New plants and garden chores

Happy Valentine's Day!

I took advantage of a week of dry weather and sunny skies to tackle a few garden chores. The first involved finishing up the job that resulted from removal of a battered and over-sized 'Blue Flame' Agave in my south-side garden. When I published my post on the project, I'd already cleaned up the area, added soil suitable for succulents, and planted cuttings of blue chalksticks (Senecio serpens). I finished replanting the area this week.

I added a few more Senecio cuttings, a mix of Aeoniums, and an Agave ovatifolia that I'd purchased in a 4-inch pot several months ago and potted up in a 1-gallon container.  As you can see, the agave's still very small.  I've left a relatively wide path, partly to accommodate the agave's eventual size but also to facilitate maintenance.

All 4 Aeonium varieties in one shot.  They're growing alongside an Acanthus mollis (left) that appears during our rainy season, then disappears during the hot summer months.  As the Aeoniums fill out, I hope they'll hide the empty space during the summer season.

Top left: Aeonium 'Dark Star', branching variety that grows 2 feet tall and wide

Top right: Aeonium 'Jack Catlin', develops low-growing clumps with green centers and burgundy edges

Bottom right: green Aeonium 'Jack Catlin', needs sun to develop those red edges

Bottom middle: Aeonium 'Octo Ink', which sports a singular tall black rosette 1-2 feet in size

Bottom left: Aeonium 'Velour', branching variety with green centers and purple edges on lower leaves

*'Dark Star' and 'Octo Ink' are Steve Super hybrids.  The others are cuttings from my garden.

I received delivery of eight plants I'd ordered by mail prior to the rainstorms and got all of those into the ground.

My order from Annie's Annuals & Perennials arrived Friday afternoon

Clockwise from the left, all 8 plants have landed space in my garden: 2 more Arctotis 'Large Marge' have joined 3 mature plants in my back garden; groundcover Centradenia floribunda (aka Spanish Shawl) sits in a bare area of my front garden behind my new Protea "Claire'; Graptopetalum paraguayense 'Pinky' sits in a mixed bed near the driveway;  Helleborus orientalis 'True Love' is a splurge that joins other hellebores in a shady area of the front garden; and 3 Papaver hybridum 'Lauren's Grape' found spots in the cutting garden

And yesterday I tackled pruning of a large shrub, one that wasn't on my original project list.

The shrub in question, Grevillea lavandulacea 'Penola' is barely visible in this shot taken from inside the house during a rainstorm last week

This long shot, which I think was also taken from inside the house during that rainstorm, provides only a nominally better view.  I circled part of it just to make it more obvious.  With its gray foliage and tiny red and white flowers, it's hard to make out at a distance, especially against a gray fence.

But, close up, its lovely flowers are densely packed along most of its branches

Sadly, I positioned it poorly, thinking I could espalier it along the fence.  I've regularly tied it to supports attached to the fence, only to have it break away.  The long branches were stretching into the path that leads down the back slope.  I didn't take a before photo but I cut back or removed many of the branches that blocked the ease of movement down that concrete block stairway.  I reduced the size of the plant by more than 25% and tied the largest remaining branches into the supports using plastic-covered wire.  Whether this latest effort to manage the shrub this way will be successful is yet to be determined.

More rain is on the horizon.  There are two more back-to-back atmospheric rivers currently forecast to show up Saturday and continue into Tuesday.  We got off easy with the earlier storms, ending up with only a chimney leak and relatively minor damage to my lath (shade) house; however, others in California didn't fare nearly as well.  Over four hundred mudslides were reported, as well as nine deaths.  As the ground hasn't had much time to dry out we can only hope that those in the most vulnerable areas will be better prepared this time.

Note: I hope to publish my Garden Bloggers' Bloom Day post on Friday, February 16th.

All material © 2012-2024 by Kris Peterson for Late to the Garden Party