Herself’s Houston Garden

It’s only just begun.

First came the December freeze. All the tropicals lost their leaves. There’s so many of them that the garden smelled like rotting lettuce for a week. ( I’m pretty sure that didn’t win me points with the neighbors. )

The yellow and black bamboos lost their leaves and wilted, the greens are holding up so far.

The gingers have died back to the ground to await warmer weather.

The younger cactus have wilted, the older cactus have blackened tips.

Surprising to me the mother-in-laws tongues have help up well, I ‘ll plant more of them come spring.

This week lows will be in the twenties. For a light freeze covering your plants with fabric, then plastic helps, at 20′F that’s not going to do much.

Do not cut your plants back. I know they look bad, but if you cut them back they’ll try to grow on warmer days and the new growth will die back on the next cold night. Be patient, wait till spring to cut your plant back and more of them will survive the winter.

It’s been rainy so no need to water.

Adding mulch never hurts, or layers of newspaper. Plastic can not be touching the plant to do any good. Put paper or fabric between the plant and the plastic.

Large rocks in the sun heat up and stay warm a little way into the night, plants near rocks, and stone walls will have better protection.

In the spring the strong plants will still be here, in place or rebuilding themselves from the ground up. Let nature decide what plants should be in your garden. Come spring, replant the lost ones with something new.

The climate usually gives us a couple decades of warm weather, then a couple decades of cold weather. It’s too soon to tell if this is just a bad winter or whether we are returning to the colder winters of the 1980s. But I’m thinking I’ll be planting less tropicals come spring.

The gardens took a beating after Ike. I did a lot of planting right after Ike. Winter came and went. Summer brought with it a drought.

Here’s how things stand one year after Ike.

The bamboo has been the biggest surprise, despite being a water loving plant it thrived all summer. It is clearly also a sun worshiper.

The bog and tropical gardens took the biggest beating this year. I lost several plants, and there are several more I’ll be removing just because they look so ragged.

I’ve put in a second low water area, it’s been a big hit with the neighbors. At least a dozen people have come by to ask questions about it. The night blooming ceres was the real star of the show there.

The gingers are all new, or relocated after Ike. They had a really rough time with the drought, yet all pulled through. I’m expecting this area will be gorgeous next summer.

The tropical woodlands area lost most of the tropicals. I’ll remove what’s left of them and stick to more traditional woodland plants there.

So there are lots of plants to be moved or removed in the coming weeks.

After the cleanup photos

The schizophrenic weather has had me carting plants in, plants out, plants in.  They went out for the last time yesterday, it’s every plant for himself after this.

I went to both the Conroe Master Gardener plant sale and Mercer’s March Mart last month.  I didn’t buy as much as usual.  I was looking for more tropical plants, but the recent weather is making me wonder about the wisdom of planting lots of tropicals.

I have several Lunch bunches at Mercer penciled into my calendar, as well as Jerry’s Jungle the 17th and 18th , Florescence the 21st and 22nd, The Houston Orchid show 24/25/26 and The Woodlands Garden Club “I’ts a small, small world” flower show the 29th. So things are busy. There is also The Texas Forest Expo the 24->26 this month I’m not yet sure if I’ll make that event or not. I just received a note telling me that Hope Farms Gardens will be open weekends from 4/25 till 5/24. I’ve never been but it has been highly recommended to me.

I finally put a compost bin in the yard last week, and have been busy filling it and tearing out more of the front lawn.

When it’s been too cold to work in the yard I’ve been reading lots about gardening and industrialized food supply ( The Omnivore’s Dilemma: A Natural History of Four Meals). If you eat or garden you’ll want to read this book.

I’m hoping to do more propagation and some more challenging gardening projects this year. I already hack computers, it’s time to start hacking the garden, and botany, and biology. The future lies in that direction.

New things I learned this week:

Time release fertilizers do not break down when the ground is below 55′F and when it is hot here they break down immediately burning plants.  Only use time release fertilizers in the spring and fall.  Stick to more traditional fertilizers in the summer and winter.

2 teaspoons of molasses per gallon of water makes a good fertilizer.  In addition it keeps fire ants out of the garden.

Spring and snakes in the garden go together.  Snakes to watch for are:

Copperhead: Copperheads all have brown rings shaped like Hersey’s kisses along them

Corals: Black, thin yellow, red, thin yellow band in that order

Cotton Mouth:  Black line with white line top and bottom across eyes like a mask.

While you won’t likely die from a snake bite from these guys it’s still a good idea to go to the hospital and get checked out.

( click on link for more information about the plant, click on image for a larger view of photo )

After Ike recovery continues. I had to take down an additional two trees. Two of my crape myrtles out front kept leaning and it was clear they weren’t long for this world.

I’ve put in a total of 8 bamboos now. I’m hoping they will give us back shade out front more quickly than would regular trees. Time will tell.

I finally able to get down to visit Caldwell’s Nursery with Nancy a few weeks back. I found a ‘tea hibiscus’ and a ‘variegated crinium’ both of which have now been planted. The nursery was clearly still recovering from the storm, so it probably wasn’t the best time to visit. Many plants were unlabeled and a bit ragged looking.

We went because they offer many unusual and difficult to find plants. Almost every plant we saw was labeled ‘rare’ in fact. But I did find two new plants and am most certainly planning to make a journey down there a couple of times a year to see what other new and interesting plants I can find.

They have a wonderful garden at the far back that is full of bamboo. I enjoyed sitting back there and envisioning how the bamboo will look around here in a few years.