landscape seems to like it. Only a few plants with special needs get any sort of synthetic fertilizer.

This sort of recycling is not new technology. It has been around as long as horses have been serving humans. In fact, it was not even invented by humans. Horses were doing it long before humans merely discovered, refined and took the credit for it.P80325+

Posted on by tonytomeo · 26 Comments

Cherry Blossom Festival

P80324KI would say that this is our own private Cherry Blossom Festival, but it really gets a crowd. These two old trees are at the edge of the main roadway through town, so several people driving by stop to take pictures. They may not seem to be very impressive compared to healthier flowering cherry trees, but they are what we have, and we are happy to get the bloom.

Decades ago, fruiting cherries were some of the more common orchard trees in the Santa Clara Valley. Flowering cherries were only somewhat popular in home gardens, and might have been less popular without the Japanese influence. They are more popular in cooler climates, not only because they are happier in cooler climates, but also because those who live where winters are harsh have a better appreciation for bloom that so happily celebrates the end of winter.

These particular trees are unfortunately deteriorating. They are quite old, and the trunks and main limbs rot and die back a bit more each year. No one wants to cut them down because they are such a familiar landmark this time of year. Few people can remember when the trees were not there.

We are grateful for the bloom this year because the weather could have easily ruined it. It was so warm earlier in winter that bloom could have very easily been accelerated, and happened just as frosty or rainy weather resumed. The trees seemed to know what time of year it was, and waited for the right time. It did happen to rain just prior to when these pictures were taken, but the blossoms had just opened, so were resilient to the rain. Weather should be milder for the next few days, until these trees are finished with their bloom.P80324K+

Posted on by tonytomeo · 12 Comments

Six on Saturday: Vegetation Management

 

It sounds so unglamorous; probably because it is. We had been working on this project for three weeks, and just finished on Thursday. Most of the work was cutting back thickets of native (but installed) redtwig dogwood. It was neither coppicing nor pollarding, but something in between. They could not be coppiced completely because they are in trafficked areas where they might be tripping hazards until they regenerate. They were not quite pollarded because there were no real trunks remaining, just short stubs of canes. We also needed to removed brambles that were mixed with the redtwig dogwood, as well as a few exotic (non-native) plants that had grown in amongst the whole nasty mess. There were a few nice pyracanthas and privets that needed to be removed. In a better situation, they would have been nice specimens. This was not the right situation for any of them. Besides, privets seed profusely and are quite invasive.

1. Now you see it. This is a privet that needed to be removed.P80324
2. Now you don’t. This is the same privet noticeably absent.P80324+
3. Evidence. There really was a privet here.P80324++
4. And there it goes!P80324+++
5. Except for the foliage that just recently developed, this thicket of redtwig dogwood that will not be pruned is what the rest of it looked like.P80324++++
6. This is what it looks like now.P80324+++++
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 · 30 Comments

Maritime Ceanothus

70322What ever happened to Point Reyes ceanothus? It is such a nice low growing shrub, with small holly-like leaves, and cheery blue flowers in very early spring. It was quite popular when it initially became available, but now seems to be rare. Maritime ceanothus, Ceanothus maritimus, from San Luis Obispo County, is a similar species that presently seems to be getting more attention.

‘Frosty Dawn’ is the standard cultivar of maritime ceanothus, although there may be at least three cultivars with the same name. The ‘correct’ cultivar gets about two feet tall and five feet wide, with rigid but arching stems, grayish half inch long leaves, and dense trusses of minute blue flowers as winter ends. Another cultivar gets taller with more open growth. Another has lighter blue flowers.

Once established, maritime ceanothus can probably survive without any watering, but it might be happier with occasional watering through summer. New plants will need to be watered until they disperse their roots. Compared to other ceanothus, maritime ceanothus grows relatively slowly, but lives longer. (Many ceanothus can be short-lived.) Also, it is a bit more tolerant of partial shade.

Posted on by tonytomeo · 14 Comments

Autumn Really Was For Planting

70531thumbIt is easy to see why there are optimum times to prune, and just as easy to see when pruning should not be done. Generally, deciduous plants prefer to get pruned while dormant and bare. They should not be pruned when actively blooming or making new foliage. Roots are of course not so easy to see. Do we really know what they are doing, or what sort of mischief they are getting into?

Autumn is the best time for planting most plants. They are less active than they had been earlier in the year, and many are going dormant. Either way, they do not need much. Once in the ground, their roots are kept cool and moist by the weather. They get to sit there all winter, as they slowly begin to disperse their roots to get ready for the following spring. It all fits into their natural life cycle.

Shopping habits, however, do not. By autumn, many plants are neither as pretty nor as tempting as they were earlier in the year. By winter, the weather keeps many of us inside, and out of nurseries. Now that it is spring, it is difficult to resist all the pretty plants that are blooming so delightfully. We are tempted to buy them compulsively, even if we have no immediate plans for them.

That is okay. We can make this work. Buying certain plants in bloom actually has certain advantages. It shows how and when particular plants bloom. This might be helpful when trying to decide between different cultivars of deciduous magnolias, flowering cherries, flowering crabapples or wisterias, for example. Besides, they will finish blooming quickly, and start to produce new foliage.

If planted before new foliage matures, new plants should be planted in cool weather, and maybe sprayed lightly with water after the roots get soaked in. This is best for drought tolerant plants like ceanothus, that want out of their cans (nursery pots) as soon as possible. If new plants stay in their cans long enough for foliage to mature, they must be watered carefully, but not kept saturated. The black vinyl cans should be shaded, since they get warm in sunlight.

Posted on by tonytomeo · 34 Comments

Na2CO3•NaHCO3•2H2O

P80321Trona

That is what this seemingly disorganized jumble of letters and numbers represents; the chemical formula for the mineral known as trona. It is what a certain small town in the very northwestern corner of San Bernardino County is named for. Trona is one of a few minerals mined and refined there. Apparently, not much else happens there.

Trona the town is about as out of the way as one can get in the contiguous United States of American. Death Valley to the northeast at least gets tourists. Not much flora survives in the hellish summer heat and caustically saline soil. The athletic field at Trona High School is famous for being grassless dirt. Even the now defunct golf course was dirt. Roofs are more important for providing shade than for keeping the four inches of annual rainfall out. A leaky house is more likely to petrify before it rots. The inertly arid air, roasting heat and acrid drifting minerals seems to sterilize and embalm even abandoned houses. The Google Satellite image shows how boringly uniform the factory tract houses are. Many are now abandoned. Some are missing.

Why am I mentioning Trona here? Because horticulture is so limited in Trona. There might not be many better places in America for a horticulturist who lives amongst dense forests of the tallest trees in the world to go on vacation! There are so few distractions! The vast desert extends for miles in every direction, with only a few plants surviving in home gardens in town. The satellite image shows how empty the gardens are. A single lawn can not be found. Even artificial turf is notably absent, perhaps because no one wants to go outside in such horrid weather.

I suppose that I will never know until I go there.

Posted on by tonytomeo · 13 Comments

Baby’s Breath

80328You might think that such a popular flower would be easy to get a picture of. Baby’s breath, Gypsophila paniculata, is everywhere, and almost a standard component of the mixed bouquets found in supermarkets. However, the flowers are so small and so sparsely arranged on thin stems, that they do not look like much in pictures. This picture is a closeup of a tightly bound bundle of bloom.

As common is it is with other cut flowers, baby’s breath is quite uncommon in home gardens. It is not often available in nurseries. Seed should have been sown by about now. Baby’s breath grows something like a tumbleweed about three or even four feet high and wide. The stems look too delicate to stand so tall. The minute flowers are usually white but can be pale pink and slightly fluffier.

While blooming in summer, baby’s breath is so handsome that no one wants to cut the flowers. It is difficult to take just a few good stems to add to other cut flowers without ruining the symmetry of a well rounded plant. Some people who grow it prefer to put it out of the way, or grow it amongst other flowers to hide the disfigurement of harvest. Baby’s breath blooms better if crowded anyway.

Posted on by tonytomeo · 3 Comments

Frost Is History For Now

80328thumbThere is no doubt that frost will return next autumn. It does that every year. Right now, we are more concerned that is should not return prior to that. It is now safe to plant plants that are sensitive to frost. Even if the weather were to somehow get cold enough to necessitate protection of frost sensitive plants, it will not be severely cold, and it will not last long. It is best to start now than to delay.

It is also safe to prune away foliage and stems that were damaged by frost through winter. It was best to leave it in place through winter, both to provide a bit of insulation for undamaged stems below, and to not promote new growth. Pruning it away allows warming sunlight to the undamaged stems, and stimulates generation of new growth. A bit of new growth might already be apparent.

Many leafy perennials can be cut to the ground, or at least just above their rhizomes. The tall vertical canes of cannas can be cut back to the low horizontal rhizomes that creep along the ground. The canes are not really stems anyway, but are merely upright foliar shoots. Any shorter new shoots that are beginning to develop can remain, even if a few outer leaves happen to be damaged.

Zonal geraniums can likewise be pruned almost to the ground, leaving only stubs of lower stems, even if only upper and outer foliage was damaged by frost. Although they do not need to be cut back so severely, they respond to such pruning splendidly, with vigorous new stems and foliage. The fungal foliar disease known as ‘rust’ overwinters in old leaves that get removed in the process.

Lemons, limes and any other citrus that were damaged by frost only need to have their damaged stems removed as far back as viable growth, where new buds might already be visible. However, if more pruning is necessary, this would be a good time to do it. Major pruning should not be done later in summer because the sensitive bark of inner stems can be scalded by sudden exposure to too much sunlight. Small trees that are sensitive to frost become more resilient as the grow larger.