Herself’s Houston Garden

The butterfly garden took the worst hit of all the beds not flattened by trees during Ike. Most of the plants local butterflies love are woody flowering shrubs. The wind tore off their leaves, and broke their branches.

I cut most of them back to almost ground level. Some are slowly leafing back out, others are lost. I had many a distressed butterfly feeding at the humming bird feeders after the storm.

In the future, when a hurricane looks imminent I will cut the flowering shrubs back to about 6″ to 12″ tall to help protect them from the strong winds.

Now that fall is settling in, it is an excellent time to take cuttings from the plants that did survive and start to root them.

Take cuttings from the newest stems. Make sure you have at least three bunches of leaves on each. Remove the bottom two sets of leaves. Dip the bottom of the stem in rooting hormone ( available very cheap at any plant store ). Plant in soil. Keep the soil moist and keep the plants in a humid area. Outside works well. In a month you should see new leaves.

Tip: be sure to plant the stems so that they have at least an inch of soil underneath and press the soil around the stem tightly. You don’t want air bubbles near the stem.

Before and after photos of the garden are posted. The front took the worst hit we lost a pine, yaupon, sweet gum, and crape myrtle. When they came down they each took several smaller plants with them.

The back garden is also not a pretty site, but I think most of those plants will recover.

Now that the weather is cooling slightly and cleanup is moving along this is a good time to take cuttings from plants still alive and start rooting them to replace some of what you’ve lost. I think I have propagation instructions for most of the plants I’ve covered. If you don’t see them find a similar plant or drop a note and I’ll get you instructions.

Most of your damaged plants will grow back from the roots. It’ll take them a little while to fill back out but the fall weather will help.

Don’t forget to fertilize. The rain washed away what little nutrients the Houston soil contains and your plants will need that food to regrow.

You may need to move some plants that are now in the sun and do not want to be in the sun. Don’t wait too long.

We spent today doing more clean up in teams with various neighbors.

But first I scored that most important of all items for storm cleanup, a gas powered chainsaw. It was the last one at Lowes.

We have everything except an enormous tree stump cut, chopped and stacked for the county to come fetch. I’m really hoping the tree stump will be done tomorrow.

The front garden is a total loss, the back not so bad, not so good either.

The electric will be out for about 3 weeks, yet another Entergy fiasco. If we move you can be sure it’ll be to a home on Centerpoint not Entergy power.

I check here when I can but net access is limited still so forgive me if I don’t answer emails just yet. Twitter is a better way to reach me now if you must.

Ike took down two large trees and several small ones. The front garden is so bad everyone who drove by siteseeing stopped to take photos and video.

Today we picked up debri. I cut all the damaged plants down to about a foot tall. I have know idea how we will deal with the trees out front. The electricity is still out and we haven’t acquired power tools at this house yet. But tomorrow’s another day.

I’ll post photos once I can get a decent internet connection again. And I’ll make an inventory of plants and tell you what does and doesn’t do well in hurricanes.