Brad's Tropical Paradise

The sago palm (cycas revoluta) that a good friend of mine sent me nine years ago is doing great, and I thought you might like a follow-up. The photo at the top of this post is from a few minutes ago, and the rest of the pics are from 2014, when my friend sold his house, and very carefully followed my directions so that I could transplant it here. Here's what it looked like when it first arrived here, as per my instructions with all of the leaves cut off, with the roots intact, but no dirt. The first thing that I did was to soak it in plain water overnight. Then I sat down for quite a while and trimmed it all down as much as I could, still soaking. Here it is: The next step was to dig a nice big hole, filled with potting soil - the good kind. I'm a big believer in preparation - you know, "dig a $100 hole for a $50 tree"! This plant didn't cost me any money, but it cost my friend in a huge amount of work, and I did a fair amount of work, too! I'm not really sure...

When I bought my house, many years ago, I had two reasons 1) to have a garage for my car and 2) to have a beautiful garden in the backyard. The rest of it, like bedrooms, a kitchen, etc. was just trivia. When I saw this house I knew that it would be perfect - all you could see from the front was a nice big garage door, and the backyard faced east. Over the years I've made so many mistakes in the garden that I wouldn't even try to list them all - this blog post would get waaaay too long, so I'll concentrate on what I did right. And I'll start with the artificial turf. Cost some bucks, but it's the best investment I've ever made, after my dogs. And speaking of which, dogs can "do their duty" on it, it's perforated, so liquids go through it. All I need to do to it is blow the leaves every once in a while. I recommend that you have it professional done, that's what I did. I also learned about miniature plants. I like miniatures (my younger dachshun...