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Weather To Die For

This recycled article is not exactly accurate for current weather conditions elsewhere, but describes the current weather here. It does not happen every year, but is somewhat common.

tonytomeo's avatarTony Tomeo

B80210KDon’t worry. He is not really deceased. He is just making good use of the lawn. The well foliated trees in the distance are a clue that this pictures was not taken recently, although it illustrates the current weather conditions accurately. We all want to be out in it, whether getting lazy in a local park, walking on the beach, or just staying home and working in the garden.

It seems that almost everyone else is contending with less pleasant weather. The summer in much of Australia had been historically hot. Much of Europe got some nasty storms. Parts of the Southeastern United States of America that get snow only on rare occasion got more than they have in recent memory.

We are certainly used to our share of pleasant weather through winter. We can only see snow in the distance on top of Mount Hamilton. Frost only happens a…

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If you want your garden to grow, you have to talk to it.

Sadly, the not so little Monterey pine in the old school yard is now gone. Unfortunately, they do not last long in the chaparral climate of the Santa Clara Valley.

tonytomeo's avatarTony Tomeo

P80131So the spelling is a bit . . . off. Ignore the ‘E’ before ‘If’ and the ‘n’ after ‘grow’. They are crossed out . . . sort of. ‘wont’ means ‘want’. ‘haf’ means ‘have’, as in ‘have to’ or ‘need to’. It made sense at the time, more than four decades ago. Perhaps I should rephrase it.

If you want your garden to grow, you must talk to it.

You must talk to your garden in order for it to grow.

Your garden requires regular discourse for healthy growth.

This concept dates from a time of big Boston ferns and spider plants suspended by coarse macrame with big wooden beads. Coleus and rubber tree were popular house plants too. Remember terrariums? There were big flowered daisies, tam junipers and big petunias in the yard. A group of three European white birches was cool, as if it was somehow unique…

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Six on Saturday: After (And Before) The Storm

Rhody and something flowery are lacking from my Six on Saturday again. We got some good rain though, after the horrid wind that I wrote about earlier. That is worth bragging about. Prior to rain, I try to plant what needs to be planted, so that it can get soaked in by the rain. This technique is particularly important where there is no irrigation.

1. Banana slug, mascot of the University of California at Santa Cruz, magically appear as the annual rainy season begins. I do not know where they go for summer, but they do not go quickly.

2. Mud also arrives with rain. This mud was formerly a baseball field. It is now where we dump storm debris. Others of our crew thought it was fun to do donuts, . . . which is why I got stuck.

3. Sweeping storm debris from so much pavement here takes ingenuity. The bare tractor bucket damages old asphalt. This mattress was surprisingly effective, but difficult to sleep on later.

4. Coast live oak seedling grew where a squirrel buried an acorn with a potted epiphyllum. I pulled the seedling out, and plugged it by the roadside, where a new coast live oak would be nice.

5. Deodar cedar seedlings are abundant under a few mature trees here. Several have been plugged into landscapes. This one got plugged by the roadside with the coast live oak and cypress.

6. Arizona cypress seedlings are finally installed as an informal hedge on the roadside, with the coast live oak at one end, and two deodar cedars and the Steven Michael Ralls Memorial Tree at the other end. These five cypress had been canned for too long, so will be much happier in the ground where they can now disperse their roots. I am pleased with this new informal hedge.

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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Saucer Magnolia

Spring color blooms before winter ends.

Before the deciduous foliage regenerates, saucer magnolia, Magnolia X soulangeana, is already completely overwhelmed with a profusion of big pastel pink and white flowers. Some of the many cultivars bloom white, paler pink or purplish. Some are more purple than pink. Individual flowers are about six inches wide. Some cultivars bloom with globular flowers that do not open quite so broadly. Others open even wider. The largest flowers can get almost a foot wide. Eventually, fading flowers will be replaced with big and soft lime green leaves. Most saucer magnolia trees are grown with several trunks and low branches to display the bloom more prominently, as well as to display the sculptural branch structure while bare through winter. The flat bark is strikingly light gray.

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Some Shrubs Are Better Trees

Sculptural trunks are worth showing off.

So many really nifty small trees never get an opportunity to perform to their best potential. Many function so well as shrubbery that there is no need to prune them into tree form. Many just get shorn down because that is the most obvious option.

There certainly is no problem with maintaining large shrubbery as shrubbery if that is the intended function. Oleander, photinia, privet, bottlebrush and various pittosporums are all excellent shrubbery, and except for oleander, can be shorn into hedges. Yet, any of them can alternatively be grown into small trees.

‘Standards’ are shrubs that are trained onto single staked trunks. Small shrubs trained as standards, such as boxwood, azalea and euryops, are really only shrubbery on a stick. The larger shrubs though, are more often trained onto trunks about six feet tall so that they can develop as small trees with single trunks.

However, they do not necessarily need single straight trunks. Many have naturally sculptural trunks that are worthy of display. They can be planted as shrubbery, and simply trained up on a few of the trunks that they are naturally equipped with. They only need lower growth pruned away as they mature, instead of getting pruned down.

Overgrown shrubbery that has become so obtrusive that it might otherwise need to be removed can often be salvaged by getting pruned up as small trees. For example, if a New Zealand tea tree or myoporum has gotten so wide at the base that it is awkward to work around, the basal growth can be pruned away so that only upper grown that has adequate clearance remains suspended on exposed trunks. The gnarly trunks within are often more appealing than the abused foliage that obscured them.

Japanese maple, crape myrtle, water gum (Tristania laurina) and various podocarpus really are small trees, but often get shorn instead of pruned properly by ‘mow, blow and go’ gardeners who do not know any better. Olive, coast live oak and saucer magnolia are substantial trees that often get shorn into shrubbery before they can grow beyond the reach of abusive gardeners.

Hollywood juniper as well as some of the other larger junipers naturally develop into sculptural small trees that are just as appealing with or without their lower growth. The gnarly foliated stems are just as sculptural as the trunks and stems within. If space allows, they can be left to grow somewhat wildly with only occasional pruning of superfluous stems.

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CAUTION!

‘Horridculture’ or not? I do not believe that this recycled article conforms to the ‘Horridculture’ meme; but perhaps the sarcasm qualifies it as such.

tonytomeo's avatarTony Tomeo

P80127Halston was quite the rage when I was a little tyke.

I did not know exactly what that meant.

I can remember elegant ladies wearing Halston pill box hats. From the back seat of the new 1967 Chevelle, I could admire my Mother’s, while my younger brother on the other side of the car got tangled in our flower child Aunt’s abundant and long hair blowing in the wind.

Although I had never seen a Halston before, I could determine from hats made from them that they were soft, fuzzy and cylindrical. I knew that apricots, walnuts and oranges grew on trees, so I would sometimes look into unfamiliar trees, including the silk oaks next door, to see if I could see Halstons ripening in them.

My older sister eventually explained that Halston was they guy who made the hats. He was very busy. His hats were very popular. Apparently…

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Dahlia

Dahlias look nothing like this yet.

There is nothing simple about dahlia. Some are short bedding plants that behave as annuals. Tree dahlias develop big and lanky canes that can get as high as ground floor eaves, only to replace them during the next summer. The most popular dahlias are lushly foliated perennials with striking and extraordinarily colorful bloom. Most are taller than bedding dahlias, but less than six feet tall.

Dahlias can bloom just about any color except blue. However, most purple dahlias tend to be rather reddish or pinkish. Green dahlias are rare, and tend to be rather yellowish. Floral form is wildly variable! So is floral size. Some dahlia flowers get no wider than two inches. Larger sorts get about ten inches wide, so must be staked. Dahlias might be as variable as related chrysanthemums.

Dormant dahlia tubers can go into the garden as early as late autumn here. Most start in winter though, to be less susceptible to rot while waiting for spring. After blooming through summer, dahlia growth succumbs to frost late in autumn. Division of crowded dormant tubers every few years promotes healthier spring regeneration. There is no need to dig and store tubers through winter here.

Posted on by tonytomeo · 6 Comments

Summer Bulbs After Spring Bulbs

Summer bulbs start late in winter.

It was easy to bury spring bulbs so discourteously in shallow graves last autumn. None of them got proper funerals. Perhaps cool season annuals obscured their interment sites. No one needed to know they were there. It seemed like a perfect crime, until now. They are back like the undead. After all, they were not dead when interred. They were merely dormant, and likely plump and healthy.

Crocus, snowdrop, narcissus and some of the other related daffodil might already be blooming. Otherwise, their foliage is emerging above the soil. They do not necessarily wait for the soil to get warmer later in winter. Hyacinth and tulip will bloom a bit later. Delayed planting delays bloom, but only for the first season. Established spring bulbs from previous seasons will bloom as they like.

Spring bulbs, including corms, rhizomes, tubers and tuberous roots, prefer early interment for a reason. They appreciate a good chill through winter. Although most get refrigerated artificially prior to sale, they certainly do not mind a bit more chill. Besides, they also appreciate early root dispersion, even while still dormant. They prefer to bloom early, but unfortunately, also finish bloom early.

Summer bulbs are very different. They go into the garden later because they do not require chill. Furthermore, many types are sensitive to minor frost if they begin to grow too early in winter. Since they start growth later than spring bulbs, summer bulbs generally bloom later. However, some bloom for extensive seasons. A few summer bulbs bloom from early summer until frost in late autumn.

Dahlia, canna and old fashioned white calla are the more reliable of summer bulbs to plant now. Old fashioned white calla may be rare in nurseries. Smaller, more colorful, but less vigorous callas are more popular. Such summer bulbs are more sustainable than spring bulbs, and can perform for many years. Gladiolus and various lily are spectacular summer bulbs, but bloom once annually.

Incidentally, unlike the spring bulbs, most summer bulbs are actually corms, rhizomes, tubers or tuberous roots.

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Brent is still an Idiot!

This recycled article shows how two of my unrefined ‘garden parcels’ looked prior to the CZU Fire that burned through the neighborhood last summer. https://tonytomeo.com/2020/10/31/six-on-saturday-there-goes-the-neighborhood/

tonytomeo's avatarTony Tomeo

That is irrelevant here though. These are pictures of one of my ‘gardens’ in Brookdale, for comparison to pictures from the Jungalow. The pictures are no better than those of the Jungalow. ( https://tonytomeo.wordpress.com/2018/01/28/brent-is-an-idiot/ ) There is nothing to show anyway. It is just a forested vacant lot on Melwin Avenue. I have no pictures of the lower vacant lot on Logan Avenue where I grow my fig trees, berries, quince tree, rhubarb and a few other odds and ends. There is no landscape there either. It is just a vacant lot where I grow a few odd plants that I do not want to plant in riskier situations, where they might be in the way of other development or gardening. The fig trees can not produce good fruit in such cool shade, but will likely make plenty of cuttings for new trees elsewhere. Perhaps someday, I will have better…

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Brent is an Idiot!

If this recycled article were as bad as the title implies, I would have posted it for ‘Horridculture’ last Wednesday.

tonytomeo's avatarTony Tomeo

He might be the best landscape designer in West Hollywood, but he is an idiot nonetheless. Besides that, he takes worthless pictures. That is why I do not have any good pictures of his Mid City Los Angeles Jungalow garden to post. I will share a few of what I have, but they really do not show it off like it should be. ( https://tonytomeo.wordpress.com/2018/01/28/dreamscape-at-the-jungalow/ )

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Of course, the prettiest thing in the Jungalow garden is Grace, my niece. This is an old picture. She is learning to drive now! Oh my! She gets here cuteness from her mother; and she looks more like both of her grandmothers than her parents.

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She is adorable and knows how to use it.

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This ‘Charles Grimaldi’ Angel’s trumpet is the same one that provided the flowers for an illustration in Sunset – Western Garden Book, although I do not remember in which year.

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