Posted on by tonytomeo · 15 Comments

Seriously?!

P71104Gardening is not for everyone. If you are reading this, you probably enjoy gardening. There are many more people who simply are not interested in it. Some tend to their own gardens in a basic manner just to keep their homes looking good. Most hire gardeners to maintain their landscapes for them.

I use the term ‘maintain’ very lightly. What they really do is keep the lawn from getting too deep, and other plants from getting too overgrown. Very few really care how they accomplish these basic requirements.

I could go into the detail about how they brag about saving water while wasting enough to drown trees, or how they shear everything within reach into nondescript . . . whatever they get shorn into, or how most problems that arborists encounter in their work are caused by gardeners. Instead, I am just gong to talk briefly about two examples of the lack of expertise or concern or both exhibited by gardeners who maintain the landscape at a small office building in my neighborhood.

There are a few healthy ‘Prairie Fire’ flowering crabapple trees in this landscape. A few years ago, they bloomed spectacularly! The following year, they were about to do the same thing. They were quite healthy, with plump buds that were swelling nicely as winter became spring. Just as the buds were about to pop, and the bright pink of the flowers within was becoming visible between the bud scales, the gardeners arrived and pollarded all the trees. Yes, they pruned away ALL of the blooming stems, cut them up, and disposed of them, leaving bare trunks and limbs. There was not bloom.

The trees recovered through the year, and produced plenty of stems to bloom the following spring. Again, the buds swelled at the end of winter, only to be completely removed when the trees were pollarded just before bloom. The trees were not even pollarded correctly. It was quite a hack job. This happens every year now. The trees never bloom.

A stone retaining wall below this landscape was well landscaped with rosemary hanging down from the top, and Boston ivy climbing up from below. The two will eventually be redundant to each other as the rosemary grows enough to cover the wall without the help of the Boston ivy, but for now, they work well together.

The Boston ivy was just beginning to show autumn color. It happens to be one of the few plants that colors reliably in our mild climate, with bright yellow, orange, red and burgundy. It would have been spectacular, but, like the budded stems of the flowering crabapples, all the Boston ivy was cut down to the ground. All the foliage that was just about to do what it does best was completely removed and disposed of.

There is certainly nothing wrong with exposing parts of the handsome stone wall. The rosemary still cascades from above to break up the expansiveness of the wall. The problem is the untimely removal of something that should have been an asset for the landscape, rather than just a liability. The Boston Ivy could have been cut back in winter, after displaying its spectacular autumn foliar color. Professionals should know how to accomplish this.

The property manager pays a lot of money for this sort of nonsense. Hey, we all know mistakes happen; but this is inexcusable. Seriously, people who know nothing about gardening could do better than these so called professionals.

Posted on by tonytomeo · 34 Comments

My Tiny Downtown Garden

P71105Main Street and Santa Cruz Avenue are the two main streets of downtown Los Gatos. They are the main shopping district, and the part of town that everyone sees. As much as things have changed, a bit of the familiar remains. Gilley’s Coffee Shoppe is still next door to the (rebuilt) Los Gatos Cinema. The brick La Canada Building miraculously survived the Earthquake. The simple deco Park Vista Building across the street is just as elegant now as it was a century ago. There are still concerts in the Town Plaza in summertime, shaded by the Town Christmas Tree that gets lit up in December.

Both Main Street and Santa Cruz Avenue are outfitted with big planter boxes that give the downtown a more relaxed and colorful ambiance. Each planter is elevated about a foot and a half, and contains one or two Indian hawthorn trees. A low wrought iron railing protects the contents of the planter boxes. Irrigation s automated. That is about all that the planters have in common.

Each planter box is ‘adopted’ by a member of the community, or a community group, each with different styles and different ideas of what we should plant in our boxes. Some like things neat and trim. Others believe that bigger is better. Some like plenty of foliage. Others like lots of colorful flowers. Some planter boxes even get adorned with seasonal decorations.

My little planter box is on the northwest corner of Nicholson Avenue and North Santa Cruz Avenue. It has a brass plaque with my name on it. It is my little garden space downtown, where I get to express my simple gardening style for everyone to see, even though I grow a few flowery things there that I would not actually waste space on in my own garden.

The trailing rosemary that cascades over the wall so nicely was there when I got the planter. So were the montbretia and liriope, which I did not want to remove because someone else had gone through the effort of planting them. When there was more space available, I planted a few inexpensive flowering annuals, like pansies and calendulas. As things grew, there was less space for annuals. Besides, I wanted to make a point of doing this planter nicely with sustainable plants that I propagated myself.

The two largest features are common aeoniums. The two original cuttings were on the dashboard in the car for weeks before I finally stuck them in the planter. They came from the home of a friend’s mother in Monterey. We emptied the home out after she passed away. It was gratifying that they found a home in my planter box, and even more gratifying that they grew so well and provided countless cuttings for copies all over town, including in other planter boxes. Between the two big aeoniums, there is a small bronze aeonium. It is the same age as the two big ones, but grows slower, and is regularly set back by people breaking off and taking the stems as fast as they grow.

These three aeoniums were not alone on the dashboard. They arrived with another related succulent, which I believe to be an old fashioned echeveria, and some sort of compact aloe. The echeveria has spread out over much of the area between the big aeoniums. The aloe is still confined to one corner.

To contrast with all the pale green foliage, I added two bronze ‘Australia’ cannas. They cost only a few dollars, and were probably my biggest expense in this entire project.

The most impressive feature of the planter box are the nasturtiums. Yes, common, simple and cheap nasturtiums. I wanted to get straight yellow nasturtiums for compatibility with the signs of the neighboring bicycle shop, but could not find any at the time. I instead started with the common ‘Jewels’ mix, which is still my favorite. After self sowing, the subsequent feral nasturtiums are only orange and yellow, with only one or two red blooming plants. What made them so excellent is how they grew! They overwhelmed the trailing rosemary (which is fine since they die back in summer when the rosemary takes over), and cascaded onto the walkway and curb. They filled the space between the railing and an adjacent bench, and even started growing through the bench. There was so much bright orange and yellow that no one seemed to mind that it was nasturtium.

After a long and warm summer, the aeoniums need serious grooming, and the nasturtium need to be replaced. I really hope that the planter box will be as impressive as it was last winter. The picture here is not very good. Perhaps I will get a better picture in a few months.

P71105+

Posted on by tonytomeo · 4 Comments

Change of Format

P71019

This blog is now two months old; so it is about time that I start to recycle old articles instead of writing so many ‘elaborations’. The articles are probably more interesting and relevant anyway. They will be from the same time last year, or previous years. Like I have been doing with new articles, the old articles will be split into two separate postings. One will be the main topic. The other will be the ‘plant’ of the week. So, one new article and one old article split into two postings each week leaves only three days for ‘elaborations’. Redundant articles will be omitted. Eventually, I will refrain from daily postings. Also, I will try to keep my ‘elaborations’ brief. I know I tend to get carried away with this. Alternatively, I may recycle another article each week, leaving only one day for ‘elaborations’. I will figure this out as I go along.

While I am taking the time to post something that has nothing to do with gardening, I should also mention that one of my main objections to writing a blog is that so much of what I write about is specifically for the climate in which I live, and not necessarily applicable to other regions. My articles are written for newspapers between San Francisco and Beverly Hills (in Los Angeles County). However, since starting this blog, I have found that not only do the newspapers that I write for already share my articles with newspapers in other regions, but that people who read my articles in other regions are already as aware of regional differences as I am. People in Australia seem to be as interested in reading about autumn during their spring as I am interested in reading about their spring during autumn. People seem to know how much of the information that I present is actually useful to them, and can distinguish information that is not accurate for their respective applications. Now, I feel much better about posting my articles, as well as writing about whatever I want to write about.

If you are wondering how the picture of Rhody above is relevant to the posting, it has no relevance. He just had a way of getting you to read my blog earlier, so I tried it again, and it worked.

Posted on by tonytomeo · 8 Comments

Colors

P71029+Remember the movie from 1988? I don’t either. I never saw it. Gang violence is not my idea of a good time. The title ‘Colors’ refers to the use of distinguishing colors by the gangs of Los Angeles. Gang members wear colors that correspond to their respective gang affiliation.

As autumn progresses, some of us get to gloat about our colors. New England gets the most and best colors, with a full range of reds, oranges and yellows, as well as browns and burgundies. The Appalachian Mountains to the south seem to go lighter on the reds and burgundies, concentrating more on oranges. The upper Midwest around Minnesota excels at the rich reds, with yellows confined to groves of cottonwoods. The lower Midwest does well with clear browns alternating with yellows, and even some oranges. The Rocky Mountains have a good range of color, with more gold than the Appalachians Mountains, but it is not as spectacularly concentrated. The bright colors contrast more with evergreens.

Here on the West Coast, we have yellow. . . . and redwoods . . . and palm trees. The bright yellow cottonwoods are quite flashy farther inland and in Nevada, where they grow along creeks and rivers that flow through the southern deserts. The only orange and rusty red we get from native specie here is from poison oak. Cottonwoods, willows, sycamores, box elders and even the bigleaf maples all turn yellow; and only when the weather is just so. Box elder foliage is more likely to shrivel and turn tan. Sycamore and willow foliage usually gets rather shabby.

To get the bright oranges and reds that everyone else in American enjoys, we plant exotic (non-native) trees; and there are not many choices that color reliably in our mild climate. Sweetgum is probably the most reliable, and the most variable with its color. Pistache and flowering pear are the second best choices, although flowering pear has a serious problem with fireblight here. Gingko colors very nicely, but is limited to yellow, which we already have a bit of.

While everyone else is posting pictures of their autumn color online and bragging to Californians about it, our color is only beginning to develop here. The most reliably colorful of the exotic trees seem to be doing well; but the natives and some of the exotics are defoliating prematurely, without much color at all. Honeylocusts have dropped most of their foliage while it is still lemon-lime green. Box elders just look sickly. Cottonwoods drop leaves as soon as they turn yellow, leaving only green leaves up in their canopies. The English walnut in the picture is the best color I could find.

It happens this way sometimes. This year, it might be a result of the unusually warm weather so late in summer, after the weather had already started to turn milder. It is impossible to say for certain. We take what we can get. We are not known for autumn color here.

P71029

Posted on by tonytomeo · 10 Comments

Planned Obsolescence

P71028For my exquisite 1979 Electra, planned obsolescence did not work out so well. It was probably a grand Buick for that time, and one of the last with tail fins! It was elegant. It was big. It was steel. It was made to last ten years or 100,000 miles . . . and that was it. Seriously, as much as I enjoyed that car, it did not want go to much farther than it was designed to go. It limped along for almost 20,000 miles more, but was not happy about it, and was really tired and worn out by the time it went to Buick Heaven.

Planned obsolescence used to mean something completely different in landscaping. Yes, we all know what it means now; that many of the so called ‘sustainable’ modern cultivars last only a few years so that they need to be replaced sooner than older cultivars. What it used to mean is that fast growing plants were used to get a landscape established quickly, while more desirable but slower plants took their time growing. As the more desirable plants matured, the fast growing plants could be removed.

For example, a large condominium complex was landscaped primarily with Norway maples and flowering pears. These trees would eventually grow to be proportionate to the buildings and the spaces that they shade. To provide shade sooner, and to help the landscape look established by the second summer, common cottonwoods were incorporated into larger areas. Their placement was not as important as it was to the maples and pears, but was strategic enough to avoid the other trees and buildings as long as possible. The intention was to allow the cottonwoods to be the prominent trees in the landscape only temporarily, but to remove them as the maples and pears matured. It was a practical technique used by landscape designers for as long as anyone can remember.

Sadly, few modern ‘gardeners’ understand this concept. The cottonwoods did not get removed when they should have been. They overwhelmed and crowded the other trees, and caused them to be disfigured as they grew. The cottonwood roots broke pavement and ruined lawns. Then, after all the damage and destruction, . . . the cottonwoods died, like cottonwoods do. Now the landscape is shaded by healthy but distorted maples and pears. The plan did not work very well.

Now, such planned obsolescence is simply impractical for trees. Even if those maintaining landscapes were reliable enough to follow through with such plans, modern tree preservation ordinances would prevent them from getting permits to remove temporary trees. Planned obsolescence can work with smaller shrubbery and perennials in home gardens, but those of us who use the technique must follow through with our plans so that things do not get too crowded.

Posted on by tonytomeo · 3 Comments

Firewood

P71027Heating homes has certainly changed. It has gotten much more efficient and less polluting. Homes are much better insulated than they were only a few decades ago. Heating systems use much less fuel, and produce much cleaner exhaust. That is partly how more than a million people who live in San Jose now make less smog than when there were half as many.

The unfortunate part of that efficiency is the decline in popularity of traditional fireplaces and stoves. Burning wood is now politically incorrect, and at times, even illegal. ‘Spare the air’ days are strictly enforced when air quality gets unpleasant.

In San Jose, building codes do not allow fireplaces to be build into new homes. Only homes that were build with fireplaces or stoves prior to the ordinance are outfitted with them. Fireplaces that are damaged by earthquakes are often removed instead of repaired.

Tending a fire does not fit into modern lifestyles very well anyway. If someone stays home long enough to do so, he or she is too busy with other work. Tending a fire simply is not considered a common household chore anymore. Fireplaces do not have thermostats, so do not maintain the sort of consistency in temperature that so many of us have become accustomed to.

Those of us who still use our fireplaces (when permitted) must procure firewood. There are no more deteriorating orchards to supply it. We can not grow our own because permits are needed to cut down trees that are big enough to make firewood. Permits are only granted for trees that must be cut down for other reasons. The need for fuel is not good enough.

Consequently, it becomes necessary to purchase expensive firewood. To some of us, it is still worth it. We can either purchase mixed firewood from a tree service, or get it from a firewood cutter in the Santa Cruz Mountains. There always seem to be more trees that need to be cut down than are needed for firewood.

Posted on by tonytomeo · 8 Comments

Anatomically Correct Horticulture

P71026Certain fruits and vegetables were so much more palatable before studying botany. Knowing what they really are sort of puts a damper on things.

Real fruits, including those known as vegetables, are no problem. We all know what they are, and they have the seeds to prove it. Just like flowers reward pollinators with nectar, many plants use fruit to get animals and people to disperse their seeds. Therefore, the fruit is designed to be eaten.

The majority of vegetables are fine too. It seems natural to eat leaves, stems, roots and even flowers. Things get a bit weird with petioles of rhubarb, celery and cardoon, since the leaves are not eaten. Cinnamon bark and saffron stamens also seems a bit odd. What about maple syrup? Is it a vegetable too?

Then there are fruits and vegetables that are not what we think they are.

You will never look at a potato the same way knowing that it is a subterranean stem known as a stolon. If it is looking back at you, it is because it has eyes, which are actually modified axillary buds, which only stems are equipped with. It it were a modified tuber or or a tuberous root like most of us think it is, it would not have these eyes.

Pineapple might be watching too, with its many eyes. Each eye actually represents a flower. What we think of as a pineapple fruit is actually a densely crowded collection of distended and fused flowers. Does that mean it is a vegetable like broccoli or cauliflower?

Strawberry is sort of fruity; but only what we think of as strawberry ‘seeds’. They are actually single seeded fruits known as ‘achenes’. Really, those little black things are outfitted with everything that they need to be classified as fruit. The red part of the strawberry is only a ‘receptacle’ for the achenes.

Everyone knows that fig trees do not bloom. So, how do they make fruit? Well, they technically don’t make any visible fruit; but they do bloom. What we think of as a fig fruit is actually a weird inside out inflorescence, with minute flowers on the inside. Each species of fig is pollinated by a particular species of minute wasp that enters the inflorescence through a very small hole at the end. Minute achenes about the size of strawberry achenes are the crunchy bits in ripe figs. To make figs even more unappealing, some wild figs contain the eggs and larvae of the wasps that went inside to deposit their eggs before dying there. Yum. Most garden varieties attract the wasps, but lack the necessary floral parts for the wasp to want to leave their eggs there. They therefore do the job of pollinating without dying inside.

Posted on by tonytomeo · 5 Comments

Butterfly

P71022Before you send me a comment about it, I am already aware that this is a very bad picture. It was taken with my primitive telephone because it was convenient at the time. This tired looking butterfly might not have waited for me to get the camera. It passed away, seemingly peacefully, right there on the hood of the old Chevrolet. It did not seem to be injured in any way. It probably simply expired like butterflies do after breeding. It is a natural process that the butterfly did not seem to be too distressed about. It gets no obituary because I am not qualified to write one. We are not sufficiently acquainted. I do not even know the specie of this butterfly.

Now that he or she is deceased, I ponder the beauty of these insects. They are so graceful and very colorful. They flutter about like animated flowers. Everyone likes them. Some of us grow flowers that attract them to the garden, and plants to sustain their baby caterpillars.

All flowers are designed to appeal to their pollinators of choice. Those that are pollinated by wind lack color, fragrance and other bling, but are very abundant. Those that are pollinated by flies smell like what flies like. Those that want to attract nocturnal pollinators are fragrant, luminescent (with ultraviolet patterns that are invisible to us), and open at night. Bee pollinated flowers use infrared patterns, and lots of other colors that bees like, and reward them with nectar and superfluous pollen. Well, you get the point. Floral structure, size, patterns, color, fragrance and schedule are all designed around pollinators.

It is difficult to say what butterflies like. They visit such a variety of flowers. Some have abundant pollen. Others have a bit nectar. Some are tiny flowers in dense groups. Others are larger composite (daisy-like) flowers. Butterflies can see both infrared and ultraviolet color, so it is hard to know what they see in flowers.

Some of the clustered small flowers that butterflies like are alyssum, fennel, goldenrod, phlox, Queen Anne’s lace, verbena, yarrow and of course, butterfly bush. They also like flower of the mint family, such as bee balm, lavender, oregano, rosemary and the various sages. Their favorite composite flowers include aster, calendula, cosmos, marigold, coneflower, zinnia and all the daisies and sunflowers.

Posted on by tonytomeo · 18 Comments

Rain!

P71020Something really crazy happened last night. From out of nowhere, a profusion of drops of water started to fall from the sky! It continued to fall for a while, and got everything wet. Soil that had been dry and dusty became rather muddy. As crazy as it sounds, it is not impossible, and actually happened repeatedly last autumn, winter, and into spring. In fact, it was so abundant that the San Lorenzo River filled with all this strange sky water, and flooded worse than it had since the flood of 1982! People in other less arid climates are more familiar with this sort of thing. It is actually no mystery. It is known simply as ‘rain’.

‘Rain’ is like free water. Really, we do not need to pay for it! It falls from the sky, and waters the garden so we don’t need to. It might be the only water that areas outside of the garden get. Some plants out there have been waiting for it since it stopped falling from the sky last spring. Rain that does not soak into the ground drains into creeks and rivers, which flow into reservoirs that store it for later use. (Local reservoirs don’t really save it for later use directly, but use it to recharge groundwater; but that is another story.)

Another advantage of rain is that it tends to get things wet, which makes them less combustible. This is rather useful when forests nearby are burning. The Bear Fire near Boulder Creek is not quite extinguished. In fact, it is not yet contained. This rain should help with that. It probably will not do much for what is already burning, but should slow the already stagnating progression of the fire.

Posted on by tonytomeo · 5 Comments

White Trash

P71018Long before my white supremacy garden (https://tonytomeo.wordpress.com/2017/09/21/white-supremacy/), I noticed that some white flowers were inferior to their more colorful counterparts. Brent (to the left in the picture in that other article I just cited) is often pleased to remind me of it. Only a few flowers are at their best in white. I, of course, am pleased to remind Brent of them. Then, he reminds me that black flowers are very rare, as if that makes them special. I then remind him that most black and dark flowers are pollinated by flies, so must imitate the fragrances of what flies are attracted to.

Callas, lilies, gladiolus, camellias, oleanders and dahlias all excel in white. They are at least comparable to their more colorful varieties. White callas, gladiolus and oleanders are actually superior to those more colorful. Some but not all varieties of rose, hydrangea, wisteria and tall bearded iris are exquisite in white as well.

Then there are plants like bougainvilleas, crepe myrtles, geraniums and angel’s trumpets that are less impressive in white. Bougainvilleas and crape myrtles just are not quite as bright in white as they are in their vibrant pinks and reds. White geraniums and angel’s trumpets are relatively weak, and white geraniums do not drop faded flowers efficiently.

Many white flowers do not even try to impress. They throw their pollen to the wind and let it do the work. Color is for flashy flowers that want to attract pollinators. Pyracantha and photinia flowers, for example, are neither colorful nor big and flashy, but are very numerous. They are somewhat fragrant, just in case some sort of pollinators happen to be interested. Other wind pollinated flowers do not even offer that much.

Nocturnal flowers that rely on nocturnal pollinators might be big and fragrant, but are mostly insipid pale white. Some are slightly blushed with yellow or pink. They are not bright white only because they do not actually use the brightness of their white to get noticed. They instead use ultraviolet or infrared color that is invisible to us. Many of these seemingly bland flowers have rather flashy patterns of stripes, spots and blotches that are only visible to nocturnal animals and insects who can see ultraviolet or infrared light. Many flowers that are active during the day use this technique in conjunction with visible color (that we can see) as well. Regardless, it does nothing for us, since we can not see it.