They’re still wearing winter coats in Kansas, so the Wichita Eagle tells us.
Argh, winter coats — I wish we could retire the winter coats…
Spring cactus show and sale of hardy varieties — Nature’s Way will have its annual spring cactus show next weekend, and this time, perennial cactus and succulents will be for sale as well.
I wish there were some way we could bring some of our California sunshine to those hardy souls in Kansas still wearing winter coats. I know, let’s vote for Obama!
Well, sure, Kansas already voted back in February, but what about Nebraska? They’re waiting for the good weather to arrive in May before voting. Smart move, Nebraskans.
They go for the experiments in Scottsdale, AZ, so I’m told, by the Scottsdale Tribune.
“My garden truly embodies what I am about. I hope everyone will enjoy what I’ve done,” said Schwab, a master gardener and homemaker, of her outdoor paradise which mingles outdoor art works with cacti, succulents and roses.
I don’t know what any of this means. It’s a deep and abiding mystery why General Petraeus is saying today that we still have to wait to see if the surge is working in Iraq.
This is the most photogenic spray of cactus blooms I have ever seen. This is all on the top of one single branch, six blooms open at once. The first one opened two days ago, and the others have caught up before the first was finished.
I’ll be posting more photos of this singular event over the next few days. I hope you enjoy the photos as much as everyone within a 6-block radius of us does. It has that much magnetism.
Time to start rationing water in the dry West. The Las Cruces (NM) Sun-News is urging you to stop wtaering your lawn, or better yet, to replace it entirely.
“It’s April 1, and I’m not fooling,” Josh Rosenblatt, the city’s water conservation coordinator said Tuesday, the day the city began enforcing the summer watering schedules that will remain in place through the end of September….
“In new developments, there are a lot of rocks and cactus and succulents,” she said. “They don’t use much water. But in the last seven years, we’ve had very little rain and it’s still green.”
Now I want to be sure we all understand that if we want to have the opportunity to plant cactus in our gardens, then we all have to do our part to support our local cactus stores.
Albuca sp. Augrabie Hills
This miniature Albuca in the Lily family, from South Africa, has curly leaves to 5″ long, white and green striped buds, with a yellow flower poking through when open. And as you can see, the baby bulbs pop through the skin of the parent plant. These are normally found above grade! – very rare for a bulb.
My Northern Garden lets us know that your local city water may be more alkaline than you think. And if you’re not thinking about it, then maybe you should get out a pH tester right now.
Malcolm (Burleigh) and one of his cactus-growing friends from California had discovered that city water tends to be much more alkaline than rain water and that the change in pH made a big difference in plant performance….
Adjusting pH for houseplants is one thing–an entire garden is another. Malcolm uses a watering system that involves a sump pump, a 45-gallon garbage pail, and an octopus hose system.
Oxford Street
Well, there’s an Opuntia ficus-indica, and I see some Aloe arborescens coming into bloom. When I took the photo, I thought I saw some A. nobilis, but i can’t find it now. Plus, there’s a giant redwood tree. That’s Berkeley for you.
What is it about the Japanese and tiny things? They like to miniaturize everything, including the plants. In this case, the succulents.
From Fashionably Cute comes this tour of a new store in Tokyo called Solxsol. Well, that’s what they say, but I can’t verify the details for you since I am not in Japan, and don’t plan on going there next January. I suppose I could google them, or call someone to verify, but the pretty picture is proof enough for me, for I am a blogger.
Sunset Magazine sent a blogger, Fresh Dirt, to cover the new Desert Botanical Garden in Phoenix. They took a lovely photo that really captures the whole look and feel for the place. Not that I would know, since I haven’t been there yet, but I look forward to visiting it in the very near future. Well, probably not the very very near future, since the nursery is very busy and we usually don’t get to Arizona except in January anyway, so maybe next January. Yeah, that’s it – we’ll meet you in Phoenix next January.
While taking pictures of our new signs, I caught Samuella Smith at work on the Oreocereuses. Do you think she’ll ask me to take this down when she finds out about it? We’re taking bets now…
Dischidia pectinoides
These vining ant plants from the jungles of the Philippines are best grown in bright indirect light. Treat them like an orchid, and these tiny red buds will open into tiny red flowers, overwhelmed in size by the giant balloon-like leaves that are colonized by ants (in the wild, not in your home.)
Notice the droplets of water on the big leaves. That must mean they were just misted by Ian.
Small rigid green leaves, like holly. Shrubs only to 3′ tall. I would say these California Lilac flowers are “lilac” in color. The very definition, even. We commonly use this plant as a shrub in low-water gardens. Works well near traffic areas where you don’t want a cactus poking you, but still want something vigorous that can stand up to kids or pets.
El Paso gets in on the act with the garden tours. The El Paso Times lets us know about the El Paso Cactus and Rock Club’s garden tour on April 6.
This Thelocactus conothelos is one of the cactuses that blooms early. It is one of 260 species of cactus in Ad Konings’ garden. The West Side garden will be featured in a garden tour April 6. (Photos by Mark Lambie / El Paso Times)
It’s nice when they include pictures before the tour so that we know if we want to bother or not. This looks like a good one.
Q: I want to cut down on water usage, and IÂ’m thinking of getting rid of my lawn. What can I plant instead of grass?
– Sally Somers, Los Osos
A: Many gardeners dislike the amount of labor and water that a lawn requires. However, they may hesitate to get rid of turf grass because they picture the alternative as a yard full of pebbles studded with cactus. While cacti and succulents can be attractive, we have many other good-looking, drought-resistant substitutes for grass on the Central Coast….
Low growing forms of yarrow, rock rose, and (native) ceanothus are also good choices. Most of these flower seasonally. An unusual possibility might be a native bunchgrass meadow studded with California wildflowers. Another alternative could be a well-mulched grove of native trees or shrubs such as manzanita.
Our Little Acre in Ohio has discovered some early signs of spring poking up. Nice photos of little sprigs. I especially like the picture of the Euphorbia dulcis “Chameleon” with its brightly colored shoots.
Here in the warmer climates we don’t get that kind of spring shoot thrill. I mean, sure we have plants that die back in winter and start shooting in spring, but they’re surrounded in the garden by all our winter green green green.
It’s all about the flowers in Mississippi when it comes to taking care of your potted cacti. The Jackson Clarion-Ledger has the story of Felder Rushing’s house plants.
I have a big pot of my great-grandmother’s night-blooming cereus cactus, the same one she used to make us sit on her porch at night to wait for its flower to open.
Now Felder also has some Pedilanthus and that’s always a good thing.
They go for the native plants to complement their cactus and succulent gardens in Pasadena, a town where I understand they would otherwise prefer the roses.
Consider California native plants, which are more than just succulents and cactus. Many are flowering and many were used for food or medicinal purposes by Native Americans….
Acuña pointed at the silver-leaved Artemesia tridentate. The Tongva, who called it “wikwat,” gathered the seeds and ground them into a mush. The leaves and branches were used in sweathouses. A medicinal tea for stomach-aches was made from the leaves, which were also used to make a green dye for tattooing.
I’ve been to a couple of those Rose Bowls and man were there a lot of rose logos around. I also saw the aftermath of the parades, where the streets were strewn with excess flowers.
Another plant in the collection of the UC Berkeley Botanic Garden. I must have recently taken my camera. I like to do that at least once a year. I recently showed a large one of these Aloes in a Berkeley garden, but not this large. This is big stuff. Very regular spiralling. They have good weather up on the hillside where the garden is.
I hope you enjoyed your garden tour in Riverside this past weekend. Did you visit the cactus garden that the Riverside Press-Enterprise featured?
Buck and Yvonne Hemenway, of Riverside, will display their back yard filled with drought-tolerant plants at the ninth annual Garden Tour and Plant Sale this weekend.
Nice garden. Where is Riverside anyway? I’ve always wanted to know.
A local site that travels locally called California Travels – “We’ll be exploring Northern California places the crowds don’t find” is their motto – travels to Stanford and finds an Andy Goldsworthy wall and a cactus garden.
The time is 8.30 in the morning and it is very peaceful. I wandered around looking at the many different cacti and succulents and then found a bench in the sun to write my journal. ItÂ’s a perfect day with hardly a breeze to stir the leaves. Every so often I gaze at the garden, which is showing its age a bit.
Now I know you’re wondering whether or not our weekend was pleasant, but the truth is often harder to discern after a couple shots of vodka. So I’ll just say that we were pleasantly surprised.
From the UC Botanical Garden’s collection comes this South African bulb in the Iris family, found on African Hill.
Ferraria crispa
An easy to grow bulb in coastal climates, it just has these wacky flowers. I find the leaves to be a particularly fine shade of blue-green, with a great structure coming out of the bulb. Older plants can form nice large caudex-like mats of bulbs above the ground.
We ask people to send us photos, and they do, boy do they.
Q: cactus jungle,
here are the pictures. please note the white dots in the picture. what causes these? (lack of light or water, too much light or water?). also given the size of the smaller cacti, should any of them be transplanted to their own pots or can they all live together in the same pot as shown in picture 2 [not shown]? how much water should they be given being that they only get about 2-3 hours of direct sunlight? thanks for your help!
-jon
A: Jon,
Thanks for sending the photos, they are quite clear: your Pachycereus has scale, an insect that attaches itself to the plant and sucks the juices out. This is treatable.
1. Spray the plant with neem oil to kill them. We mix 100% neem oil, which is safe for cacti. Don’t use the 70% solutions, like “Rose Defense,” which are not safe.
2. After 2-3 days, carefully clean off the scale with a q-tip dipped in alcohol.
Finally, your plants are all fine in the same pot, but they need more sun. Not enough light is making them prone to the scale. Slowly bring them into a location that gets more direct sun, waiting a week after they’ve been treated. I recommend a minimum of 4 hours of afternoon sun, which means near a west or south facing window.
Water every 3 weeks, drenching the soil and letting the water drain away. You should lift the pot up on pot feet or bricks so it is never sitting in water in the saucer.
Aloe plicatilis at the UC Berkeley Botanic gardens, on the African Hill.
These tree aloes do very well in the Bay Area, although they top out at about 5 feet tall, rather than the 12 feet they get in South Africa.
The Jackson Hole Star Tribune has an article about a local gardener and her extensive cactus collection.
Lawson has grown cactus for 20 years, but she never expected she’d love it this much or get so carried away: “I was a plant nut anyway. I just got very interested in their growth pattern, their looks, their uniqueness. And it snowballed from there.”
The part I liked best is where the writer describes the occupants of the house and where they like to hang out.
Lanky saguaros lean against her walls…..
Chollas hang out by the bookshelves….
An Old Man cactus sits… his silky white hair looking disheveled in the sunlight.
Now that’s classic quality writing. I once wrote an article about the L.A. River and the restoration of the riparian edge.
I love it when someone blogs about the plants they got from our nursery. it makes me feel connected. Pictures always help too….
So Radical Acts found some Lotus crassifolus in our native section and now shares pictures of the plant in full bloom. We’ve sold out for the spring, except for one amazing plant in a mixed hanging basket.
