Tag: raspberries

April sprouts, blooms, buds, and a couple new plants

Posted on by susan

This is a post I started at the beginning of April and forgot to post.  Mostly recordkeeping…

 

Super early! First blooms on Eccremocarpus came out March 25. And a bit washed-out, color-wise. They will deepen.
Also from March 25, Pulsatilla is still flowering a month later.
Magnolia ‘Genie’ is now making leaves. A gift from a friend, I’m not sure where to site this yet. Possibly a large pot while I mull it over.
Unflippingbelievable Hellebore started blooming January 15, and on April 25 it still looks like this.
Purple sprouting broccoli knocks my socks off. It’s now in flower.
Raspberries looking great, but this will be their last year with me.
Came-with-the-house Clematis is 10′ tall now. Mild winter, no pruning.
New plant! Chamaerops humilis var cerifera or var. argentea. This will be a focal point in the backyard.
Geranium ‘Bill Wallis’ just got this from Annie’s.
G. macrorrhizum (cv unknown if it is one). All Geraniums seem very successful under my dogwood tree.
This poor thing. I hope it grows out of this as it gets taller. It’s Arctostaphylos mewukka ‘Mottley Crue’ and it sure is looking “mottley”. A month later it’s now showing new growth.  I got this at Cistus last year.
Imperial white currant starting to bloom much later than the natives.
Geum rivale is incredibly cute and I’m going to have to move it now that I know it wants more water than it’ll ever get here. Very floriferous.
Ozothamnus rosmarinifolius ‘Silver Jubilee’ – got this from Xera Plants last spring and it’s doubled in size (at least) now about to flower. YEY
Can you see how far this tiny start of Zauschneria has spread just over the winter? I planted this one here last fall.
This is Arctostaphylos densiflora ‘Howard McMinn’, also from Xera, planted last year (forgot when) and you can really see why people say it’s an easier one for the garden. No mold, lots of new growth already.
My neighbor’s cherry. Brief, but so glorious. I like that some branches visit my side of the fence.

And lastly, Grevillea victoriae is making new growth! This is yet another I got from Xera last May. This is right in front of my house.

That’s it for this very belated April update.  Funny, everything’s different now, especially now that we’re having some actual HOT weather (80F right now at 2pm April 25).  Excellent excuse for a new post!

Wednesday Vignette: New tree!

Posted on by susan

It looks flippin awful right now but just you wait.  There’s so much going on here – hoop house is up with tomatoes NOT in it (what? I don’t know, I don’t work here), there’s fencing and other crap all over the place to keep birds and dog out of the garlic, there’s a big ol’ feverfew that I’m going to put in the ground (it volunteered in that pot and went crazy), grapes that need to be pruned (in the big pots) and of course the big obvious red highlighter mark which is the hopeful eventual outline of a Eucalyptus parvula.

For a long time I’ve been wanting an evergreen tree on my side of the fence right there in between those two Styrax japonicas on the other side.  I’ve considered oak, Arbutus (unedo?), cypress, and various others until it finally occurred to me that (I think) Eucalyptus feels right.  So then it became a matter of selecting the species.  As luck would have it I had a conversation about this with Paul Bonine of Xera Plants while in the car, and not only does he have a lot of experience in growing Eucalyptus, he also knows where they all are around town.  So he took me on a little tour and showed me E. kybeanensis, E. parvula, and several others.  E. parvula won the race handily once I saw the gorgeous one on N. Delaware Avenue just south of Sumner.  Street view here.

Yet another stroke of luck – another friend just happened to have a little E. parvula and he gave it to me.  EEEEEEE!!!

Lastly, If I say it out loud do I HAVE to follow through? I think I’m gonna take out the raspberries.  They are thirsty, hard to harvest, and I have those damn spotted wing drosophila.  Relatively new arrivals to the area, these assholes are responsible for significant impacts to commercial fruit growers.  They are damnear impossible to control and I just don’t think it’s worth it.  I’m halfway though an experiment to see if allowing chickens to forage under and around the plants will reduce populations or eliminate them (adults overwinter in/on ground) so I’m going to see that out but even if it’s successful, I’m still not all that keen on growing these.   Maybe olives…

Wednesday Vignettes come to us from the genius of Anna at Flutter & Hum, so go check her blog out too.