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Blog Archive 2011
December 2011
I have been slow to join some of the newer computing trends like social networking. I just joined Facebook. If you are a Facebook member and want to receive notices when I add a blog page or want to discuss gardening with me, please invite Chuck Hubbuch to be your Facebook friend. It you are not a member of Facebook, I will continue posting blogs and new information on this website.
Tom Schodowski is planning for an organizational meeting for the continuation of Horticulture Study Group meetings. He will be in touch with everyone when he has something to offer the group.
By mid-December, two hard frosts with overnight lows around 34 degrees F burned the foliage of some of the tender plants in my home garden. Still, there is a lot of color. Bright orange clusters of tangerines, fall-blooming camellias, shrub roses and trailing lantana provide the largest masses of color. Two bromeliads, Aechmea recurvata and A. distacantha survived the past two very cold winters and are flowering in mid-December. Several different species and hybrids of camellia are flowering and more are showing buds for late winter and spring flowers. Beautyberry (Callicarpa) has lost its bright purple berries by mid-December but the various hollies still have bright yellow, orange and red fruits. A few spring flowers are starting early with the mild weather. Violets, lyre-leaf sage, evening primrose, creeping bluets and native spiderworts are blooming. In a quick walk, I count thirty-three different types of plants in flower and seven more with brightly colored fruits. I have a little fall color, too. Winged sumacs, eastern dogwood, firebush and red maples have bright red colors. The red leaves of the Japanese maples are mostly gone but Oliver's maple is just starting to turn red. Wild cherry has bright orange leaves. Grape leaves are lemon yellow. Sweet gums have not decided. Most of their leaves are green but they are starting to show some orange and purple.
I mentioned last month that the nasturtiums started flowering six weeks after sowing the seeds. They were hurt a little by a hard frost a couple of weeks ago. By mid-December, they are covered with flowers. The new nemesias (Sunsatia series hybrids) are growing and flowering well in a pot by the door. I really like the bright yellow flowers of the cultivar, ‘Lemon.’ Calendulas began producing flower buds just two months after sowing the seeds. Their bright, golden yellow flowers add to the front door display. I left the larkspurs and California poppies out in the cold and they show no damage. I protected the annual poppies and cornflowers from frost by bringing them under the carport roof. They continue to grow well.
In the vegetable garden, I harvested the last of the sweet potatoes at the first of the month after the frost burned the leaves. I am not fond of candied sweet potatoes but find that I enjoy them baked and in soups. Recently, I saw a black beans and sweet potato recipe that looked interesting. Ethiopian kale that I got from the UNF vegetable garden on our tour last year reseeded and I have started harvesting their leaves. Collards from last spring are still going strong. I have added kale, broccoli, carrots, cauliflower, lettuce and more in the past few weeks. I still see some insect damage but expect good growth with the cooling weather – provided we do not have a hard freeze.
After many years in Miami, winter is not my favorite time of year. Fluctuating winter temperatures force me to watch the forecasts closer and carry pots in and out. However, bugs are less of a problem in the garden at this time of year, especially the ones that bite me. I am learning to enjoy some of the winter annuals, vegetables and fruits. I just hope it is a mild winter. I had enough cold during the last two winters to last me for a long time.
November 2011
Recently, I had an interesting conversation with Marilyn Draper about landscape problems she was having due to salts in the reclaimed water in St. Augustine. It struck a chord with me and I began searching for more information on the internet about salts in reclaimed water and salt sensitive plants. One of the first sites I found was a page from Pinellas County Utilities telling their reclaimed water users to not plant azaleas, gardenias, roses, geraniums and orchids in areas irrigated by reclaimed water. As I searched further, I found more information. This seems to explain why the loropetalum trees at UNF suddenly declined and died, why the tulip poplars started looking bad and why azaleas, mahonias and camellias have grown poorly in recent years. I had wondered about these things but did not consider that it might be due to a single cause. Salt sensitivity appears to be the one thing that connects all of these problems.
I believe in conserving our drinking water. I believe that using reclaimed water is a good way to do that whenever, wherever it is available. Using reclaimed water will, however, may mean making some adjustments. One choice is to leave the established azaleas and loropetalums without irrigation. They are tough enough to survive without it. Replacing salt sensitive plants with salt tolerant plants in another option. Yet another is to plant drought tolerant plants that do not require supplemental irrigaion. Regardless of your decisions, it is better to know the issues before you make the change. Take a look at my Reclaimed Water and Salt Tolerant Plants pages for more information. In addition, I have added information about salt tolerance to plant pages wherever possible.
In what seems now like a previous life, my job gave me the opportunity to travel to the tropics. I have a lot of slides from that time. I just bought a slide duplicator and am beginning to digitize them. So far, I have added ten countries (or regions,) including Central America, Madagascar, Mauritius, South Africa and Australia. Of course, my travels have the distinctive perspective of an obsessed gardener. Take a look at my Travels page for these images and some information about the trips.
Fall-blooming and winter-blooming camellias provide a lot of color in my home garden now. I picked up an interesting dwarf Camellia sasanqua last spring. 'Sarrell' is a spreading, compact shrub that is supposed to grow to only three feet tall. It is blooming now with semi-double, pink flowers. The nearly red'Yuletide,' bright pink 'Stephanie Golden,' and pink and white 'Autumn Beauty' are in full bloom in November. Besides the comparatively common Camellia sasanqua, my Camellia oleifera is covered with single white flowers. Its flowers are a little smaller than C. sasanqua but are produced in large numbers. This plant produces very large seeds and is one of the sources of camellia oil. Tea plants, Camellia sinensis, are flowering now with one inch wide, white to pink flowers. A very nice hybrid, 'Yume,' has flowered so heavily that it has grown very slowly. It is covered with nearly white flowers that darken to pink in the center and each petal has a notch at its end, somewhat like a dogwood. One of my winter-flowering Camellia japonica plants is already flowering, 'Silver Waves.' It has huge, single white flowers that are six inches or more wide. It may continue to bloom into March. Other camellias will come into flower through the winter and spring. I may have mentioned Camellia Forest Nursery before. It is a great source of wide selection of camellia species, hybrids and cultivars. They carry a few other unusual plants, too. You can find them at www.camforest.com.
My nasturtiums just started to flower this week, six weeks after sowing the seeds. The outer leaves were damaged by a light freeze two weeks ago but the plants have recovered already. I'll be sure to protect them when the next freeze is predicted. The annual poppies, larkspurs and calendulas that I mentioned last month are growing well but are not yet flowering. I stopped by Trad's Nursery last weekend to look for odd winter annuals. I picked up some large-flowered Nemesia hybrids with bright yellow flowers, one with purple centers. If these showy hybrids are as cold hardy as the common nemesia, they will be a great addition to north Florida's winter landscape. I bought a perennial sweet allysum there last winter. It is called 'Snow Princess.' It is a low-growing plant that can spread out a couple of feet. My plant flowered through last winter's cold temperatures in a large container and then continued growing and flowering through the heat of the summer. It died during the summer when it dried out while I was away on vacation. I saw some plants at the Jacksonville Zoo when I was there recently. It has impressed me. We will be adding it to the UNF landscape.
October 2011
The most interesting thing that I did last month was not in my garden. My wife and I traveled to Alaska for the first time. We flew into Anchorage and drove a car on day trips through the region. It is a beautiful place. From a gardening perspective, I was impressed with the annual flowers planted in Anchorage and nearby communities. Click on this link, Alaska, to read more about the trip and see some photographs.
Returning to Florida, I began looking further into winter annuals. I have had some experience with the commonest winter annuals in our area: plants like flowering kale (Brassica,) snapdragons (Antirrhinum,) petunias and callibrachoas (Petunia,) pansies and violas (Viola,) sweet allysum (Lobularia,) and nemesias and diascias. (See the Annuals list.) Now, I have nasturtiums (Tropaeolum) that germinated in one week and are growing in a large container. Seeds of California poppies (Eschscholzia,) corn poppies (Papaver rhoeus,) larkspur (Consolida,) calendula (Calendula) and corn flowers (Centaurea) have started germinating within one week. Iceland poppy seeds (Papaver nudicale) were sown at the same time and began germinating in eight days . I am growing all of these in large containers of commercial potting soil. From my reference searches, I assume that the poppies and larkspur will survive the winter outdoors. Nasturtium, calendula and cornflowers will require freeze protection (or a very mild winter in my garden) to survive to spring. Please tell me more about these winter annuals or additional species that you have grown in the Coastal Southeast - or, have tried to grow. Send e-mails to thegardener@southeastgarden.com.
* Leslie Pierpont e-mails me to say that larkspurs have grown well in her Jacksonville, FL garden, even reseeding for a couple of years. She has grown the red poppy, Papaver rhoeus, successfully, too. Janese Warriner says she has grown some of the annual poppies in Jacksonville, FL. They have grown well but she has lost "beautiful plants full of buds" during a hot spell in April. She says that California poppies (Eschscholzia californica) fare a little better.
My zone 8b garden had about five inches of rain in September. The zone 9a garden had a little less. While this is a few inches shy of average, it is one of the three rainiest months I have seen in the last two years. October is starting out cooler and rainy. Two summers of drought have taken their toll on garden plants and native wild plants, too. Small wildflowers like sundews have not appeared for the past two years. Hopefully, they remain dormant in the soil and will appear again someday when we have a rainy summer. Despite two difficult years, the yard looks fairly well. Trailing lantana, plumbago, gaillardia, angel's trumpet, soft yucca, galphimia, bottlebrush, shrub roses and others are flowering. Native goldenrods, asters, liatris, agalinis, species of Bidens and others are in flower, too. The gray fruits of wax myrtle, red holly berries and purple beautyberries are ripening for the birds. This is the best fall I have had so far for edible fruits in my yard. I have been eating jujubes for nearly four weeks. A three year old, six-foot tall Japanese persimmon has fourteen large fruits that are nearly ripe. The tangerine trees are full of fruit that will ripen in December.
On campus, we have been planting drought tolerant plants for the past few years. During these drought years, successful plants include of Acacia, Agave, Caesalpinia, Chilopsis, Chitalpa, Dasylirion, Ebenopsis, Havardia, Hesperaloe, Leucophyllum, an olive tree (Olea,) Nolina and Parkinsonia. We are having mixed results with Opuntia species. See my Opuntia page for more information. We were lucky to start our trials of drought tolerant plants before the drought started. If you have a hot, dry landscape, take a look at these plants. I hope the drought ends soon, but who knows? A report on this morning's news says that Texas forecasters are predicting a continuing drought in their state. It seems likely that the conditions that affect Texas will impact other Gulf Coast states.
September 2011
Last month at this time, my jujube was fruiting heavily despite a very dry summer. You may have noticed that we’ve had a good bit of rain lately. Many of my jujube fruits swelled with the abundance of water, then split and began rotting. It looks as though I’ll have plenty of fruits but not as many as I expected.
I have been very careful about removing and avoiding exotic pest plants in my gardens. I think about the millions of tax payer dollars that states spend trying to control wildly invasive things like water hyacinth and melaleuca. I think about exotic pest plants crowding out native plants and the animals that depend on them. I think, too, about all of the unwanted seedlings or suckers coming up throughout my own garden. I have enough weeds already. Mexican petunia (Ruellia brittonia) is one of those plants. It clumps with some vigor and is ruggedly sturdy in the Florida landscape. It produces lots of purple flowers and lots of seed capsules. The two sides of its capsules snap open and throw seeds several feet away. Recently, I stumbled across an article about University of Florida researchers creating a seedless hybrid called ‘Purple Showers.’ I started looking for plants and learned that many nurseries call the weedy species ‘Purple Showers.’ Finally, I found a note about the seedless plants being sold by Riverview Flower Farms as Florida Friendly Plants. I found a large group of these plants in a Home Depot just a couple of weekends ago. I hope local nurseries are carrying this seedless hybrid, too. I could find nothing on the label about these being seedless. However, looking through the potted plants, I found lots of old flower spikes but no seed capsules. If you like this tall, vigorous purple-flowered perennial, please be sure to plant the Riverview Flower Farms’ hybrid, ‘Purple Showers.’
Fall is approaching. The late summer stalwarts are flowering. Native blanket flower (Gaillardia pulchella,) goldenrod (Solidago odora,) partridge pea (Chamaecrista fasiculata,) Spanish needle (Bidens pilosa,) sunshine mimosa (Mimosa strigulosa,) paintbrush (Carphephorus corymbosus) and elephant’s foot (Elephantopus elatus) are in bloom. Liatris species are sending up spikes and will be flowering soon. The bright purple berries of beautyberry and the orange fruits of persimmon are ripening now. The small fruits of the black gum are starting to turn. It won’t be long before the catbirds are calling from those trees. In the cultivated parts of my garden, pentas, plumbago, porterweed, galphimia and trailing lantana are blooming. The large numbers of flowers attract hummingbirds, bumblebee moths, butterflies and other pollinators. The numbers of the insect pollinators seem lower this year than previous years. I assume that the two cold winters and long period of drought has hurt their populations. Too bad it didn’t do the same to yellow flies and mosquitoes.
I found a brightly colored grasshopper in my garden a few days ago. I have been using Grasshoppers of Florida by Capinera, Scherer and Squitier to identify grasshoppers in my yard but this insect was colored like nothing else I've ever seen. It had a bright pink head and thorax, black and green wings, yellow hind thighs with black stripes, red hind knees and a blue lower hind leg! My wife took photos of it. Finally, I e-mailed Dr. Capinera at the University of Florida for help. He identified it as a southern greenstriped grasshopper, Chortophaga australior. It is not a common color form but it is a relatively common grasshopper in north Florida. Here are some photos. If you look closely, there are interesting things to discover in the garden.
July-August 2011
Today, I look at my garden and see the damage of the last two years, two unusually cold winters and two very dry summers. My turf is in shambles. I have lost a few plants and others are struggling to recover. A few plants, however, are thiving. Citrus and figs are okay but my muscadine grapes and jujube trees are looking great. I have two muscadine cultivars. Each is loaded with fruit this year. I’ll eat a wild muscadine when I find one before the birds get it but I really like these cultivars with large fruits and thin skins. I have four jujube trees (Zizyphus jujube.) One is still too young to fruit. The fruits of the first to ripen began in July and is already finished. Another is ripening now. The largest is over ten feet tall. It is so heavy with fruit that the trunk is leaning over far enough for me to pick fruits from the very top of the tree. If you are not familiar with the jujube tree, it has small, shiny brown fruits in late summer and fall. Each contains a single seed. The flesh of the fruit is crispy when fresh and tastes like an apple. They can be eaten raw or dried. Just Fruits and Exotics is a mail order nursery in Florida that offers several cultivars of jujube (they say jujuba.) Their web address is http://justfruitsandexotics.com/
At the encouragement of the late Richard Waldron and, more recently, Rich Lindberg, I have tried a few clumping bamboo plants at home (north of the airport) with mixed success. One that really impresses me is Bambusa textilis var. gracilis. It showed very little damage as a result of these last two winters, each of which dropped to lows of 18 degrees F. In its fourth year, it is well established with at least sixty stalks and a height of about twenty feet. I try to water it thoroughly once a month when conditions are dry. With that little bit of water, it looks great today and is sending up more shoots. Several other varieties of Bambusa textilis are available. ‘Wong Chuk’ is a giant that grows to 45 feet tall. ‘Scranton’ is a very upright, narrow selection.
At UNF, we have several clumping bamboos in a courtyard between buildings. They are growing well, including some that might not be cold hardy in the open in Jacksonville. A standout is Dendrocalamus minor amoenus. It is the centerpiece of this planting. It is a tall bamboo that spreads gracefully at the top to provide plenty of shade. The stalks (culms) are dusty grayish when new. As this waxy covering washes away in the rains, the culm becomes yellow and green striped. Another stunning plant is Dendrocalamus ‘Parker’s Hawaiian Giant.’ Massive, dark green, thick walled new shoots are pushing up to ten feet now. The plant has the potential to reach sixty feet with culms that are eight to nine inches thick. Bountiful Earth Nursery must be the nearest nursery with a large selection of clumping bamboos. It is located in New Smyrna Beach, just south of Daytona. The website is http://www.bamboo.ws/complete_list_np.htm
Two flowering plants are growing well for me in very different parts of the garden. Red yucca (Hesperaloe parviflora) is seen much more often in gardens of the dry, sunny American southwest. Dancing lady, (Globba winittii) is a plant for the shady, somewhat moist garden.
Red yucca has long, slender leaves that grow up from underground stems to a height of about eighteen to thirty inches. Flower spikes arch up to about three or four feet tall. Each spike can flower for two and a half to three months in the summer. I have the typical pink-red flowered plant and a yellow flowered plant in the ground at my home garden. They grow slowly but steadily in a sunny, well-drained spot. At UNF, John planted a new cultivar named ‘Perpa.’ It has bright, true red flowers. Since these plants grow slowly, consider spending a little extra for a larger plant. I have seen the typical pink-red flowered plant at Plant Ranch in Jacksonville. For the others, try the on-line catalogs of Yucca Do Nursery (http://www.yuccado.com/) and High Country Gardens (http://www.highcountrygardens.com/.)
The Dancing Lady ginger is a very different plant. It grows in the shade, in a well-drained, reasonably moist spot. It has underground rhizomes with leafy stalks that grow to about twelve to eighteen inches tall. In late summer, a long, branched flower spike hangs down from the top of the stalk. At the base of each branch is a large white to purple leaf-like bract. Small, delicate yellow flowers are produced along the short branches. It is hard to describe so if you are having trouble visualizing it, look at the Globba page on this website. Joyce Jarrell gave me these plants. You might find her plants on e-bay under the vendor name, Greenleaf Gardens.
June 2011
Summer came on quickly at the end of May and last year’s drought continues. Spring wildflowers bloomed weakly this year. The water in the bird bath disappears as quickly as the food in the bird feeders. It seems that the animals are quieter and less conspicuous this year. I see fewer butterflies and lightning bugs. Even the pest insects are less common in my garden – except for yellow flies.
Baptisia alba and its hybrids, Gaillardia pulchella, Gaura lindheimeri, Mimosa strigulosa, Rudbeckia hirta, and Silphium asteriscus thrive despite the drought. The winter-dormant gingers (Curcuma, Kaempferia and Zingiber) and blood lilies (Scadoxus) are still popping up. I have mentioned the evergreen dogwood, Cornus elliptica, before. It was a solid mass of flowers nearly ten feet tall and ten feet wide by mid-May. It does get some irrigation but not a lot.
In my cold yard (for Jacksonville,) two Brazilian bromeliads have come through two cold winters remarkably well. Aechmea distichantha is a large plant. Leaves are gray-green. Clones vary a bit but leaves will grow to two feet tall or more. Flower spikes are pink and retain their color for months. The spikes are taller than the leaves, two-and-a-half to three feet tall. Yucca Do Nursery in Texas was selling it on-line the last time I looked. Aechmea recurvata is the other one that has come through the winters well in my yard. Yucca Do sells this one, too. I have seen at least four cultivars in their catalog at different times. It varies from about four to twelve inches tall. Foliage may be green or red. Red flower stalks are short, just above the foliage. Aechmea cylindrata and A. calyculata have grown well for me until recent winters took temperatures down into the upper teens. I still have some but they were hurt badly. Tropiflora is a Florida mail-order nursery that has many bromeliads, including some cold hardy types.
I have been trying a few different maples in my yard and have been watching Philip Schretter’s collection at the Armstrong Atlantic State University Arboretum in Savannah, Georgia. I am very fond of two evergreen species, Acer coriaceifolium and Acer fabri. On a trip to North Carolina a couple of years ago, I picked up a plant of Acer triflorum on a whim. Looking it up when I got home, I found that it was recommended for zones further to our north. Surprisingly, it has grown well for the past two years. I really enjoy a Japanese maple that Joyce Jarrell gave me a few years ago. In my yard, it has been a very reliable source of bright red fall color. I bought a nice specimen of Oliver’s maple, Acer oliverianum, at Tallahassee Nursery last year. A large specimen at the Bamboo Farm and Coastal Garden in Savannah looks like a gigantic Japanese maple, about twenty five feet tall with a dense, rounded crown. Besides these, I am growing a few additional maple species at home and at UNF.
With these maple successes in mind, I was very happy when Richard Lindberg introduced me to Bobby Woodard. I picked up some more maples at his nursery. One exciting find was Acer tegmentosum, one of the so-called snakebark maples. Reading more about it, this looks like it is one of the prettiest of the snakebark maples and also the most likely to grow well in the south. The term “snakebark” refers to its smooth green bark with white vertical lines. The wide leaves with shallow lobes are attractive, too. There are over one hundred species of maples in the world. I suspect that many more will grow in north Florida.
May 2011
Today is the first of May. Summer temperatures came early this year and the drought continues. I had just under an inch of rain in my home garden last month. Lubber grasshoppers keep hatching out around the yard. I do regular patrols to catch them while they are young. Their little shiny back bodies stand out against the foliage. Later, when they are yellow and brown, they are harder to see - or, they become better at hiding.
Green is the predominant color in my garden. The Carolina ash is finally producing leaves. It is always the last woody plant to leaf out in spring. Many of the gingers are still dormant. They should appear in the next week or two. Two of the Curcuma species, the hidden lilies, are just starting to show color. Curcuma elata is the big one in my garden, with flower spikes that stand about a foot tall. Large pink bracts at the top of the spike are the showy parts of the spike. The pale yellow flowers below are interesting but require a closer look. The leaves start emerging with the flowers. In a few weeks, these tropical-looking leaves will stand five to six feet tall, creating an eye-catching clump. I have several species of hidden lily in my garden. They are easy to grow and should be much more common in local gardens. For pictures and more information on these interesting plants, see Curcuma.
Roses continue to provide the biggest splash of color in my garden, especially the coral-pink 'Lady Elsie May' that I planted along the driveway. I talked more about this rose last May (see below.) Spigelia marilandica, the Indian pink, is a beautiful plant for shade. It is native to the southeastern U.S. including parts of the Florida panhandle. It is a small plant, creating a tight clump about eighteen inches tall. For a couple of weeks in late April and early May, it is covered with clusters of attractive flowers that are reported to be good hummingbird attractors. Each flower is an upright trumpet, bright red on the outside and flaring out into a bright yellow star at the top. For a picture and more information , see Spigelia. My evergreen dogwood, Cornus elliptica, is covered in small, 4-pointed green stars. In the coming weeks, these green bracts will grow larger and turn white. It is a stunning flowering tree that seems almost unknonwn in Jacksonville. See Cornus for pictures.
I have grown to appreciate gladiolus. I am not interested in those giant florists glads that require staking but there is an assortment of smaller species and hybrids out there. Joyce Jarrell gave me one that was a weed in her well-irrigated nursery, the parrot glad or Gladiolus dalenii. In an unirrigated section of my garden, this plant has made a large clump with iris-like foliage that stands about three feet tall. In May and June, the spikes rise to about four feet tall with bright red-orange and yellow flowers. I have not observed any seedling volunteers in my dry yard. Plant Delights catalog has a fall-flowering form of this plant and several other small glads that do not require special care. I ordered a few more this spring to try in my yard. For pictures and more information on glads, see Gladiolus.
In the wilder parts of my garden, gallardia, ruellia, coreopsis, spiderworts, wild iris, lyre-leaf sage, wild climbing hydrangea and ladies tresses orchids are flowering. Erythrina herbacea, the Cherokee bean, is holding up tall spikes of tubular pink-red flowers for the hummingbirds. Coral honeysuckle is flowering on the patio fence. The native arrowwood viburnum, Viburnum dentatum, is covered with buds and will flower soon.
At this point, each of us has spent enough time indoors at the computer. Let's get out and garden!
April 2011
I visited Belize in mid-April with some friends. Belize is a small country along the western Caribbean. Its neighbors are Mexico to the north, Guatemala to the west and Honduras to the south. To read more about this trip and see photos, click on this link, Belize.
It is the second day of April and it seems that spring is here. This has been an unusual spring. Instead of a series of temperature rises and sudden drops of forty or fifty degrees, we have enjoyed a gradual warming - mostly. I haven't had to carry potted plants back under cover. I had no freezes of newly opening flowers or leaves this time. It looks like my fruit production will be good this year. It is nice but it is not typical of north Florida.
Wildflowers are blooming on the roadsides. Lyre-leaf sage, spiderwort, hawkweed and blue-eyed grasses flower on the roadsides. Atamasco lilies and wild irises bloom in the ditches. Polygalas, swamp violets, yellow-star grass, hypericum, pitcher plants and sundews are flowering in the woods. Native fringe trees (Chionanthus) and swamp dogwoods (Cornus foemina) are flowering now in local landscapes and woodlands. Climbing wild hydrangea (Decumaria) is producing flower buds in my garden for the first time since I planted them five years ago. The leaves of the black gum trees, or tupelos, and snowbell (Styrax americanus) are beginning to expand. In my garden, only the pop ash (Fraxinus caroliniana) remains bare at this time of year. Unfortunately, I see a lot of the exotic pest plant, Hall's honeysuckle, in flower along our roadsides, too.
Another thing that I see on Jacksonville's roadsides raises my bloodpressure. Along city-maintained streets, I see crape myrtles that have been hacked back to major branches in the style that the extension agents call 'Crape Murder." Another term for this method is 'hat racking." The Extension Service, the Arborist societies and modern science say that the practice is allows disease to enter trees, weakens their branch structure and destroys the natural grace of the crown. It annoys me that the city is using my tax dollars to for this as we listen to the debates over cutting programs in economically troubled times.
Retruning to more pleasant topics, shrub roses are the stars of the garden at this time of year but there are lots of other things happening. The flowers of one of my favorite azaleas, 'Admiral Semmes,' are fading now. It is a hybrid of the Florida flame azalea with larger yellow flowers and more vigorous growth than the species. It is a mass of bright, golden yellow for about two weeks each spring. In a city of pink and white azaleas, this one stands out from the crowd. Baptisia alba and 'Carolina Moonlight' are in bloom. 'Purple Smoke' baptisia has developing flower spikes that are nearly mature. They are reliable perennials and their upright spikes of flowers remind me of lupines. I have a new iris that excites me. I bought it from Lazy S's Nursery catalog as Iris wattii. There seems to be some confusion about the name. Regardless, this is a short iris that has spread rapidly by rhizomes. Each fan of leaves has an upright stalk with several flat, light blue flowers, opening one at a time. My small mail-order plant has grown into a two foot wide clump in two years and started flowering this year for the first time in a shady, irrigated part of my garden.
I have to admit that I am developing a respect for Indian hawthorn. Rhapholepis indica is planted a lot in Jacksonville but it is an attractive shrub in a hot, dry place. The flowers have faded on the compact, white-flowered forms that are so common here. A newly purchased 'Ballerina' is flowering in my garden now. It may be late because it just came from Woodlander's Nursery in South Carolina. I bought a Rhapiolepis umbellata cultivar also. I do not see this species in nurseries or landscapes in our area and am curious to see how it grows for me. This is a selection named 'Blueberry Muffin.' Its foliage is reported to turn purple in the winter.
Last summer, I kept a lot of my new plants in pots in a cluster near the hose. I have been busy planting them out this spring in hopes that we do not experience another drought year. John and his crew are busy planting at the University. Recently, he planted a large olive tree in a raised planter on the sunny, south side of a tall building in the center of campus. He placed over one hundred labels on plants this year. The many little plantings of the last several years are beginning to add up to a large, interesting campus landscape. We will have a tour of the campus in one of the coming months. If you do not want to wait, you can visit on weekends and park for free in most parking places (not the handicapped spaces unless you have a permit) and take a stroll through the campus.
March 2011
In my gardens, it feels like spring is here. The pine pollen has dusted everything with a fine yellow powder. The oaks are starting to flower now. Red maple samaras are spiraling down from the trees. Maples, sweet gums, willows and others are producing a new crop of leaves. Redbuds are flowering and the bracts of our native dogwoods are beginning to expand. Spring wildflowers like violets, lyre-leaf sage and buchnera (blue hearts) are in bloom. In fact, I see new spring growth everywhere as I walk, bike and drive around. Unfortunately, I’ve experienced to many late frosts in Jacksonville to be assured that winter is over. I cannot do anything about it but I will not relax until April.
A few years ago, I tried some gladiolus bulbs that I picked up at a big box store. They were Abbysinian glads, Gladiolus callianthus or Acidanthera bicolor, depending on the authority. I have read that they grow well in our zones, even become a little aggressive. For some reason, mine want to flower in winter and are damaged frequently by frosts and freezes. When they do flower, the flower stalks tend to flop over. My first experience with small glads was not good and I am not interested in the big hybrid glads that grow to six feet tall and require staking. Then, I saw some nice short plants in the neighborhood and at Joyce Jarrell’s. Joyce gave me some bulbs of the orange and yellow-flowered parrot glad (Gladiolus dalenii) and the burgundy-flowered Byzantine glad (G. communis var. byzantinus.) They grew well without care and their flower stalks were both short and sturdy enough to resist flopping. In Joyce’s irrigated nursery, the parrot glad spreads aggressively by seed. In my dry yard, they do not spread rapidly. Last year, I asked John Moscarillo to purchase and plant dwarf gladiolus bulbs on campus. He bought bulbs of the Glamini series of dwarf glads and we enjoyed their flowers through the summer. These plants have large, showy flowers on short, stout stalks, about 18 to 24 inches tall. They come in a wide variety of colors. At my house, I am trying some others. This year, I bought white corn flag (Gladiolus italicus) and Carolina Primrose (G. dalenii var. primulinus ‘Carolina Primrose’) to try. Each is reported to be a sturdy perennial in our area. These plants flower in late spring and summer. Next, I want to try Plant Delights’ selection of Gladiolus dalenii named ‘Halloweenie.’ I saw it blooming in October in the Armstrong Atlantic State University Arboretum last year. I will be looking for more dwarf glad bulbs this fall.
I was happy with the calibrachoas or million bells that I tried last year, too. They survived the heat and drought in pots last summer. I watered them on the same schedule as my potted agaves and cacti. As their roots filled the pots, they wilted a few times between watering but always came back and bloomed more. In fact, they bloomed nearly non-stop until last winter’s freezing weather. One of my plants had golden-yellow flowers and a bushy habit. It grew to about twelve inches tall. It dropped many of its leaves and sat there looking half dead until about two weeks ago. When the weather warmed and I started watering my pots again, it began growing and flowering again. Today, it is about eighteen inches wide and covered with blooms. The other had bright pink flowers with white stripes and a compact trailing habit. It died back to a low mat of green leaves and sat through the winter without flowers. It began growing at the same time as the other and is covered with flowers, too. John planted some at UNF last fall and we had similar results there. These plants rarely produce seeds and do not require deadheading. I am impressed with their sturdiness, the long flowering season and the brilliant jewel-like colors of their little flowers. So, I bought more this weekend with the intent of trying them in the ground. John bought several more for UNF. From all I have read and seen, these plants are fairly drought tolerant but do not want to be soggy. They like sun and flower well in a spot with some afternoon shade. These little plants are sturdier than they look.
Trying to track down their origins and names, I learn that some scientists include these plants in the genus Petunia. Others place them in a separate genus, Calibrachoa, and consider them to be close relatives of the petunia. I have not learned the details of why they might be separated. I did see that one species, Calibrachoa parviflora, has naturalized on beaches in the Florida panhandle. It does not look like a garden ornamental but grows as a low mat with tiny pink flowers. Just yesterday, I saw an orange-flowered Calibrachoa-Petunia hybrid at Hall’s Nursery on San Jose. I had wondered when that would happen. Since they do not produce many seeds, these plants are propagated by cuttings and tissue culture. More named varieties are appearing, although the box stores do not always provide names. I am intrigued by these little plants and will be looking for new and interesting selections.
I bought some of the tall red pentas this weekend, too. My plants came back weakly from the cold 2009-2010 winter. I’ll be surprised if they come up this spring after another very cold winter. I tried some of the dwarf, seed-grown pentas for the first time last year. They needed regular watering and seemed to struggle with the heat and drought all summer. I know the old-fashioned tall varieties need little more than a spot in the sun to thrive. My summer garden just isn’t complete without a few of these plants and some of the dwarf red porterweed. I know they will bring in butterflies and hummingbirds.
January 2011
I have not lost many plants but two unusually cold winters in a row have caused severe cosmetic damage to my gardens. Already, I know that I am going to give up on one of the bamboos (Gigantichloa maxima) on campus that has sustained severe damage again. Otherwise, I'll have to wait and see what this second cold winter has done to my plants. If the cold wasn't enough, we suffered drought conditions for most of 2010. I measured a little over thirty-one inches of rain at home last year. UNF had a similar total. That is just a little better than half of Jacksonville's annual average. The life of a gardener is nothing if not challenging.
I completed a raised bed for vegetables this winter. So far, it contains asparagus, onion sets and two types of kale that UNF's Jonathon Felts recommended for north Florida, 'Western Front' and Ethiopian. I will be adding more cool season vegetables soon, things like lettuce, broccoli, cabbage, carrots, cauliflower, collards, sugar snap peas, radishes and turnips. If you have not already seen it, look at the 2011 garden calendar at http://jacksonville.com/entertainment/home-and-garden/2011-01-02/story/our-annual-gardening-calendar. This is a very useful guide to vegetable and annual flower gardening in our area.
I started several succulents and cacti in pots late last year. I bought from several mail order sites, including CSucculent Nursery (csucculent.com,) Cold Hardy Cactus (coldhardycactus.com,) Mesa Garden (mesagarden.com) and Yucca Do Nursery (yuccado.com). Also, I got a couple more plants from Study Group members Joyce Jarrell and Kyle Brown. The results have been very good. I could not resist a few oddballs that were listed as marginal for our area and placed them indoors on windowsills for the coldest nights. Several others sat under the car port roof or on a covered porch for protection from rain. Some Agave, Dasylirion, Nolina, Opuntia and Yucca species sat out in the weather all winter. Several of the on-line cactus and succulent catalogs were very informative about cold hardiness and I see more nurseries that I want to try. The Desert Tropicals website from Phoenix does not sell plants but contains especially helpful information on the cultivation of these plants, at http://desert-tropicals.com. Already, I see the temptation of collecting these plants. This year, I will focus on desert plants that are likely to survive in the ground in north Florida.
Six years ago, I got some 'Changsha' tangerine seeds from Kyle Brown. This year, the tree bore over two hundred, very sweet tangerines. Last year, I germinated a few apple seeds from my trees and planted out four of the resulting seedlings. It will take five or six years for them to fruit but I hope I'll find another low-chill apple worth eating to add to the limited number available today. The chance is not high but I am hoping that growing the apple seedlings will be as rewarding as growing the Changsha tangerine.
I see several interesting camellia selections and hybrids at the mail order camellia nurseries. 'Sarrel' is an interesting selection of Camellia sasanqua that I want. It is reported to be a spreading plant that grows to only about three feet tall. 'Tiny Princess' is a taller, upright cultivar with small leaves, small pink flowers and willowy branches. Its new leaves are burgundy in color. I saw both of these at Bobby Green's wholesale nursery in Fairhope, Alabama last year. If I find a retailer, I'll buy these and more for my yard this spring. The camellia genus is a surprisingly diverse group of shrubs and small trees. I have about a dozen camellia species and several hybrids in my garden already and have been very happy with them.
Otherwise, I am surviving these cold days by browsing nursery catalogs and websites in search of interesting plants. I suspect that many of you are doing the same.
I have been slow to join some of the newer computing trends like social networking. I just joined Facebook. If you are a Facebook member and want to receive notices when I add a blog page or want to discuss gardening with me, please invite Chuck Hubbuch to be your Facebook friend. It you are not a member of Facebook, I will continue posting blogs and new information on this website.
Tom Schodowski is planning for an organizational meeting for the continuation of Horticulture Study Group meetings. He will be in touch with everyone when he has something to offer the group.
By mid-December, two hard frosts with overnight lows around 34 degrees F burned the foliage of some of the tender plants in my home garden. Still, there is a lot of color. Bright orange clusters of tangerines, fall-blooming camellias, shrub roses and trailing lantana provide the largest masses of color. Two bromeliads, Aechmea recurvata and A. distacantha survived the past two very cold winters and are flowering in mid-December. Several different species and hybrids of camellia are flowering and more are showing buds for late winter and spring flowers. Beautyberry (Callicarpa) has lost its bright purple berries by mid-December but the various hollies still have bright yellow, orange and red fruits. A few spring flowers are starting early with the mild weather. Violets, lyre-leaf sage, evening primrose, creeping bluets and native spiderworts are blooming. In a quick walk, I count thirty-three different types of plants in flower and seven more with brightly colored fruits. I have a little fall color, too. Winged sumacs, eastern dogwood, firebush and red maples have bright red colors. The red leaves of the Japanese maples are mostly gone but Oliver's maple is just starting to turn red. Wild cherry has bright orange leaves. Grape leaves are lemon yellow. Sweet gums have not decided. Most of their leaves are green but they are starting to show some orange and purple.
I mentioned last month that the nasturtiums started flowering six weeks after sowing the seeds. They were hurt a little by a hard frost a couple of weeks ago. By mid-December, they are covered with flowers. The new nemesias (Sunsatia series hybrids) are growing and flowering well in a pot by the door. I really like the bright yellow flowers of the cultivar, ‘Lemon.’ Calendulas began producing flower buds just two months after sowing the seeds. Their bright, golden yellow flowers add to the front door display. I left the larkspurs and California poppies out in the cold and they show no damage. I protected the annual poppies and cornflowers from frost by bringing them under the carport roof. They continue to grow well.
In the vegetable garden, I harvested the last of the sweet potatoes at the first of the month after the frost burned the leaves. I am not fond of candied sweet potatoes but find that I enjoy them baked and in soups. Recently, I saw a black beans and sweet potato recipe that looked interesting. Ethiopian kale that I got from the UNF vegetable garden on our tour last year reseeded and I have started harvesting their leaves. Collards from last spring are still going strong. I have added kale, broccoli, carrots, cauliflower, lettuce and more in the past few weeks. I still see some insect damage but expect good growth with the cooling weather – provided we do not have a hard freeze.
After many years in Miami, winter is not my favorite time of year. Fluctuating winter temperatures force me to watch the forecasts closer and carry pots in and out. However, bugs are less of a problem in the garden at this time of year, especially the ones that bite me. I am learning to enjoy some of the winter annuals, vegetables and fruits. I just hope it is a mild winter. I had enough cold during the last two winters to last me for a long time.
November 2011
Recently, I had an interesting conversation with Marilyn Draper about landscape problems she was having due to salts in the reclaimed water in St. Augustine. It struck a chord with me and I began searching for more information on the internet about salts in reclaimed water and salt sensitive plants. One of the first sites I found was a page from Pinellas County Utilities telling their reclaimed water users to not plant azaleas, gardenias, roses, geraniums and orchids in areas irrigated by reclaimed water. As I searched further, I found more information. This seems to explain why the loropetalum trees at UNF suddenly declined and died, why the tulip poplars started looking bad and why azaleas, mahonias and camellias have grown poorly in recent years. I had wondered about these things but did not consider that it might be due to a single cause. Salt sensitivity appears to be the one thing that connects all of these problems.
I believe in conserving our drinking water. I believe that using reclaimed water is a good way to do that whenever, wherever it is available. Using reclaimed water will, however, may mean making some adjustments. One choice is to leave the established azaleas and loropetalums without irrigation. They are tough enough to survive without it. Replacing salt sensitive plants with salt tolerant plants in another option. Yet another is to plant drought tolerant plants that do not require supplemental irrigaion. Regardless of your decisions, it is better to know the issues before you make the change. Take a look at my Reclaimed Water and Salt Tolerant Plants pages for more information. In addition, I have added information about salt tolerance to plant pages wherever possible.
In what seems now like a previous life, my job gave me the opportunity to travel to the tropics. I have a lot of slides from that time. I just bought a slide duplicator and am beginning to digitize them. So far, I have added ten countries (or regions,) including Central America, Madagascar, Mauritius, South Africa and Australia. Of course, my travels have the distinctive perspective of an obsessed gardener. Take a look at my Travels page for these images and some information about the trips.
Fall-blooming and winter-blooming camellias provide a lot of color in my home garden now. I picked up an interesting dwarf Camellia sasanqua last spring. 'Sarrell' is a spreading, compact shrub that is supposed to grow to only three feet tall. It is blooming now with semi-double, pink flowers. The nearly red'Yuletide,' bright pink 'Stephanie Golden,' and pink and white 'Autumn Beauty' are in full bloom in November. Besides the comparatively common Camellia sasanqua, my Camellia oleifera is covered with single white flowers. Its flowers are a little smaller than C. sasanqua but are produced in large numbers. This plant produces very large seeds and is one of the sources of camellia oil. Tea plants, Camellia sinensis, are flowering now with one inch wide, white to pink flowers. A very nice hybrid, 'Yume,' has flowered so heavily that it has grown very slowly. It is covered with nearly white flowers that darken to pink in the center and each petal has a notch at its end, somewhat like a dogwood. One of my winter-flowering Camellia japonica plants is already flowering, 'Silver Waves.' It has huge, single white flowers that are six inches or more wide. It may continue to bloom into March. Other camellias will come into flower through the winter and spring. I may have mentioned Camellia Forest Nursery before. It is a great source of wide selection of camellia species, hybrids and cultivars. They carry a few other unusual plants, too. You can find them at www.camforest.com.
My nasturtiums just started to flower this week, six weeks after sowing the seeds. The outer leaves were damaged by a light freeze two weeks ago but the plants have recovered already. I'll be sure to protect them when the next freeze is predicted. The annual poppies, larkspurs and calendulas that I mentioned last month are growing well but are not yet flowering. I stopped by Trad's Nursery last weekend to look for odd winter annuals. I picked up some large-flowered Nemesia hybrids with bright yellow flowers, one with purple centers. If these showy hybrids are as cold hardy as the common nemesia, they will be a great addition to north Florida's winter landscape. I bought a perennial sweet allysum there last winter. It is called 'Snow Princess.' It is a low-growing plant that can spread out a couple of feet. My plant flowered through last winter's cold temperatures in a large container and then continued growing and flowering through the heat of the summer. It died during the summer when it dried out while I was away on vacation. I saw some plants at the Jacksonville Zoo when I was there recently. It has impressed me. We will be adding it to the UNF landscape.
October 2011
The most interesting thing that I did last month was not in my garden. My wife and I traveled to Alaska for the first time. We flew into Anchorage and drove a car on day trips through the region. It is a beautiful place. From a gardening perspective, I was impressed with the annual flowers planted in Anchorage and nearby communities. Click on this link, Alaska, to read more about the trip and see some photographs.
Returning to Florida, I began looking further into winter annuals. I have had some experience with the commonest winter annuals in our area: plants like flowering kale (Brassica,) snapdragons (Antirrhinum,) petunias and callibrachoas (Petunia,) pansies and violas (Viola,) sweet allysum (Lobularia,) and nemesias and diascias. (See the Annuals list.) Now, I have nasturtiums (Tropaeolum) that germinated in one week and are growing in a large container. Seeds of California poppies (Eschscholzia,) corn poppies (Papaver rhoeus,) larkspur (Consolida,) calendula (Calendula) and corn flowers (Centaurea) have started germinating within one week. Iceland poppy seeds (Papaver nudicale) were sown at the same time and began germinating in eight days . I am growing all of these in large containers of commercial potting soil. From my reference searches, I assume that the poppies and larkspur will survive the winter outdoors. Nasturtium, calendula and cornflowers will require freeze protection (or a very mild winter in my garden) to survive to spring. Please tell me more about these winter annuals or additional species that you have grown in the Coastal Southeast - or, have tried to grow. Send e-mails to thegardener@southeastgarden.com.
* Leslie Pierpont e-mails me to say that larkspurs have grown well in her Jacksonville, FL garden, even reseeding for a couple of years. She has grown the red poppy, Papaver rhoeus, successfully, too. Janese Warriner says she has grown some of the annual poppies in Jacksonville, FL. They have grown well but she has lost "beautiful plants full of buds" during a hot spell in April. She says that California poppies (Eschscholzia californica) fare a little better.
My zone 8b garden had about five inches of rain in September. The zone 9a garden had a little less. While this is a few inches shy of average, it is one of the three rainiest months I have seen in the last two years. October is starting out cooler and rainy. Two summers of drought have taken their toll on garden plants and native wild plants, too. Small wildflowers like sundews have not appeared for the past two years. Hopefully, they remain dormant in the soil and will appear again someday when we have a rainy summer. Despite two difficult years, the yard looks fairly well. Trailing lantana, plumbago, gaillardia, angel's trumpet, soft yucca, galphimia, bottlebrush, shrub roses and others are flowering. Native goldenrods, asters, liatris, agalinis, species of Bidens and others are in flower, too. The gray fruits of wax myrtle, red holly berries and purple beautyberries are ripening for the birds. This is the best fall I have had so far for edible fruits in my yard. I have been eating jujubes for nearly four weeks. A three year old, six-foot tall Japanese persimmon has fourteen large fruits that are nearly ripe. The tangerine trees are full of fruit that will ripen in December.
On campus, we have been planting drought tolerant plants for the past few years. During these drought years, successful plants include of Acacia, Agave, Caesalpinia, Chilopsis, Chitalpa, Dasylirion, Ebenopsis, Havardia, Hesperaloe, Leucophyllum, an olive tree (Olea,) Nolina and Parkinsonia. We are having mixed results with Opuntia species. See my Opuntia page for more information. We were lucky to start our trials of drought tolerant plants before the drought started. If you have a hot, dry landscape, take a look at these plants. I hope the drought ends soon, but who knows? A report on this morning's news says that Texas forecasters are predicting a continuing drought in their state. It seems likely that the conditions that affect Texas will impact other Gulf Coast states.
September 2011
Last month at this time, my jujube was fruiting heavily despite a very dry summer. You may have noticed that we’ve had a good bit of rain lately. Many of my jujube fruits swelled with the abundance of water, then split and began rotting. It looks as though I’ll have plenty of fruits but not as many as I expected.
I have been very careful about removing and avoiding exotic pest plants in my gardens. I think about the millions of tax payer dollars that states spend trying to control wildly invasive things like water hyacinth and melaleuca. I think about exotic pest plants crowding out native plants and the animals that depend on them. I think, too, about all of the unwanted seedlings or suckers coming up throughout my own garden. I have enough weeds already. Mexican petunia (Ruellia brittonia) is one of those plants. It clumps with some vigor and is ruggedly sturdy in the Florida landscape. It produces lots of purple flowers and lots of seed capsules. The two sides of its capsules snap open and throw seeds several feet away. Recently, I stumbled across an article about University of Florida researchers creating a seedless hybrid called ‘Purple Showers.’ I started looking for plants and learned that many nurseries call the weedy species ‘Purple Showers.’ Finally, I found a note about the seedless plants being sold by Riverview Flower Farms as Florida Friendly Plants. I found a large group of these plants in a Home Depot just a couple of weekends ago. I hope local nurseries are carrying this seedless hybrid, too. I could find nothing on the label about these being seedless. However, looking through the potted plants, I found lots of old flower spikes but no seed capsules. If you like this tall, vigorous purple-flowered perennial, please be sure to plant the Riverview Flower Farms’ hybrid, ‘Purple Showers.’
Fall is approaching. The late summer stalwarts are flowering. Native blanket flower (Gaillardia pulchella,) goldenrod (Solidago odora,) partridge pea (Chamaecrista fasiculata,) Spanish needle (Bidens pilosa,) sunshine mimosa (Mimosa strigulosa,) paintbrush (Carphephorus corymbosus) and elephant’s foot (Elephantopus elatus) are in bloom. Liatris species are sending up spikes and will be flowering soon. The bright purple berries of beautyberry and the orange fruits of persimmon are ripening now. The small fruits of the black gum are starting to turn. It won’t be long before the catbirds are calling from those trees. In the cultivated parts of my garden, pentas, plumbago, porterweed, galphimia and trailing lantana are blooming. The large numbers of flowers attract hummingbirds, bumblebee moths, butterflies and other pollinators. The numbers of the insect pollinators seem lower this year than previous years. I assume that the two cold winters and long period of drought has hurt their populations. Too bad it didn’t do the same to yellow flies and mosquitoes.
I found a brightly colored grasshopper in my garden a few days ago. I have been using Grasshoppers of Florida by Capinera, Scherer and Squitier to identify grasshoppers in my yard but this insect was colored like nothing else I've ever seen. It had a bright pink head and thorax, black and green wings, yellow hind thighs with black stripes, red hind knees and a blue lower hind leg! My wife took photos of it. Finally, I e-mailed Dr. Capinera at the University of Florida for help. He identified it as a southern greenstriped grasshopper, Chortophaga australior. It is not a common color form but it is a relatively common grasshopper in north Florida. Here are some photos. If you look closely, there are interesting things to discover in the garden.
July-August 2011
Today, I look at my garden and see the damage of the last two years, two unusually cold winters and two very dry summers. My turf is in shambles. I have lost a few plants and others are struggling to recover. A few plants, however, are thiving. Citrus and figs are okay but my muscadine grapes and jujube trees are looking great. I have two muscadine cultivars. Each is loaded with fruit this year. I’ll eat a wild muscadine when I find one before the birds get it but I really like these cultivars with large fruits and thin skins. I have four jujube trees (Zizyphus jujube.) One is still too young to fruit. The fruits of the first to ripen began in July and is already finished. Another is ripening now. The largest is over ten feet tall. It is so heavy with fruit that the trunk is leaning over far enough for me to pick fruits from the very top of the tree. If you are not familiar with the jujube tree, it has small, shiny brown fruits in late summer and fall. Each contains a single seed. The flesh of the fruit is crispy when fresh and tastes like an apple. They can be eaten raw or dried. Just Fruits and Exotics is a mail order nursery in Florida that offers several cultivars of jujube (they say jujuba.) Their web address is http://justfruitsandexotics.com/
At the encouragement of the late Richard Waldron and, more recently, Rich Lindberg, I have tried a few clumping bamboo plants at home (north of the airport) with mixed success. One that really impresses me is Bambusa textilis var. gracilis. It showed very little damage as a result of these last two winters, each of which dropped to lows of 18 degrees F. In its fourth year, it is well established with at least sixty stalks and a height of about twenty feet. I try to water it thoroughly once a month when conditions are dry. With that little bit of water, it looks great today and is sending up more shoots. Several other varieties of Bambusa textilis are available. ‘Wong Chuk’ is a giant that grows to 45 feet tall. ‘Scranton’ is a very upright, narrow selection.
At UNF, we have several clumping bamboos in a courtyard between buildings. They are growing well, including some that might not be cold hardy in the open in Jacksonville. A standout is Dendrocalamus minor amoenus. It is the centerpiece of this planting. It is a tall bamboo that spreads gracefully at the top to provide plenty of shade. The stalks (culms) are dusty grayish when new. As this waxy covering washes away in the rains, the culm becomes yellow and green striped. Another stunning plant is Dendrocalamus ‘Parker’s Hawaiian Giant.’ Massive, dark green, thick walled new shoots are pushing up to ten feet now. The plant has the potential to reach sixty feet with culms that are eight to nine inches thick. Bountiful Earth Nursery must be the nearest nursery with a large selection of clumping bamboos. It is located in New Smyrna Beach, just south of Daytona. The website is http://www.bamboo.ws/complete_list_np.htm
Two flowering plants are growing well for me in very different parts of the garden. Red yucca (Hesperaloe parviflora) is seen much more often in gardens of the dry, sunny American southwest. Dancing lady, (Globba winittii) is a plant for the shady, somewhat moist garden.
Red yucca has long, slender leaves that grow up from underground stems to a height of about eighteen to thirty inches. Flower spikes arch up to about three or four feet tall. Each spike can flower for two and a half to three months in the summer. I have the typical pink-red flowered plant and a yellow flowered plant in the ground at my home garden. They grow slowly but steadily in a sunny, well-drained spot. At UNF, John planted a new cultivar named ‘Perpa.’ It has bright, true red flowers. Since these plants grow slowly, consider spending a little extra for a larger plant. I have seen the typical pink-red flowered plant at Plant Ranch in Jacksonville. For the others, try the on-line catalogs of Yucca Do Nursery (http://www.yuccado.com/) and High Country Gardens (http://www.highcountrygardens.com/.)
The Dancing Lady ginger is a very different plant. It grows in the shade, in a well-drained, reasonably moist spot. It has underground rhizomes with leafy stalks that grow to about twelve to eighteen inches tall. In late summer, a long, branched flower spike hangs down from the top of the stalk. At the base of each branch is a large white to purple leaf-like bract. Small, delicate yellow flowers are produced along the short branches. It is hard to describe so if you are having trouble visualizing it, look at the Globba page on this website. Joyce Jarrell gave me these plants. You might find her plants on e-bay under the vendor name, Greenleaf Gardens.
June 2011
Summer came on quickly at the end of May and last year’s drought continues. Spring wildflowers bloomed weakly this year. The water in the bird bath disappears as quickly as the food in the bird feeders. It seems that the animals are quieter and less conspicuous this year. I see fewer butterflies and lightning bugs. Even the pest insects are less common in my garden – except for yellow flies.
Baptisia alba and its hybrids, Gaillardia pulchella, Gaura lindheimeri, Mimosa strigulosa, Rudbeckia hirta, and Silphium asteriscus thrive despite the drought. The winter-dormant gingers (Curcuma, Kaempferia and Zingiber) and blood lilies (Scadoxus) are still popping up. I have mentioned the evergreen dogwood, Cornus elliptica, before. It was a solid mass of flowers nearly ten feet tall and ten feet wide by mid-May. It does get some irrigation but not a lot.
In my cold yard (for Jacksonville,) two Brazilian bromeliads have come through two cold winters remarkably well. Aechmea distichantha is a large plant. Leaves are gray-green. Clones vary a bit but leaves will grow to two feet tall or more. Flower spikes are pink and retain their color for months. The spikes are taller than the leaves, two-and-a-half to three feet tall. Yucca Do Nursery in Texas was selling it on-line the last time I looked. Aechmea recurvata is the other one that has come through the winters well in my yard. Yucca Do sells this one, too. I have seen at least four cultivars in their catalog at different times. It varies from about four to twelve inches tall. Foliage may be green or red. Red flower stalks are short, just above the foliage. Aechmea cylindrata and A. calyculata have grown well for me until recent winters took temperatures down into the upper teens. I still have some but they were hurt badly. Tropiflora is a Florida mail-order nursery that has many bromeliads, including some cold hardy types.
I have been trying a few different maples in my yard and have been watching Philip Schretter’s collection at the Armstrong Atlantic State University Arboretum in Savannah, Georgia. I am very fond of two evergreen species, Acer coriaceifolium and Acer fabri. On a trip to North Carolina a couple of years ago, I picked up a plant of Acer triflorum on a whim. Looking it up when I got home, I found that it was recommended for zones further to our north. Surprisingly, it has grown well for the past two years. I really enjoy a Japanese maple that Joyce Jarrell gave me a few years ago. In my yard, it has been a very reliable source of bright red fall color. I bought a nice specimen of Oliver’s maple, Acer oliverianum, at Tallahassee Nursery last year. A large specimen at the Bamboo Farm and Coastal Garden in Savannah looks like a gigantic Japanese maple, about twenty five feet tall with a dense, rounded crown. Besides these, I am growing a few additional maple species at home and at UNF.
With these maple successes in mind, I was very happy when Richard Lindberg introduced me to Bobby Woodard. I picked up some more maples at his nursery. One exciting find was Acer tegmentosum, one of the so-called snakebark maples. Reading more about it, this looks like it is one of the prettiest of the snakebark maples and also the most likely to grow well in the south. The term “snakebark” refers to its smooth green bark with white vertical lines. The wide leaves with shallow lobes are attractive, too. There are over one hundred species of maples in the world. I suspect that many more will grow in north Florida.
May 2011
Today is the first of May. Summer temperatures came early this year and the drought continues. I had just under an inch of rain in my home garden last month. Lubber grasshoppers keep hatching out around the yard. I do regular patrols to catch them while they are young. Their little shiny back bodies stand out against the foliage. Later, when they are yellow and brown, they are harder to see - or, they become better at hiding.
Green is the predominant color in my garden. The Carolina ash is finally producing leaves. It is always the last woody plant to leaf out in spring. Many of the gingers are still dormant. They should appear in the next week or two. Two of the Curcuma species, the hidden lilies, are just starting to show color. Curcuma elata is the big one in my garden, with flower spikes that stand about a foot tall. Large pink bracts at the top of the spike are the showy parts of the spike. The pale yellow flowers below are interesting but require a closer look. The leaves start emerging with the flowers. In a few weeks, these tropical-looking leaves will stand five to six feet tall, creating an eye-catching clump. I have several species of hidden lily in my garden. They are easy to grow and should be much more common in local gardens. For pictures and more information on these interesting plants, see Curcuma.
Roses continue to provide the biggest splash of color in my garden, especially the coral-pink 'Lady Elsie May' that I planted along the driveway. I talked more about this rose last May (see below.) Spigelia marilandica, the Indian pink, is a beautiful plant for shade. It is native to the southeastern U.S. including parts of the Florida panhandle. It is a small plant, creating a tight clump about eighteen inches tall. For a couple of weeks in late April and early May, it is covered with clusters of attractive flowers that are reported to be good hummingbird attractors. Each flower is an upright trumpet, bright red on the outside and flaring out into a bright yellow star at the top. For a picture and more information , see Spigelia. My evergreen dogwood, Cornus elliptica, is covered in small, 4-pointed green stars. In the coming weeks, these green bracts will grow larger and turn white. It is a stunning flowering tree that seems almost unknonwn in Jacksonville. See Cornus for pictures.
I have grown to appreciate gladiolus. I am not interested in those giant florists glads that require staking but there is an assortment of smaller species and hybrids out there. Joyce Jarrell gave me one that was a weed in her well-irrigated nursery, the parrot glad or Gladiolus dalenii. In an unirrigated section of my garden, this plant has made a large clump with iris-like foliage that stands about three feet tall. In May and June, the spikes rise to about four feet tall with bright red-orange and yellow flowers. I have not observed any seedling volunteers in my dry yard. Plant Delights catalog has a fall-flowering form of this plant and several other small glads that do not require special care. I ordered a few more this spring to try in my yard. For pictures and more information on glads, see Gladiolus.
In the wilder parts of my garden, gallardia, ruellia, coreopsis, spiderworts, wild iris, lyre-leaf sage, wild climbing hydrangea and ladies tresses orchids are flowering. Erythrina herbacea, the Cherokee bean, is holding up tall spikes of tubular pink-red flowers for the hummingbirds. Coral honeysuckle is flowering on the patio fence. The native arrowwood viburnum, Viburnum dentatum, is covered with buds and will flower soon.
At this point, each of us has spent enough time indoors at the computer. Let's get out and garden!
April 2011
I visited Belize in mid-April with some friends. Belize is a small country along the western Caribbean. Its neighbors are Mexico to the north, Guatemala to the west and Honduras to the south. To read more about this trip and see photos, click on this link, Belize.
It is the second day of April and it seems that spring is here. This has been an unusual spring. Instead of a series of temperature rises and sudden drops of forty or fifty degrees, we have enjoyed a gradual warming - mostly. I haven't had to carry potted plants back under cover. I had no freezes of newly opening flowers or leaves this time. It looks like my fruit production will be good this year. It is nice but it is not typical of north Florida.
Wildflowers are blooming on the roadsides. Lyre-leaf sage, spiderwort, hawkweed and blue-eyed grasses flower on the roadsides. Atamasco lilies and wild irises bloom in the ditches. Polygalas, swamp violets, yellow-star grass, hypericum, pitcher plants and sundews are flowering in the woods. Native fringe trees (Chionanthus) and swamp dogwoods (Cornus foemina) are flowering now in local landscapes and woodlands. Climbing wild hydrangea (Decumaria) is producing flower buds in my garden for the first time since I planted them five years ago. The leaves of the black gum trees, or tupelos, and snowbell (Styrax americanus) are beginning to expand. In my garden, only the pop ash (Fraxinus caroliniana) remains bare at this time of year. Unfortunately, I see a lot of the exotic pest plant, Hall's honeysuckle, in flower along our roadsides, too.
Another thing that I see on Jacksonville's roadsides raises my bloodpressure. Along city-maintained streets, I see crape myrtles that have been hacked back to major branches in the style that the extension agents call 'Crape Murder." Another term for this method is 'hat racking." The Extension Service, the Arborist societies and modern science say that the practice is allows disease to enter trees, weakens their branch structure and destroys the natural grace of the crown. It annoys me that the city is using my tax dollars to for this as we listen to the debates over cutting programs in economically troubled times.
Retruning to more pleasant topics, shrub roses are the stars of the garden at this time of year but there are lots of other things happening. The flowers of one of my favorite azaleas, 'Admiral Semmes,' are fading now. It is a hybrid of the Florida flame azalea with larger yellow flowers and more vigorous growth than the species. It is a mass of bright, golden yellow for about two weeks each spring. In a city of pink and white azaleas, this one stands out from the crowd. Baptisia alba and 'Carolina Moonlight' are in bloom. 'Purple Smoke' baptisia has developing flower spikes that are nearly mature. They are reliable perennials and their upright spikes of flowers remind me of lupines. I have a new iris that excites me. I bought it from Lazy S's Nursery catalog as Iris wattii. There seems to be some confusion about the name. Regardless, this is a short iris that has spread rapidly by rhizomes. Each fan of leaves has an upright stalk with several flat, light blue flowers, opening one at a time. My small mail-order plant has grown into a two foot wide clump in two years and started flowering this year for the first time in a shady, irrigated part of my garden.
I have to admit that I am developing a respect for Indian hawthorn. Rhapholepis indica is planted a lot in Jacksonville but it is an attractive shrub in a hot, dry place. The flowers have faded on the compact, white-flowered forms that are so common here. A newly purchased 'Ballerina' is flowering in my garden now. It may be late because it just came from Woodlander's Nursery in South Carolina. I bought a Rhapiolepis umbellata cultivar also. I do not see this species in nurseries or landscapes in our area and am curious to see how it grows for me. This is a selection named 'Blueberry Muffin.' Its foliage is reported to turn purple in the winter.
Last summer, I kept a lot of my new plants in pots in a cluster near the hose. I have been busy planting them out this spring in hopes that we do not experience another drought year. John and his crew are busy planting at the University. Recently, he planted a large olive tree in a raised planter on the sunny, south side of a tall building in the center of campus. He placed over one hundred labels on plants this year. The many little plantings of the last several years are beginning to add up to a large, interesting campus landscape. We will have a tour of the campus in one of the coming months. If you do not want to wait, you can visit on weekends and park for free in most parking places (not the handicapped spaces unless you have a permit) and take a stroll through the campus.
March 2011
In my gardens, it feels like spring is here. The pine pollen has dusted everything with a fine yellow powder. The oaks are starting to flower now. Red maple samaras are spiraling down from the trees. Maples, sweet gums, willows and others are producing a new crop of leaves. Redbuds are flowering and the bracts of our native dogwoods are beginning to expand. Spring wildflowers like violets, lyre-leaf sage and buchnera (blue hearts) are in bloom. In fact, I see new spring growth everywhere as I walk, bike and drive around. Unfortunately, I’ve experienced to many late frosts in Jacksonville to be assured that winter is over. I cannot do anything about it but I will not relax until April.
A few years ago, I tried some gladiolus bulbs that I picked up at a big box store. They were Abbysinian glads, Gladiolus callianthus or Acidanthera bicolor, depending on the authority. I have read that they grow well in our zones, even become a little aggressive. For some reason, mine want to flower in winter and are damaged frequently by frosts and freezes. When they do flower, the flower stalks tend to flop over. My first experience with small glads was not good and I am not interested in the big hybrid glads that grow to six feet tall and require staking. Then, I saw some nice short plants in the neighborhood and at Joyce Jarrell’s. Joyce gave me some bulbs of the orange and yellow-flowered parrot glad (Gladiolus dalenii) and the burgundy-flowered Byzantine glad (G. communis var. byzantinus.) They grew well without care and their flower stalks were both short and sturdy enough to resist flopping. In Joyce’s irrigated nursery, the parrot glad spreads aggressively by seed. In my dry yard, they do not spread rapidly. Last year, I asked John Moscarillo to purchase and plant dwarf gladiolus bulbs on campus. He bought bulbs of the Glamini series of dwarf glads and we enjoyed their flowers through the summer. These plants have large, showy flowers on short, stout stalks, about 18 to 24 inches tall. They come in a wide variety of colors. At my house, I am trying some others. This year, I bought white corn flag (Gladiolus italicus) and Carolina Primrose (G. dalenii var. primulinus ‘Carolina Primrose’) to try. Each is reported to be a sturdy perennial in our area. These plants flower in late spring and summer. Next, I want to try Plant Delights’ selection of Gladiolus dalenii named ‘Halloweenie.’ I saw it blooming in October in the Armstrong Atlantic State University Arboretum last year. I will be looking for more dwarf glad bulbs this fall.
I was happy with the calibrachoas or million bells that I tried last year, too. They survived the heat and drought in pots last summer. I watered them on the same schedule as my potted agaves and cacti. As their roots filled the pots, they wilted a few times between watering but always came back and bloomed more. In fact, they bloomed nearly non-stop until last winter’s freezing weather. One of my plants had golden-yellow flowers and a bushy habit. It grew to about twelve inches tall. It dropped many of its leaves and sat there looking half dead until about two weeks ago. When the weather warmed and I started watering my pots again, it began growing and flowering again. Today, it is about eighteen inches wide and covered with blooms. The other had bright pink flowers with white stripes and a compact trailing habit. It died back to a low mat of green leaves and sat through the winter without flowers. It began growing at the same time as the other and is covered with flowers, too. John planted some at UNF last fall and we had similar results there. These plants rarely produce seeds and do not require deadheading. I am impressed with their sturdiness, the long flowering season and the brilliant jewel-like colors of their little flowers. So, I bought more this weekend with the intent of trying them in the ground. John bought several more for UNF. From all I have read and seen, these plants are fairly drought tolerant but do not want to be soggy. They like sun and flower well in a spot with some afternoon shade. These little plants are sturdier than they look.
Trying to track down their origins and names, I learn that some scientists include these plants in the genus Petunia. Others place them in a separate genus, Calibrachoa, and consider them to be close relatives of the petunia. I have not learned the details of why they might be separated. I did see that one species, Calibrachoa parviflora, has naturalized on beaches in the Florida panhandle. It does not look like a garden ornamental but grows as a low mat with tiny pink flowers. Just yesterday, I saw an orange-flowered Calibrachoa-Petunia hybrid at Hall’s Nursery on San Jose. I had wondered when that would happen. Since they do not produce many seeds, these plants are propagated by cuttings and tissue culture. More named varieties are appearing, although the box stores do not always provide names. I am intrigued by these little plants and will be looking for new and interesting selections.
I bought some of the tall red pentas this weekend, too. My plants came back weakly from the cold 2009-2010 winter. I’ll be surprised if they come up this spring after another very cold winter. I tried some of the dwarf, seed-grown pentas for the first time last year. They needed regular watering and seemed to struggle with the heat and drought all summer. I know the old-fashioned tall varieties need little more than a spot in the sun to thrive. My summer garden just isn’t complete without a few of these plants and some of the dwarf red porterweed. I know they will bring in butterflies and hummingbirds.
January 2011
I have not lost many plants but two unusually cold winters in a row have caused severe cosmetic damage to my gardens. Already, I know that I am going to give up on one of the bamboos (Gigantichloa maxima) on campus that has sustained severe damage again. Otherwise, I'll have to wait and see what this second cold winter has done to my plants. If the cold wasn't enough, we suffered drought conditions for most of 2010. I measured a little over thirty-one inches of rain at home last year. UNF had a similar total. That is just a little better than half of Jacksonville's annual average. The life of a gardener is nothing if not challenging.
I completed a raised bed for vegetables this winter. So far, it contains asparagus, onion sets and two types of kale that UNF's Jonathon Felts recommended for north Florida, 'Western Front' and Ethiopian. I will be adding more cool season vegetables soon, things like lettuce, broccoli, cabbage, carrots, cauliflower, collards, sugar snap peas, radishes and turnips. If you have not already seen it, look at the 2011 garden calendar at http://jacksonville.com/entertainment/home-and-garden/2011-01-02/story/our-annual-gardening-calendar. This is a very useful guide to vegetable and annual flower gardening in our area.
I started several succulents and cacti in pots late last year. I bought from several mail order sites, including CSucculent Nursery (csucculent.com,) Cold Hardy Cactus (coldhardycactus.com,) Mesa Garden (mesagarden.com) and Yucca Do Nursery (yuccado.com). Also, I got a couple more plants from Study Group members Joyce Jarrell and Kyle Brown. The results have been very good. I could not resist a few oddballs that were listed as marginal for our area and placed them indoors on windowsills for the coldest nights. Several others sat under the car port roof or on a covered porch for protection from rain. Some Agave, Dasylirion, Nolina, Opuntia and Yucca species sat out in the weather all winter. Several of the on-line cactus and succulent catalogs were very informative about cold hardiness and I see more nurseries that I want to try. The Desert Tropicals website from Phoenix does not sell plants but contains especially helpful information on the cultivation of these plants, at http://desert-tropicals.com. Already, I see the temptation of collecting these plants. This year, I will focus on desert plants that are likely to survive in the ground in north Florida.
Six years ago, I got some 'Changsha' tangerine seeds from Kyle Brown. This year, the tree bore over two hundred, very sweet tangerines. Last year, I germinated a few apple seeds from my trees and planted out four of the resulting seedlings. It will take five or six years for them to fruit but I hope I'll find another low-chill apple worth eating to add to the limited number available today. The chance is not high but I am hoping that growing the apple seedlings will be as rewarding as growing the Changsha tangerine.
I see several interesting camellia selections and hybrids at the mail order camellia nurseries. 'Sarrel' is an interesting selection of Camellia sasanqua that I want. It is reported to be a spreading plant that grows to only about three feet tall. 'Tiny Princess' is a taller, upright cultivar with small leaves, small pink flowers and willowy branches. Its new leaves are burgundy in color. I saw both of these at Bobby Green's wholesale nursery in Fairhope, Alabama last year. If I find a retailer, I'll buy these and more for my yard this spring. The camellia genus is a surprisingly diverse group of shrubs and small trees. I have about a dozen camellia species and several hybrids in my garden already and have been very happy with them.
Otherwise, I am surviving these cold days by browsing nursery catalogs and websites in search of interesting plants. I suspect that many of you are doing the same.