Succulents and More™

Work has been very busy this week so I haven’t had much time to spend in the garden or on this blog. But I plan to have a few longer posts for you very soon. Today I took my camera on my lunchtime walk and I want to show you some scenes of early spring in our neighborhood. We live on the edge of town and have easy access to a greenbelt that extends for miles in either direction. It is used a great deal by people walking, running, bicycling or just strolling along at their leisure. Soon the majestic walnut and oak trees will leaf out, but at the moment the most prominent sights are the lush grass that grows under the trees like a green carpet and flowering fruit trees that must be left over from the time when this area was a large farm.             Many houses in this neighborhood have flowering fruit trees, too. I can’t tell what kind they are—plum, cherry or some other member of the genus Prunus —but they sure are...

No story in this post, just some random macro photos I took today. Enjoy the patterns, textures and colors! Nasturtium ( Tropaeolum majus ) Rhubarb ( Rheum × hybridum ) Rhubarb ( Rheum × hybridum ) Echeveria ‘Doris Taylor’ Aeonium tabuliforme Unidentified aeonium Aeonium ‘Kiwi’ Aeonium ‘Zwartkop Echeveria pulvinata ‘Ruby Blush’ Euphorbia tubiglans String of buttons ( Crassula perforata ) False saguaro ( Pachycereus pringlei ) Sea holly ( Eryngium planum ), blooming far too early Cape restio ( Rhodocoma capensis ) Hebenstreitia dentata Haitian metal art

After visiting several nurseries and botanical gardens lately ( Annie’s Annuals | UC Botanical Garden at Berkeley | Cactus Jungle | UC Santa Cruz Arboretum | Sierra Azul Nursery & Gardens ) and buying a plant or two at almost all of them, the flag stone walkway to the front door was beginning to look like a nursery display. Just the other day a neighbor said how nice it looked, but even so, it was high time to get a few things in the ground. The first two things I proceeded to plant were the Grevillea ‘Superb’ and Leucadendron salignum ‘Winter Red’ I’d bought at Norrie’s, the UC Santa Cruz Arboretum gift shop, last Saturday. But before I could put them in the ground in the planting bed adjacent to the small patch of lawn in the backyard, I had to do some housekeeping. The potted bamboo on the left in the photo below, Phyllostachys bambusoides ‘Castillon’, needed to be moved to a larger pot anyway so that’s the first job I tackled (I wrote about it in yesterday’s post ). Then...

Since our backyard is so small, all our running bamboos are confined to containers. Planted in the ground, they would require careful monitoring to ensure that they don’t escape under the fence into a neighbor’s yard. While I do keep a good eye on things, I’d rather not have to worry about potential bamboo problems. The downside about keeping taller bamboos in containers is that they get pot-bound fairly quickly. To keep them healthy, you need to remove them from the pot every year or so and remove the rhizomes that will invariably have started to circle around the root ball. In addition, potted bamboos need extra watering because a great deal of moisture evaporates through the leaves. Our potted bamboos are tied into an automatic drip system. It usually runs from April through late October, i.e. during our dry season. In the late fall through early spring, we get enough rain to keep things hydrated. In a normal year, that is. This winter has been exceedingly dry, about 40% of normal...