Brad's Tropical Paradise

Cape honeysuckle is one of my favorite plants for the Tropical Paradise for so many reasons. First of all, it loves heat, which is important here in the Phoenix, Arizona area. The foliage is a beautiful deep-green and vining in shape. The flowers are just the right color and shape to attract hummingbirds, and best of all, it blooms in the winter! To help your cape honeysuckle (Tecomaria capensis ) bloom, put away the hedge trimmers! Instead, get your garden shears and trim by hand. Look at what you are doing. Look for buds and be sure to leave them alone. Trim back the rest of the shoots as hard as you want. Cape honeysuckle can grow up to be very tall, or it can be kept trimmed down to any size you want. I keep mine at just a few feet tall. I am looking for blooms. And hummingbirds! Cape Honeysuckle flower bud beginning to form.

It's the third week of January here at The Tropical Paradise and the weather has been fabulous. Sunshine in the backyard only lasts a few hours because of the olive tree, so Macintosh, the good little wiener dog, is making the most of it. You can see some of the frost damage to the fronds of the Phoenix roebellini (dwarf date palm) and Zamia furfuracea cycad . Note that the Dioon edule var. palma sola (at right) did not get any frost damage. I have put out a pot with a forced Amaryllis bulb, which is growing like wildfire, but still no beginning of the bloom stalk. The King Alfred Narcissus (daffodils) are coming up all over the place and should be blooming by the middle of next month (February).

It just doesn't get any better than this. Temperatures in the low 70s, bright clear skies, no breeze. The fronds that you see in the foreground are of a Phoenix roebellini (dwarf date palm), behind that is an olive tree, and behind that is a Phoenix rupicola (Indian date palm tree). Just behind Macintosh, the good little wiener dog, is a dioon edule var. palma sola cycad, behind it against the wall is a Tecoma capensis (cape honeysuckle) which blooms in the winter. Downhill and just left of Macintosh is an Agave Colorta . My neighbor has Cupressus sempervirens Glauca (cypress trees), and you can see a couple of fronds of a Phoenix canariensis (Canary Island Date Palm), which is across the street. To the left of the chair is a Dioon edule cycad whose leaves have flattened out after coning two years ago. I hope to see a new flush of leaves on that plant this spring!

There's really not a lot that needs to be done here in The Tropical Paradise for my visitors who will arrive this weekend. The artificial turf has been down for five years now and still looks great. You don't need to mow, water, or edge it. All I need to do is hose it down every once in a while. I bought some bulb plant food at K-Mart this morning at 50% off and sprinkled it around the plants, then gently watered it in. The olives have finally stopped falling and are now part of the garden mulch. Next year I will remember to spray fruit stop in the early spring and that will eliminate the problem of olives falling everywhere. I cut back the Ravenea rivularis (Majesty palm) in the hopes that this will spur some new growth. It has been doing poorly ever since the big freeze of 2007. You can see the Dioon spinulusum cycad much better now. It will grow into that space. Cycads are slow growers but it will probably need to be removed in 100-150 years from now. I'll deal with ...

Winter is tourist season here in the desert. But for my winter visitors, they will have to "work on their tan" somewhere else. The olive tree at this time of year is casting a shadow pretty much across the whole north part of the yard. This used to be a problem years ago when the grass was real, causing dead spots and places with mud. The artificial turf has no such problems. It is a walkable surface any time of the year. Another advantage is that I don't have to mow it, which created noise and dust. The only watering that I need to do in the winter, that is, from November to May, is by hand. The watering system is shut off. I water the daffodils with the watering can every once in a while, and I hose off the artificial turf occasionally, but that's all. Water is precious in the desert, but that doesn't mean that I have to stare at gravel and concrete! Macintosh, the good little wiener dog, likes it, too.

Olive trees, like most trees that do well here in the desert, require very little water and very little maintenance. They are not deciduous, that is, they don't lose their leaves in the fall, but they tend to shed all year. I use the leaves as mulch, as you can see in the photo. Olive trees are unaffected by the hottest and coldest weather we get here, and just look great all of the time. In fact, they are so dependable that many times people don't even see them. But I see them, and to me everything about them is wonderful, including their blue-green leaves and their wonderful sculptural trunks and branches. There are two things that you need to do to keep olive trees looking their best - spray a fruit stop in the spring (when the flowers appear) and trim the suckers regularly. Suckers are the leaves and branches that start growing up from the base of the tree. I've seen people try to deal with it by trimming a little "apron" of leaves at the base, and to me, th...

It's early January and here in the Phoenix, Arizona, area, temperatures are getting pretty cold at night, down to nearly freezing. During the day it is getting into the fifties and low sixties and with a lot of sunshine. Great golf weather for our tourists, and also the time start watching your bulbs start to grow. I've been planting bulbs here in The Tropical Paradise for years, especially Narcissus (daffodils). My experience is that it matters less where they came from, including The Dollar Store, than the care and feeding you give them. These daffodils started blooming around Christmastime and are getting pretty near their maximum in January. Like all daffodils, they come back year after year. So once they start showing a little growth above ground, give them some plant food. It really doesn't matter what kind - I like the little houseplant spikes that you can get for 99 cents. Be sure to insert the spike slightly away from the bulb, you don't want to injure the r...

The low temperatures here in the Phoenix, Arizona area got down below freezing for several nights in a row in the last few nights of 2010. I've seen a lot of frost damage in the neighborhood, and although it's best to wait until the weather warms up again, I have done a small amount of cleaning up here in the Tropical Paradise. In 2007 it got cold enough here that some of my small Phoenix roebellinis died, and a lot of Ficus Benjamina trees in the neighborhood were killed. There was a nice Ficus Benjamina tree in the yard just east of my backyard that is gone. I doubt whether people will be planting them much more now. The most recent frost has damaged leaves, but hopefully the trees won't die. In my backyard, I have cleaned up the ornamental sweet potato vine. There are bits and pieces of it left in the ground, and it will grow back. I have cut back the Caladiums (elephant ears) and the Cannas . They are tuberous, and will grow back. In fact, these plants look best if...