Cactus Blog 

Crate and Barrel has candles in the shape of succulents.

Which is interesting, because our local Crate and Barrel Outlet bought real succulents from us to display in some of their pots.

via Apartment Therapy.

Today we are traveling around the world. Earlier we posted from Canada – Ottawa! – and Ireland – Piltown! – because it seems like there are succulents everywhere, and the fanciers to match. Or at least the reporters to try to make sense of it all.

Now to India.

Here we have a travel article about Chandigarh, near the Pakistan border, home to Le Corbusier’s biggest building.

And they tell you to visit some nearby gardens too. Very generous of the travel writers, although to be honest, when given the opportunity to visit the Assembly building, really who cares about a few measly cacti. But for you, here you go anyway.

The Cactus Garden is Asia’s largest of its kind with over 3500 species of cactus. Visit the 17th century Pinjore Gardens spread over 100 acres. According to Hindu mythology, it is believed that the Pandava brothers rested here during their exile.

They might as well point you in the direction of the nearby taco stand around the corner from Louis Kahn’s National Assembly Building in Dhaka, Bangladesh.

Photo by Karl Ernst Roehl

I’m sure they make very good tacos there.

Opuntia streptacantha

A nice thick-leaved prickly pear with good edible tunas. You know you want to try it, but you can’t get past the spines, now can you? Well, here, let me help. Yes, like so, you peel back, knock the spines off, grab hold, good, good, now, OOPS… OK, that’ll hurt.

Today we travel the world in search of hip and contemporary succulent fanciers. And now we find them in Ireland this coming weekend.

The South East Garden Show is one of the most eagerly awaited events of the year and is on track to be a huge success. This year’s show has moved to a new location, Clonmel Racecourse, Clonmel, Co. Tipperary on 20th 21st & 22nd June. This was previously held at the Iverk Show Grounds, Piltown, Co. Kilkenny….

I don’t know what that paragraph was about, what with the clonmels and the iverks and the piltowns.

Dermot O’Neill, that well know gardening personality, will be on hand once again to officially open this high-quality event on Friday 20th June at 12noon…

Yes, I know Dermot well. Or I would, if I lived in Ireland and followed the lecture circuit for well-known garden personalities.

It is a great family event with children’s entertainment with Sylvano the magician…

Oh God…

bouncy castle…

I’m bursting….

and more….

Phew.

There will be plenty of… cacti and succulents… for the adults to see and buy… and much more

You could do worse.

…for succulents. Even in Ottawa. No, especially in Ottawa.

What is the shortest distance between the novice gardener and a hip garden? A collection of succulents. These little (for the most part) charmers announce to the world that you have arrived in the garden design world.

It is true. To be hip one needs to garden with succulents. Take your hipness tips from an Ottawan and you can’t go wrong, I always say. Now you know.

Now, I have to say, this advice is only good if you do not live in the desert. If you live in an actual desert, then please ignore this. Please?!?

Opuntia picardoi

A miniature prickly pear with nasty sharp spines and overactive glochids.

What do you care about, anyway? We want to know.

What are you doing to solve these intractable problems in your hometown? We want to know.

Did I mention we have a hybrid car? A 2001 Honda Insight with carpool lane sticker! You can see it behind the Calindrinia blooms in this post over here.

Yes we can!

We have many different kinds of cactus where we live, some growing wild and some either given to us or we purchased. My wife was very excited yesterday when she went our to water our many plants and trees. She noticed one of the cactus plants had a beautiful flower. We have had the cactus for approximately eight years and have never seen it flower. My wife asked me to take a picture of the flower and use it as my desktop background on my PC. I have searched the internet trying to identify the type of cactus it is and get some information on the specific plant and had no luck. I have attached the photo to this email. Could you please identify the cactus and tell me where I can obtain information about the plant? I am glad I took the picture yesterday because when I checked it this morning the flower had really drooped and is not pretty at all. We live in Chaparral, NM, just outside of El Paso, TX.

Thank you. Roy

Roy,

Your plant is a very nice Echinopsis subdenudata, it use to be called Lobivia subdenudata but all the Lobivia got “Lumped” with Echinopsis…. It is native to Bolivia. We have a little more information on our website here.

Hap

Which candidate for US President said this:

“I will veto every single beer”

Check out the video for your lovely answer to which US presidential nominee from a major party is anti-beer. Now if we can just all agree on being anti-Schlitz beer in particular…

via atrios

Romneya coulteri – Matilija Poppy

Spectactular giant California poppy blooms on top stems that can get to 8′ tall. You can see them from miles away. Nows a good time to see them in bloom, since they’re now in bloom. They do have an underground rhizome – difficult to establish, easy to spread.

They belong in the back of a succulent garden, up against the house assuming you don’t have a white house.

…starts with plants.

If the sea rocket detects unrelated plants growing in the ground with it, the plant aggressively sprouts nutrient-grabbing roots. But if it detects family, it politely restrains itself.

A dodder after it attacked a tomato plant. Photo: Justin Runyon/De Moraes and Mescher Labs

I always knew it. I’ve argued it for years. Now we’ve got the possibility that vegetarians have been eating intelligent life forms all along. And they were delicious. Of course, based on the article, it wasn’t the tomato plant that was intelligent….

Tracey, of Life in Sugar Hollow, had a tough choice deciding what to give as party favors. Succulents won out, and they are a very attractive bunch of Sempervivums, as it were, judging by the photo.

Verizon has a unique way to hide some cell towers in Casa Grande, and I don’t mean invisible ink.

The tower will… blend into the landscape, looking like a 24-foot saguaro cactus. Dubbed the “Stealth Cactus,” the Verizon cell tower “monocactus” will be joined by four live saguaros on the currently bare hill to match area landscapes.

This is very good news. I foresee some new towers in many interesting and happy shapes. For instance, in Philadelphia, they’ll be in the shape of a big bell.

And in San Francisco, they could hide them on the hills looking like a cable car.

How about for Buffalo they could hide them in a snow drift?

I like the idea of a giant crab in Baltimore; a big pot of beans in Boston; a 2000lb lobster in Maine, and a pig in Nebraska…. Hey! Now there’s an idea…. The world’s largest cell-phone-tower-pig! I’d stop by to see it.

Any other ideas?

Sedum alboroseum “medio variegatum”

Man, these look delicious. Really, they’re not. They taste terrible, and are a natural purgative, no less. That makes them somewhat deer-resistant.

They get large sprays of yellow blooms. They’re prone to powdery-mildew, and they die back in winter down to the ground. But it’s also a nice surprise when they come back because they’re so vibrant and colorful even before the blooms arrive.

Cactus Jungle: Greetings,
I am very worried about 12 bamboo plants (Psuedosasa japonica) I bought from you a little less than a year ago, which I have planted outdoors in large redwood planters in an alley behind my house in Noe Valley, SF. The alley is fairly narrow E-W running – the plants get direct sun during the mid-day hours because the hill I’m on slants towards the south. I water them once every week or two, and this spring have given them one dose of fish emulsion. While there are new shoots coming up at the base of the plants, a noticeable portion of the leaves are beginning to yellow or brown – worrisome during the fair springtime weather. Additionally, there is an apdhid infestation on the plants – they exude an oily residue covering the leaves. Do you have any experience with this problem?

I have invested both time and money into these plants and am not thrilled to see them fail in less than a year. Please see the attached jpegs: I would be most grateful if you have any advice or information which would help me care for the plants. As far as I can tell the species is appropriate for the climate, but let me know.
Many thanks,
Benjamin

Benjamin,

The yellowing leaves is from stress, from the aphids (sucking like
vampires on the leaves) and the fact we have had a very dry spring and
the plants are thirsty. Aphids are usually not a problem if the plant is
getting enough water and nutrients, all though they are often an issue
while recently planted plants are getting established. As your plants
mature they will become less prone to aphid problems.

You should spray the aphids off with a blast of water from the hose.
There are easily washed off and be a soft insect are usually fatally
injured by a good jet of water. You can also use insecticidal soap or
Neem Oil, but only use them after our “hot spell” that has just started,
is over. Hot weather and insecticides are a bad combination for your
plants! Spray in the evening, not during the day or morning as the soap
and or Neem Oil can cause leaf burn in the hot sun. I would recommend
using a hose end sprayer and really coating the leaves to kill off the
remaining aphids and eggs glued on to the leaves.

In a raised wood planter like yours, the bamboo is going to need a bit
more water than if it was in the ground (where its roots could pull in
moisture from all around). The wood breaths and so the soil inside dries
out faster. Water well, at least once a week, dry soil can be hard to
re-wet, so a slow soaking with a trickle of water is usually best, a
soaker hose ran down the length of your planter, twining between the
plants is an easy way to water your bamboo. Give it more water if it is
warm and windy, as this dries the bamboo out faster through
transpiration in the leaves. After a year in the ground you should be
able to water less, since the plants will have better established root
systems to pull in available water, but remember that raised beds always
take more irrigation.

They should “Out Grow” the aphids and stress pretty quickly as long as
our projected drought holds off long enough for them to get established.
Psuedosasa japonica is a great drought tolerant bamboo but like all
young things needs a bit of care to grow up strong enough to face the
big, bad world… I think your will take off with a bit more water and
knocking down the aphid infestation.

Good Luck,

Hap

Sempervivum “Emerald Empress”

In our continuing series of Sempervivum photos, I gotcha this one right here. Well, what do you think? It’s got nice thick leaves, green and pink hues, pups coming off the sides. It’s a winner!

The name “Emerald Empress” comes from the ancient greek phrase,

καὶ εἶπεν ἄνθρωπος τῷ πλησίον αὐτοῦ· δεῦτε πλινθεύσωμεν πλίνθους καὶ ὀπτήσωμεν αὐτὰς πυρί. καὶ ἐγένετο αὐτοῖς ἡ πλίνθος εἰς λίθον, καὶ ἄσφαλτος ἦν αὐτοῖς ὁ πηλός.

But you can still refer to it by it’s English translation if you like.

Who knew there were others doing this too, and that they had a formal name and PO Box too?

A young woman in a green jacket with horses printed all over it stopped to ask what they were doing.

“We’re gardening,” Reynolds told her.

“Who are you gardening for?”

“For everyone and ourselves,” he said. “We’re guerrilla gardeners.”

An unauthorized horticultural action in London this May.
Photo: Finlay MacKay for The New York Times

Have you ever done anything like this? Planted something on public property or on someone else’s under-utilized land?

The Lawrence World Journal has reader blogs, and one reader found a blooming Epiphyllum in Lawrence, Kansas with a cell phone photo to prove it. This is a very exciting find, I would think. But then it’s Saturday, so what do you expect?

Sempervivum “Red Heart”

I think this is going to turn out to be Sempervivum week here at the blog.

I don’t know why this one is called “Red Heart”. I did some research, and there is no Victorian novel in its background. I don’t know of anyone, fictional or otherwise, named Red Heart. I certainly don’t know any propagators with the nickname Red. Sometimes they name plants after a daughter or niece, and that would seem to be a good thing to check out if I have more time later.

It’s Husker Du

Students near San Diego get with the program and plant some cactus after all.

When their science teacher announced plans to make a cactus garden that would be a model of water conservation, students pictured an arid landscape.

BORing.

Hey! That’s not fair. Kids can be so cruel.

But some eighth-graders at San Marcos Middle School embraced the after-school project after seeing pictures of an award-winning cactus garden with bright colors and resembling a coral reef. They perked up more after visiting Palomar College’s cactus garden down the street.

Students then decided to dedicate the garden that they would create to Lenny Preyss, a popular history and English teacher who is retiring in June after 31 years on campus. The school garden should be finished next week.

Oh. That’s better. Good for them. I wonder how that turned out?

Today’s link is to 2Modern Design Talk as they wander Austin looking for Modern design. And they found some. Not a lot, mind you, but just enough that featured some sassy succulents that they got a blog post out of it, and I got one too.

Don’t live in the hill country? Try cacti, agave plants and succulents. There’s hardly a yard or kitchen table around this city without a cactus.

My sister lives in Austin and she doesn’t have any cacti. I might suggest that means she doesn’t have a modern house, but they’re rebuilding the small bungalow and I’m the designer, so it must be modern. And yet, still no cacti. I’ll have to speak to her about that.

Sempervivum “Black”

These cultivated rosettes are called “Black” not because of the dark tips, nor because as they grow they look like Echeveria “Black Prince”, but rather they were named after a fictional character named Doriet Black in a very popular Victorian novel from 1882.

In the novel, The Mystery of Doriet Black, Doriet Black was a fishmonger on the backstreets of Manchester, however he was also a secret agent married to a Prussian Princess. So you can see how the Victorian gentlemen of the time, amateur gardeners all, thought that might be an appropriate character to name a clever little sempervivum after. And they were right. We thank them for their resourcefulness.

However, things went bad in the sequel, The Deathly Hollow of Black, when Doriet Black turned out to be a triple agent in the service of an Italian Counterfeiter. Because of the uproar in 1886 over this 2nd novel, really more of a novella, the plant went out of style for over 100 years, returning to the succulent-growing public only in 1990.

This is kind of a strange post by DigaPixBlog, of an Opuntia bloom. The writer is a cactus hobbyist and photographer, but the photo is by someone else, unnamed and unlinked-to, while the shot is criticized, even cropped to change the effect. I don’t agree with the suggested cropping anyway. But the original uncredited photo is quite lovely, with a bee diving in to the bloom.

Pardee Street
Calandrinia grandiflora in, shall we say, bloom.

These form beautiful mounds of blue-gray leaves. With more water and shade the leaves will grow big and full. On the other hand, if you blast them with sun and turn off the water then they bloom up a storm. Like so.

They’re also great in hanging baskets, for centerpieces, for lunch meetings, and in half-open VW Beetle convertibles.

Pedro Almodóvar’s latest project is filming in a famous cactus garden, although we don’t know why. Here is a picture of a famous actress being hounded by photographers in a famous cactus garden, although you can’t see any of the cacti in question. But they assure us they’re there.

Penélope Cruz in the Guatiza Cactus Garden yesterday – Photo EFE

Filming on the island is expected to last for more than two weeks.
Penélope Cruz is already in Lanzarote at the orders of Pedro Almodóvar as filming starts for the new film ‘Los Abrazos Rotos’.

The famous Guatiza Cactus Garden was chosen by the director for some shots taken yesterday, and part of the filming was carried out by helicopter and comes at the start of what will be more than two weeks filming on the Canary Island.

I remember the first Almodóvar film I saw, Tie Me Up Tie Me Down!, ah good times. I also liked All About My Mother. It really was. All about my mother, that is. What a lame joke. But that’s only because it’s hard to adequately describe an Almodóvar experience. In fact, I think I’ll add Tie Me Up Tie Me Down! to my netflix list, as I haven’t seen it in years.