[ Lost in the Landscape ]

random updates

Update #1: The gopher chron­i­cles (Orig­i­nal post: Cook­ing for Ver­min)

It’s been three weeks since I tried to ward off gophers by using extra-hot chili pow­der. Peo­ple want to know if it works.

The con­clu­sion: There’s no sign of obvi­ous dam­age from pocket gophers in the treated area. The plants are grow­ing and bloom­ing nor­mally. That might sound like suc­cess, but there hasn’t been any gopher dam­age any­where else in the gar­den, either. So it’s incon­clu­sive at this point. But I’ll post as the sea­son goes on. I really really want this to work.

Update #2: Life post-hacking (Orig­i­nal post: I was hacked)

After I real­ized that my blog was hacked I cleaned out what looked like the prob­lem code. But two days later the Word­Press Pharma Hack was back. I did more dras­tic cleanup after that, and it looks like that took care of the problem.

Even after cleanup, because it takes days to weeks for Google to catch up and rein­dex every­thing on a site, searches for my blog showed many titles for my posts as promis­ing ways to buy var­i­ous drugs with­out pre­scrip­tion. Even as recently as Wednes­day, last week, the num­ber one blog key­word was “Pre­scrip­tion.” For a gar­den blog it’s pathetic to have that word ahead of the next four on the list: “gar­den,” “plants,” “blog” or “land­scape.” But the tide turned on Thurs­day, and the good words con­tinue to rise as the hacker words sink.

Update #3: Aloe, good-bye (Orig­i­nal post: Exotic plant, exotic pest)

It’s been almost a year since I men­tioned that my spec­i­men Aloe bar­berae (aka A. baine­sii) was in seri­ous decline. Aloe mites had attacked the plant and I was blam­ing its fate on them. The plant con­tin­ued to decline to the point that it had just a few grow­ing tips that kept get­ting smaller and smaller. Some­thing was very wrong and we cut the plant back to a stump one to two months later, leav­ing three small pups that were spring­ing from the low­est two feet of the plant.

Since then even those lit­tle pups have failed to thrive. Signs of mites have been few, so I’m begin­ning to think that some other cause is respon­si­ble for the prob­lems. Hypoth­e­sis #1 at the moment: pocket gophers eat­ing the roots. My main rea­son for think­ing this is that there’s another A. bar­berae just a few feet away that looks robust, with none of the signs of ill­ness the big plant was show­ing. I’ll keep my hope up for that plant.

In the mean­time, aloes being aloes, I fig­ured that all the lit­tle branch tips I cut off might root eas­ily. I treated all the chunks with miti­cide, stuck them in pot­ting mix and kept them just-moist. All three took.

Quite frankly I’m not sure there’s room in the front for two giant aloes I had there in the first place–placing the two orig­i­nal plants so close was a mis­take. So I gave two of the rooted plants to peo­ple in my office who were eager to grow this ter­rific plant. I still have one rooted plant, along with a half dozen more unrooted branch tips sit­ting on my green­house floor that are still green, almost a year later. I might end up with an impres­sive aloe in a pot if I can’t find a place for it. And if I root the remain­ing branch tips I could have a half-dozen more giveaways.

The orig­i­nal plant looks doomed, but pieces of the orig­i­nal clone live on. In the life and death world of gar­dens that’s almost a happy ending.

Update #4: Crest-fallen (Orig­i­nal post: Mutant Prim­rose)

In case you’re won­derng what hap­pened to the mutant Hooker’s evening prim­rose from a May 12 post­ing, it looks like the weight of the extra tis­sue on the crested grow­ing tip was more than the stem could keep aloft. Within a week of the orig­i­nal photo, the stem flopped to the ground, where it has stayed, still alive, but not thriving…

Update #5: A dif­fer­ent out­come for a crested growth (Orig­i­nal post: Defor­mity or Bio­log­i­cal Won­der?)

My last progress report is on this mutant crested growth of a Euphor­bia lam­bii. Since I posted on it in June of 2009, the plant seems to have incor­po­rated the crest into its con­tin­ued growth pat­terns, unlike on what was going on with the prim­rose above. Still, you can tell that the growth pat­tern isn’t quite what nor­mal plants go through. Still inter­est­ing, two years later…

July 15 2011 | Categories: gardening • my garden | Tags: Aloe bainesii • Aloe barberae • aloe mite • blogging • crested plants • Eriogonum grande var rubescens • Euphorbia lambii • Oenothera elata • pocket gophers • Wordpress Pharma Hack | 8 Comments »

colder than alaska

It’s been a cool sum­mer so far, fol­low­ing on the heels of a sunny but cool spring. I’ve been watch­ing the tem­per­a­tures in the paper for Fair­banks, Alaska, and most days the offi­cial San Diego report has been cooler. In fact it’s been cooler than almost any­where in the US except for maybe Anchor­age in Alaska. Brr.

At my July 4th party I was talk­ing to some­one there with ties to the Scripps Insti­tu­tion of Oceanog­ra­phy, and his thoughts were that this is typ­i­cal for an El Niño year. The phe­nom­e­non that the locals call “May gray” would be slow to get started (as was the case this year), and the dreaded sub­se­quent phe­nom­e­non the we call “June gloom” would drag on longer than usual. All that seems to be happening.

The gar­den natives don’t seem to be wor­ry­ing about the tem­per­a­ture as much as I’ve been. In fact the late-spring bloomers seem to be hav­ing a field day, extend­ing their bloom, look­ing nice at a time of year when they don’t always. Black sage is often done by this time, but there are a few lin­ger­ing flow­er­ing stems.

For stun­ning flow­ers, though, the black sage has passed the baton to Cleve­land sage. Here’s the com­mon and gor­geous cul­ti­var ‘Win­nifred Gilman.’

…and here’s Win­nifred in closeup…

One of local live-forevers, Dud­leya edulis, has had one of the more amaz­ing years that I can remem­ber. Here’s an 18–20 year old plant from above, all cov­ered with flow­ers. In this photo it’s sprawl­ing six feet across from one edge to the other.

The same dud­leya, viewed from ground level as it cas­cades over a short lit­tle retain­ing wall.

The San Miguel Island buck­wheat that I grew from seed two years ago, Eri­o­gonum grande var. rubescens, is finally hit­ting its stride, finally look­ing the pho­tos I’ve seen in books. Maybe the cooler weather will keep it look­ing nice longer.

Among the many non-natives that call my gar­den their home, this is Clero­den­drum ugan­dense, finally perk­ing up after look­ing like a twig until late in May. I think it’s been a some­what slow start for this plant this year, but it always waits until the weather warms to look like a plant you want to keep in the garden.

The com­mon orna­men­tal sage, Salvia ‘Hot Lips,’ is grown for its red and white bicol­ored blooms. I’ve heard that it blooms mostly with white flow­ers when weather turns cold. In the left photo these are the only two red and white flow­ers I could find on three plants. The rest of the flow­ers are white. In the depths of win­ter, how­ever, this plant is often com­pletely bicol­ored, so I’m not sure if there’s any truth to this color change rumor.

Some of the plants that I worry about the most are my Amer­i­can pitcher plants, these Sar­race­nia from the South, where the daily low tem­per­a­tures these days are often run­ning ten degrees above the San Diego day­time highs. For­tu­nately these plants seem to respond more to daylength than to tem­per­a­ture, and the plants look pretty good. Still, they might be taller by now where they originate.

Cool as the days may be, one thing told me for sure that I do not live remotely near Alaska. Mon­day night was the grand open­ing of the first giant bloom of this climb­ing cac­tus, prob­a­bly Hylo­cereus unda­tus. Even if it’s prob­a­bly been slow get­ting started this year, it’s prob­a­bly the best proof that I’m over­re­act­ing. Hardy to not much below freez­ing, one hit of arc­tic cold and you’ll freeze this plant’s tuchas off.

At eight to ten inches across, the only shy thing about this plant is that it only opens as dark­ness approaches. Peo­ple in cold climes covet being able to grow plants like this–or in fact many of our more ten­der Cal­i­for­nia natives.

That’s def­i­nite proof, Dorothy. We don’t live in Alaska. It just might feel that way these cool sum­mer days.

July 07 2010 | Categories: gardening • my garden | Tags: buckwheats • Cleveland sage • Eriogonum grande var rubescens • Hylocereus triangularis • in bloom • night blooming cactus • Salvia clevelandii • Salvia mellifera • San Miguel Island buckwheat • sarracenia • summer • temperature | 13 Comments »