Brad's Tropical Paradise

Petunias are wonderful. Even though they're annuals, and only live a few months, it's a wonderful life, filled with flowers. Here in the Phoenix area they're planted in the fall, and when the heat of the summer comes on, they die. Back where I grew up in Minnesota, of course, they're planted in the spring, and bloom all summer long. They're one of my fondest memories of visiting my grandmother. To get the most blooms from petunias you have to do two things 1) deadhead them and 2) water - a lot. Deadheading simply means pulling off the spent blooms, which I do every morning while I'm having my coffee. If you're new to it, you can easily recognize the spent blooms which get all shriveled up, and as your eye sharpens you learn to recognize blooms that haven't shriveled up yet, but are done blooming, by the way that they hang their heads. And since petunias look their best with continuous deadheading, it's good to have them in a place in your gard...

It's mid-April, and here in the Phoenix, Arizona area, it's a good time to plant some things, and a bad time to plant other things. That's because, brace yourself, summer's coming. And it doesn't just get hot here, it gets brutally hot. Ridiculously, crazy, hot. You could get a nasty burn on your hand from just touching one of the rocks in my garden in July, and August. Heck, we've had a preview of high temperatures already, so summer will probably be here in just a few weeks. And if you're wandering around a garden center, there are things you want to walk past, and other things you do want to plant in the spring. So sorry, but no delicate plants like annuals. The petunias you see there were planted last fall and are already feeling the strain of the desert heat. If you're tempted to buy petunias in the spring you might as well save yourself the trouble of planting them and watching them die, by tossing them in the garbage right after you buy them....

I live in the desert, in the greater Phoenix, Arizona area, and when I bought my house, I wanted the tiny backyard to be an oasis. I had just moved from Southern California so I wanted a tropical effect. What I found out is that the high temperatures and low humidity meant that a lot of plants, like ferns, just didn't grow. I would buy them, and no matter what I did, I would just watch them slowly die. Then someone introduced me to a "sago palm", which got me interested in that type of plant, which is called a cycad. Cycads are sort of miniature palms, and have a nice ferny look without being so delicate. I've planted a lot of them around here. I've also found that miniature agaves make a wonderful complement plant for them. But hold on there, before you go rushing out, you gotta do a little bit of homework. That is, you have find out the mature size of these plants before you make the mistake of planting something that will get way too big. And you'll ...