Herself’s Houston Garden

I had purchased this as a house plant for the front hallway but there wasn’t enough light there to make it happy. It’s a cool bamboo, clumping and yellow culms with green vertical stripes.

It is supposed to be very easy to grow with 4″ culms that reach 50′ in height.

I’ve had him outside less than a week and already he’s perking back up.

Bamboo needs lots of water and wants lots of sun. I expect this guy will be impressive even in part shade and drier ground. It might help keep him tamed as well. This is a clumping bamboo not a running bamboo so it should not attack the neighbors.

Watch for mealy bugs ( I just clean them off with a garden hose) and mites. Mites will have webbing and leaves will yellow. Use orange oil for them. Aphids and scale also attack bamboo and can be controlled with orange oil.

See also Black Timor Bamboo entry for more information on growing bamboo here

This was purchased from Tropical Bamboo Nursery ( Sun Sentinel Story about the nursery ).

I first saw these on a trip I made to Las Vegas last winter. I thought they were the coolest plant but I couldn’t find out what they were. Then last March I stumbled across them in HD and Lowes in the house plant section. Both stores had them mislabeled as ‘variegated snake plants’. It took quite a bit more digging to find out they are African Spear plants.

This plant grows like a aloe, it starts out with the leaves growing in a fan shape. The leaves are round like a pencil which is what caught my eye when I first saw it. Like an aloe leaves will grow upright when the plant receives enough light and grow horizontal or become floppy if the light is too low.

It prefers drier conditions about like an aloe and lots of sun like an aloe. Any place aloe is happy the African Spear should be as well. It is drought tolerant.

It can handle temperatures down to 28′F, so it is borderline for Houston and will want protection on colder evenings. It should reach about 5′ tall in full sun.

I’m told it blooms in warm summers though flowers are unimpressive looking but night fragrant.

It spreads by rhizomes but I’m told you can cut off a leaf, stick it in the ground, keep it damp and it will root. I found one person who says you can slice up the leaves and plant the pieces and they will grow. It is interesting how different the young plant looks from a mature plant.

I also read that you will get better color on the plant if you plant it in more shade than sun. That seems counter intuitive. Mine is planted in a shady area so time will tell.

So I finally made some time to finish beating back the jasmine that is threatening to eat us all. I couldn’t reach the last 10′ or so and put DH on the job. He managed to remove the remaining jasmine from the pine. But he also managed to tip over two dead trees in the neighbor’s yard that the jasmine was holding up. Whoops. Right now they are precariously balanced on the fence between the properties. We have visitors coming in from out of town and the neighbor ( who was very understanding ) has been traveling a lot now so it may be a few weeks before we all get the dead trees removed.

. . . fast forward a week . . .

The neighbor removed the dead trees and that same day the transformer blew for the neighborhood. Turns out the transformer is underground under the fence between mine and that same neighbor’s yard. It would seem that fence is determined to get itself removed one way or another. The transformer is fixed, one dozen guys and half a dozen hours later, but my elephant ears, toad flowers, a few mother in law’s tongues and Japanese Spindle may have been sacrificed to the the gods of electricity.

I gave them some fertilizer and trimmed off the trampled leaves. Nothing to do now but wait and hope.

See also:
Japanese Spindle
Star Jasmine

I’m beginning to think half the ferns I own have the common name Asparagus Fern. Watch the Latin names when buying ‘Asparagus Ferns’.

Like many commonly called ferns this plant is not really a fern.

Imagine my surprise last week when I went to prune it and it bit me. It also has sharp, long, pointed thorns. And like many plants down here it is toxic.

It does get small white flowers in the spring, nothing spectacular.

Asparagus fern will grow in full sun to shade, preferring more sun than shade. Asparagus fern prefers moist soil but will tolerate dry soil.

It is known for spreading and becoming a problem. So keep an eye on it if you use it in your garden.

Several sources refer to it as a climber growing to 10′. I’ve yet to see climbing behavior from this plant but that may just be because I prune anything over 3′ tall. * I went to the Houston Zoo last week and they had a tropical bird house full of tropical plants and this fern was growing there and well over 10′ tall. So it will get large if you allow it.

Things to watch for on ferns:

Leaf scotch: appears during dry, windy weather.  Water frequently and deeply and provide what shade and shelter you can.

Scale: looks like small brown bumps on stems and underside of leaves.  I use orange oil.

Mealy bugs:  Looks like white fuzz on plants.  I just wash them off with a garden hose.