Posted on by tonytomeo · 36 Comments

Six on Saturday: ROCK ON!

 

This might be the very first post in the history of Six on Saturday that lacks any plant material! There are certainly plenty of flowers blooming out there, but that was not what I was working with this week. The first two pictures were at a site where I was working earlier in the week. The other four pictures were at a larger landscape that is in the process of being renovated. Until this week, I had not seen much of the site, but heard about it daily. The work is behind schedule, so a whole bunch of us went to the site to help. Although we were very grateful for the help, and everyone was genuinely pleased to be of service, I can not help feeling guilty about my esteemed colleagues engaged in the unpleasantries of such dusty and dirty work, especially when they have so much of their own work to tend to.

1. The soil at the first job site is of exceptional quality, but is only about a foot deep! This now broken mudstone is what lurks below, but it is not broken down under. It is only broken in the picture because it needed to be pried up so that larger plants could go into the ground. It took all morning just to install a few #5 plants. The smaller #1 plants were planted much more easily on top of the mudstone.P806162. This sometimes happens when prying up mudstone.P80616+3. At the second and much larger landscape, the irrigation system and lighting needed to be installed before the rest of the landscape. There is now irrigation pipe and electrical conduit everywhere! It took some serious digging. Because so much excavation had already been done at the site for the installation of big wide walkways, much of the soil was being moved a second time. The soil is so loose and sandy that much of it needed to be dug a few more times from the ditches as the irrigation system was installed.P80616++4. A few big boulders were installed on the site. To avoid driving the heavy machinery on the new concrete, the boulders were installed early in the renovation process, before the new concrete was installed. Consequently, they were buried by the soil that came from all the ditches for the irrigation and lighting systems. They reappeared as the ditches were filled. I still do not understand the appeal of stone and boulders in landscapes. The mudstone that was encountered earlier in the week was not much fun.P80616+++5. Plant material has not yet been installed, so the landscape features only a few dogwood trees that were already there, and these few boulders scattered about in the dusty soil. It really is dusty! I cannot figure out why the dogwoods are so happy there. I can not figure out why the boulders are so happy either, . . . or if they are happy . . . or if they really care at all. I just do not know.P80616++++6. One of our soil science professors at school was emphatic about soil being ‘soil’. We were not allowed to refer to soil as ‘dirt’. Well, this soil happens to be better than it looks, and it is good enough for dogwoods, but it really is very dirty soil.P80616+++++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 · 13 Comments

Blue Dawn Flower

70614Even within its native range, blue dawn flower, Ipomoea indica, can be a problem. There are not many other plants in some coastal regions of Peru that can avoid getting overwhelmed by the aggressive wiry vines. These vines grow roots where they touch soil, so can spread indefinitely over the ground. Vines that succumb to frost over winter regenerate as if nothing ever happened.

Three inch wide flowers are rich purplish blue when they open at dawn. They then fade through the day, only to be replaced by fresh new flowers the following morning. Bloom continues from spring until autumn, and can get profuse at times. The lush rich green leaves are cordate (heart-shaped) or lobed (with only three lobes). Too much fertilizer promotes growth but inhibits bloom.

Blue dawn flower’s main weakness is a dependency on water. If it gets too dry briefly in summer, it can die back like it does with frost, and then recover once it gets water, but it will not survive for very long if it stays dry. As aggressive as it is, it should not spread very far from landscaped areas or riparian areas where summers are too warm and dry for it.

Posted on by tonytomeo · 13 Comments

Annuals Just Might Be Perennials

70614thumbAnnuals come and annuals go. There are cool season annuals for winter. There are warm season annuals for summer. Really though, there are all sorts of annuals that are not annuals at all. Most are some sort of perennial that has the potential to last longer than a single season. Only a few popular ‘annuals’ would necessarily die after blooming and producing seed, within a single year.

To be clear, true annuals last only a single year. They probably germinate from seed early in spring, and grow quickly. They then bloom in spring or at least by summer, and subsequently produce seed. Once their seed has matured and been dispersed, their job is done. They finally die in late autumn or winter. Annuals from deserts are even faster because of the harshness of the weather.

Many large-flowered sunflowers are true annuals. They are finished once their seeds mature. They will not bloom again. Even if they wanted to, they would not survive through winter. Petunias should be annuals, because they also die over winter. However, it is possible for them to survive winter in a semi-dormant state, and regenerate and bloom again the following spring and summer.

Realistically, it is not practical to salvage petunias for a second year. It is easier and more efficient to plant new ones. Yet, it sometimes happens, particularly in mixed plantings where old plants can get cut back while cool season annuals dominate in winter. Alternatively, lanky old stems can get buried with only their tips exposed. These tips might grow as new plants the following spring.

Cyclamen are cool season annuals that have been dieing back for summer. They usually get removed by now. However, in mixed plantings, some of their fat tubers can survive through summer to regenerate next autumn. For what they cost, they are worth salvaging! Primrose, chrysanthemum, impatiens and the various fibrous begonias are all worth salvaging through their off seasons.

Fibrous begonias may not know what their off season is. Those that bloomed through winter might be looking tired by now. If pruned back, they could regenerate as warm season annuals. Those planted in spring might look tired by the end of summer. If pruned back early enough in autumn, and protected from frost, they might grow enough before winter to work as cool season annuals. Cutting them back and waiting for regeneration may not be much more effort than replacing old plants with new ones, and is less expensive.

Posted on by tonytomeo · 28 Comments

Horridculture – Satellite Dish

P80613

Satellite dishes, tater tots, fish sticks, soldiers, flat tops, gobstoppers, corks, oil tanks and trip hazards are just some of the many but less objectionable names that my colleague down south and I have developed for what should be good shrubbery, trees, vines or whatever that so-called gardeners got to with their hedge shears. Tater tots are usually Heavenly bamboo shorn into stout cylinders. Fish sticks are the same, but taller, narrower, and often composed of Podocarpus macrophyllus. Corks are commonly breath of Heaven, but could be just about anything shorn to be somewhat cylindrical, but narrower down low, and wider on top. Trip hazards are ground cover plants like creeping California lilac or creeping cotoneaster, shorn into absurd low hedges next to sidewalks. Gobstoppers could be just about anything, but tend to hang over the curbs in parking lots, ready to impale a radiator grill with a gnarly stub. You can use your imagination for soldiers, flat tops and oil tanks. You probably can not conceive anything more absurd than what my colleague and I see on our job sites.

‘Garage sales’ are probably the worst. They are a variety of plants that were probably intended to function as a practical landscape, but instead got shorn collectively into a large thicket of mixed foliage that rarely gets the chance to bloom. Bougainvillea, New Zealand flax, jade plant, pampas grass, wisteria, fruit trees and even the occasional century plant; anything goes! If the so-called gardeners can reach it, they will shear it.

The original satellite dish was a carob tree in Westchester. I first saw it in the early 1990s, when some homes that had a bit of space to spare were still outfitted with huge parabolic satellite dishes, before the much smaller ones that can be mounted on roofs were invented. This tree had a normal trunk that went up into a remarkably flat ceiling under which no foliage was allowed to hang. This ceiling was only about seven feet above the lawn below. Above that, there was a remarkably symmetrical but low dome of very tightly shorn foliage that looked something like a downward facing satellite dish. This dome was perhaps twenty feet wide, but less than four feet from top to bottom. So, with seven feet of clearance above the lawn, the entire tree was no more than twelve feet tall, barely higher than the eaves of the home behind it. I really wish I had a picture to share. Who puts so much work into ruining a tree?! Maintaining it properly would have been much less effort.

Earlier, we discussed renovating overgrown shrubbery as small trees. https://tonytomeo.wordpress.com/2018/05/21/overgrown-shrubbery-becomes-small-trees/ . The satellite dish was the exact opposite of such useful procedures. What is the point of planting trees and then not allowing them to develop as anything more than abused shrubbery?

The pair of satellite dishes in the picture above are Japanese maples. Their canopies are about the same depth as that of the carob tree in Westchester, but are only about half as broad. What is the point of planting Japanese maples if they are not allowed to look like Japanese maples? They look ridiculous. What is worse is that someone puts significant effort into making them look so ridiculous. They would be so much prettier if pruned only very rarely, and only for clearance above the driveway and away from the building behind. Such pruning would have been less work than shearing these disgraced trees just once.

Even more effort goes into humiliating the plants in the picture below. The fish stick to the upper right is a wisteria vine that is not allowed to bloom or climb onto the trellis that was built for it (which is not visible in the picture). The trip hazard to the lower left is some sort of lavender that is not allowed to spread out over the bare soil as it was intended to do. The cork in the middle is a New Zealand tea tree that can never develop the gracefully irregular canopy and sculptural trunks that it would be pleased to display. It is just a cork.

P80613+

Posted on by tonytomeo · 11 Comments

Annual Gazania

80620Why would anyone want to grow annual gazania when perennial gazania that is popularly grown as ground cover lasts for several years? Well, as long as the weather stays warm, annual gazania blooms with an impressive abundance of bigger and more brightly colored flowers. Perennial gazania blooms less profusely and only in midsummer, with simpler and somewhat smaller flowers.

Flowers are warm shades of orange, red, yellow, pink, beige and white, typically with intricate patterns of stripes and spots of other colors of the same range, as well as chocolatey brown. Each upward facing daisy flower is as wide as three inches or maybe four. They close up at night and during cloudy weather, and stay closed briefly in the morning until they warm up a bit in the sunlight.

Mature plants typically do not get much more than six inched deep, but can get twice as deep if crowded. They have no problem getting nearly a foot wide though. Foliage is only slightly bronzed; not quite bronze, but not rich green either. The pretty gray undersides of the leaves are obscured from view by the density of the foliage. Gazania needs full exposure, and is quite tolerant of heat.

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Concrete And Jungle Can Be Compatible

80620thumbConcrete is one of the most common of landscape materials. There are probably more landscapes that include concrete of one form or another than there are landscapes that include lawn, and most landscapes include lawn. There are more landscapes that lack shade trees than there are without concrete. We do not notice it much because, once it is installed, we do not do much to it.

Concrete gets poured into our gardens as a liquid like slurry of cement and sand and gravel aggregates that cures into a stone-like solid. It is not ‘cement’, but cement is the component that binds it all together. Almost all modern concrete is reinforced with steel of some sort to prevent it from breaking as easily as old unreinforced pavement does. It can be as permanent as we want it to be.

Concrete is used to pave patios, driveways and sidewalks, and gets molded into stairs, curbs, and the foundations and slabs for our homes and garages. The visible surfaces of concrete can be colored, textured or outfitted with stone to look better in the landscape than simple bare concrete. It is relatively ‘low-maintenance’, but should sometimes get swept or blown if debris accumulates.

Concrete is a versatile and durable material, but is no more perfect than anything else in the garden. It inhibits percolation of moisture and gas exchange in the soil below. Because it is inflexible, it fractures if displaced by roots or settling soil. Glare from paved surfaces can enhance sun exposure enough to roast sensitive foliage and exposed bark. Certain foliar debris can stain concrete.

Concrete limits plant selection. Conversely, the presence of mature trees limits the location and quantity (surface area) of concrete to be installed. Trees with aggressive roots or big trunks should not be planted so close to concrete that they will have no choice but to displace it. Root barriers help with mid sized trees, but are not always effective forever. Dogwoods,Japanese maples and other plants with sensitive foliage or bark, are more vulnerable to exposure if concrete around them is also exposed.

Posted on by tonytomeo · 32 Comments

Halston Junior

P80610Apparently, the warnings were effective. https://tonytomeo.wordpress.com/2018/01/27/caution/ . They managed to avoid the traps and survive to perpetuate another generation under the lawn of Felton Covered Bridge Park. It is impossible to know if they are directly related to the now deceased Halston https://tonytomeo.wordpress.com/2018/04/21/halston/ who infested a landscape only about two miles away. It is unimportant. They all are intent on conquest.

Halston Junior, a baby gopher who may or may not be a descendant of the famed Halston, was found wet and shivering on the surface of the ridiculously perforated lawn. Rhody wanted to play, but was restrained from consorting with the enemy. The prisoner was detained, dried and put in one of Rhody’s blankets to recover. There was no formal interrogation, but the detainee was found to be well armed.

It is impossible to imagine what sort of damage such sharp and strong claws could inflict!P80610+

It is equally as impossible to imagine how dangerous such nasty fangs could be!P80610++

The purpose of this formidable weapon is unknown, but it is undoubtedly very dangerous!P80610+++However, the most effective weapons of all were mind control techniques. Halston Junior used them merely for self defense, by convincing his captors that he was too cute to be euthanized. It could have been much worse if he had not been so mentally compromised from his ordeal.

We knew that Halston Junior could not be released back into the lawn from which he came, but we also knew that relocating him somewhere else would disrupt the ecosystem slightly, and that Halston Junior would likely migrate back to where he came from. Ultimately, he did get released into a nearby meadow. We can only hope that the rest of the ecosystem will not notice.

Halston Junior won this battle, but not the war.

 

Posted on by tonytomeo · 23 Comments

Souvenir

P80609KNurseries are full of plants for sale. That is their business. They sell plants, and whatever plants need. With a bit of money, it is easy to purchase plants to compose an exquisite landscape. That is important to landscape professionals who make a business of composing landscapes to beautify the environments in which they work.

Those of us who enjoy home gardening might also purchase plants that we want for our garden. Yet, our home gardens are more than mere landscapes that are designed to simply beautify. The might also produce flowers for cutting, fruits and vegetables. Some might produce firewood. Gardens are usable spaces for active lifestyles. They are spaces for us to grow whatever we want to grow.

I buy almost nothing for my garden. The last item I purchased was a ‘John F. Kennedy’ rose, and I only did so because it was easier than growing one from scratch, and it is my favorite hybrid tea rose. Almost everything else was grown from seed, cutting, division or even as entire plants taken from somewhere else. They all have stories. My figs and quince are from trees that have been producing fruit in the Santa Clara Valley for generations. My great grandfather gave me my first rhubarb before I was in kindergarten. I found one of my pelargoniums in a neighbor’s trash heap when I was in junior high school. I found another in a creek where I grew citrus in Gilroy in the early 1990s.

My iris are from all over. My favorite are still those from the garden of my great grandmother https://tonytomeo.wordpress.com/2017/09/10/roots/. Two others came from and ‘incident’ back in college https://tonytomeo.wordpress.com/2017/09/12/the-colors-of-karma/ . I may grow as many a four white iris, not only because they are my favorite color, but because they came from important origins. The short white iris that I do not like much must stay because it came from my grandmother’s garden in Saint Helens. There is another tall iris that is not a pure white, but seems to be somewhat grayish, but it must stay too because it is the only iris I got from the historic home of a friend’s mother in Monterey. One of my favorite whites was supposed to be red, but must stay because it came from a friend’s home in Lompico . . . and because it is one of the prettiest. I have a purplish burgundy iris that I only recently learned was brought from the garden of a colleague’s grandmother in Placentia, a town in Orange County that really should change it’s name. It proliferated and was shared with the Felton Presbyterian Church, where it proliferated again, which is how I found some on a trash heap. They are a keeper now.

When they were all together in the same garden, I grew as many as fourteen bearded iris, with a few other types. Some of the redundant white bearded iris have been relocated to the garden parcel in Brookdale, just to keep the separate from similar cultivars. Not many have been added, although there does happen to be a group of mixed iris from the garden of a former client in Ben Lomond. I think I will keep them mixed because they are easier to keep track of as a single mixed group rahter than as several separate cultivars.

These pictures are a few weeks old, from when the iris were still blooming. The iris in the picture above came from the garden of a friend in the East Hills above San Jose. The flowers are the biggest of all the iris I grow. You can see how distinctive they are. The iris in the picture below, which is not a good picture, is ‘Blueberry Ice’. It was a gift from the Clara B. Rees Iris Society. It has stout stems to support the very wide flowers that are mostly white with a variable blue edge.P80609K+

Posted on by tonytomeo · 20 Comments

Six on Saturday: Petunias

 

These were only recently planted, within the past few weeks, so are not completely filled in. That of course is unimportant for pictures of only the flowers close up. I have not grown petunias for many years, but I am getting to like these because they are so colorful in the sunnier spots. There are busy Lizzy in the shadier spots. (I can explain that later.) It is not easy to select a favorite. Although the white petunia should be my favorite, I really like how brightly colorful the first one ‘Dreams Sky Blue’ is on the side of the road. ‘Blue Madness’ and ‘Red Madness’, the second and third pictures, are so reminiscent of petunias that we grew many years ago, and might even be the same. The unknown petunia in the fifth picture is the only one here that I do not like much, and it did not work out as well as hoped anyway. It is planted in hanging pots, but does not cascade. That is why a few ‘Wave Lavender’ in the fourth picture were added in with them. The white petunia happens to be only one of a mix of various colors.

The first three were planted in beds at ground level. The fourth was planted both in an elevated planting bed, and added to hanging baskets with the fifth. The fifth was the first to be planted in the hanging baskets, but is not cascading as expected. The sixth, along with a variety of other colors, is in a few large planter boxes, so will hopefully cascade somewhat, but does not need to.

1. Dreams Sky BlueP80609
2. Midnight MadnessP80609+
3. Red MadnessP80609++
4. Wave LavenderP80609+++
5. This variety is unknownP80609++++
6. This variety is unknown and includes a mix of colors.P80609+++++
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

Western Azalea

70607We think of rhododendrons and azaleas as being from cooler and moister climates. After all, that is where they do best. Yet, there does happen to be a native western azalea, Rhododendron occidentale, that lives in the Sierra Nevada and coastal ranges from San Diego County to just southwest of Portland, Oregon. (Azalea and Rhododendron are varied specie of the same genus.)

Bloom is mostly white, with pink, pale yellow or golden orange. Some of the fancier garden varieties bloom clear white, or with more vibrant color. The lightly fragrant, two inch wide flowers bloom in groups of two or three on open conical trusses. Each truss produces as many as a dozen flowers in sequence, so a new flower replaces a fading flower for a bit more than a week each spring.

Western azaleas plants are unfortunately not much to look at after bloom. They grow somewhat slowly and irregularly to about three to five feet tall. The two or three inch long deciduous leaves that can turn yellow and orange where autumn is cooler are more likely to turn an unimpressive grayish brown here. Foliage can fade prematurely if the weather gets too hot and arid through summer.