Brad's Tropical Paradise

Cape honeysuckle is great here in the Phoenix area. It doesn't mind the heat, and the very best part of it is that it blooms in the fall and winter, when it's perfect for your out-of-town friends to visit, and maybe sit outside. But there's a trick to making this plant look its best, and getting blooms in the winter. And it takes two tools - an electric trimmer, and a hand pruner. In the summer, when it's over 100 degrees and I want to just keep the plant from getting out of control, I give it a good haircut with my small electric trimmer. I keep my plants about three feet tall, but left alone they can get much taller, and very viney, and rangy. So in the summertime I trim to keep the shape fairly tight. Then in the winter it's time to put away the electric trimmer and get a hand pruner. Watch what you're doing. Go ahead and trim off branches that obviously have no bloom starting (you'll recognize the difference - the one I'm about to trim off i...

One of the reasons I love living in Phoenix is that there are palm trees. I grew up in Minnesota and pictures and movies that showed palm trees just seemed unreal to me, as if it was a fantasy place. When I turned 18 I left Minnesota and moved to Phoenix. There, and Southern California, is where I've been ever since, and hope to be until they carry me away. With palm trees. The main problem with palm trees is that they're very big. I have a small suburban lot, and full-sized palm trees here would just look like telephone poles in no time. So I haven't planted any full-sized palm trees, just miniatures. And I have one medium-sized palm tree, which is kind of a big miniature. You know, like a jumbo shrimp. It's called an Indian Date Palm (from India) or more specfically a Phoenix rupicola . Sorry 'bout that, but if you want to be sure to get the exact right plant, you gotta speak a little Latin. By the way, the miniature palm trees back there are Phoenix roebelle...

I'm planting a petunia today in a spot that's just a little too hot and sunny at this time of year. In a week or so the temperatures will be perfect for it, but right now it's just too hot. If I put it in the ground it would die, no matter how much water I gave it. The sun is just too intense. So I'm making a teepee. I've marked off the area for the plant, took three bamboo twigs (which came as a big bundle from the dollar store) and wrapped a rubber band around the top. Because of the structure (don't ask me why) it's very sturdy. It's only stuck in the ground less than an inch. The next step is to move the river rocks away, and plant the plant. That just took some digging, and getting my hands dirty, which I like. Petunia teepee made with bamboo twigs and shade cloth I had some stray plant shade cloth in my garage, but you can use anything as long as it isn't too dark, or too opaque. A little bit of light should get through, because y...

I like birds, don't get me wrong. I love their songs, I love to see them in flight. But, unfortunately, they have tendency to dig holes in my garden, excavating for worms, I guess. And I wish they wouldn't do that. They dig around plants, sometimes exposing roots, and sometimes they just make my garden look as if someone had been tossing hand-grenades into it. Not a good look! I've been trying different things for years to no avail, until a Facebook friend posted a photo of some plastic snakes in his garden which he called "scarecrows". So I wandered over to the dollar store, bought two bags of them, and put them in places in the garden. It worked! No digging, even though it's the time of the year when the digging is usually at its worst. So today I went back and invested another two dollars, doing the front garden, and the courtyard. You're actually looking at the back of the front garden, as the goal is to make them visible to birds, but not show ...

It's October 9th, and really it's still a couple of weeks too early to start planting petunias - but I'm cheating. I bought four large petunia plants today and am planting them in areas that are a little shady. You don't ever want to plant blooming annuals in full shade, but since it's still kinda hot in Phoenix, I'm not planting any out in full sun, yet. In a week or so I will. Petunias don't mind the cold here. That is, it never gets too cold in Phoenix for petunias. If you're from back east, you're used to planting them in spring, but here in Phoenix the summers are waaaayyy too hot, and they do their best planted in the fall. And you can plant them all winter. Hole for a petunia plant I dig a generous hole, just the right depth, but a little wider than the pot. I take the soil that I dig out of Arizona and use it elsewhere, as fill. The plants that I plant are planted with potting soil. I also add some moisture crystals and slow-rel...

I'll be planting petunias again this year and I've begun the first step - digging the hole. I will be getting one gallon plants this year because last year the tiny six-pack plants did terrible. Early October is still pretty hot here. In the past I've rushed over to Home Depot, purchased a whole bunch of plants and was in a big hurry to get them in the ground. This year I'm going to take it slower. And that's why I've dug the hole this morning, even though I haven't gone shopping yet. In a longish life, I've planted a lot of plants from one-gallon pots so I have a pretty good idea how big the hole should be. So I dug the hole, and put the dirt in a bag that maybe I can use later. The hole will be filled with the new plant, and surrounded with fresh potting soil. That will give the plant its best chance to form new roots before they need to start struggling through the heavier clay soil of Arizona. This spot is also strategic for my first plant t...

The best time to plant petunias in the Phoenix, Arizona area is from October to January. It's been very hot lately, and although it's October 4th, this year I'm going to wait another week. And yes, you can plant them all winter. If you get them in and established in October they will have their best chance to grow as much as possible before they die in April. Yes, I know it seems kinda funny. I grew up in Minnesota, and the season for planting petunias there is spring. Here in Phoenix it's fall. It never gets too cold for petunias in Phoenix, you just don't want to plant them when the temperatures are too high, which can last through September, and early October. As I write this, it's 97 degrees. Too hot to plant yet! Next week! I've planted petunias many times here at the Tropical Paradise. The photo at the top this post is from 2012, and that was a great year. Petunias love water, so you really can't overwater them here. And Phoenix tends to get...

I'm fortunate to have two olive trees on my property, which were planted by the previous owner in the late 1980s. When I first bought my house, in 1993, they were fairly small, but now they're big enough to soar above the house, giving nice shade. But there are two things that you need to do to make these trees as beautiful as possible. You need to spray them every February to stop the olives from forming, and you need to trim them. When my trees were small I could do this myself, but now I need professional help. Olive trees, like all desert trees, aren't really trees at all. They're just big bushes that are trained up to look like trees. Left alone, they'll be bushy and full and grow low to the ground. In fact, leaves of olive trees are continuously growing from the base, and the truck (so I snip them off regularly). And left alone, they can look pretty ratty. So making them beautiful takes some effort. I don't have the landscape guys come in on a reg...

I live in Phoenix, and one of the reasons I consider it paradise is tropical plants, including palm trees. I have a small property, and so only have miniature palm trees, but I enjoy going to places where there are full-sized palms, like the Sahuaro Ranch, which is in the photo at the top of this post. But let's face it, palm trees, like flowers, require water. They require maintenance, which takes money. And their only value, really, is beauty. I've had people argue that I should be planting things that I can eat, or some other perfectly-reasonable functional thing. And so my argument about beauty sounds a little hollow to these practically-minded people. Why would someone invest time and money in something that was of no practical value? I think I can explain. Visit a garden, look at some roses, walk under some swaying palm trees. There's a feeling there that I just can't put into words, although I'm trying to here. Once you have that feeling, you'll kn...