Brad's Tropical Paradise

It took about 10 days for the coleus seeds to sprout in the little pots in the courtyard. Elsewhere they haven't shown up. This is the first year that I have tried to grow coleus from seed, so I have planted them all over The Tropical Paradise. My understanding is that they need light to sprout, but not too much. So I have them planted in lots of different ways and am watching to see what works. What is working here appears to be in a shady area where the potting soil never really gets a chance to dry out, which is in my courtyard. As you can see, I created a pot out of newspaper, which I discovered on YouTube, a pot out of a used jello single-serving container, and a pot out of a cup from some fertilizer. They are sitting in a plastic container that helps hold the moisture in also. So it may be too dry elsewhere in the garden, because this looks pretty consistently soggy. Planting seeds is like waiting for water to boil. The trick is to not pay attention. But if you just le...

In addition to starting flower seeds in small pots and flats, this year I am sowing them directly into the ground. This is all experimentation, but I figure since the weeds have been growing so well in these places, flowers should, too! Right here under the Phoenix canariensis-rupicola  palm tree cross, I have planted petunas, dwarf snapdragons, and alyssum. There are also a lot of daffodil bulbs there so I'm hoping that it will look a lot more interesting in a month or two! As you can see, I have a sprayer head that covers this area very nicely, and there is also a mister towards the back. It's a tricky balance to get the flowers to flourish here, they need to be in a sunny area to bloom, but it can't be too hot and sunny that it kills the tiny sprouts. I will keep an eye on it.

It's the end of September here at The Tropical Paradise, and the Cape Honeysuckle is starting to bloom. This is such a great plant for here in the desert - it thrives in heat, has a wonderful tropical-looking deep green leaf, it attracts hummingbirds, and it flowers in the cool temperatures when your winter visitors are here. Cape Honeysuckle can grow to be very tall, but I keep mine at about three feet. The trick to keeping the plant size under control and getting blooms is to never use a hedge trimmer. If your gardener is shaping all of your plants into the *poodle* or *Dr. Seuss pom-pom* shape, you will get very few, if any blooms. Instead, trim by hand. Cape Honeysuckle is meant to be a vining plant, so let it vine a bit. That's where the flowers will be. Add a little fertilizer, give it some water, and enjoy the blooms through February!

Alyssum appears to be the clear winner in my *easiest to start by seed* experiment here at The Tropical Paradise. The seeds sprouted in only two days and are going strong in the little Burpee 36-cell greenhouse which I ordered on Amazon. In the past couple of weeks I have also planted seeds of Petunias, Coleus, and Snapdragon. The competition may be unfair as the alyssum seeds were the only ones who got the luxury of sprouting in the little greenhouse. The other seeds are out in the garden, either directly-sown, or are in tiny pots. It doesn't surprise me that the alyssum is doing so well. I've seen it reseed itself from growing plants, and I've read that in some parts of the country, it is considered an invasive weed. Here at The Tropical Paradise I've grown a lot of alyssum, but always from seedlings, and it does well in the winter in sunny areas, and like all annuals, it dies in the summer here. In a small garden like mine, when the alyssum has grown to a nice ...

Just when I think that my Elephant Ears (colocasia) can't get any bigger, they do. Here in the Phoenix, Arizona area, they suffer during the hot summers and the cold of the winter. In the summer, they tend to sunburn around the leaf edges, and temperatures below 20F knock them down, but they don't die. I've cut these plants down to the ground many times, and they come back even stronger. And, like any other bulb plant, they multiply, so you can dig some up and share them with your friends! What colocaias like is water. Any plant that has the characteristic shape of the point at the end of the leaf is a plant that has evolved around water, and lots of it. The shape of the leaf allows the water to drain off. Interestingly enough, the shape of the stem allows water to be held. I like to add a mixture of water-soluble plant food and Super Thrive™ in a watering can and pour it into the stem area and base. You really can't over-water and over-feed these plants! They will ...

Yesterday I planted some Seeds of Change© Bergam's Green Leaf Lettuce seeds here in The Tropical Paradise. Lettuce has a nice tropical ground cover texture to it, and you can eat it! If you plant leaf lettuce, you just cut off the leaves that you want to add to your salad, instead of digging up the whole plant (that would be head lettuce). The plant keeps growing, and you have more edible ground cover. I experimented a bit last year and found that the area near my dining room window was the best. This year I prepared the planting area by putting down some fresh Miracle Grow Moisture Control™ potting soil, slow-release fertilizer, scattered the seeds as evenly as I could, and topped it with Seed Starter™ potting soil, well watered in. This part of the garden only gets morning sun and it will be perfect for a cool-weather crop like lettuce. I even put in a little plastic plant marker that says *lettuce* and the day I planted them, but I won't forget!

Today is the fall equinox, where the length of day and the length of night are exactly the same. From today on, the days will get shorter and the nights will get longer. The sun will rise and set farther and farther in the south until it reaches its shortest arc on the day of the winter solstice, which this year will be on December 22nd. And as the angle of the sun's rays slant more and more, there will be much less warmth from the sun. Here in the Phoenix, Arizona area, that's a good thing, as it gets uncomfortably hot in the summer. The fall, winter, and spring are the times when the tourists visit and pay large amounts of money to play golf and splash around in swimming pools because for most of the rest of the country, the colder temperatures are uncomfortable. But here in the Phoenix, Arizona, area, the temperatures in the fall and spring are that beautiful "Chamber of Commerce" weather of the mid-seventies. This is the time for planting here. I'm plant...

The *secret* to having beautiful, lush tropical plants is food. Actually, it's not a secret at all. Tropical plants, unlike cactus, are heavy feeders. In their natural habitat in the tropics, they live where there is always a lot of rotting vegetation for them to eat. Your garden, by contrast, is empty of food, unless you put it out. You wouldn't dream of just putting out water for your dog or cat, so don't starve your tropical plants, either! And if you're wondering what plant food to use, don't worry. Anything at all is better than nothing. I recently bought a bag of Miracle Grow™ plant food, and spread out just about the whole bag all of The Tropical Paradise. And if you're worried about over-feeding your tropical plants, don't worry, you can't. Be generous! In this picture - at left Dioon spinulosum cycad, behind it Canna Tropicannas .

A friend of mine in California recently asked me about the water bills here at The Tropical Paradise. With all this lush vegetation, he imagined that it cost me a fortune. It doesn't. It is much cheaper to have plants like this than grass. There is no grass here at The Tropical Paradise, only artificial turf in the back and 1/2 inch gravel in the front. The tropical plants are watered with two systems. One is a tiny low-pressure drip system which I have added sprayer heads to, and a simple misting system, like the kind you see cooling off patios. The water is used like the precious resource that it is. Get rid of your grass! Get a Tropical Paradise and save money!

I moved my Dioon spinulosum last year when I had the palo brea tree removed. The tree had really gotten out of control, was spiny, and I had planted it way too close to my block wall many years ago, and it was in danger of falling over and ruining the block wall, so I'm glad I removed it. Still, it provided a lot of nice shade for my cycads, especially the Dioon spinulosum , which I have had for over fifteen years. So I moved the dioon over to the other side of the garden, where it gets afternoon shade, but unfortunately, a lot of morning sun. This past summer the fronds burned badly and I was about to despair for its health and longevity in the new spot, when I just noticed signs of life! It is putting out new leaves, a flush, in September! Life finds a way! I've been growing cycads for a long time and it's just a reminder to not give up too soon. One thing to note about cycads that have had an easy life in the shade, that when they flush in direct sun, their frond...

Sometimes you just have to bring in the big equipment. This morning I had a good size branch cut off by a landscape company. It only took them a few minutes with their expertise and their chainsaw. If I could go back in time about ten years I wouldn't have let the tree fork so low. But when a tree is small, it's hard to imagine what it will look like in the future! This branch was sticking out sideways and into my neighbor's property line, so it really needed to go away.

My success at growing carrots and lettuce from seed has inspired me again to try to grow petunias from seed. I've tried it before, and failed, but I was younger then! So I ordered a packet of petunias seeds from Amazon, which arrived today. I have to admit that I was very surprised to find only about a dozen seeds in the packet. Actually, there are fifteen, and yes, it says so right at the top of the packet. I even wrote to Ferry Morse asking them about this, and they responded right away and very courteously. The color is what caught my eye for these flowers so it looks like I am paying a premium. I planted them in little plastic cups that I scrounged out of my kitchen, making sure that I made drain holes. The small plastic cups are from individual jello servings. I packed them with Miracle Grow® Seed Starter soil and dropped one seed into each, after making a hole with a pencil. The pelletized seeds are pretty cool, much easier to handle, and I'm guessing the pellet has s...

You don't need a degree in astrophysics to be a gardener, but it helps to understand a bit about how the sun moves. Well, of course the earth moves, but you see what I mean. Actually, it's about how the shadows move in your yard. The first thing to determine is the daily movement of the shadows. That is, as they move as the sun goes through the sky in the day. My backyard faces east, so it gets full morning sun and then the house starts to shade it after noon. But that's only part of understanding the shadows in your yard. The other part has to do with seasons. You ignore this at the risk of your plants! Assuming that you live in the United States, and you are north of the equator, it's summer in June and July and winter in December and January. And if you remember your old high school studies, you know that the sun rises and sets lower and lower in the southern sky as the winter goes on. So, as the winter goes on, the shadows move more and more over to the nort...

It doesn't rain much here in the Sonoran Desert, so when it does, it is a beautiful sight! It just started raining a few minutes ago and it promises to be a nice desert thunderstorm. Great for the cannas! Here along the north wall I have a mass of Canna Tropicannas . They love water so they will soak up a lot of it. In front of them, the garden tilts down a bit to allow the water to run off of the cycads and the palm trees. The artificial turf is perforated, so rainwater soaks into the ground, too. I had a gutter installed along this edge of the patio to keep the rain from hitting the flagstone so hard and breaking up the grout. During hard rains it works great, diverting the water to the yard, where the drainage for the property takes it around the side of the house to the courtyard, where it is retained, and then out the front of the property for overflow. There is a neighborhood flood detention basin at the northwest corner of 67th and Peoria, and a much larger flood detenti...

It's getting to be that season again here in the Phoenix area when the Bermuda grass goes dormant, turns brown, and many people overseed with annual ryegrass in order to have a nice green lawn during the time of the year when the weather is actually nice enough to be outside. I did this for many years here at The Tropical Paradise. It includes buying seeds, fertilizer, topper, and using up a huge amount of water. Annual grass is pretty but it stains, the fertilizer smells bad while the seeds are starting, and it takes several weeks before it really starts to look nice. And of course, you have to stay off of it, and that includes your dog. Grass is so wrong in the desert, but so beautiful. I've had artificial turf here at The Tropical Paradise for over five years now, and it's great. In the summer, I don't need to go out in 100+ heat to mow it, it requires no water, the only maintenance it needs is to be swept occasionally, and you can always walk on it. And yes, it...

If you live in one of those neighborhoods where all of the plants are trimmed with power hedge-trimmers, looking like the pom-poms on poodles, or something from a Dr. Seuss cartoon, then there are very few flowers. That's because they aren't being allowed to bloom. You wouldn't trim rose bushes with a hedge trimmer! So don't use a hedge trimmer on your cape honeysuckle. If you want flowers, put away the hedge trimmers! Instead, get your hand trimmers out and learn to see where the blooms are beginning to bud. When you see one, all you have to do is to avoid trimming it. Cut somewhere else! The picture at left shows the beginning of the flower bud. Learn to recognize it early, and just avoid snipping it off. You will be rewarded with lots of blooms! After it blooms, you can clip it off, especially if you are trying to control the size and shape of your plant. And if your neighbors want to know how got all of those beautiful flowers, just tell them to throw away the...

It's finally September here at The Tropical Paradise, and that means planting season is here. If you're from back east, you can think of this time as if it were spring. It's the time to plant annual flowers, divide bulbs, and plant seeds. If may seem upside down, but it works here. Look around you as you travel around Phoenix. In the next few weeks you will see a lot of new plantings around town, especially annual flowers. The pros know this. The reason for the reversed planting season here is that it doesn't snow here, and that it gets brutally hot in the summer. So plants that would normally freeze back east won't, and plants that do well in the summer temperatures back east will die in the summer temperatures here. So fall and winter is the time for gardening! I have lived here in the desert for more years than I care to admit, and it has taken me a long time learn this lesson. Spring and summer are not the right time to plant here! Planting time here is in...

Resorts here in the Phoenix area have used tropical plants to create the illusion of cool ocean breezes for a long time now. No, tropical plants don't actually make it any cooler, it just feels that way. Yes, it's still over 100 degrees here, even in the shade! To me, having harsh desert plants like cactus staring at you just reminds you of how hot and miserable it is in the summer here. Don't get me wrong, I have a beautiful Saguaro cactus out front, but in the back I want to imagine that I am in Tahiti, not the Sonoran Desert. So, dried up skulls of cows and tumbleweeds just don't appeal to me. This is an oasis. Like any oasis, it's small. Trying to achieve a Tropical Paradise that is the size of Disneyland in your backyard is a terrible mistake. All you really need is a place to sit surrounded by your tropical plants. Here in The Tropical Paradise, I installed artificial turf about six years ago, and it's the best investment I have ever made. Still look...