Are we one of the top ten Garden centers in the Bay Area ? You decide…

The Top Rated Garden Centers and Nurseries in the Bay Area

According to the New Republic, there’s never been a better time to decorate your home with so many succulents that you can’t even see the windows anymore.

I am not trendy

. In fact, I actively disdain something as soon as I sense it’s a trend… But that couldn’t stop me from falling prey to one of the latest trends: succulents.

I noticed other people’s obsession with succulents before I became obsessed myself….

But somewhere along the way, my stance on succulents started changing. I found myself thinking that maybe if I had a succulent….

First, I acquired a light green echeveria that grew a single yellow flower. Then I got another, darker echeveria. And a hen-and-chicks. And a big spiky aloe. And a fairy castle cactus. There was no turning back.

Phew! What a story! A journey to enlightenment.

Hilltop Steakhouse is gone for good, but the cactus remains!

Whither Hilltop Steakhouse? Closed since 2013, the landmark restaurant on Route 1 in Saugus is about to be demolished. That’s the bad news, at least for lovers of its marbled beef and baked potatoes. The good news is that the giant cactus that greeted patrons is staying put. The developer “recognizes that the cactus is such an iconic item that he couldn’t do any better than to reuse it”….

The Hilltop was opened in 1961 by Frank Giuffrida, a butcher whose name is emblazoned on the 68-foot tall, 45-foot wide cactus. That won’t remain, apparently. We’re told the developer plans to retrofit the Route 1 icon with LED lights and replace the name.

It’s a Boston thing.

Each year, (a) mature cactus can produce 10-20 offsets….

“You can harvest the babies off the larger cacti every year.”…

Last year they had about 1,500. They now have almost 5,000 cacti growing at Tilllsonburg Garden Gate.

“This year I have to pull off 50,000 cacti… with my hands.”…

“Once we have 50,000, then we’ll be able to expand sales,” said Dawson…. “Next year, 50,000 x 10, we could have half a million cacti.”…

“It’s a specialty market.”

That’ll be a lot of cactus soon enough! I wonder if they’ll be trying to sell them to us in California too? It’s a bigger market for cactus than Toronto…

Cactus Jungle

It’s been a few years since the fight over protecting the Cactus Owls has made its way to court, but a new court battle over protections is coming.

Two environmental groups filed a lawsuit Tuesday aimed at forcing the federal government to protect Arizona’s diminishing cactus ferruginous pygmy owl population under the Endangered Species Act.

The Sonoran Desert of southern and eastern Arizona is home to about 50 of the owls. While Arizona’s population is one of two small populations in the United States, there are significant populations of pygmy owls in Mexican states of Sonora and Sinaloa.

The lawsuit filed by Defenders of Wildlife and the Tucson-based Center for Biological Diversity calls for the U.S. Fish and Wildlife Service to list the owl as endangered….

Pygmy owls were once more common in Arizona, but urban sprawl from Phoenix and Tucson in the 1970s and ’80s has eliminated much of their habitat, according to Noah Greenwald, endangered species director for the Center for Biological Diversity.

A change to the Endangered Species Act in 1997 defined the cactus ferruginous pygmy owl as a “distinct population segment” that could be protected under the Act.

It’s been awhile since we’ve posted one of these local news stories where an Agave blooms and everyone comes from miles around to see the enormous sight. And then the local newspaper gets involved and publishes a picture and that picture zooms around the world on the wings of the web to my desk and from my desk to your eyes.

Enjoy! Local news at its finest.

Mystery cactus springs more than 6m in Bentleigh garden

…(LORNA Smith) and her husband, John, have lived at the Bentleigh house since 1956 and the huge cactus is a first.

“It’s gone straight up like a rocket, it’s taller than my garage now,” Mrs Smith said.

“I just can’t believe it, nothing like this has happened before.”

The commenters have correctly identified it as an Agave americana.

Wayfair sells miscellaneous home goods type crap and such, and for some reason they wanted to let me know they also have butterfly maps for the US. So here, have a link to their Butterfly Maps for the US.

With Butterfly Pictures too:

It’s an odd thing for that website and I wouldn’t have blogged it but for the pretty pictures. That’s what it takes for me to blog something! Send me a link to pretty pictures!!!!!!!

That’s a great idea! We should invent a wifi enabled smartphone plant minder. The devices should cost only $5 per plant, with a base unit that costs about $25. You could connect all your plants to your smartphone for under $100, unless you’re like me and have a lot more plants than that.

You could check the soil moisture and temperature of each plant. You could check the amount of ongoing photosynthesis happening on sunny and cloudy days. You could make sure your roommate isn’t overwatering.

Nice!

Too bad it doesn’t exist. But this does:

From Bundt comes a story about Lithops in the Lifestyles Section.

Lithops als aufregende Zimmerpflanze

You might think I would run this through a translator so I could see what this article is really about. You never know! It could be about how to grow Lithops for fun and gardening, or maybe it’s for some nefarious purpose – the Germans are after all a lot closer to Ukraine than we in the US are!

I don’t know what that has to do with Ukraine, but it is a current topic of news, so maybe, you know, maybe.

Further into the article we get this.

Ursprünglich sind lebende Steine, die sich von Frühjahr bis Herbst in der Wachstumsphase befinden, in Südafrika beheimatet.

I still don’t know what that means, but it also seems like it’s probably something innocuous about growing Lithops.

Scientists believe the agave plant – the raw source of Tequila and mezcal – could produce cost-effective biofuel for farmers

As part of a science project at Central Queensland University in Rockhampton, Australia, scientists have been growing the plants and discovered the leaves, that are currently a by-product, could be used to make bioethanol.

Of course it will work, you can make alcohol from it easily enough, but will it be a better source than switchgrass?

Sandy Johnson, the co-owner of Hearts of Jade Succulent Garden, Art and Gift Shop on High Street, said business was “steady” this holiday season….

Hearts of Jade, open since Sept. 2012, features indoor and outdoor decorations, including metal sculptures, birdhouses, pottery, wind chimes and a variety of succulent wreaths and arrangements.

“We do a lot of one-of-a-kind things you don’t see anywhere else,” Johnson said. “Succulents are big right now, (so) we’re just kind of riding the wave.”

Do more than just ride the wave, Sandy! Grab hold of the bucking bronco of succulent popularity right now and make a mark in the Chicagoland arts scene!

By the way, do click through that link above to the bucking bronco. Amazing what succulent popularity of the moment can lead to!

The Marin Independent-Journal News-Navigator is pretty definitive about how to pronounce plant names.

Kalanchoe

Pronounced kal-un-KOH-ee, kalanchoe is a little blooming machine that can light up a room with brilliantly colored blossoms encircled by fleshy, glossy, scalloped green leaves.

Dictionary.com lists 4 possible pronounciations. We prefer the 4th one. The one listed above is generally used by florists, while nursery growers usually say “kuh-lan-choh”.

It would be irresponsible not to comment.

Interestingly the Saguaro attacks the young woman with chollas.

There’s a lot to unpack in this AP article about the common houseplant known as the Pencil Cactus. Here’s the opening:

Sap aside, pencil cactus is nice indoors and out
Lee Reich, Associated Press

This undated photo shows a pencil cactus, the common name for Euphorbia tirucalli, an easy-to-care-for and interesting-looking houseplant, in New Paltz, New York. LEE REICH Associated Press

Pencil cactus is a fitting common name for Euphorbia tirucalli, even though the plant would be useless for writing and is not really a cactus.

OK, so the headline starts right off with mentioning the sap as a downside, but not enough of a downside to stop one from buying it. Maybe! But it is one of the most poisonous of the Euphorbias commonly available for purchase, so maybe it shouldn’t be so easily dismissed as a concern.

Then the headline lets you know that the plant is good outside, and yet the photo accompanying the article was taken in New Paltz, NY, home of an original French Huguenot village, and the truth is it will die die die if left outside through a winter in New Paltz, NY, home of the SUNY New Paltz campus.

Finally, the AP writer writes a pun! Oh the humanity! Of course, its not really a pun, not at all funny, and has no place in such a serious article about a houseplant in New Paltz, NY, home of the Mohonk Mountain House. Nice!

From Tela-Botanica it’s labeled as Hoodia alstonii, which has amazing little yellow flowers. Unfortunately it’s in french so I don’t know what the description says.

C’est Linné qui, en 1754, a créé le genre Cactus dans son ouvrage fondamental Genera plantarum. Or ce genre Cactus n’existe pas dans la nomenclature actuelle. Et pourtant, il est le type de la famille des Cactacées. Son apparition progressive dans la littérature botanique est intéressante, et deux explications sont proposées quant à son origine.

I suppose I could run it through a translation software package and find out, but what fun would that be?

OK, I ran it through the translation software and it must be a mistake. This photo of a Hoodia and this description of the Cactus Family in french do not go together. What now?

Growing succulents in Florida can be a challenge because the counterpart to our dry season is the wet season, making it difficult to sustain the dry growing conditions that succulents require.

And yet they recommend planting:

The Thai crown of thorns blooms year round. Kalanchoe ‘fantastic’ has colorful, mottled leaves. The Fishhook Aloe. Senecio ‘Blue Chalk’ is aptly named. The ‘mother of thousands’ Kalanchoe has a upright, striking bloom. Euphorbia ‘Firesticks’.

That’s a lot of succulents to be mworried about the Florida humidity and wet season. So many potential problems! And yet, a lot of people seem to grow a lot of succulents in Florida, so maybe it’s OK after all.

They get Pet Questions for their Plants:

By Dr. Susan Baker

Question: I have had a Kalanchoe plant for several months and a good friend visited me over the holidays and told me it is toxic to my cat! Is it true? I love the pretty flowers and my cat Jessibelle has never touched it. Do I have to get rid of it?

Answer: Good question Monique! Unfortunately, the Kalanchoe plant is listed as one of the top plants to cause toxic issues for pets! The plant contains bufodienolides that can cause vomiting and diarrhea and in severe cases can cause abnormalities in heart rate and rhythm….

The ASPCA animal poison control center has a nice website on poisonous plants that you can review at www.napcc.aspca.org.