Brad's Tropical Paradise

The time to apply fertilizer to your cycads is when you see new growth. It's late April here in Glendale so this is the time. If you are wondering what fertilizer to use, go ahead and buy the expensive stuff at Home Depot made especially for palms and cycads. But if you can't get around to it, just use ordinary plant fertilizer. I just applied a bag of "bulb booster" dry fertilizer. It's better to apply some type of fertilizer now than to miss this window of opportunity for the next few weeks. This cycad, a Dioon spinulosum , lost all of its leaves after transplanting and living through the big freeze of this last winter. But it is a survivor! When the leaves appear, give them a nice watering with Miracle Grow through a hose-end sprayer. You can also pop in those little plant food spikes that you use for indoor plants around the base of the plant. As with all dry fertilizer, water in well.

Palms and cycads look especially nice at night if you light them from the bottom. This is a trick I learned while traveling around California and Arizona. It's kind of amazing the effect that a single light at the base of an ordinary palm tree, or in this case, a cycad (sago palm), can do. Here at the Tropical Paradise I have ordinary Malibu lights, the kind that you buy at Home Depot. I do most of my lighting indirectly with spotlights. There are a few path lights scattered around, but most of the light bounces up and off the plants. If you do this, be very careful not to have the spotlight pointed into a window, or pointed out at people walking around the garden. This particular spotlight is on a low-voltage 12-volt system and is 20 watts. When you consider that the lowest wattage that you usually use in a lamp in your house is 60, 20 doesn't seem like much. But out in the garden at night, it produces magic!

It looks like everyone is getting their roof replaced here in Glendale. The hail storm did a lot of damage, but the new roofs on all of the houses are brightening everything up! The noise of pounding nails, etc. is upsetting to Macintosh, the good little wiener dog, but she is getting used to it. As you can see, the cannas are coming back strong. There is a lot of new growth on the palm trees, too. The artificial turf is now five years old and still looks great. Best investment I ever made! I can leave the lawn furniture and the yoga mat on the grass because, well, it isn't grass! The neighbor who is getting the new roof had a beautiful ficus tree in their yard that got killed in the frost of 2007. So, their roof is my view, and it looks like it is going to get a little better!

My cycads are starting to show signs of life after the devastating big freeze of 2010-2011 here in Glendale. Here is a cycas revoluta (commonly called a sago palm) showing new growth. Cycads usually only flush once a year, so this is it. The fronds start growing up and out, with the leaves curled tightly in. When they achieve their final length, the leaves unfurl. You can see around this area that most of the other foliage around this cycad was wiped out. But cycads are pretty tough, be patient, they will survive. They have been surviving here on this planet since before the days of the dinosaurs! This particular plant has been growing underneath a tree most of its life, but I cut the tree down late last year, so it is getting much more sun now. That is why it is one of my first cycads to flush, but also why the fronds will be shorter. The more shade a cycad gets, the longer its fronds will be as it reaches out for light. In brilliant sunshine, the fronds are stumpier. Sago palms wi...

A friend of mine visited The Tropical Paradise yesterday and asked me what the strange-looking "pods" were on my dwarf date palms ( Phoenix roebelinni ). They are the beginnings of the flowering stage of the tree. They will grow out to about a foot, then open up revealing tiny yellow flowers. All palm trees flower. Most of us are used to seeing what looks like stringy yellow-ish-tan leaves around the fronds of a palm tree. It's the inflorescence, a cluster of flowers around a main stem. Many plants have this. On date palms, this is where the dates form.  If you have a Phoenix dactylifera (a true date palm), cut the inflorescence off as soon as the flowers appear and it won't produce any of that messy fruit. Of course, if you want fruit, that's a different story. But most of us just want the plant to be ornamental. Every year, I waiver back and forth on what to do with the inflorescences. I have tried to cut them off as soon as they appear, to keep the tre...

I am seeing the first Canna flower of the season. Cannas are, of course, grown for their beautiful foliage, not the flowers, but I usually leave them on for a while, anyway. This is on my north wall. A garden has many microclimates. Areas that get a lot of sunshine, the ones that face south, will be where spring will arrive earliest. So don't expect everything to happen at the same time. Areas that face west will be next, then east, then north. This is a Canna Tropicana . If you want to get the deep, lush, color of the leaves, cut them back severely. I cut mine to the ground this past winter. Trim the flowers off - they are using energy that could go to leaf production. And be very generous with water and fertilizer!

It's nice to see strong, healthy growth on my palm trees after the devastating freeze of last winter. You can now trim them back as much as you want, if you haven't done so already. These are dwarf date palms ( Phoenix roebellini ). They still look kind of sad but you can see that they will be OK. In addition to the strong growth in the center, they are producing inflorsescenses, which are the beginnings of its flower stalk. They will grow out to be about a foot long, open up, and produce tiny flowers. Whether to cut them off or leave them is a matter of personal taste. They can be messy over a sidewalk, but I like to leave them alone, let the flowers form, and then cut them off when they are all dried up. If you are not seeing any new growth on your Phoenix roebellinis , they probably died in the freeze. I lost a nice-sized one over by my east wall. Here is how to check: tug gently on the inner leaves. If you can pull them out with normal finger strength, the plant is dead...

It's getting on to the middle of April now and the Canna Tropicannas are coming back strong. After the big freeze of the winter of 2010/2011, I cut them all back to the ground. I've had them in the ground for several years now and I realize that it is the severe cutting back that gives them that beautiful, rich, color. Still no sign of life on the Zamia furfurcea (cardboard palm), which is just a stump now and is hiding behind the cannas and the ornamental garlic. Macintosh, the good little wiener dog, is watching and waiting for it to grow back. It will! The daffodils are fading away and hopefully the cannas will overshadow them. Daffodils need to die back normally, otherwise there won't be any blooms next year. At this time of year, it's hard to look at. But spring is in the air!

Moving, or transplanting, a sago palm ( cycas revoluta ), or any cycad, is surprisingly easy. Cycads transplant readily, and late spring is the best time to do it. Winter is a bad time because the roots aren't actively growing in the cold, and summer is a bad time because the heat is bad for both the plant and you! So, now is the time! The first thing that you do is to cut off all of the leaves. Yes, yikes! But it's better for the plant, and makes it much easier to manage. If you transplant it correctly, the leaves will all grow back, usually the same year, but it may take a season. In the meantime, you will be looking at a stump, which is sad, but it will grow! Plant your cycad on a slight slope, which allows water to drain quickly. Mix in a lot of volcanic pumice. If you can't do that, at least use a nice potting soil mixture designed for cactus. Be sure to allow plenty of room for the plant to grow and for the leaves to spread out - not too close to walkways! A...

The number one mistake that gardeners make is that they don't allow room for a plant to grow. Cycads are beautiful, but their fronds can be sharp, so planting them too close to a walkway is a serious mistake. I've seen these beautiful plants hacked to pieces because they weren't allowed space to grow. But the question is, how much space should you allow? Cycads live for hundreds and hundreds of years and grow very, very, slowly. If you allow enough space for them to grow to their full size, they will look pretty lost in your garden. This Dioon spinulosum by my bedroom window, for example, will grow up to 90 feet, but not in my lifetime, or several of my lifetimes. I'm a middle-aged guy, so I expect to see this plant get to be about five feet at the most.  The next owner of this house may see it grow to ten feet, if they live long enough. You see what I mean. But realistically, you need to allow it to have fronds that will grow to a span of at least ten feet, even wh...

One of the really fascinating things about cycads, as opposed to palm trees, is that cycads don't grow continuously. They send up their leaves, usually once a year, in a big hurry, called a flush . If you live in the Phoenix area, like I do, expect your cycads to start flushing in April. The ones in direct sun will flush sooner, the ones in shade, later. Don't be surprised if it takes until summertime for some to flush, and some will flush more than once a year, and some will takes years in between flushes. If your cycad has lost all of its leaves from the big freeze this winter, be patient. If the trunk (sometimes called the pineapple) is firm, the cycad is alive and will recover. Don't dig it up and throw it away! Give it to me! People who have cycads are on the lookout for new growth at this time of year. When you just barely see it, like in this photo, you know that your cycad is strong and healthy. Don't be tempted to cut off all of the old leaves from the pr...