A New Kind of Gardening

Well, we are in the new house now for six weeks now and got our container about after one week in the house. The house is new (2009), but the one acre property is not developed at all. The first thing we did was pay for a hog fence across the back and down one side, the other side was already done. The front is open, but I plan to build a wall across with a small walk in gate and automatic (solar) drive though gate. The driveway is curved, and the house set back at an angle, so it leads to a lot of creativity. The dogs, Thai and Tallow our rat terriers arrived Sept. 28th, and were at home by the next day. They leave the local wild chickens alone, and for now seem to stay in the yard. The first purchase was some cindersoil, we got 30 yards delivered for about $700 bucks, or about $23/yard. So far I like it, it's heavy to move around, but holds enough moisture while maintaining good drainage. We are basically on rock (lava), and gardening here is filling in existing holes and planting, or building up on top of the lava, just like making raised beds. I plan on mulching as soon as I can find some, It's free at the landfill, but the chipper is only here part time. It's raw so will probably need to composted first, but trust me that doesn't take much time here. It has rained almost every night so far, although we are drier than when we were in Lalani. It's only rained a few days so far, today was one. Even then, the sun seems to come out at least a little every day. Some areas are over grown with Moluccan Albizia (Falcataria moluccana), a huge towering tree. It's nitrogen fixing, so it grows fast. Most people here don't like them, they are supposedly brittle and fast growing. We have a small one in the back, so I'll remove it, in ten years it could look like these.

But they are very cool to look at, these are at the lava tubes, piles of lava left after the trees that were in the middle got burned out.

Speaking of lava, when Dani's sister Dae and husband Cliff were here a few weeks ago we

walked out to to the spot where the lava flows into the ocean, it was really beautiful, and only about 10 miles from the house. Jeff is in the green shirt, Andy on the right end.

We've been making beds and planting, we got three 15 gal Ptycospermum elegans, Solitary Palms, for the front beds, plus some cool Mala

ysian Rhododendrons from this

local nursery 'White Cloud Nursery', they have over 200 varieties. They need perfect drainage so I picked up some clean

5/8's cinder for them, you can also use it to add air space to any potting mix, kinda like pumice or perlite. It cost about $20 buck a yard picked up.

We been getting lots of cool stuff at the local Mucuu Farmers Market on Sundays. I meet a guy who sells Cordyline terminalis cultivars (Ti). We went out to his place

& got a whole truck full.

We also ordered some sod, yes grass!, it's called seashore pasplaum, a really fine textured low grass that reminded me of hybrid bermuda, but it's soft. It supposed to be very salt to

lerant, and can even be watered with sea water. I'm hoping that it will put up with the dogs. I'll cut it with a reel type mower, push, very green.

We have a small front porch. So we added a grass walk to the steps, I'll probably add some custom stepping stones later. All in all it's coming along. I think it's going to look great. -tom

Aloha

It's been a while since I've posted, but it has been an extremely crazy year. Andy and I finally sold the house in Vista at the beginning of July and had our last day on the property on July 23rd. We moved to Hawaii at the beginning of August. But, that last month in Vista was a wild one. We had developed an amazing garden over the last 10 years, and put a lot of work into it. It was kinda sad to say goodbye, but I've been told when you have a dream, to follow it, so we did. Hawaii has always been a popular vacation destination for us, and we considered retiring there. Andy and I started looking at some land to buy on the Big island for the future, and we quickly realized that prices had really come down over here, if we could sell the house back in California. After lowing the price considerably, to bring it in line with plunging values in the neighborhood (Ouch!), we finally sold to a great family, who really appreciate the garden, which made us very happy. They even took the chickens and goats.

So packing and making arrangements to move to an Island in the middle of the Pacific required some major planning. In less than 30 days we sold most of the furniture, what was left of the nursery, (after we had started it up again), packed a container for Hawaii & said good buy to friends. Their was a glitch with the dogs and they are staying with our good friend Dani up in Apple Valley until they can be shipped over the end of this Month (September 09). For us it's been hard not to have them around, but we'll be better settled in by then, and things will be stable.

We bought a brand new house about 10 blocks from the ocean in a community called Hawaiian Paradise Park, not far from Pahoa, a small town that looks the wild west in the tropics. It's about 15 miles south of Hilo, the largest city on this side of the island. Adjusting to a Hawaiian frame of reference has been interesting, they tell us that it's dry down where we bought, it only gets about 90" of rain a year. After having an average rainfall of 8" a year in San Diego, this may take some getting used to. The really wet places her

e can get up to 200" a year. The rental we have been

living is in Leilani, about another 5 miles south. We are farther inland here and get a lot of rain. It rains almost every night and things are very lush. The little house is tucked in the jungle just off the main road. The garden is surrounded by strawberry guava which has overtaken the native landscape to the point of being impenetrable. Moss covers

everything, and Hedychium gingers, Ti's and Heliconias are everywhere. It really is beautiful, even though we are basically camping

out, since most our belongings are being held until the escrow closes on the new house, which happens this week. Most of our time has been spent setting things up here, and having fun. Not to far from us are the Kapoho tide pools which offer excellent snorkeling, as well as a small black sand beach in Kehena which is as beautiful as can be. Large coconut trees, rocky cliffs and amazing clear blue water just cool enough to be refreshing, but not so warm as to be like bath water. We have already begun to amass quite a few plants. I'm still getting used to the fact that it is about 83 every day here and 70 at night. They tell me it gets cold here in the winter, the high

60's. There has never been a recorded frost here and the water quality is excellent. Paradise - I'll post again soon - tom

Michelias

Well I gotta say, even though I don't like winter in general, I do like the progression of the garden as we approach spring. Just walking through the garden is a delight for the senses. The Michelia doltsopa has been in bloom for at least a month now, although it seems early. The smell is wonderful, the flowers so elegant. It's about 9 years old now, is 12' tall, conical in shape and I can see it from my kitchen window. 

It's funny how so much of the winter garden can I enjoy  from inside the house. I've always been very consience  of views from the inside of the home. Even the night garden is so important. The front yard has great lighting and never fails to make me feel good. 

I just got a few 1-gal Magnolia grandiflora that I'm going to use as rootstock to graft some michelias onto, I think I'll do an approch graft. That type of graft just splices to cuts together while they both are still connected to their own roots. I've had bad luck before using tradition grafting techniques, I'm told they do better in the summer in a humid greenhouse. I also picked up some 1-gal jacaranda to graft some of the dark purple form called 'Midnight' I have by the office, grafting in Febuary has worked before with that one. 

The hybrid Michelia x Jack Foggi 'Allspice' is also just starting to bloom and the fragrace is amazinig, sweet with a hint of banana. Near it is a Lonicera fragrantisima also in bloom, not  avery pretty plant, kind of gangly with dull foliage, but the super sweet frangrace always gets me. 

The spring flowering trees haev also begun. My low chill cherry Prunus 'Pink Cloud' is almost in full bloom (non-fruiting) in  a super showy light pink. Across the road from it, down by the aviaries, the Red Baron peach is in full bloom. That one has brillent double fuchsia pink flowers and also has great yellow peachs, definately a winner. And once again I can look down on both trees from the back deck.

Well that's it for now, I have to go weed the garden below the vegetable bed and mulch it. Too many weeds popping up! -tom

Evolution of drought tolerance

Well it's been a while, but school is over. I've getting a good grasp of HTML, but java script looks like a nightmare. Anyway, the Verbena 'Little Ones' were patented, the label maker left that info off the tag. 2008 was kinda rough, still trying to sell my place here in Vista, one good thing did happen though Andy & I got married on Aug 9 th, after 13 years together. Still a new home in Hawaii would be sweet. 

We've been pruning roses and fruit trees for a couple of days now. People like those, so those stay, but I am doing a reduction in perennials that take too much work. So mostly for water and maintenance issues. The trees and shrubs are really the important to provide structure, the filler plants are more like the pillows on the couch. I actually like the garden better with less. It's funny how gardeners are always adding, not subtracting. 

 I stopped watering the perimeter gardens four months ago, kinda a Darwin design method. If the plant can't handle it, I cut it to the ground and compost it. I've been surprised by the result. Some so called droughty leptospermums and melaleuca bit it, but my English oak looks great. A few of the big (more tropical) Mexican salvias definitely didn't like it, but they weren't my favorites. I told Andy we needed to get down to the 100 best salvias, or less, call me crazy. Any that I liked I took cuttings of and am planting closer to the house. 

Prepping for spring, potting up new seedlings and such, still need to make cuttings of natives, this is the best time of year. My recent efforts have been in a home made solar heat for the greenhouse, propane just too expensive. I'll let you know how that works out. It will be spring before you know it. I think a road trip to the Huntington or LA is in order.

 The Camellias are starting to bloom, a hybrid called High Fragrance is just starting now. It's highly unusual but it has a great fragrance and a long bloom season. I love Camellias, they really help get me through the winter. There's just so much variety, if you've only seen the ones at Home Depot, you are really missing out, Nuccio's, just up the coast in Pasadena, has the best. 

I'm propping quicker stuff right now, but I have potted up some rare Australian shrubs recently, just some seeds I have left over. Still doing the farmers market in Vista on Saturdays. That's where most of the plants are going right now, I can't seem to grow them fast enough, I think the mail order will have to wait till March when I have more plants. Til next -tom

Plant Patents

Well today Andy brought home some Verbena bonariensis 'Little One', a new dwarf, sterile selection of the normally 5' tall annual (perennial here). The difference is that we 'own' the patent on this plant. I'm generally not a fan of patenting plants, I kinda believe in an open market system with free propagation of all the great stuff out there. Some of the best plants don't get propagated because of licensing rights. But I do realize that with many plants much research, time and effort goes into bringing a plant to market. Since I live in this world and not an ideal one, we went capitalistic. We found this dwarf Verbena in a seed batch we grew several years ago. It's a perfect plant with great proportion, so we decided to go forward with patenting it. We do have bills to pay  after all. My concern was who was growing it, it had a 'Proven Selections' label (with no patent id #) with my name 'Little One'. If I find out they are paying patent rights, well then great, more money for me. (Trust me it's not that much). My concern is that in the past The Proven Winners/ Proven Selection people have been not so trustworthy, I've been told by other growers. They are excellent business people, focused on advertising, but they are very aggressive at acquiring new plants, sometimes 'stealing' peoples plants, renaming them and patenting them themselves. The bigger issue for me is I see lots of 'PW' plants in local nurseries, and even though they say what they grow is proven for any region, I see lots of plants, like Heucheras, that do not do well here at all. People then kill their plants and think that gardening is hard and then give up. I know the local growers choose the plants to grow, but we just need to do a better job of empowering people as new gardeners. I personally grow plants that love our climate, and that are easy to grow. And 'easy' doesn't mean boring, more next time. tom

Today I was thinking about Hawaii. As a lot of you know, Andy and I have the house and nursery for sale and we are planning to move to HI. The real estate market is super slow, so we are here for the immediate future. I was walking through the front garden and I was really feeling that tropical vibe; the sun was back lighting the palms and I felt totally okay with whatever the future holds. I love our garden, we've been here for nine years now and the garden is really coming into it's own. We finished the pond in the front yard last fall, which was just a big hole in the ground for over two years, (as Andy reminded me often). For me, it meant everything, it sets the whole mood for the space. The sound alone is amazing and of course the dragonflies and birds it brings in are great. I love looking at the fish and even the greenish patina forming on the sides. I know some people like that sterile, chlorinated look, but I wouldn't have it any other way. What I didn't count on was the incredible reflections on the garden structures and ever the ceiling in my living room. What a great bonus! So even though we are not in Hawaii, I feel that I've created my little bit of paradise here. I've changed my entire life this year, and while the uncertainty of our future is disconcerting, I find it very exciting. The fact the I get to live in this great house (that we just finished remodeling) and this amazing garden is just such a joy. My time is so different right now. I'm so used to working six or seven days a week. Not having a regular staff has really freed me up to do a lot of things I've wanted to do; like create this blog. For example, I started taking a 'html' class yesterday. It's so cool to be able to step out of my comfort zone and stretch myself. This is really new for me, so hang in there while I'm getting used to this. Sharing what I've learned (so freely from my mentors) with the others is what I think this journey is all about. I hope to get into some specific plants and topics, so stay tuned. tom

A new day

Been in Southern California for almost 25 years, growing, or at least trying to grow, everything I could get my hands. I'm a self confessed plant addict, and can never seem to get enough. I'm a landscaper and wholesale grower. But, things are changing here, and I've realized we have to change too. So I'm putting together a website to promote good information on horticulture and maybe sell some plants as well. Knowledgeable sales people are hard to find in local nurseries, and good landscapers are even harder to find. People who are good gardeners here are few. I think everyone is busy, and it's easy to find cheap labor, what we call mow and blow. It's too bad, because I have found this to be one of the best places to grow an amazingly diverse variety of plants in the same location. So I'm going to try to reach out to other horticulturists to talk about all thing horticulture. As my blog title says, I am an opinionated gardener, but I am very open to other points of view, and have even been known to change my mind on occasion, granted those are few. I love tropicals, drought tolerants, natives, woodsy, Asian, okay I like everything, that's the point. More to come