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Four O’Clock

Four o’clock is not obsessively punctual.

Most who enjoy four o’clock, Miribilis jalapa, do not grow it intentionally. It tends to sneak into gardens from outside, and then bloom too delightfully to be unwanted. It naturalizes, but not aggressively enough to be a weed. New seedlings develop tuberous roots during their first year. They regenerate to produce abundant seed as early as their second year.

Flowers are supposed to open at 4 o’clock. They may open earlier during warm or humid weather. They remain open through the night, and perhaps for part of the morning. Floral color ranges through white, yellow, orange, red, and many tints of pink. Flowers might be striped or spotted with the other colors. Individual plants might bloom with various colors. 

Mature four o’clock plants do not get much taller than three feet. They might sprawl twice as broad. Rich light green foliage is quite full, and obscures unexpectedly soft and lanky stems with knobby nodes. Bloom continues through most of summer, but decreases with increased seed development late in summer. All growth above ground succumbs to frost.

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Seasonal Changes Keep Gardening Interesting

Oleander continues to bloom into autumn.

Gardening is work. The extent of such work is proportionate to the techniques and scale of the gardening. Substantial gardens likely need substantial work. Fruit trees, roses and vegetables need more specialized work than lawns and wildflowers. Seasonal changes demand a strict schedule. It never ends. It is ironic that so many enjoy gardening to relax. 

In some climates, gardening is less work through the harshest of winter weather. No one wants to be outside in harsh weather anyway. That is no excuse here, where the garden remains active throughout the year. Perhaps that is a disadvantage of such mild climate. Furthermore, seasonal changes, regardless of how mild or slow, are reliably continuous.

Another month of summer remains. That may seem like enough time to stay on schedule for summer gardening, and maybe take some time to relax. However, it is already time to begin preparation for autumn gardening. Gardening should progress as efficiently as the seasons do. Seasonal planning facilitates this process. It will be autumn in only a month. 

Warm season annuals and bedding plants are still in season. Most will remain in season until cool weather in autumn or perhaps the first frost. Nonetheless, cool season annuals for autumn begin to grow from seed about now. If started early enough, they will be ready for planting into the garden at the proper time to replace their warm season counterparts.

The same applies to vegetables. Many warm season vegetables can produce until frost. A last phase of corn should still have time to mature. In the meantime, some cool season vegetables can begin to grow from seed. Broccoli, cabbage and larger types can start in cell packs or flats. For direct sowing, root vegetables may need to wait for garden space.

Some of the many plants that bloom through most of summer bloom less later in summer, even though the weather remains conducive to bloom. Some prefer to divert resources to seed production as the days get shorter. Old fashioned oleander with fragrant bloom can get shabby with seeds. Modern sterile types lack fragrance, but bloom until cool weather. It is a good time to collect seed from formerly seasonal flowers.

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Big Trees

Big stumps around here remind us how big the coastal redwoods were. Big stumps of the giant redwoods are even bigger.

tonytomeo's avatarTony Tomeo

They are the biggest. Giant redwoods are revered for their age and size. It was not always like that.
Many of the biggest giant redwoods were killed merely for bragging rights. Whoever discovered the biggest got to arrange to get it cut down, and then pose on the stump for photographs. Some trees were cut down just so the rings could be counted. Many felled trees were just left to rot where they fell. It was not practical to transport the lumber out of the remote regions of the Sierra Nevada where the trees lived. That was at a time when ‘sportsmen’ shot from trains into herds of wild buffalo, only to pose with the biggest dead carcass they could find in the aftermath, and then leave all of the deceased to rot on the prairie.
So, at about the same time in history that the related coastal redwood was…

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Scarlet Pimpernel

Up close, these flowers are rather pretty. They seem like they would be nice wildflowers. They really just sprawl on the ground though.

tonytomeo's avatarTony Tomeo

P80826It is pretty but pervasive. Actually, I do not really find scarlet pimpernel to be all that appealing, but this is how someone who reads my gardening column in the Santa Ynes Valley News describes it. Embarrassingly, she requested that I discuss scarlet pimpernel while it was more of a problem back on June 7, but I only recently read the message. By now, it is already dying back for autumn, and is completely deteriorated in dry and hot exposed areas. It will be back next spring, and will bloom with tiny peachy orange flowers so that it can throw tiny but ridiculously abundant seed by summer before anyone notices. Flowers can be other colors in other regions. The sprawling stems can spread more than a foot wide, and can get up to about ten inches high if sprawling over other weeds. The tiny and soft leaves are arranged in…

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Six on Saturday: Eucalyptus

Blue gum earned a bad reputation for all species of the genus decades ago. It really is as massive, messy, combustible, unstable and structurally deficient as reputed. Some find its foliar aroma to be objectionable. Fortunately, it is not as invasive as formerly alleged. It is common only because it was planted so extensively a long time ago, and is somewhat naturalized in some regions.

Other eucalypti are more appropriate to landscape situations than blue gum, which is #6 below. #3 and many others are now classified as Corymbia, rather than Eucalyptus. Genus is omitted for these Six.

1. pulverulenta or cinerea is the only eucalyptus that was here when I arrived. I learned this species as ‘cinerea’. However, the correct designation seems to be ‘pulverulenta’. #2 should match.

2. cinerea or pulverulenta, as mentioned above, was supposed to match #1. It was labeled as cinerea. I thought that #1 is cinerea. I still do not know which is cinerea and which is pulverulenta.

3. sideroxylon is the first tree I planted in 2021. For such a dinky tree, it already has quite a history. I gave it to my colleague who appreciates the distinctively dark and coarsely textured bark.

4. citriodora is as goofy as it looks. It is about fifteen feet tall, with just a few leaves at the very top. Its smooth white bark contrasts with that of #3, which it will be planted close to this winter.

5. globulus ‘Compacta’ gets coppiced to produce aromatic juvenile foliage, but is less aromatic than the straight species, #6. It might be my least favorite eucalyptus, although I am fond of #6.

6. globulus gets pollarded to produce aromatic juvenile foliage, like #5, but on a trunk. It is the eucalyptus that gives all other eucalyptus a bad reputation. Nonetheless, I like its grand stature.

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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Giant Yucca

Common giant yucca is uncommonly bold.

Like so many of the plants that became too trendy at one time or another, giant yucca, Yucca elephantipes, had gotten a bad reputation. Some people still consider it to be cheap and common. The real problem though, is that some of the countless giant yuccas planted over the years went into situations that can not accommodate their massively distended trunks. Only a few of the largest specimens are taller than a two story house, and not many get broader than tall. However, their several sculptural trunks are remarkably bulky and flared at the ground.

The somewhat rigid and narrowly pointed leaves can get as long as three feet, and as wide as three inches. Foliage is typically slightly yellowish green, or richer green and a bit floppier in partial shade. Spikes of white flowers that bloom in spring are tall enough to stand just above the foliage, but are usually too high up to be too flashy. Individual flowers are actually only about an inch and a half wide. The bold form and texture of giant yucca work will with other bold plants like giant philodendron, various agaves and various cacti. Shoots and stems of any size that need to be pruned away can be stripped of lower leaves and ‘planted’ wherever new plants are wanted. They only need to be watered regularly until they develop roots like really big cuttings.

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Online Plant Purchases Have Certain Risks

Many seeds can be found online.

So many plants that were difficult to obtain years ago are now much more available online. The internet does more than give everyone access to nurseries and seed suppliers that sell online. It also makes it possible to communicate with others who might want to share plants and seeds from their own gardens. The advantages are obvious, but there are innate problems with so many plants being too available.

Before humans started to relocate plants all over the world, plants were much more confined to certain regions. Once relocated to new regions, some plants naturalized and became problematic for the plants that were already there. Exotic (non-native) plants often had the advantage because pests that troubled them back home had not come with them.

For example, pampas grass had been confined to the Pampas region of South America. It was imported to California and Oregon because its fluffy flowers and graceful texture are so appealing. The problem now is that it naturalized, and continues to proliferate and crowd out native plants in coastal ecosystems, without natural pathogens to slow it down. The availability of so many more plants from so many more regions seriously increases the potential for the importation of invasive exotic plants, as well as plant diseases and even insects!

Another potential problem is that common names of plants can be very different in different regions. Now, this can be an advantage when seeds from a common yucca in Lubbock, Texas might actually be from the very uncommon plains yucca (Yucca campestris, which I recently purchases on Ebay!). The problem is that the yucca known as ‘Adam’s needle’ in Georgia may be a completely different species from what is known as such in Pennsylvania, Oklahoma or anywhere else. A plant described as a ‘mimosa’ could be a silk tree, a jacaranda tree, or any of several different acacia trees!

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Horridculture – Neapolitan

Oh, how cringeworthy. This hedge had not improved in three years, and was already many years old three years ago. So many so-called ‘gardeners’ just do not care.

tonytomeo's avatarTony Tomeo

P80801Baldness was not yet cool while Brent and I were studying horticulture at Cal Poly in San Luis Obispo back in the late 1980s. Nor were hairpieces yet tacky. Consequently, some middle aged men work toupees. As these men aged and grayed, their formerly well matched topees did not.

Hedges of Pittosporum tobira ‘Variegata’ are notorious for developing green sports (unvariegated mutant growth). https://tonytomeo.com/2018/07/04/horridculture-mutants/ Because gardeners do not prune these sports out, they become prominent green blotches in otherwise nicely variegated hedges. Pruning large blotches out would only leave big bald spots. That is why such hedges, as well as similarly blotched hedges of other variegated plants, are known as ‘bad toupee’ hedges.

‘Neapolitan’ hedges are a variant of that concept. They are not composed of formerly identical plants that later challenged their respective identities. ‘Neapolitan’ hedges are actually composed of different plant material that has been shorn together. They…

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Catmint

Catmint bloom is like faded denim.

Cats prefer catnip. It makes better tea too. Catmint, Nepeta X faassenii, is prettier though. It sprawls over the ground to get about three feet wide, without getting more than two feet deep. Where well exposed, it may not get much deeper than one foot. The aromatic gray foliage is denser than that of related catnip. Its individual leaves are small and furrowed.

Bloom begins with warming spring weather, and continues until cooling autumn weather. Individual flowers are tiny, and suspended on small floral stems. They just happen to be very abundant. Warmth stimulates phases of exceptionally profuse bloom. Floral color is light or pale blue, like faded denim. Shearing to deadhead enhances profusion of bloom.

Catmint works well as a rustic border or a ground cover for small areas. Alternatively, the blue bloom can be a delightful component of mixed perennials, in beds, planters or pots. Deer generally ignore catmint. Bees most definitely do not. They swarm it! ‘Walker’s Low’ is the most popular cultivar. It may be all that is available in some regions. Catmint is sterile, so generates no seedlings.

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Mail Order Fakes And Realities

Succulent cuttings are readily available online.

Sea-Monkeys are one of the most famous of mail order scams. Their original $0.49 price was not cheap for children who made the first purchases in 1957. They were nothing like their playful portrayals in comic book advertisements. They were minuscule brine shrimp who were incapable of building castles, playing tennis, or even just smiling for a camera.

Nonetheless, Sea-Monkeys were lucrative for their enterprising inventor. For many such capitalists, profit is the priority. It is no different for the many mail order scams that involve seed and plants. They range from the rare monkey face orchid to multicolored tomatoes. Consumers get either nothing or random seed or plants that are nothing like they expect.

Most mail order scams that involve seed or plants are on e-commerce sites. They mostly include popular buzz words such as ‘rare’, ‘organic’ and ‘bonsai’, even in regard to plants that are not conducive to bonsai culture. Associated illustrations are obviously faked, but somehow convince enough consumers to sustain their deceptive mail order exploitation.

Fortunately, the vast majority of online seed and plant suppliers are very trustworthy and reputable. They provide precisely what they claim to provide. Their commodities become available prior to the season that is best for delivery. Then, delivery happens early during the regionally best season for planting. Products are not marketable out of their seasons.

Many seed catalogs and plant catalogs enact more than seasonal or climactic limitations to their sales. For various reasons, particular species are not admissible within particular states or counties. Some may be potential vectors of disease. Some may be too likely to naturalize and interfere with natural ecosystems. Species limitations are fortunately rare.

Much of the seeds and plants that are available from e-commerce sites such as eBay are from the home gardens of those selling them. The sellers are generally quite trustworthy and reputable, but can make mistakes. It is easy to misidentify some species, especially by common names. Also, such sellers are very often unaware of marketability limitations.