Buy small and let them grow

This picture was taken November 7 2007.
I made the outline with the garden hose, used roundup to kill the grass inside, then waited about two weeks for the grass to die. Over a period of weeks, I filled the interior with grass clippings until I had covered the whole bed.

I bought all these plants at a local garden center, these are all "Florida Friendly" plants, plants that require little or no additional watering, which is essential since we basically only have 2 seasons, wet and dry. From June until November we receive the majority of our rainfall, the remaining 6 months are generally very dry with an occasional chance shower.







I took this picture on Jan 15 2009, just before our first cold snap. Most of the original plants had grown large and beautiful. During tropical storm Fay, some of the plants were badly damaged and I had to remove the Cuban buttercup. I also removed the Cogon grass as it is listed as an invasive species here in Florida - plus little volunteer seedlings were sprouting up all over the place. I replaced it with lemon grass.

The papaya trees in the before image, were also removed, they were seedlings from a solo variety I bought at our local warehouse. They never produced any fruit of value, the fruit that managed to mature were all infested with papaya fruit fly larvae. So I removed them. I have since grown some Caribbean Red papayas from seeds and have already had 4 papayas from it. They were stung by fruit flies but none seemed to develop to larvae. The two papayas are both still full of maturing fruit that I will harvest in the next couple of weeks.

A new spider discovered

Today I came across this beauty of a spider. A quick internet search for common Florida spiders revealed that its probably a "Black and yellow argiope spider".

Leaf mulch

I finally raked up the leaves from my neighbour's tree. I got a whole wheel barrow full (pressed down).




















Here's the area I'm going to mulch, in the foreground is an area mulched with grass clippings from last summer. The little green plants are lemon grass divisions from the one clump I bought at my favourite tropical fruit tree nursery at $4. The green and yellow variegated plant at the back is Alpinia zerumbet, a very popular and beautiful ginger plant around here, also a division from an existing clump. I will be mulching the area behind the ginger.












Here's the area behind the ginger, mulched about 3 inches think. You can see that the wheel barrow full didn't cover a very large area, I still need about 5X as much to cover this entire bed. In the background, is one of my two Catura coffee plants grown from seed, they were also badly burned by our recent cold snap. It looks as if they're sprouting new growth so I think they'll be fine.

Weird and wonderfull and disgusting

This weird looking fungus showed up in one of my vegetable beds. The growing medium is composted cow manure.
















This disgusting looking thing showed up on one of my parsnip plants. Its disgusting, revolting, at the same time quite fascinating, the ants seem to eat it, or maybe its producing honey like aphids ? It seems to have snail like tentacles, or caterpillar like tentacles on the right hand side ?

I tried to pry it off and it disintegrated into hundreds maybe thousands of little eggs all held together with a slimy goo. Very ewww.

Bananas anyone ?

Here's the 3rd bunch of bananas from my original 2 dwarf red Cavendish bananas that cost $2.97 each. I already have at least 4 replacements growing and should have another bunch or two this time next year. Notice how the leaves have turned yellow on the plant, signalling its death. It has produced a single bunch and now it dies. It has produced 4 or 5 little baby plants in the form of suckers (one which I have dug out and planted elsewhere already). Don't worry, of course nothing goes to waste. The whole plant will be cut down and cut into round slices of banana pizzas and placed at the base of the "clump" providing much needed mulch and protection from the dreadful nematodes here in our sandy soil.











I cut the top off about 10 inches below from where the bunch comes out, this way, the bunch has a natural "hook" that you can use to hang it. I hung it on the side of the barbecue grill on the patio, note the recycled cardboard underneath - that's to catch the resin that will ooze from the cut for the next couple of days. You can see some resin glistening on the first "hand". If you don't place something underneath it, the cleanup is a huge mess and a big task as it dries to a very hard sticky substance.

The bananas ripen from the top down, a hand at a time. Providing a constant supply over a couple of weeks.

Pine bark mulch - like a black forest cake

This is my preferred method of mulching. Here's my most favorite plant of all, Aloe barberae, mulched with pine bark mulch. It makes me think of the chunks of chocolate on a black forest cake. This little Aloe barberae might one day grow into a 40 feet tall specimen (God willing and no hurricanes), right now, I am contempt with it though - it gives me great pleasure to see it grow slowly.

Before and After 2

In the before, the lawn must have been heavily fertilized and treated with herbicide. After we moved in I also turned on the sprinklers twice a week, but after spending $50 per month on water, I soon forgot about having a beautiful green lawn, instead, I believe its perfectly fine for the lawn to go dormant during the dry season. Once our wet season kicks in, you can hear that St. Augustine grass grow.

Whenever I loose a patch of grass to cinch bugs, I either make a new flower bed there, or plant a specimen tree there. In the after picture, you'll see a small mulched tree (yes with cypress and I won't do it again :) ), that spot started becoming bare as a result of cinch bug infestation, so I decided to plant this beautiful variegated guava tree there - a Christmas present from my "sister" Ronel who visited us from Minneapolis (can you blame her for escaping at least a part of winter) and wife. Yes, I used to love buying electronic gadgets etc. for birthdays and holidays, now I gladly accept a new tree or plant instead.

The kids playhouse, well that's another story, I personally went to Toys R Us, with our minivan, bought it, got someone to bring it to the curb, loaded all the boxes, drove it home, had to buy a wheelbarrow in order to move it to the backyard (just as well since I needed one). I took a week of vacation and spent 5 days building this thing. I'll post later how I stabilized it so my 9 year old daughter can still swing on it without it lifting up or swaying.