NEW PLANTS FOR 2011

Well, it seems that our Southern California "winter" is mostly behind us now and I'm starting to work on the garden again. I brought a bunch of baby plants indoors and placed them on the warmest/sunniest spot in our house, our large kitchen windowsill, to get them a headstart on growth. Already they have grown quite a bit. I also bought some new plants: A couple of nice, large alocasia plants that I bought at Lowes hardware store and two papaya trees, two banana plants and a night blooming jasmine (all still baby plants) from my favorite online tropical plant seller, Wellspring Gardens in Florida. You can click on the photos to see larger, more detailed images of each plant.

 These two alocasia plants (there are two in the pot), also known as elephant ears, are around four feet tall but they could be well over twice that high by midsummer, possibly even taller!

 

These papaya trees are tiny right now but are expected to be over eight feet tall and producing fruit in less than a year!

 

More banana plants! As if I don't have enough already (last count was around nine). These new ones are basjoo, which is commonly seen in tropical landscaping and bears no fruit. The other one is called ice cream banana, and like it's namesake, it is supposed to taste like vanilla ice cream and is considered one of the tastiest bananas. I can't wait to find out!

Here is my Monstera Deliciosa plants and my blog is named after it. It's also known as split leaf philodendron, but it's a a more exotic variety than the more commonly seen houseplant of the same name. This one eventually gets huge leaves (see the photo of me next to one at the top of my blog) and also produces an edible fruit. My plant is a year old and and already pretty good sized.

 

Here are some 2nd generation baby colocasia/alocasia (elephant ear) plants from the parent plants I bought last year. The one on the left, I believe, is a green ruffle colocasia and on the right is alocasia portei.

 

Here's an avocado tree I grew from a pit and is a descendent of Candee's avocado tree (thanks, Candee!). It's growing with two stalks and looks more like a short bush than a tree. Normally, it would make more sense to cut off the 2nd stalk so the tree can put all it's energy into one taller stalk but I love the way this looks so I'm letting it do it's thing!

The two pots in the back are black magic colocasia, which will grow huge leaves that start out green and eventually turn purplish black. I've been taking some gorgeous photos of the larger leaves and will post them soon. The plant in the front is a Chinese orchid. I bought two bulbs at Huntington Library. The other one is still dormant but hopefully will sprout soon.

 

Here's another black magic colocasia. The leaves are growing from the original parent plant. I cut the plant back to the dirt level when it died back in the winter and now the plant is growing back with a vengence.

 

Here is yet another, larger black magic colocasia. This is one of the parent plants that I was able to keep from going into dormancy during the winter. This should be huge by mid-summer, maybe six feet tall with massive leaves.

Here are two strawberry guava trees that I bought last year. They are doing quite nicely. Not sure when they'll start producing fruit but I'm guessing maybe in a year or so.

HAITUS IS OVER - IT'S TIME FOR SPRING CLEANING

It's been over 5 months since my last entry. I'm a slacker! Well, in my defense, the tropical gardening season ended not too long after my last entry and many of the plants went dormant so there really wasn't much activity going on in the tropical gardening front. And it's still the dead of winter, ("California-style", which means that you need both sweaters and t-shirts in your wardrobe) so most of the tropical plants in my garden are still snoozing. They started to go into dormancy when the night temperatures dipped into the 40s. But there's no better time than late January to start preparing the garden for springtime. I put many of the dormant plants and babies into smaller pots and brought them indoors for some pre-Spring warm weather on our kitchen windowsill. I also received a few plants as birthday gifts and they are already feeling right at home in the garden. And I just ordered some more plants: 2 papaya trees, 2 types of banana plants and a night blooming jasmine (I grew up with one of these in my parent's back yard and will never forget the incredibly fragrant smell at night when the flowers opened.)

 

I cleared out the dead tangle of tomato plants here and this spot has become the temporary home for these 3 potted avocado trees and a guava tree (on the right). I'll probably put more tomato plants and a few other veggies in this spot again but will have them in the front and plan to put larger tropical plants like banana, alocacias and papaya trees in the back.

As you can see in this photo, the table isn't fairing to well. It's pressed wood and rain has caused it to warp. Won't be long before it collapses so I'm trying to figure out whether I should try to reinforce it, which is probably a bad idea since the pressed wood will probably eventually dissolve, or replace it with some other type of stand.

Here's a new vine plant I got recently as a birthday gift (thanks, Brad and Jolene!). It's quite stunning as a hanging plant with its long vines. It hasn't looked too happy the past week though and appears bone dry even though I've been watering it regularly. I'm guessing that either it doesn't like the cold weather or else the soil isn't holding the water very well. I added some fresh soil and gave it plenty of water so finger's crossed!

Here's another birthday present I got, courtesy of Dwayne and Jennie. It's a beatuiful and bizarre looking air plant that needs no soil or direct watering but only an occasional misting.

TROPICAL GARDEN PROGRESS - COMPARISON BETWEEN SUMMER 2009 & SUMMER 2010

The garden is coming along nicely. I've finally forced myself to stop buying plants because even though they were small plants when I bought them, many of them are already getting huge and it's obvious that my small garden space has nearly reached full capacity. And on top of that, most of the plants are still fairly young and will grow twice their size or more in the near future. Here are some comparison photos between summer 2009 and summer 2010. I'm still blown away when I see the changes!

VIEW ONE (OLD)

VIEW ONE (NEW)
This shows the nice view we have from our kitchen. We got this 5-piece lounging set for only $250 at CVS (patio furniture at a drug store... who'da thought!) To the right, you can see the large tropical plants (bananas & alocasias) that create a lush tropical backdrop to the furniture. The older photo shows the row of tomato plants. This summer I still have 9 tomato plants but I moved them further to the left to make the garden appear more tropical, so they are not visible in this photo. Behind the chair in the middle, you can see the multi-tiered shelf with several plants and in the background you can see the various tropical plants (bananas, alocasias, colocasias and plumeria).

VIEW TWO (OLD)

VIEW TWO (NEW)
Here, you can see the drastically, stunning changes made to the left side of the garden. I moved the table that you can see in the first photo over to this wall and placed on it a variety of plants such as avocados, succulents, palms, etc. and I filled out the wall with passion fruit vines and the darker wall (to the right) has been filled out naturally by a pre-existing vine. On the ground are 2 dwarf banana plants and several smaller potted plants.

VIEW THREE (OLD)

VIEW THREE (NEW)
Here, you can see the monstrous overgrowth of vines and berry bushes. This side section is kind of out of control, but done intentionally so it will look less barren. Some of what you see on the left side wall is a bushy vine plant that filled out over the summer months but the greener leafy vegetation that you see is actually a pleasant looking vining weed that I transplanted here from another part of the yard. It's impressive to see how much it has grown.

VIEW FOUR (OLD)

VIEW FOUR (NEW)
These photos show the dramatic growth of the two small fern trees seen in the older photo. One of the ferns hasn't grown much, but growing next to and above it is the other fern which has exploded in size. It's been growing fast all four seasons. To the left of the fern trees, hanging on the wall is a large spider plant with dozens of hanging baby plants. This added an extra nice tropical touch. On the bench you can see blooming plumeria and several black stem alocasias and black magic colocasias. These will can triple in size so I will probably need to move them once they outgrow this spot.

VIEW FIVE (OLD)

VIEW FIVE (NEW)
In these photos you can see how this year I had less of an emphasis on vegetables and more on a tropical look. I actually had more tomato plants this year but only a few are visible in the new photo since they are surround on both sides with more tropical vegetation. On the multi-tiered shelf, you can see the various tropical plants, including a bamboo palm on top. In the middle of the photo you see the various banana, alocasia and colocasias. The exciting, and a bit daunting, aspect is the fact that all of these plants are going to grow a lot bigger so the garden is slowing overgrowing and will literally become a jungle. Stay tuned!!

GARDEN COMPARISON VIDEOS: JULY 2010 / MAY 2009

Check out the progress in the garden
in the past year. The top video is July 2010
and the bottom one is May 2009.
The new video is a bit long-winded
but I give some interesting
background on the plants. Enjoy!