Cactus Blog 

It’s on the DIY network, if you get that. A show called Bath Crashers where they renovate bathrooms. I blogged the shoot here. Here’s the info on when it will air. I’ll remind you right before the 20th.

Floating Waterfall Tub

September 20, 2010
9:00 PM e/p

This bathroom transformation makes its way outdoors! What was once a dark bathroom with Seventies lava rock in the tub room, dated dark floors and golden swan fixtures gets completely gutted and is opened up by taking advantage of an unused courtyard and incorporating it into this bathroom revamp! The outdoor floating tub is the main event in this “crash!” The crew takes advantage of some outdoor real estate and opens the shower room into a garden tub room, where they set the freestanding tub in a shallow pond and create a serene waterfall that cascades behind it! Throw in a ceiling mount tub filler, modern privacy panels and slate pavestones and these homeowners are blown away!

Here’s a picture of the host, who designs and renovates the bathrooms on TV.

The last time Cactus Jungle got product on TV was almost 3 years ago!

Hi! I have an enormous cactus that is eating my house. I need to remove it but didn’t want to just throw it away, it’s quite impressive but unfortunately it’s ruining the foundation. Do you know anyone that would want this cactus? I attached a picture.

Thank you! Krista

Yowza, that’s a big Cereus!

I don’t know anyone in Southern Cal off hand, but I’ll post it on the blog for you. Also, we find Craigslist works well.

Peter

If anyone is interested, email me and I’ll forward it along to Krista in the 310. Just a warning, though, if you do go to cut it down, make sure you don’t let the giant branches fall on the roof, or yourself either. Just sayin’.

Hello,
We’re the women who were in on Sunday and were arranging, and finally purchasing the manzanitas, sage and the little euphorbia obessa. We could use your help.

While we were there we talked with Keith about what we think is a fungus that killed the tree that used to be in our front yard. The fungus appeared on the stump after we had the tree cut down (it was dead.) We’re concerned about planting the new trees close to this area, that they might also be attacked by this fungus.

Anyway, Keith said that we could send a photo of the fungus and he would try to identify it.

We’re going to have someone install these plants for us and would appreciate your quick reply.

Thanks for your help.
Lynn & Joanne

Lynn,

It looks like your stump is being eaten by a bracket fungi called Trametes versicolor, or “Wild Turkey Tail”. The brackets are the fruiting bodies of the organism that is actually inside the stump eating the cellulose. This species only attacks dead or nearly dead hardwoods so it is unlikely to be what killed the tree, but took advantage of the food source after it was dead.

So we do not believe this fungus would cause any problem planting a new healthy manzanita.

But it is a amazing and beautiful artifact.
Peter

Brighamia insignis

These very rare, endangered in the Hawaiian wilds, plant are really nice local houseplants, although somewhat prone to spider mites.

Here’s an article from the SF Chron from a few months ago.

We should be seeing some yellow flowers in the next month. Too bad we don’t have the Hawaiian moth that has gone extinct to pollinate this for us.

Here’s a shot in habitat from arkive.

There aren’t any succulents in this green wall, but it’s EDIBLE! and that’s cool too.

Atlanta Botanical Garden

The design is a fulfillment of the possibilities of CROP CIRCLES! and that’s cool too. There’s a crabapple orchard, a vegetable amphitheater, espaliered fruit trees, and more. Reach out and pick a piece.

I wonder what you get if you google “cactus” and skip ahead to the 100th page?

It only seems to go up to page 88!

Well, here is what I found. Your results may vary.

Cactus Eyed Joe hasn’t blogged in over 2 years.

It’s been a year and half since Cactus Annie blogged.

And Healthy Ashley has a Cereus that bloomed last month. Nice!

It does appear that random blogs make it at the end of the search. I wonder where cactus blog makes it?

Agave americana v. medio-picta “Alba”

This has been a popular plant, since we featured it a couple weeks ago. We only have 15ga. plants right now, the 5’s won’t be ready for a few more weeks, and there has been a rush on them! We only have 1 left. I wonder why? Maybe because it’s gorgeous. Here it is in a front yard in Berkeley.

Customers say it looks like it’s painted. So I tell them that we paint them ourselves, in-house. Locally painted, I think, is better than having them shipped to Wisconsin to have them painted for us, like those other nurseries around do.

Ian restocking the liquid seaweed after a busy weekend.

Everybody wants to know how to get your christmas cactus to bloom at christmas. Well, let me tell you. Now is the time to start your preparations.

Now is the time to start giving your christmas cactus some bloom food every time you water and begin the process of bringing more darkness to your plant. We use 100% fish bone meal for our plants. You can use a liquid if you prefer. Not too strong, though, since you are going to be feeding it every watering for the next 3 months.

I go over all the details here.

But beware, incorrect darkness can result in blooms in spring. Oh noes!

Pretty.

Pt. Reyes Lupines threatened by invasive beach grass, with the help of a cute little native mouse.

It’s a battle between an invasive plant and a native plant, but with a new twist. The two plants, European beachgrass and Tidestrom’s lupine, are not in direct competition, and yet the beachgrass is helping to drive the lupine over the cliff.

European beachgrass provides cover that allows a timid deer mouse to get close enough to the lupine to snip off stalks of lupine fruits without being nabbed by overflying birds.

How cute is that little mouse? This cute:

Awwww…..

Easy Cactus sells cactus throughout England and the EU, by post. The prices look reasonable. The selection is odd, random even. And they also sell live mealworms. Odd, but true. They sell cactus and carnivorous plants and orchids and live mealworms. Check it out if you live across the pond.

They have a survey of your favorite cactus, and the winner is…. not a cactus at all!

They also keep older latin names, not having updated in what appears to be decades. For instance, here’s a lovely Echinopsis backebergii they offer for sale under the name Lobivia wrightiana.

Shocking.

A Cereus cv monstrose getting ready to bloom.

Euphorbia milii “Dwarf Yellow”

It’s Saturday morning and the dogs are playing so I won’t be adding anything more to this post.

The original Basketball Jones

JoTo sends along a photo from probably 4 years ago of a trough we had out on the floor filled with Cleistocactus strausii, and wants to know if we still have the trough with the cactus in it.

Oh, how things have changed around here since then. We no longer have our growing troughs out on display, filling up retail floor space. Now we have plants for sale everywhere. Not an inch to spare, though if there is one, I’ll find it and use it.

As it turns out, those plants have just been finally put out on the floor in 18″ clay pots 2 weeks ago, and they’re about 6ft. tall.

This is one of them:

Hap took this shot of the two dogs outside Betty’s in February.

Cute!

Uncarina roeoesliana

The new crop is blooming. Adorable little buggers, about 1″ caudex. Still happy to produce lots of flowers though.

This was going to be part of a radio ad starting next week, but the local radio station just switched formats, as of this weekend. So all is lost. Except this excerpt, which I upload for you:

[mp3player width=300 height=50  file=”/wp-content/uploads/2010/08/california_native_plants.mp3″ name=California Native Plants]

The video version was blogged back here.

And it’s all because we’re having a Cal. native plant sale starting Sunday, August 15th. Here’s the ad going in the SF Chronicle this Sunday. Look for it in the Home and Garden section.

Parodia subterranea

I featured this plant a couple months ago on the blog, although we did not have it out for sale at the time. Now we do. And it has kept blooming all that time since. Up to 5 flowers at a time. And all I seem to be able to catch is one open flower. The bees like these parodias.  I like this one too, since it’s not a yellow flower like all the other parodias we have. And it blooms more often, like a rebutia, so what’s not to like?

The shortest email question, evah!

is this san pedro?

Yes!

(This email and photo was sent to us by Hamza. Your answer was provided by Peter.)

It was a short trip to the city to get a haircut, but I did catch these sedums doing really well in a window box on Market Street.

Clearly, I don’t get out enough.

It’s been awhile since I’ve been to the Castro, Market and Castro to be exact, and they’ve upgraded! With succulents and a stunning and healthy Leucadendron “Jester” too.

A lot of aeoniums, probably A. atropurpureum and A. subplanum. The groundcovers look like recent transplants of sedums and sempervivums and delospermas, but I didn’t take notes so I’m just checking out the photo like you, so if you have any other suggestions, let me know.

Here is what the corner looked like before all the added planters and seating and plants, from Google Streetview.

Scientists from the University of Arkansas announced at the Ecological Society of America annual meeting the results of a study that showed genetically engineered pesticide-resistant canola growing like a weed in North Dakota. They found that up to 80 percent of wild canola in their sample from various North Dakota roadsides contained genes that conferred resistance to either glyphosate (the active ingredient in Monsanto’s RoundUp Ready pesticide) or gluphosinate (from Bayer’s LibertyLink seeds).

But it gets better, er, worse. The scientists also found wild canola with both properties. And as lead scientist Cynthia Sagers observed in an accompanying news report, “these feral populations of canola have been part of the landscape for several generations” — plant generations, mind you, not human generations. Still, this is not a new phenomenon. It’s true that biotech companies do sell seeds with multiple forms of pesticide resistance, so-called “stacked trait” seeds. But these wild canola plants managed this interbreeding feat all by their lonesome.

So, these genetically engineered plants — which, when out in the wild, are considered weeds — are cross-pollinating and transferring “alien” genes that confer pesticide resistance. The next step in the chain is for the canola to interbreed with other related weeds. Suddenly, the prospect of our nation’s bread basket infested with superweeds becomes very, very real.

We’ve been calling this Trichodiadema decorum, mostly because it really really looks like that. See:

Until you see the blooms of course, and now that the plant at the top is starting to bloom, we very quickly realized that it is not Trichodiadema decorum, nor even a mesemb of any kind.

It’s Crassula mesembryanthemoides! I assume this means we were not the first ones to be fooled. I’ll post flower pictures after they’re open, any day now…

Euphorbia “Excalibur”

Taller than most of our spurges, this one will get about 3 feet. I would call that color a chemical yellow. Maybe this one.

On Cape Cod, no less!

Bill Hayes of Chatham created a ‘lawn’ using a variety of succulents, lavender, thyme, ornamental rocks and other drought-tolerant plants.

That’s quite beautiful! And if I seem surprised it’s because I’ve been to Cape Cod. In the winter. So I find this a bit more lush than usual for that area.