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This time of year, its pretty hot in my garden – too hot to for new plants to go into the ground and too hot for me to be out in the garden all day. Instead, I turn my attention to my container plants. I have dozens of them, so several are always in need of attention. I walk the garden looking for pots in need of help:

Problem: Potting soil disappears from the pot to the point where the pot is only half filled!

Poor quality potting soil used in this pot has sunk by about six inches in less than two years

Read more…..

In most gardens, spring cleaning means preparing for spring.  In my garden, it means cleaning away the spring.

Here in Southern California, spring is when plants explode into growth, expanding inches, it seems, each day.  By time we get to the heat of summer (which should be about now, though this summer, we’ve hardly seen sun), plants sink into the slumber that allows them to survive the dry heat.

This is when I do my spring cleaning.

I spent most of this afternoon and evening cleaning my tiered garden.  It was, in a way, like a grand treasure hunt.  I pulled away waves of nasturtiums, revealing plants set into the ground last fall.  Some are most certainly drowned, others may survive.  Only time will tell.

I found baby agaves beneath sprawling wands of a salvia whose name is long forgotten but whose coral colored flowers glow from spring through summer.  Two new Darwinias, the prostrate shrubs named for the prophet of evolution, appear to have a 50/50 chance of survival;  one looks like it will make it, the other looks to be a goner.  How ironic.

Plants uncovered as the nasturtium and salvia are cleared away

Lots and lots of old nasturtium foliage.

The tall, running perennial sunflower leaned so far down from its perch that it nearly smothered the pale yellow ‘Lemon Leigh’ Spanish lavenders on the steppe beneath it.  It took me 20 minutes of pruning to rescue them.

Piles of debris from spring's growth

My arms are sliced, my hands chapped, but the garden beds looks so much better.  A new layer of mulch and they will be ready for summer!

Years ago, a neighbor introduced herself to me as “the plant pincher.” I must have looked surprised because she explained that whenever she saw a plant she liked, she pinched a piece and took it home to try to root it. And, she continued, would I mind if she pinched some of my plants.

She assumed I was surprised to hear that plants could be rooted from pieces. On the contrary, I was surprised to learn I wasn’t the only plant pincher in the neighborhood!

My friend pinched because her budget was limited and her property large. I pinch hard-to-find plants in friends’ gardens (with their permission of course).

Rooting plants from cuttings is surprisingly straightforward. Not everything is easy to start, but once you understand the basics, try your hand at anything.

(more at www.Blackgold.biz….)

Fig tree cutting six months after rooting in potting soil

When Maury and Heather Callaghan moved to their newly built Olivenhain home in 2001, they carpeted the two-thirds-acre lot in sod. The New Zealand natives had lived all over the world, most recently in Kentucky where they had a large, woodland garden. Both had gardened with their parents as children. As adults, however, Maury’s business had taken them around the world, mostly where there wasn’t much opportunity for gardening, until they landed in Kentucky, where Heather became a Master Gardener. (read more…)

Ever drive along the roadways of California and notice a huge, fountainy grass with big, feathery, buff-colored plumes?  To the untrained eye, pampas grass (Cortaderia selloana)  looks like a statuesque, beautiful grass, but oh!  Beware!

Pampas spreads out of control

In her wonderful horticultural history, Southern California Gardens, Victoria Padilla tells how in the mid 1800s, Joseph Sexton “the father of horticulture in Santa Barbara” popularized pampas.
Vast acreage was devoted to pampas as demand grew, not just for  garden plants but also for plumes to decorate hats and other items.  “Pampas grass became so popular.” Padilla writes, “that it was almost a national emblem, and was used not only for indoor decorations, but for parades and even on holiday greeting cards”

Notice how the pampas towers over John Sexton!

If only Sexton had known what would happen not a full century later.  Pampas was so well adapted to growing in California’s Mediterranean climate, this South American native has become one of our worst invasive plants.   It invades natural habitats, crowding out the plants that native animals depend on for food, shelter, and cover.  It clogs waterways causing the buildup of sediments and again destroying native habitats.  Its dry leaves and plumes allows fire to jump from plant to plant, even across wetlands.

Pampas’ destructive nature has not gone unnoticed.  There are efforts at every level in the state to stop the sale of pampas in nurseries.  At the same time, millions of dollars are spent annually in eradication programs both for habitats and for garden situations.

In fact, home gardener Sandy Shapiro initiated a backyard pampas eradication program in his hometown of Encinitas, California.  Project RIP, or “Remove Invasive Pampas Grass” was intended as a model program to show residents how to get pampas off their properties.

Still, wholesale and retail growers continue to offer dwarf and variegated hybrid pampas such as such as ‘Gold Band,’ ‘Silver Comet,’ and others.    Because identical looking seedlings don’t pop up in the nurseries, they assume these plants are sterile and “safe” for garden use.   But are they right?

Pampas is beautiful, but beware!

Not according to Marie Jasieniuk, Assistant Professor in the Department of Plant Sciences at UC Davis. Jasieniuk identified genes found in both wild (invasive) pampas populations and cultivated landscape pampas varieties sold by nurseries and garden centers in California, in other states across America, in Europe and New Zealand.  She compared the genetics of cultivated varieties to 29 wild populations of pampas from Crescent City in the north to La Jolla in Southern California.

Jasieniuk’s research determined that wild populations of pampas have genes in common with the so-called sterile, cultivated varieties.

In other words, while they don’t breed true-type offspring, cultivated pampas definitely breed with the wild growing pampas and contribute to the overall problem of invasive pampas.

According to Jasieniuk, ” landscape plantings are probable sources of invasive populations…  Our results strongly suggest that …. landscape planting has contributed to the range expansion of invasive C. selloana in California.”

Further, results suggest that even as we spend millions of dollars eradicating wild growing populations of pampas, landscape plantings continue to “replenish” the wild populations. Therefore, Jasieniuk writes, ”management efforts that target secondary releases by eradicating landscape plantings may be highly effective in controlling existing invasive populations as well as preventing further invasive spread.”

In other words, to eliminate invasive pampas from both native habitats and cultivated areas, we need to stop planting all varieties of the pampas, Cortaderia selloana in our gardens.

Beautiful but dangerous.  Sounds like the beginning of a good novel.  If only it were fantasy rather than reality….

Hidden Pleasures

Plants are so amazing….

Last night, my husband and I took an evening stroll and as we stepped out the front door, I was struck by a sweet fragrance.   I couldn’t quite pinpoint its source, and since my husband was already half way up the street, I scrambled after him rather than taking the time to find it.

Upon our return, however, I stopped him before he made it to the front door.  “Honey,” I said, “do you smell that?  Lets figure out where it is coming from.”  I happen to have a better smeller than he does, but I like to involve him in my plant escapades from time to time.

I know from experience that the biggest smells often comes from the most demure or subtle blooms.  In fact, it is a common strategy for plants whose flowers aren’t very showy to make a big smell.  We humans may think that the fragrance is for our enjoyment, but in truth, that’s how the plants attract pollinators.  And the fragrance isn’t always sweet.

In the case of Stapelia, for example, the genus is known for its off-color, star-shaped  flowers that nestle deep among succulent branches.  It would be pretty challenging for an insect or bird to find their blooms by sight.  But the flowers emit a terrible odor, like rotten meat.  And guess what their pollinator is…   flies!  What better way to attract a fly than to smell like rotten meat?

Pale colored flowers are often fragrant too.  Angel trumpet (Brugmansia) for example, has lovely, huge, dangling trumpet-shaped flowers, typically in ghostly white, pale, yellow or pale pink/coral.

Beautiful white flowering angel trumpet is fragrant from afternoon to evening to attract its pollinator, a night flying moth

These big-blooming South American natives are pollinated by moths at night.  So, how do the moths find their targets in the dark?

If you grow angel trumpet, you’ve probably noticed that they emit a wonderful floral fragrance starting in the late afternoon and lasting through much, if not all of  night time hours (I’m never awake long enough to figure out when the fragrance abates).  The moths simply follow the scent.

By the way, hybrid angel trumpets are selected for more intense-colored flowers.  And the  cold-tolerant, Andean red angel’s trumpet, Brugmansia sanguinea blooms deep orange-red with a yellow throat.

One of my favorite species gladiolas, Gladiolus tristis (South African marsh Afrikaner) uses the same strategy as the angel trumpet. These January/February bloomers have tall, narrow leaves and the palest of yellow flowers.  Starting late afternoon, their perfume fills the air, just in time to attract their own moth pollinator.

But this time of year, the angel trumpet has yet to flower and the gladiola is long past.  So what was so fragrant?

Amazingly enough, it was a Sansevieria, a plant whose unfortunate common name is mother-in-law’s tongue.

Sansevieria are evergreen plants of tropical and subtropical Africa and Asia.  They were tremendously popular in the era of  mid-century modern and modernistic architecture (roughly 1940s - 70s) because of their own architecture. Tall, smooth, single pointed blades each rise straight from the ground, some solid green, some pale green, some green with yellow margins, and others spotted.  Some blades are straight while others twist slightly.  Still others fold into themselves to form a solid cylindrical spear.

Sansevieria with spotted blades

Sansevieria with patterned blades

Sansevieria with cylindrical blades

Sansevieria continue their popularity in part because these oddities are able to live in the shade outdoors (in frost free areas) or indoors with almost no water at all, as long as they are planted in very well draining soil.

I have a Sansevieria given to me years ago that was my very last houseplant after the rest died or migrated outdoors.  It sat in my office and was watered about once every six months - when I remembered.  I finally took pity on it and moved it outdoors where it really isn’t as happy as it seemed indoors.

This demure little Sansevieria bloom has the fragrance of fresh Freesias

But last night as I searched my front entry patio, I noticed a very small, very unobtrusive, and unfortunately no longer labeled Sansevieria.  It sat in a small pot where it had produced a tall flower stalk, the source of the evening’s perfume extravaganza.

The funny thing is, I have at least a dozen kinds of Sansevieria, most given to me more than 25 years ago by the late plant explorer Manny Singer of Singer’s Growing Things.  All these years, they haven’t even hinted at blooming, and this year, at least four different types are in bloom.  And all fragrant.

Ah, the wonder of plants!