Brad's Tropical Paradise

A fellow-member of the Arizona Palm and Cycad Association was kind enough to give me a new plant for The Tropical Paradise. The common name is African Spear, the Sansevieria Cylindrica . After doing a bit of research on what it likes, which is sandy soil and mostly neglect, I have found what I consider the perfect place for it. One of the biggest problems people have with planting something like this is that gets placed too close to where people walk. It's not particularly sharp, but it is pointy, and like all plants of this type, it looks best when it has room to grow. This is planted at least four feet away from where anyone will walk, and it's in a dry, sandy area of The Tropical Paradise. I have high hopes for it! By the way, the bulbs growing to the right of it are Sparaxis, which I got from Easy to Grow Bulbs . They call it their "the big party mix". Below them is some alyssum, which I grew from seed this year. It has surprisingly large leaves for alyssum...

After doing more research, I found that just sitting by a window doesn't supply enough light for growing seedlings. I found an old lamp in the garage and it has made a difference. This past year has been a good learning experience for me! The *pots* are made from cut-down disposable coffee cups, filled with potting soil which has a few pieces of Miracle Grow® and some polymer watering crystals. I keep a little spray bottle handy and give the seedlings a little spray every once in a while. They are on my dresser right next to my computer so it's no trouble. By the way, the bigger seedling at the lower right corner of the photo is a dwarf petunia. I have a label in there to remind me. The other seedlings, like the little alyssum to the left, are big enough now that I can recognize them without a label.

Cannas are grown mostly for their beautiful tropical foliage, not for their blooms. But seeing a flower blooming on the day after Christmas, especially for a Minnesota kid like me, is still pretty amazing. This is a Canna Tropicanna that I got at Easy to Grow Bulbs a few years ago, but now it's available just about anywhere. I've even seen them at Walmart, although they look a little ratty there. But you are getting it for the bulbs, not the leaves, so if they need to be cut off, don't worry, more leaves will grow back. The blooms don't last very long, and, as you can see, they open in progression, so if you want it to look its best, just gently tear away the spent blooms as they fade. After a stem has finished blooming, I always cut it all the way down to the ground. Cannas will suffer a bit with cold. They are fine if it just gets into the upper 30s (like it did last night). At freezing, their leaves will get droopy and mushy. Below freezing will knock them to ...

It's Christmas Day here at The Tropical Paradise and there really isn't much to do but enjoy the sunshine. I hand-watered the lettuce (in the foreground), which is growing back nicely after I trimmed several leaves for a salad a couple of days ago. If you are going to do this, be sure to get leaf lettuce, not head lettuce. With leaf lettuce, you just trim off the leaves you need, eat them, and the plant continues to grow and produce new leaves. Head lettuce, like iceberg, conversly, is trimmed off at the base so you can only harvest it once. When I first moved to Phoenix I was surprised that the grass went brown (dormant) in the winter. So to have green grass during best part of the year, you have to overseed, which requires seeding, topping, watering, and of course, mowing. Have I mentioned how much I like my artificial turf? All you have to do for that is to go out with a blower every once in a while. I have a nice little rechargeable blower that I use, and it only takes ...

Seeing the emergence of a daffodil bud before Christmas is one of the really cool things about living here in the Southwest. This clump of daffodils has been in the ground for several years now and blooms very early. I expect to see flowers in early January. I just gave this plant a nice drink of Miracle Grow and Super Thrive. I don't know if it's absolutely necessary right now, it just seems like the thing to do. Life finds a way!

It's December 22nd, and The Tropical Paradise is settling in for winter. I turned off the water about a month ago, so the moisture that you see on the flagstone is just from the rain we had a couple of days ago. The cannas and the elephant ears are still growing, as is the lettuce, which I am now harvesting. Of course, the turf is artificial, so it doesn't require any water. Best investment I ever made. I won't need to turn the water back on until February. The temperature right now at 9:30 am is in the low forties, (about 6 C) and it should get into the high fifties (about 15 C) by this afternoon. My backyard gets a lot of shade, which is good for the summertime, but not so good in the winter when you want to go out and work on your tan! There is enough sun on the other side of the yard (where Macintosh is looking) for flowering bulbs like daffodils and freesia, which I have seen bloom here as early as January. That would be nice to see again.

It's December 21st and there is some nice growth of the Freesia *Sunset Sisters* at the base of this sago palm ( cycas revoluta ). These bulbs were planted in the middle of October, and hopefully I will see some flowers in a month or so. The other plants you see are clumps of alyssum, which I grew from seed, starting in September. I am finding that the alyssum gets leggy on its own, so I've cut it back down to shape. The idea is for the alyssum to form a beautiful *carpet of snow* (which is what it's called) at the base of the freesia. Freesia does well here in the Phoenix, Arizona area. It requires no pre-chilling or anything like that. Just put 'em in the ground and stand back!

I planted this Cape Honeysuckle here at The Tropical Paradise about twenty years ago and it blooms consistently every winter. The *secret* to getting it to bloom is to avoid treating it like a hedge. Don't ever, ever, use hedge trimmers on it! Treat it like a flowering shrub, like a rose bush, by hand-trimming it. All you have to do is avoid trimming off the forming flower buds. It's easy by hand, impossible with a power hedge trimmer. Your Cape Honeysuckle will bloom like crazy all through the winter. After the blooms have spent, just trim them off for neatness, and trim back some of the long vining shoots. You can keep Cape Honeysuckle at any size you want. I keep mine at about 2 1/2 feet tall. And watch out for dive-bombing hummingbirds!

Every season I have always applied a pre-emergent weed preventer, like Amaze® or Preen®. A pre-emergent keeps weed seeds from germinating in your garden. Today I used the generic Kmart brand. And I can tell that I didn't use any at the beginning of this season! The reason that I didn't use a pre-emergent (which keeps seeds from germinating) is because I did a lot of direct sowing of flowers, such as the alyssum that you see in the bottom of the picture. This has been a time of learning for me, and I will not do direct sowing again. My survival rate was absolutely dismal for the seeds that I just planted in the ground, and, since I couldn't use a pre-emergent, I have a lot of weeds! There is something kind of cool about seeing what happens when you fail to do something. I mean, I've been buying and sprinkling out pre-emergent for years. I didn't have the weeds, but, was it really the pre-emergent that was doing it? Maybe the weeds would stay away on their own? ...

One of the most frustrating things I've ever encountered with plants is that you may be giving it too much water, or not enough. Like someone who has overfed goldfish, I have killed my plants with kindness by giving them too much water. I mean, how can you let these poor little babies suffer? But, you must. In order for the plant to develop a strong root system, it must work. And that's done by letting the soil dry out a bit. Believe me, even when it seems dry as a bone on top, there is still plenty of water down at the bottom of the pot. So you have to grit your teeth, and leave them alone. These seedlings are right next to where I am sitting right now, on top of my dresser, so there is no chance that they will be forgotten. In fact, they are in a greater danger of drowning, so I have try to ignore them. If I start to feel guilty, I can do a light mist of water, and I probably will. They are sitting about four inches under a fluorescent lamp and close to a window, so they ...

It just stopped raining and the sun is coming out, after a whole day (and night) of steady rain. The rain is wonderful for the plants and, unlike the violent thunderstorms of the summer, Christmas rains are gentle. I went out to clean up a little after the little dog, look around, that sort of thing, and decided to do some more trimming of the Elephant Ears. The Elephant Ears grew so much this past summer that by fall they had covered up the Dioon spinulousm cycad (in the center) and the newly planted Phoenix rupicola x reclinata palm tree. Of course, the cycad and the palm tree will eventually get taller than the Elephant Ears.

It's December 11th at 7 am and the sun is starting to rise here at The Tropical Paradise. I specifically asked my real estate agent to find a house with a backyard that faced east because I wanted to have a garden. Here in Arizona it's best to have an east-facing garden so that the hottest rays of the sun hit the other side of the house. I've been working from home for a long time now but I remember in my old *9-to-5* days in the winter how I would leave the house in the dark and then come home in the dark. In those days I looked forward to the weekend so that I could work on the garden. It looks like it's going to be another beautiful, clear, Arizona day. I just love it here!

I planted this freesia on the first week of October and they are now growing strong here at the end of the first week of December. According to Easy to Grow Bulbs , I can expect flowers in 90 days, so with any luck I will see blooms around Christmastime, or more probably January. There is also alyssum *carpet of snow* planted at the base, which I grew from seed. I think that they will make a nice combination. I have this freesia/alyssum combination in a lot of places around The Tropical Paradise - even out front. I am getting a surprising amount of sun right here for a couple of reasons - first, because the sun is so much lower in the winter, and secondly because I had big branch of the olive tree trimmed off in the fall. Remember that your flowering plants need sunshine!

It's December 7th, and the temperature touched 32 degrees (0 Celsius) last night (actually in the wee hours of the morning). I just finished trimming another damaged leaf from the clump of Elephant Ears, but overall there is no damage elsewhere in the garden. The sun is warming things up already, at about ten a.m., and the forecast is for 62 degrees this afternoon (17 C). By the way, I'm old enough to remember when the attempt was made here in The United States to get away from Fahrenheit, and to get in line with the rest of the world. I guess we resisted it because it was called *Centigrade* and that sounded too Russian to us, or something. Anyway, I am determined to post temperatures here on this blog in both F and C, and maybe I can learn it. Celsius does seem to make a lot more sense, because freezing is zero, as opposed to in Fahrenheit, where it is 32. Maybe it sounds warmer! When I try to explain to people here in the Southwest about my childhood in Minnesota, it...

It's December 6th and it got down into the high 30s last night (around 3 Celsius). The only damage is to some leaves of the big Elephant Ears in the corner by the dining room window. These guys are very sensitive to cold, and this particular corner of the yard is a trap for cold air, so I see a lot of cold damage here to the same plants that are not damaged in other parts of the yard. My plan right now is to let the top layers of the Elephant Ears protect the bottom layers. I will cut off the wilted leaves and hopefully there will be some plants left standing by the end of the winter. The foliage is pretty thick here, and as you know, plants do better huddled together for warmth, just like us people! Even with her sweater, Macintosh, the good little wiener dog, is pretty miserable outside, so I guess she won't be going out with me while I tend the garden today. I don't know how dachshunds manage in other parts of the country, like Minnesota, where it snows! Macintosh ...

Here in the Phoenix, Arizona area, at 33.32 degrees north latitude, we are entering winter. Like everywhere in the northern hemisphere, the days are getting shorter and the nights are getting longer, as the planet tilts away from the sun. My fellow-travelers on the planet that are at about the same latitude are; Los Angeles, California, USA at 34.04 degrees; San Diego, California, USA at 32.42 degrees; Dallas, Texas, USA at 32.46 degrees; Atlanta, Georgia, USA at 33.45 degrees; Casablanca, Morocco, Africa at 33.32 degrees; Osaka, Japan at 34.42 degrees. But these other cities have an advantage in the winter that we don't have here in the desert, the tempering effect of the ocean. So, if you live near the ocean (and I don't mean literally on the beach, the tempering effect of the ocean goes inland for miles), it just won't get as cold where you are as it does here. So latitude doesn't tell the whole story. If it weren't for the ridge of mountains that are just ea...

The temperature at The Tropical Paradise got into the 30s F (close to 0 C) last night for the first time this year. We also had a gentle rain yesterday, so it's pretty uncomfortable for man and beast, but it's still OK for the tropical plants. But it's the first shot across the bow to remind us to start getting ready for the cold. The ability of your plants to withstand cold temperatures is measured by how *hardy* they are. You can look up the hardiness of all of your plants, and many plant tags from nurseries indicate hardiness. In my experience, I have found that if you try to plant *houseplants* out in the garden, they will do fine until it gets into the 30s. Then, they will either look terrible, or they will die. One of the most beautiful plants that is commonly planted here in the Phoenix area is bougainvillea, but it is so sensitive to the cold that it doesn't take much of a cold snap to make it look terrible. I had one in the front courtyard for years, but be...

One of the limiting factors when growing tropical plants here in the desert is cold. Cold isn't something that most people think about here in the Phoenix, Arizona area, and of course it doesn't snow here, but it can be wildly uncomfortable for tropical plants. In true tropical environments, the temperatures never, ever, get as low as they do here in the Sonoran Desert. And temperatures below freezing (32 F, 0 C) can be fatal for these plants. And below-freezing nighttime temperatures here are common in December and January, even if the temperature gets nice and warm during the day. Sure, it's 65 degrees (18 C) when you are out playing golf here in December, but if you try going outside at 3 am, you will see how cold it is! And your plants have to live out there! All night! So now, at the beginning of December, is the time to be getting the garden ready for the cold. And the first thing that you have to do is to turn off your gardening instinct. That is, you don't...

Here in the Sonoran Desert, where Phoenix, Arizona is, there are two rainy seasons. In the summer, we get thunderstorms, and in the winter we get gentle rain that I like to call *Christmas rains*. The thunderstorms in the summer are very violent and harsh, whereas the Christmas rains are gentle. The temperature right now at 10:30 am here at The Tropical Paradise is 52 F (11 C), which is a bit chilly for man and beast (Macintosh, the good little wiener dog, doesn't like it) is just wonderful for the tropical plants. These nice soft Christmas rains really help to bring moisture deep into the soil, and they usually continue through January. Now is the time to turn off the automatic watering, which will remain off until February.

It's December 1st and most of the little tiny alyssum plants are starting to bloom now. I would say that this little guy here is almost the size that you would find in a six-pack at Walmart or Home Depot. Since a six-pack costs about two dollars, he is worth 33 cents. Since it took over two months and a lot of TLC to get it to this point, it really doesn't seem that economical. But it was fun - and I have learned a lot. It turns out that there is a lot more to growing flowers from seed than just getting little plastic cells and dropping the seeds into the potting soil. In reality it takes two steps to get them sprouted and then safely into the ground - first the general sowing, and then pricking them out and growing them on in larger containers. I missed the second step and just put them out at the size of tiny weeds - not very attractive in the garden! They really shouldn't go out until they are at least this size. Not only does putting them out at *tiny weed size* loo...