Posted on by tonytomeo · 21 Comments

Six on Saturday: Out With The Old

 

The planter box downtown has been neglected for too long. ( https://tonytomeo.com/2017/11/04/my-tiny-downtown-garden/ ) I really must make some time to clean out the debris and a little bit of trash. There is nothing as interesting as when the concrete slurry was dumped into it by whomever was installing the tile in the bathroom of the adjacent building, but there are some odds and ends. One of the six trailing rosemary plants that was trailing so nicely over the southern edge is missing . . . as in someone cut it back to a stump. Someone dumped out an old dead houseplant right into the middle of the planter box, leaving an upside down pot shaped wad of potting soil, as if no one would mind. Right next to that, someone left a potted kangaroo paw, as if I might want to plant it into the planter box. It is all dried up and mostly dead . . . and I really do not like kangaroo paw enough to want to grow it there. Well, perhaps it is better to show you the drama than to write too much about it.

1. This is the potted kangaroo paw that someone left in the planter box. Anyone who does not notice how sloppy all the dried foliar debris on the ground around it is will be sure to notice how unsightly this dried kangaroo paw is. The pile of discarded potting soil was already bashed up and spread out before this picture was taken. I will probably plant the kangaroo paw somewhere else, just in case it survives. I do not want it here. The pot is nice.P80818

2. It has a name; Anigozanthos ‘Kanga Yellow’. Doesn’t anyone use species names anymore?P80818+

3. Right next to my planter box is a tree well with a London plane that has not grown more than a few inches in the past few years. When my nasturtiums really get to blooming and seeding, I sweep some of the seed into the tree well, where they bloom just as prolifically as they do in the planter box, but a bit later. I make it look like an accident. There is also a busted up houseleek in there. It grew from a piece of mine, and will regenerate when the rain resumes in autumn. It sort of looks like an accident too.P80818++

4. Just to the west of the slow London plane is one of a few old Southern magnolias that will be removed. They are disfigured and somewhat unhealthy, so are not worth salvaging as the pavement of the surrounding roadway, sidewalk and curb get replaced. Even if we wanted to salvage them, they would not likely survive the process. It is sad to see them go, but they were good street trees for a very long time, and certainly lasted longer than they should have been expected to. Southern magnolias commonly displace pavement. I really would not mind if the ailing London plane were to be removed as well, just because it it too pathetic to work around, but the tree huggers are intent on preserving it. When the magnolias get replaced with new redbuds or tupelos, the London plane will look odd, and will eventually get too big and break the new pavement. Oh well. My planter box and this tree are actually on Nicholson Avenue, not on Tait Avenue or Bayview Avenue.P80818+++

5. ‘X’ marks the magnolias who are condemned to death. I know they need to go, but it is saddening anyway. They were fun neighbors.P80818++++

6. Since there were no colorful flowers within my planter box, it was necessary to get this picture elsewhere. Brent might say this looks like the Academy Awards, with a bee on the red carpet rose. Well, I can not expect you to know how Brent thinks. You can omit ‘rose’, and think of ‘bee’ as ‘B’, and think of ‘B’ as a euphemism.P80818+++++

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 · 8 Comments

Six on Saturday: Cacti

Cacti was the topic for my gardening column less than two weeks ago. ( https://tonytomeo.com/2018/07/30/cacti-are-notorious-for-nonconformity/ ) Both space and illustrations are limited in the column though. Only a picture of a prickly pear was posted with that main article. The other part of that article, which is a brief description and a picture of white epiphyllum, was posted the next day. ( https://tonytomeo.com/2018/07/31/epiphyllum-oxypetalum/ ) Since then, I have been wanting to get a picture of one of the small but delightful orange flowers of a prickly pear in the private collection of one of my colleagues. Now that I got that picture, I really did not know what to do with it. I got two other pictures of the fruit and stems of the same prickly pear, and three more pictures of other cacti in the same collection so that I could post them here. Instead of saving the best picture for last, the prickly pear flower is posted first just because it is that cool.

1. Prickly pear flower should bloom during the day. They should not be nocturnal. I can not be certain because I am not familiar with this particular species. What I do know is that the flowers have been open early in the morning, and then closed shortly after exposed to sunlight, almost like those of a nocturnal epiphyllum. It took me a while to get this picture of this single peachy orange flower.P80811

2. Prickly pear fruit should ripen right after bloom, but most fall off of this plant while still green. It might be because the plant is potted and watered regularly. Those that ripen are only about two inches long, and quite pithy without much flavor. They would probably be bigger, more abundant and better flavored if the plant could grow in the ground.P80811+

3. Prickly pear pad is not as prickly as those that I got a picture of for the previous article about cacti. I do not know how their flavor is because I have not tried them. This is a small plant that can not spare many pads. Even if there were a few to spare, they are not very big, even when mature. The probably would not taste very goo either, since they take so long to mature in the pot.P80811++

4. Cereus cactus really is nocturnal; cereusly! It produces huge white flowers that are about as big as those of the white epiphyllum that was featured earlier. The flowers do not open until after sundown, and may wait until late at night. While open, they are powerfully fragrant. The fragrance seems to ‘turn on’ immediately when the flower open, and ‘turn off’ as soon as the flowers close before dawn.P80811+++

5. Rat tail cactus, like epiphyllum, is epiphytic, which means that it grows where debris collects in crotches of limbs in big trees. If they grown on the ground, they just sprawl about and maybe form low mounds. This is not an exemplary specimen, although it bloomed well earlier, with reddish orange flowers that are significantly smaller than those of the epiphyllum, and also a bit smaller than those of the prickly pear.P80811++++

6. Epiphyllum is a weird epiphytic cactus. This particular cultivar is even weirder than most. Cacti photosynthesize with their green stems, while using what should be leaves as spines. This cultivar does not seem to be satisfied with that technique, so is outfitted with these weird leafy appendages on its flat green stems, as if it really wants leaves like other plant have.P80811+++++

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 · 17 Comments

Six on Saturday: Bits and Pieces II

 

It has been a while since I posted a sequel to anything like I used to do so commonly. I am only doing it now because I do not have six pictures that fit a particular theme. There are not six different camellias or six different rhododendrons blooming at the same time. There is not a new landscape with six different newly installed plants to show off. Instead, I merely found a few amusing or silly pictures from work for this week. I sort of like #5 because it is interesting even to those of us who are familiar with it. I will actually elaborate a bit more on that later at noon.

I know these Six on Saturday posts do not fit with my other articles, but hey are fun for those us who participate. You can see other Six on Saturday posts by other writers at the link at the bottom of the page. You might even want to give it a try and participate yourself.

1. This might look like a signs at the Generic Aroboretum, or the Arboretum for the Horticulturally Disinterested, but the signs really refer to buildings that are named after trees. Almost all of the buildings in the neighborhood are names after flora of some sort.P80804

2. Woodpecker pantries are often constructed in old coastal redwood trees with soft bark. It seems silly to me; but it must be effective. Otherwise, woodpeckers would not put so much effort into stocking them. Woodpeckers deposit single acorns into the holes bored into the bark, in order to store the acorns for later. Some of these holes are very old, so have stored several acorns over several years. At lest one woodpecker guards the pantry from squirrels while the other woodpeckers are out and about collecting acorns. Such pantries are typically in trees that are isolated from others, so that squirrels can not enter from other trees, and then raid the pantry from above. The only access to the squirrels is from the ground. This panty does not seem to be active at the moment, but discarded acorn shells at the base of the tree indicate the it was active in recent history.P80804+.JPG

3. Coastal redwood trees are very efficient at regenerating from stumps of harvested trees. This tan oak wanted to give it a try too. It did not really regenerate from the stump of course, but merely grew from an acorn in the detritus that collected on top of the stump, and rooted into the rotted wood. The fractures visible at the bottom of the stump are caused by expanding tan oak roots.P80804++

4. Which of these things does not belong here? Do you remember that from Sesame Street? Blue hydrangeas are not common here, although we have quite a few that are fertilized to be blue. I thought that these looked silly together because they are so similar in color.P80804+++

5. Albino coastal redwoods are so fascinating. The white foliage can not survive without chlorophyll, so must remain attached to the original green tree that produced the white mutant growth. This takes a bit of explanation, so I will write a bit more about this about noon.P80804++++

6. Finally, we have two silly looking tiny weds that grew in a crack in the big rock that I wrote about earlier in Rock Concert. https://tonytomeo.com/2018/04/07/six-on-saturday-rock-concert/ They are not much to look at, but this looks like one of those artistic pictures that other writers take.P80804+++++

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 · 42 Comments

Six on Saturday: Bits and Pieces

There were no major projects this week that were interesting enough to get six pictures of. The best that I could do was get six random pictures of random features of the landscapes. I do not actually do much to cultivate flowers, but they happen to be components of the landscapes. Most are perennials that bloom on their own. Of course, I do not mind taking credit for them.

Some blooms started late while the weather was mild, but were then accelerated as the weather suddenly warmed. It seemed that several different types of flowers needed to be deadheaded at the same time. Zonal geraniums and lily-of-the-Nile are two of the most reliable perennials that bloom on schedule no matter what. Zonal geraniums bloom sporadically most of the time, and only bloom more while the weather is warm. Lily-of-the-Nile may start a bit early or a bit late, but is always in full bloom on the fourth of July. The blooms even look like exploding fireworks. More than two weeks later, their flowers are still in full color but will slowly start to fade. Phlox was a surprise for us.

1. Can you guess what this bloom is?P80728

2. You can probably guess that this is phlox. It sure had my colleagues and I perplexed. We had never seen anything like it. Phlox is uncommon here. I would even say it is rare. No one knows why. It just is. I got a picture of it a few years ago only because I was intrigued by it in a neighboring landscape. It took a bit of effort to identify it, although I sort of suspected that it was phlox. It did not look quite like this phlox, and was lower to the ground. No one knows how this one got into the landscape. We suspect it arrived with the ‘fertilizer’ that the horses make for us.P80728+

3. Lily-of-the-Nile is still one of my all time favorite summer blooming perennials. I do not care how cheap and common it is. It is one of the first perennials I divided while I was in junior high school. I grew more than eighty new plants from a single old plant that needed to be removed. It was the old fashioned sort, with big blue flowers and big flabby leaves, perhaps bigger than these. I also like the white ones with the same big flowers and leaves, of course, because they are white. All the fancy modern cultivars are nice too, but not as excellent as the originals. I do like seeing the very pale blue ones in other gardens.P80728++

4. This zonal geranium has these small but cheery cherry red flowers, but it is really grown for the weirdly variegated foliage that is blurry in the background. I think that these flowers would look better against simple green foliage. There is another zonal geranium in another part of the landscape, with small peachy pink flowers and foliage that is variegated only with white. I am none too keen on the flower color, and I am not often too keen on variegation, but the foliage of that particular zonal geranium really looks sharp.P80728+++

5. Himalayan blackberry is one of the worst and most invasive of the exotics weeds here. It develops huge canes that arch over and drop on top of other plants in the landscape. The wickedly sharp prickles (technical term for their thorns) are tortuous when trying to remove the canes. Even picking their berries is nasty business! There are a few berries ripening now, and they happen to be pretty good, but they are sooooooo not worth it.P80728++++

6. Chips needed to be dispersed into the newly landscaped areas that are partially visible in the background of this picture. These chips were free. They are made of recycled wood waste. For our purposes, they are sufficient. However, they include a few large chunks of wood and bits of metal. The chunk of metal in this picture is a short section of rebar. Some of the chips have paint on them. Some seem to be bits of old furniture. It makes one wonder where some of this material came from.P80728+++++

By the way, the bloom in the first picture #1 is merely a fist full of deadheaded white zonal geranium flowers all pressed together. White zonal geraniums do not readily drop their faded blooms like other zonal geraniums do, so they need to be deadheaded.

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 · 34 Comments

Six on Saturday: New Landscape

 

Yes, we have another new landscape. It is not much bigger than the last one, and is not very far away. In fact, although it is associated with two different buildings, it is located adjacent to the opposite corner of the same building that the last landscape was constructed for. https://tonytomeo.wordpress.com/2018/04/07/six-on-saturday-rock-concert/

These six pictures were taken prior to the installation of wood chip mulch, so ground cloth is visible below. It was quite dry and dusty at the time. All of these six plants were newly installed after being procured from nurseries, so none were relocated from other landscapes, or from our storage nursery. They were blooming nicely when installed, but are actually not blooming so nicely now, and some were damaged by the sudden warmth immediately after installation. They would have been fine if only the warmth did not arrive so suddenly, or if it had arrived a few days later. Well, we can not control the weather.

Large stones and bare soil prior to the installation of the landscape were shown in this previous Six on Saturday post, https://tonytomeo.wordpress.com/2018/06/16/six-on-saturday-rock-on/

1. fernleaf yarrow, Achillea filipendulina, Most of these are white. A few are rusty red. A few are yellow like this one, which might be ‘Moonshine’. These did not show symptoms of heat stress right away, but have since gotten rather crispy. I could not find a picture like this one now. Fernleaf yarrow has been popular here for as long as I can remember because it supposedly does not need much water, although most get watered regularly.P805212. Russian sage, Perovskia atriplicifolia, That sounds like ‘piroshki’. These and the rockrose #4 were 5 gallon plants, so are somewhat bigger than most other plants in the new landscape. They were not bothered by the change of the weather. Their faded denim blue flowers continue to bloom nicely. This is a plant that has been popular for a while, but that I have never grown. I tend to avoid trendy plants. However, my colleagues do not.P80521+3. gaura, Gaura lindheimeri, The common name is ‘white gaura’, but some are pink and some are darker pink that is almost red. I do not know if they are merely cultivars of ‘white’ gaura, or different specie. It seemed appropriate to omit ‘white’ from the name. Besides, that is how I learned it. This one can self sow enough to be an annoyance. Individual plants do not live very long, so a few feral seedlings can be selected to replace them.P80521++4. rockrose, Cistus cretisus, When I learned about rockrose back in the 1980s, we learned only two specie. One was white rockrose. The other was pink rockrose; and the pink rockrose did not look like this one. Now, there are too many to remember. Most do not have species name, but merely cultivar names. I really do not know if this really is Cistus cretisus. It just happens to look like it. I suppose I should have looked at the label.P80521+++5. chocolate coreopsis, Coreopsis ‘Chocolate’, As I implied for #4, nomenclature is not what it used to be. It was standardized to simplify things, but is difficult to keep track of now with all the breeding and hybridizing, and botanists wanting to make a name for themselves by changing a name to something supposedly more accurate. I really do not know the species name of the chocolate coreopsis. It is known merely by the cultivar name.P80521++++6. milkweed, Asclepias tuberosa, This one wilted rather badly in the warmth, but did not get roasted too much. The shriveled flowers in this picture are the worst of the damage. It is blooming more profusely now, and is developing strange seed pods. Milkweed is another trendy plant that caters to the butterfly gardening fad. I am not certain if I like the idea of planting something that is expected to get munched. It sure is colorful for now.P80521+++++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 · 29 Comments

Six on Saturday: Redwoods

 

Both coastal and giant redwoods, are the most excellent trees. The giant redwoods are endemic to isolated colonies in the Sierra Nevada. The coastal redwoods are endemic to the coastal region from the Oregon Border to San Luis Obispo County, which happens to include this region.

Coastal redwoods are so awesome that even the dead stumps from trees harvested a century ago are awesome. Most of the stumps in this region have been charred by forest fires. Yet, even after a century, they are still quite solid. They decay very slowly, which is why their timber is such a popular and important building material. Because the stumps are so big and would be difficult to get rid of, not many of us even try.

1. Compared to some of the tacky garden art that some people pay significant money for, this old redwood stump is strikingly sculptural. It stands so proudly out on this knoll on the edge of a small creek just above where it flows into Bean Creek. It is difficult to see in this picture, but a landscaper tried to obscure this stump with potato vine. Only a bit of twiggy growth can be seen at the top of the stump. The rest of the vine is now overwhelming the adjacent dogwood above. The trunk of the dogwood is to the right. Coastal redwood forests are innately shady. The potato vine is not very happy there. Even if it were happy, and were able to obscure the stump, would it really be an improvement?P80142. These two bigger stumps are just a short distance uphill and across the small creek. Old stumps are more often single, but surrounded by multiple trunks that emerged from the roots. Because almost all of the trees here had been harvested about a century ago, there are now many more secondary trunks per area than there would naturally be. It is not much of a problem yet, but these trunks will likely become more crowded as they mature.P8014+3. These are the same two stumps from the other side. This trunk coming up from within is likely from the same original root system. All trunks that develop from the same root system are genetically identical, so they look very similar from a distance. Some genetically identical groves can be quite broad, and include many trunks.P80714++4. This small coastal redwood trunk is not happy about the fence that is nailed to it.P80714+++5. This is more what you expect coastal redwoods to look like. It is impossible to determine from this picture if these trunks are genetically identical secondary trees that emerged from the same root system, but their proximity to each other suggests that they likely are.P80714++++6. This epiphyllum is the flower that I promised to those who expressed a concern than my Six on Saturday lacked adequate bloom. I shared a picture of this same epiphyllum earlier, but it has continued to bloom.P80714+++++

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 · 23 Comments

Six on Saturday: Finally Flowers

 

After posting so many inter pictures of soil, stone, road signs, plumbing, empty wine barrels and mockery of French culture, I suppose I should share some pictures of actual flowers for a change. I mean, this is about gardening after all. Unfortunately though, I do not work with many flowers. The landscapes are designed to be compatible with the surrounding forests, so flowers are minimal. I already shared pictures of most of the best. Some of these are from gardens that I do not work with. I just thought that they were pretty.

1. Avens finished blooming more than a week ago. I just really liked this picture because it is such a nice swirly orange color. Until I found these, I had not seen avens in many years, and did not expect to see it anytime soon. Since featuring it in the gardening column, I have found that others in other regions are quite familiar with it, and this it more popular than I would have guessed. http://www.canyon-news.com/ph-has-ups-and-downs/80473P80707
2. Lobelia is one of the more common warm season annuals. This is not from one of the landscapes that I work with, but looked good enough in a planter box in town for me to get a picture of it. I do not know what variety it is. There are many varieties nowadays that I am not familiar with anyway. Back in the 1980s, bright blue lobelia was popular alternated with white alyssum. I thought it looked rather silly at the time, but would not mind seeing it now. It was such an 80s look.P80707+
3. Pelargonium was in the same planter box as the lobelia. I know neither the species nor the cultivar. Again, it was just too pretty to pass up without getting a picture. It is more diminutive than the sorts of pelargoniums that I am familiar with. The plants are very compact. The variegated leaves and flowers are quite small.P80707++
4. Zonal Geranium happens to be one of my favorite perennials because it was one of my first. Although I grew my first for only a short while when I was very young, I still grow one that I found in a trash pile when I was in junior high school, and another that I found naturalized in a creek near San Martin shortly after I graduated from college. I bring pieces of them everywhere I go. Both are the big and weedy types that are probably very closely related to the straight species. The first one is the very common bright pink with leaves that lack halos. The second is the very common bright orange red with only slight halos on the leaves. Getting back to this remarkably bright red zonal geranium; it is not one of mine. The leaves have only very light halos. The growth seems to be almost as vigorous and weedy as my bright orange red one, but not quite. It is more tame, and more prolific with bloom. The bright red color is prettier too.P80707+++
5. Lithodora looks prettier close up that it really looks in the landscape. It was planted into one of the newer small landscapes, but is not growing very well. I found the name to be amusing because it seems to mean that it smells like a rock. However, someone recently explained to me that the name means that it adores rocks, since it naturally grows in soil that is too rocky for other plants.P80707++++
6. White Hydrangea is a nonconformist among all the hydrangeas that I fertilized to be either pink or blue. So far, the pink ones are still pink, and the blue ones are still blue. The few white ones are always white. http://www.canyon-news.com/ph-has-ups-and-downs/80473P80707+++++
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

Six on Saturday: Infrastructure

 

There is so much more to horticulture than plant material. There is a lot of hard work, which is hard to get in pictures. There are a lot of materials. There is a lot in infrastructure.

Well, I do not have pictures from the farm to show how our horticultural commodities are grown. That would not be very interesting anyway. These pictures are merely odds and ends of what we work with in regard to landscape maintenance.

1. Incarcerated stone. Yes, it is quite obvious that this prison is overcrowded. This is where they do ‘hard’ time. Incidentally, ‘Pet Rock’ was invented in Los Gatos.P80630
2. Half barrel. Back when there were more real wineries in the Santa Clara Valley, barrels such as this were cheap, and could sometimes be found left on the sides of roads for anyone who wanted to take them for kindling. At nurseries and lumber yards, they could be purchased already cut in half, perforated with a few drainage holes on the bottom, and painted with wax on the inside, for use as planters. They are more expensive now. This particular barrel came from France, so is not even made of local valley oak. See the fancy label at the top of the picture? The drainage hole on the left was not drilled through because the drill bit encountered something metallic in the wood. Check out the tips of my stylish boots at the bottom of the picture.P80630+
3. ErmitagE France. This metallic label on the wine barrel is so comically contradictory! The lack of an ‘H’ at the beginning, and the capitalized ‘E” at the end of ‘ErmitagE’ implies that the former contents of the barrel was something fancy, but is then followed by ‘France’.P80630++
4. NO DUMPING ALLOWED. This is a classic example of ‘Do as I say, not as I do’. We dump debris from landscape maintenance all the time. When we prune for road clearance, much of the debris gets thrown back out into the forest behind what was pruned. In some spots, it works like mulch to keep some of the weeds down. Larger bits must get taken away of course. This sign will be posted on a wide spot on one of the roadways where dumping had apparently been a problem. By the way, it is just coincidence that the two words ‘CHILD DUMPING’ lined up like that.P80630+++
5. White star magnolia. This was just moved to the new landscape of a newly renovated building. https://tonytomeo.wordpress.com/2018/06/16/six-on-saturday-rock-on/ We would have preferred to wait for it to defoliate in autumn before relocating it, but it was in the way within another recently landscaped area, and we really wanted to install it here in the new landscape before other material gets installed around it. https://tonytomeo.wordpress.com/2018/04/07/six-on-saturday-rock-concert/ It does not seem to know that it has been moved. I happened to grow these along with many other magnolias back in the late 1990s, and really did not like working with them in the nursery. We just were not set up for them. However, I really like them in the landscape. This particular magnolia grows like a large shrub, so will not get big enough to drop flowers onto all that pavement. That would have been a concern with larger magnolia trees that bloom with larger flowers that can be a slipping hazard when they fall onto pavement.P80630++++
6. Epiphyllum. This just happens to be in bloom at the shop. It belongs to the horticulturist who maintains all the landscapes here, so has nothing do do with the landscapes. With all the pictures of inert items and only one white star magnolia, I thought I should include something a bit more colorful. It does not get much more colorful than this.P80630+++++
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 · 26 Comments

Six on Saturday: Nursery Rhyme

 

I wish we had one. There is no rhyme and only a few disjointed reasons for what happens at the small storage nursery at the maintenance shops. This is nothing like acres of production nursery full of rhododendrons, azaleas, camellias and such. Nor is it like the retain nurseries that sell the rhododendrons, azaleas, camellias and such. This is merely a small yard where we store a few plants that get removed from landscapes, and plants that were recently procured from a nursery but have not yet been planted.

It is like the nursery version of the wood shop, with its collection of new lumber and old recycled lumber that gets used on the historic buildings. The plumbing shop contains all sorts of new plumbing and fixtures, as well as many old fixtures that might someday be useful. The landscape shop, which is separate from the nursery, is #7 of about twelve specialized shops used by the maintenance staff. The nursery might seem to be the most dysfunctional of the several shops, but only because plants are dynamic and need maintenance . . . and because, without necessary maintenance, a few have deteriorated, died or conversely thrived and made themselves at home.

Newly procured plants like #5 and #6 are easy to work with. They come in with a plan, and generally leave within a week or two as they get installed out somewhere in the various landscapes. Recycled plants like #1 and #2 were removed from the landscapes either because they were in the way of something, or because they proliferated too much, but could someday go back into other landscaped areas. Then there are a few plants like #3 and #4 that stay long enough to disperse roots through the bottoms of their cans and into the ground, essentially planting themselves on the spot because they got tired of waiting for a new home.

1. Peruvian lily was so prolific at the Post Office that many needed to be pulled. They were canned to be installed elsewhere, but no one wants to put them into a situation where they might proliferate like they did at the Post Office. Besides this pink, there is also peachy pink and yellow. All are the tall types that were originally grown fro cut flowers, rather than the lower mounding home garden varieties. Consequently, they need to be staked or caged like tomatoes so that they do not lay on the ground.P80623
2. Chrysanthemum was grown as annuals in a few various locations, but when they were removed to relinquish their space for more seasonable annuals, a few were canned. It is not always easy to discard certain perennials just because their time is up. The problem is that, although they look so good in the nursery, and bloom in spring instead of autumn, they do not get cycled back into the landscape. When new color is needed, it is often purchased and planted before the old stock is considered.P80623+
3. Potato vine has been growing like a weed on the cyclone fence and shade structure for so long that no one knows where it came from. I do not even know where the vines originate from. I would guess that somewhere under the overgrowth, the main canes emerge from the remains of a #1 can that the roots split apart years ago. This vine lives here now. Even if we had a spot for it, relocation is not practical. If it gets too overgrown, it might get cut back.P80623++
4. Campanula was probably in a 4” pot that got set into the #15 can of a ‘Black Lace’ elderberry and forgotten about. It might have been recycled, or it might have been something new that never got installed. Before the elderberry was relocated, the campanula had spread into the cans of other trees, so like the potato vine, it lives here now.P80623+++
5. Cone flower is easy. I just arrived from a nursery, and will be installed into a landscape in just a few days.P80623++++
6. Yarrow came with the cone flower, and will be planted nearby in the same landscape at about the same time.P80623+++++

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 · 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/