Using cycads to give the illusion of ferns

-
When I bought my house in Glendale, Arizona (a suburb of Phoenix), I wanted to get back the Tropical Paradise feeling that I remembered from living in Santa Barbara. But, uh, Phoenix isn't Southern California! Yes, you can buy plants here that do well in Southern California, and you can plant them, but really, all you get to do is to see them suffer, and die. And that's especially true of ferns.

So, the most successful *ferns* that I have here aren't ferns at all, they're cycads. And if you've never heard of them, that's not surprising. Most of the people I've met have never even heard the term. It's a group of plants that give a ferny, small-palm-tree look, the most common of which is called a *sago palm*. Many people have heard of sago palms. They're not palm trees at all, they're cycads. In the photo, by the way, the cycads are Dioons. Stay with me on this.

When I first learned what a cycad was, I found myself entering a strange world of cycad collectors. I even joined a group here in Arizona and volunteered as the webmaster. And even though it's a gardening group, it's really not like how I imagined a gardening group would be.

If you think of a gardening group as nice little old ladies with trowels, then you haven't seen the kind of people who collect cycads. Yes, they're gardeners, but they're really more like a bunch of overgrown kids collecting bubble-gum cards. The vast majority are middle-aged men, like me. And the more you learn about plants, the more addicted you become. Some of them are very, very, rare and are very, very, expensive. Kind'a like a Babe Ruth rookie card, if you follow me. The cycads I have are common ones, a little more expensive than your typical sago palm, but not *collector cycads*.

Anyway, if you want to fill your yard with cycads, you gotta do your homework. Some do well in a particular climate, some don't. And your local nursery is really no help. You need to find the guys who collect them. This past year I was introduced to a group on Facebook called Planet Cycad. And these guys are good! Information is freely passed around by people all over, well, the planet. As an American, I have to often remember that O means 32. It's a closed group, so you have to be allowed in, and you have to mind your manners.

As you can see here in my backyard, I am growing all kinds of miniature plants, including cycads. And now I'm discovering the same sort of enthusiasm for aloes, agaves, etc. So, I'm experimenting mostly, to see what works in a climate that gets over 110 F in the summer and well below freezing in the winter.

So, this is my *fern garden*, or as close as I can get.

Comments

Post a Comment

Popular posts from this blog

How to tell if your cycad (sago palm) is alive or dead

-
Image
Cycads are strange plants. They're beautiful, and look like small palm trees, or large ferns. They grow very slowly, and can be very expensive, even common ones like "sago palms". But sago palms, in spite of their common name, aren't palms at all. They belong to a group of plants called cycads. They are wonderfully weird, and grow in strange ways. And sometimes they lose all of their leaves. Of course, if it were a palm tree that lost all of its leaves, you would know that the plant was dead. But it's not true of cycads. So don't dig that cycad up and throw it away! Not yet. If you've recently transplanted a cycad, and the leaves have all faded away, hang on. Take a look at the top center of the plant, at what I call "the pucker". There you will see some stubby, soft fronds, no more than an half-inch or so. At least that's what you should see. That means that the plant is still alive, and has dropped its leaves to focus on building r...
Read more

Rooting sago palm pups for more plants

-
Image
Once a sago palm ( cycas revoluta ) reaches a certain level of maturity, it starts to create pups. Like agaves, these are little plants that are exactly the same as the parent plant, only smaller. And yes, you can trim them off and grow them into new plants. This is how to do it. Cut them off from the parent plant with a sharp knife. If there are any roots at the bottom, try to save them, but chances are there won't be any. That's not a problem. The next step is rooting them. Douse the cut part and the bottom of the plant with some garden sulfur and some rooting hormone powder. Rooting hormone powder is pretty easy to find at your local Home Depot. I had to go to a real nursery to get garden sulfur. Anyway, the idea is to keep the little plant from rotting while giving it time to grow its own roots. Sago palm pups being rooted Bury them fairly deep in some free-draining mix. It should include volcanic pumice, if you can find it, and if not, you can use perlite. I ...
Read more

Growing sunflowers from Pennsylvania in Arizona

-
Image
It's October 21st, and I just received some sunflower seeds from a friend in Pennsylvania. Their season is ending and the season for planting here in Arizona is just beginning, and I'm kinda wondering if the seeds are wondering what's going on? It's spring again already? If you're new to the Phoenix, Arizona area, and are from back east it must seem kinda strange that fall and winter is our flower season, but it is. By springtime it will start to get so hot here that the flowers will die, and of course back east the season is just beginning.  Sunflowers growing in Peoria, Arizona, about a mile from where I live I've seen sunflowers blooming around my neighborhood of Glendale, which is a suburb of Phoenix, in the winter, and although I've never grown them I understand that they're easy to grow. I guess I'll find out - I learn best by doing! The seeds arrived safely, and it's my understanding that they were still connected to the spent flower (I do...
Read more