I’ve always thought of Ventura County as a nice place to drive through on the way. Now we find out there’s a spectacular cactus and succulent garden.

Juan Carlo / Star staff 06/23/09 in Newbury Park: Frank White of Newbury Park has a garden in the front and the back of his house including some 1,000 succulents, about 200-300 of them in pots. Many, which are blooming now, and it is a great way to save water.

Don’t miss the photo of the crested Pachypodium.

No LOL on this cat, yet.

Cactus Cat by tiki god
from My[confined]Space, which posts user-submitted photos.

The Fish Peppers are coming in very nicely. They’re a very attractive plant, and the peppers are variegated! I hear they’re a hot pepper – I wonder what I should cook?

So I was adding to my blogroll this morning when all of a sudden the entire sidebar disappears. If you know what I’m talking about, then you know that this is a frightening thing. Fortunately I had a backup from a few months ago, and I figured out what the sidebar file name was, and where it was located, and got it back in there. So now all I have to do is figure out what went wrong, fix the problem, go back into the sidebar, and update all my links from the past few months. Oy.

Sometimes an article says it all, without me needing to add anything. This is an article about the dangers of running in summer in Texas.

When you see a steer start to paw the ground and lower his head I was informed that he might charge….

Unfortunately, my foot caught the edge of the dirt… and… the dirt had a number of those small cactus plants…. I tried to get up and continue running but my legs would not stop churning and kept pushing me forward on a four-point crawl on my hands and feet through this dirt and cactus….

The steer was so astounded by my actions that it stopped and I am sure was puzzled to see this human crawling through the cactus.

Unfortunately there’s no video to go with the article, so we will have to imagine this ourselves.

Country Living magazine wants you to know that succulents make a good addition to any container garden, if you live in the country. I suppose we should check with City Living magazine to check out succulents in the city.

A friend collects animal-shaped pots such as chickens, goats, pigs, bunnies…

I love bunnies! I wonder if they also collect turtle shaped pots. I love turtles!

(C)onstruct hypertufa troughs from… cat-litter trays as molds….

I don’t think so.

One of the great things about succulents and cacti (on which I dote) is that they can live in very small pots for a very long time.

That is true, but not forever.

While puttering with my succulents and cacti, I reminisce about trips to Nice or Cancún.

Now that’s just the capstone on the concept.

Blogging is easy when you have a subtly translated email to share.

Hello, how are they?

Since we are in a period of holidays, do not forget to suggest a visit to the Festival of Gardens in Ponte de Lima, and noted that the entries for the next edition are open until 31 October. For more information, see the site.

“Kaos in the Garden” is the theme of the 2010 Open.

I wish for good holiday.

Regards,
City of Ponte de Lima

I thought it was too hot in Phoenix for most succulents, unless you had a lot of shady spots. The newspaper begs to differ.

Stylish succulents can thrive on neglect

One large succulent in a pot makes a dramatic garden on its own…

You can infinitely mix them in potted arrangements…

(S)wag them from the balcony…

These are good ideas. I would add:

-Drip them from the drain pipe…

-Dangle them from the garage’s gutters…

-Pop them out of your car’s cup holder…

-Arrange them in shapes like circles, pentagrams and dodecahedrons….

-Glue them to the kitchen wall beside the refrigerator. You know the spot, where Sue threw the dishes at you and missed last week and they smashed against the cupboard leaving a bit of a dent in the plaster work – that spot.

Are you friends with the Ruth Bancroft Garden yet?

The Examiner has a terrible slide show to go with this article about container gardening. I don’t recommend it. Here, have some of their container ideas instead:

• Containers are portable.
• Containers can come inside for the winter.
• Containers (are) decorative.
• Containers… showcase a plant.

That’s enough for me. I’m off to go garden in a container.

hi hap –

attached are pictures of our cactus. one snapshot includes the white spots (scales), and the other picture is of the browning at the bottom of the plant.

please call to share your thoughts.

thanks,
tish

Tish,

As I said on the phone it looks like the cactus has caught an infection (think of it as it caught a cold…). The best “Home Remedy” that I can suggest is to spray it once a week with the following:

1/2 cup whole milk
1/2 tsp Baking Soda
1/2 cup hot water

Mix well, spray to the point of run-off. It works best if you spray at night, after it is dark, since cacti keep their stoma closed until night so they can conserve water, so by spraying at night the mix can get in to the skin. Spray once a week for at least three treatments.

The scale insects can be cleaned off with a Q-tip dipped in alcohol. It will dissolve the glue that they use to keep themselves attached to the plant.

If the plant does not look like it is improving by the end of the month please give me a call and we can try something more agressive.

Take care,

Hap

So you probably already know that Euphorbia sap, or latex, is poisonous. Some of the plants are merely irritating, while others are deadly.

We do occasionally recommend Euphorbia characias on the edge of a garden to help keep cats away, since it’s like cayenne pepper to the cat, but not particularly dangerous. But please don’t get it on your eyes or lips because it can be very painful.

Anyway, where was I? Oh yeah, euphorbias.

Here’s a website that list species and levels of dangerousness, and lots of individual stories too.

Mr. Subjunctive also has a good series of posts about poisonous plants, that I linked to previously.

My sister’s front landscaping is done. They live in Austin, TX which is far enough away from Berkeley that we weren’t able to help.

But I see they have at least one succulent, an agave that will get quite large in a few years, probably A. americana. That might be another agave, or yucca, in front. Hard to tell.

GQ seems to think the way to impress a woman on a first date is to show off your knowledge of succulents. No, really, that’s what they say right here, in the UK edition:

Imagine my relief then this weekend to discover the perfect location for a first date…. If you’re stuck for somewhere to take her, I bid you, then take her here: the Chelsea Physic Gardens… it’s a surprisingly large secret garden hidden away at the back of the Kings Road. On a sunny day, you can… wander the hedged isles for an hour or two, impressing her with your knowledge of Mediterranean succulents and soil density.

That’s gotta be some of the strangest first date advice I’ve ever posted right here on cactus blog. But then, I’m working overtime here getting the best date advice for all our readers near Chelsea. I wonder if it’s too far for a first date if you’re from Willingham? What about if you live all the way out in Popshire?

Casa Tina in Dunedin, FL serves cactus, and the review from the Examiner is not good.

Ensalada de Nopalitos, the cactus salad, is supposed to be more characteristics of Mexico than any other salad. In this cactus salad, the ingredients were sacrificed. Dunedin, a town known for its Farmers’ Market, it was disappointing to see and taste canned cactus spears on my cactus salad. The flavors of the tin metal can were spread all through out the salad. Cactus paddles laid flat on unwashed leaf lettuce. They could have been crisp tender or even served tender and hot. I would not have even prepared that sort of low quality salad at home. It was valueless.

Oy, I haven’t read a review that bad since Bill O’Reilly read Senator Franken’s “Lies and the Lying Liars”.

From the Telegraph, an article that will set your hair on fire.

Aeonium ‘Zwartkop’ has rich, polished dark purple foliage and will tolerate near zero temperatures. Photo: Timber Press

You know, at first that didn’t make sense, since Aeoniums are from the Canary Islands and they really can’t get down as low as 0° F and then of course I realized they were talking C! And then all the advice is right after all! Yay!

On the other hand, this photo credit for the publishing company is rather limited in its generousness. I’ve looked through our Timber Press books and I can’t find the picture, so I can’t give you a better photo credit. If anyone knows the photographer, let them know we are borrowing their photo from the Telegraph without proper credit.

Out of Fremont comes this sensible suggestion for the East Bay.

(W)eekends are best spent at the local nursery, shopping for succulents and flowering perennials to fill your garden.

I should hire the writer as our PR person.

Editor’s note: This is the first in an occasional series showcasing homes and gardens of distinction in Ventura County.

Pictured are a cluster of sedum, foreground; a flow of senecio serpens, center; and agave victoriae-reginae and aloe plicatilis, in rear of Chris Biehl’s dry garden.

Plus a nice echinocereus in the middle and a hoodia off to the left. I also see echeveria, a couple more aloe species, and even the corner of a graptopetalum. Anything else I’m missing?

This was quite the website odyssey to find this amazing Spanish balcony photo. From 7×7 San Francisco to Apartment Therapy to Flickr, and there it was!

And now you get the joy of Cactus Blog to 7×7 SF to Apt Therapy to Flickr, all in one fell swoop!

(Image: Flickr user Manuel M. Ramos licensed for use under the Creative Commons)

From the Plain Dealer we get a story about Africa

Cleveland Metroparks Zoo re-creates animal habitats with plants …

“We use a lot of succulents and grasses that provide a visual impression similar to Africa…

OK, so the thing is, if you use succulents from Africa, then there is a good reason you’re giving a visual impression similar to Africa. It’s as if when wearing my Boston Red Sox hat someone comments that I’m giving the impression of a Boston sports fan. Or when using water in an aquarium I’m giving a visual impression of a watery environment.

I like this game.

It’s as if I ordered toast for breakfast and someone said I was giving the impression of someone who likes toast for breakfast.

That’s enough.

We use latin names here on the cactus blog, but this is apparently a controversial issue. We often get people at the nursery asking for something by a common name, and all too often they’ve made up the common name themselves! Really, it’s true. And that’s the thing about common names, there are often many common names for a single plant and many plants have the same common names. So what to do?

Why do you ask?

But Charles Reynolds in Florida has put together a list of common names that are problematic.

When it comes to palms, there are evidently hordes of people to whom anything green must be a palm.

As evidence I present these non-palms: Ponytail palm, cardboard palm, traveler’s palm, sago palm, lily palm, Mexican palm, sedge palm, coontie palm and palm grass which, by the way, is neither a palm nor grass.

And speaking of grass, here are a few plants commonly misrepresented as grasses: Mondo grass, Aztec grass, bear grass, fiber-optic grass and sweet flag grass…..

We’ll tackle cactuses next and point out that pencil trees and many other Euphorbias are frequently tagged as cactus, while chain-store labels often proclaim a vast range of non-cactus succulents to be cactuses.

True enough. But on the other hand, the word cactus does not only refer to plants in the cactus family (cactaceae) but also to:

1. Any of various succulent, spiny, usually leafless plants native mostly to arid regions of the New World, having variously colored, often showy flowers with numerous stamens and petals.
2. Any of several similar plants.

So now you know that nobody knows nothing, anyway, so call them what you will. Only a pedant would dare to correct you. Why do you ask?

The Jacaranda are in bloom. I don’t know what that has to do with Cactus Blog, but there you go.

Jacaranda mimosifolia

I’ve never heard of a Mexico Sombrero Cactus, especially one made in Japan, so that just goes to show you.

It’s the same as yesterday’s toothpick holder, but in it’s original packaging! A steal at any price!

Yet another in our collection. Not our collection of toothpick holders, of course, but our collection of photos of cactus toothpick holders.

Metal sculptures, succulents, cactus, and the nieghbor kids all come together in an article in the beleaguered SF Chron.

His backyard patio is a gallery of his metal work. (Eric Luse / The Chronicle)

Recycled work boots become containers for succulents. (Eric Luse / The Chronicle)

Apparently there is a whole collectible subset of cactus toothpick holders. I never knew. It must be something about the spines and the toothpicks. Of course, you could use the spines off the Stetsonia coryne, also known as the Argentine Toothpick. So I figure I’ll feature a few more of these toothpivk holders this week. Aren’t you lucky!

It’s a Fenton!