Posted on by tonytomeo · 6 Comments

Steven Michael Ralls Memorial Tree

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Steven Michael Ralls Memorial Tree is mostly camouflaged by the surrounding forest.

Steven Michael Ralls got his Memorial Tree this morning, three years after he passed away on May 2, 2017. The circumstances that coincided for this event were impossible to ignore. Just like the other Memorial Tree, which was installed to replace an oak that was missing from a parking lot island, the Steven Michael Ralls Memorial Tree also has a practical application.

The small tree is a young Monterey Cypress, Cupressus macrocarpa, that needed to be removed from one landscape, and was waiting in the recovery nursery to be installed into another. Of course, a Monterey cypress in no easy tree to accommodate. It is too big and too dark to be compatible with most of the landscapes into which we add smaller and mostly deciduous trees.

However, it happens to be ideal for obscuring undesirable scenery, just like a row of five Arizona cypress, Cupressus arizonica, will be expected to do when installed along a busy roadway. Furthermore, it just happens to grow bigger faster than Arizona cypress, so is even better for the low end of the row where a bigger tree is preferred. The row really needs six trees anyway.

The location of the tree just happens to be ideal as well. With all Arizona cypress spaced evenly along the roadway, and the Steven Michael Ralls Memorial Tree strategically situated around the lower corner of the fence, it is located precisely where Steven Michael Ralls camped while homeless late in 2012. I could not have selected a more appropriate location if I had planned it.

The new tree will need to be watered by bucket occasionally through summer, but will need no intervention after the rain starts next autumn. It knows what it needs to do to get established and become an evergreen asset to the forest.

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It was easier to see before it was planted.
Posted on by tonytomeo · 4 Comments

Six on Saturday: Self Isolation

 

Self isolation was not exactly why I avoided the landscapes. Since there are very few people here, I can get all the pictures I want without getting too close to anyone. Nor did I intentionally avoid the landscapes because, as I mentioned earlier, it is too saddening to see them looking so good without anyone here to enjoy them. I was just too busy to get out. These six pictures are instead from the recovery nursery. These are items that should eventually be out in the landscapes. Some should have bee there a long time ago.

1. Jasminum humile, Italian jasmine was grown from pruning scraps from a big shrubby specimen in Monterey. It does not look like much so far, but is extremely fragrant, like pink jasmine.P00502-1

2. Solanum jasminoides, potato vine was left by someone who moved away, but has not yet been planted into a landscape. It is overgrown now, so will need to be pruned back when planted.P00502-2

3. Mimulus aurantiacus, sticky monkey flower got removed from where it was in the way of something else, got canned, and now waits to be recycled elsewhere. I should have composted it.P00502-3

4. Cistus x argenteus, rockrose was actually purchased rather than recycled or grown here. It was for a small new landscape that can not be completed right now. This might be ‘Silver Pink’.P00502-4

5. Pelargonium peltatum, ivy geranium provided cuttings when pruned a month ago. It might be ‘Royal Candy Cane’. They should have been planted intact, but there is not enough of them.P00502-5

6. Leucanthemum × superbum, Shasta daisy, like sticky monkey flower, was removed from an area that was outfitted with a new landscape, but not yet recycled. I really should just plant it.P00502-6

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 · 14 Comments

Horridculture – Fences

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This is not exactly visually appealing.

Fences are necessary. They contain children, dogs and minor livestock. They exclude deer, cattle and others who are unwanted within an enclosed space. Some obscure unwanted scenery. However, even the more ornate sorts are more functional than aesthetically appealing.

That is why hedges are popularly grown to obscure fences that obscure outside scenery. Climbing vines take up less space than hedges, but are likely to damage the fences that they are intended to obscure.

Where I lived in town, the garden in back was surrounded by fences. I loathed them. I grew a grapevine on one. Another one was outfitted with a trellis of twine for pole beans to climb. Tall zonal geraniums obscured at least the lower half of the fence behind the laundry yard. I would have preferred no fences at all.

There were no children or dogs to contain. Nor were there cattle or deer to exclude. Except for the laundry and trash yards, there was no unwanted scenery to obscure. Nonetheless, the neighbors wanted fences, probably because they all believed that backyards should be fenced. It was just how it had always been.

Some urban fences are more like high and solidly constructed walls. Batons cover the seams between planks. Where local ordinance limits the height of fences, lattice is commonly added on top to (sort of) lawfully increase height. It is difficult to grow much on the shady north side of such tall fences.

I am fortunate that I do not work with many fences anymore. However, an area at work is surrounded by cyclone fences. It is necessary and practical, but would be very unappealing around landscape situations. I put pole beans on one, and two grape vines on another. If I must contend with them, I may as well take advantage of them.

Posted on by tonytomeo · 21 Comments

Lineup

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The usual suspects.

There is significant traffic right outside. It is one of the three busiest roads around. No one here really minds, because we are mostly too busy with something else while we are here. We are accustomed to it as part of the ‘scenery’. The noise sometimes makes it necessary to shout to each other, or take a telephone call somewhere else, but is not too much of a bother otherwise.

However, the scenery that those in the traffic see from the road might be slightly less than appealing. Industrial buildings surrounded by pavement, building materials, work vehicles and all sorts of associated items are all that are in here. Next door, there is a herd of dumpsters! It is a view worth obscuring. Bay trees and box elders that used to screen the view are too tall now.

I should have planted these five Arizona cypress in a row along the road last autumn. If I were to plant them now, I will need to water them occasionally until next autumn, not that I would mind. After their first winter, they would be happy on their own. They would start to obscure the view within only a few years, and unlike box elders, would stay evergreen through winter.

They really should have been planted a long time ago. They have been in the same cans for so long that the medium within has decomposed and collapsed. Without staking, their lean trunks became disfigured in confinement. They really would not have needed to be staked if they had been planted sooner and been able to grow more vigorously. Fortunately, they should recover.

A Monterey cypress will be planted at the low end of the row next Saturday, even if these Arizona cypress are not planted until autumn. I will explain later.

Posted on by tonytomeo · 15 Comments

Wheat

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It is not as bad as it looks.

No, this is not wheat. It is the larger of the two Mexican fan palms that I dug and canned more than a week ago. ‘Wheat’ refers to the unpleasant phase that it is now going through. It is a long and awkward story about how it became known as the ‘wheat’ phase. All that anyone should know is that it refers to the color of the fading foliage. It fades from green to golden brown, just like ‘wheat’.

I say that the explanation is awkward because it involves an old skit by an offensive comedian on HBO in 1986, when the renowned landscape designer, Brent Green, was my college roommate.

Yes, we will just leave it at that.

Anyway, this is not at all unexpected. It is a normal process. I just wish it could be avoided. Every time I dig and can a palm, I hope that it will not happen; and I actually engage the associated palm as if it will somehow be different from the rest, and maintain all of its healthy green foliage. Some get through it more efficiently. Some start to produce new foliage before their old foliage dies off.

I actually relocated a mature windmill palm that somehow maintained the upper half of its canopy until it started to produce new foliage. That was all the fronds that were above a right angle to the trunk! I was impressed by that one. It was very different though. Most of the roots had already been damaged prior to relocation. Also, it was relocated in autumn, so had all winter to start recovery.

This unfortunate palm was dug not very long ago, just as the cool and rainy weather of winter was ending. Now that the weather is suddenly warming to around 80 degrees, the foliage is resuming vascular activity that the severed roots can not sustain. To compensate, it will shed this foliage that is now browning, while diverting resources into new foliage and roots. It knows what it is doing.

The new fronds that are still folded up in the middle are just fine. They will unfold into healthy new fronds as the palm recovers through summer. The first few fronds might be a bit stunted, but that is just part of the process. Newly relocated palms tend to accelerate foliar growth during such recovery, so, in just a few months, this cute little palm may look as good as it did when I canned it here.

Posted on by tonytomeo · 22 Comments

Six on Saturday: Blank Slate (& Asphalt)

 

While unable to work at my second most time consuming job, I developed a bit of unused space into a vegetable garden. I would not have done so if I had known how much work it would be, or how much of what seemed to be usable space was just trash, brambles and a shallow bit of soil on top of pavement. Alternatively, I should have had the main unpaved area bulldozed first.

Now that it is halfway through spring, this new vegetable garden is finally started!

1. Four decades of junk mixed with wicked brambles was removed to expose less than four hundred square feet of cruddy slope. Rain draining from the deck eroded a gully in the middle.P00425-1

2. To the right, disfigured juniper should be temporarily obscured by cucumber vines expected to grow from seed sown just above a ditch. Indeterminate tomato vines will be added soon.P00425-2

3. Across the road, more junk, weeds and brambles were removed from between a curb and fence, only to find that the area is paved to the fence! Pole beans will be pleased with the fence.P00425-3

4. Posts supporting the deck had too much potential to ignore. Dragon fruit plants can climb them to the top and cascade downward. The posts are pressure treated, so will be painted first.P00425-4

5. ‘Kadota’ fig can grow as a hedge where the outer surface gets sunlight under the downhill edge of the deck. The area behind it is too shaded to be useful. The area in front is for vegetables.P00425-5

6. There are plenty of radish greens growing wild outside of the garden; but a few radish roots would be nice too. These are developing splendidly, and should be ready before anything else.P00425-6

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 · 7 Comments

Horridculture – Jumpin’ Juniper!

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This is the backside of some of the better junipers!

Junipers have a bad reputation. They earned it at a time when they were too common. Too many were installed into situations that they were not appropriate for. As they grew, they were unpleasant to handle. If not handled enough, they became overgrown and shabby. Once that happened, there were nearly impossible to prune back into confinement without being ruined.

I was never one to completely subscribe to that bad reputation. There were just too many junipers that I really liked, particularly the Hollywood juniper and the Hetz blue juniper. There were a few that I disliked, and I still loath the common tam juniper, but they were in the minority, and happen to be the same sort that are becoming more scarce.

For landscape situations that they happen to conform to, there really is no reason for junipers to be any less appropriate than any other genus is. They are happy with local climates and soil types. Once established, they do not need much water at all, and many need no supplemental irrigation. They last for a very long time. Best of all, they need only minimal maintenance.

However, even some of the best junipers are not perfect. I know. I just needed to work with some that were installed in 1980, and, except for getting pruned back around the edges, were completely ignored. After days of trying to tame them, I can not longer deny that some of what I have not wanted to believe about them is very true.

Besides all the trash and road debris that had been dumped into them during the past four decades, they were thickly infested with Himalayan blackberry. Removing the bramble was not only wickedly unpleasant, but it exposed bare spots where juniper foliage had been shaded out. Removal of a few junipers that had been overwhelmed and died left even more bare spots.

Well, I could not just leave all the dead twiggy growth under the bars spots, so tried to remove some of that too. That only exposed more of what what under and behind it, and caused the well foliated stems above to sag into the whole mess. In the end, the junipers are an unsightly mess, and I know that they will stay that way for a very long time.

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Removal of all the bramble and dead junipers exposes a lot of bare branches.
Posted on by tonytomeo · 20 Comments

Tradition

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Lunaria annua is known more for coin shaped seed pods than bloom.

Money plant, Lunaria annua, which some may know as ‘honesty’, is honestly not a wildflower here. It is neither native nor naturalized. Yet, it seems to grow wild on roadsides, in drainage ditches, and around the perimeters of some of the landscapes. It certainly produces enough seed to naturalize. It just would not have done so in this climate without a bit of intervention.

Many years ago, someone who maintained the landscapes here started sowing seed for money plant. I do not know if he was the first to sow the seed, or if he collected it from plants that someone else grew. He collected seed annually to disperse randomly by simply tossing it out wherever he though it might happily grow into more money plant.

Since money plant wants a bit more water than it gets from annual rainfall here, it was happiest where it is most often seen now, in roadside drainage ditches and on the perimeters of irrigated landscapes. It somehow competes effectively with other seemingly more aggressive vegetation. In the more favorable situations, it self sows, but can not perpetuate indefinitely.

The horticulturist who dispersed the seed for so many years retired a few years ago. Consequently, there has been a bit less money plant annually since then. It certainly tries to naturalize, but was rather scarce last year.

We could not allow it to go extinct just yet. We collected some of the seed from the plants that bloomed last year. I dispersed a few where I thought they would be happy without being obtrusive in the landscapes. I gave most of the seed to a neighbor who happens to enjoy tossing random seed into random (but hopefully suitable) spots where wildflowers would be nice.

It is such a delightful tradition that is worth continuing.

Posted on by tonytomeo · 14 Comments

When It Rains, It Pours

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Mudslide!

The only reason we developed a small vegetable garden here this year is that we have been unable to go to work for about a month. Without my second most time consuming employment, I had time to clear a small unused space (which was not nearly as simple as that sounds) and sow seed for vegetables. It was a late start a month ago, but not too late.

In fact, there was still time to do it before the last storm to go through. I know that sounds trivial, but as a Californian who is accustomed to gardening in a chaparral climate, and sometimes where there is no water available, planting prior to a storm ‘seems’ to be rather important. I know it is not. Water is available here. Otherwise, I would not grow vegetables.

Not only was there a storm, but there was a second storm later! Of course, it is not really that simple. The first light duty storm was nice, and soaked things sufficiently. Then the weather stayed strangely cool for this time of year. Nothing germinated. Then the second storm was brief but torrential enough to erode all of the recently sown seed right out of the new garden!

It was too comical for me to be too annoyed by it. I only needed to see what survived the erosion so that I could replace what did not. I almost replaced everything anyway, just because I was that certain that nothing survived.

Well, as it turned out, not much was missing! The garden got a slow start, and was delayed again by cool weather, but somehow seems to be recovering nicely. Even some of the very old seed that I did not expect to be viable has germinated.

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A late batch of radish somehow survived.

Now, I must go work in the garden.

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Late but ready to go.
Posted on by tonytomeo · 18 Comments

Six on Saturday: Moving Day

A neighbor family relocated to a new home a short distance away. The former home needs such major repair that it may instead be demolished and replaced. For now, it remains abandoned. I collected a few plants from the abandoned garden so that some could be relocated to the new home. So far, only two Philodendron selloum and one Mexican fan palm went. The rest remain here, and may actually go to other homes.

1. In all my career, I have never seen a trunk of a palm shrivel from desiccation like this. All of the now absent roots were desiccated also. I seriously doubt that this queen palm will survive.P00418-1

2. It got canned anyway. Without significant roots, it certainly did not need all this medium. It only got a #15 can so that the shriveled trunk could be buried, sort of like a weird palm cutting.P00418-2

3. This lemon tree was almost left behind because it is so mutilated. It looks a bit suspicious too, sort of like shaddock understock of a formerly grafted tree. Actually, it is ‘Ponderosa’ lemon.P00418-3

4. The smaller of two Mexican fan palms got canned into a #5 can until it starts to produce new roots and foliage. Actually, only the queen palm and the big Mexican fan palm got larger cans.P00418-4

5. This bigger Mexican fan palm got a squat #20 can because the trunk is wider than a #5 can. There are not very many roots in there yet. It got left here to divert traffic around the garden.P00418-5

6. These three Philodendron selloum were all I originally wanted to salvage. One lacks foliage for now. The other can that seems to be empty contains bare tubers of an unidentified heliconia.P00418-6

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/