Mexican Feather Grass

Jeff's favorite addition to the yard this year has been the Mexican Feather Grass we added in the front yard around our live oak tree. Mexican Feather Grass, or pony tail grass as it is sometimes called, starts out as a soft, thin, green grass. As it matures, the grass takes on a golden wheat color. Our little people love to touch it as they walk past it - it really has a way of drawing them in to appreciate it.

So much of our garden landscaping is fixed in one place. The wind tosses this grass around in the most graceful manner, giving the landscape a beautiful sense of movement. I think what I love about it is how much it reminds me of the grasses that grew on the sand dunes at the beaches in Northwest Florida where we grew up.

Figs - woohoo!

Finally...evidence of fruit on the fig bush. I didn't think it would be an issue; the plant has been thriving just fine where we have it. But I didn't realize until last week that we shouldn't expect to see visible flowers prior to the fruit setting. The flowers are not outwardly visible but actually grow internally. I had been wondering when I would see it flower. I love that we got to skip straight to seeing fruit! Sure enough, as I inspected it this past weekend, almost 30 small figs were visible. I'm so impressed. You must know that this little "tree" (really a misnomer, it is SO small since we just bought it this spring) is only about 3 feet tall x 2.5 feet wide. It is absolutely covered with baby figs!

Culprit caught!

Aha! So this morning Jeff and I went to inspect the bell pepper plant to see if we could determine what was munching on the leaves. Success! He found a small black caterpillar on the underside of one of the leaves. Hopefully now that it has been removed, the peppers will develop without any problems.

Mushrooms

Today I was inspecting some of my potted plants and happened upon these mushrooms mixed in with my potted asparagus fern. From what I could find they can be rather common to find mushrooms in potted plants with rich potting soil. It's likely these are in a rather mature state and are in the agaricaceae family and the genus lepiota, though I couldn't say definitively. I was quite amazed at how many websites there are devoted to trying to help people identifying mushrooms.

Tomatoes, Blueberries, and Bell Peppers

We've had some rainy weather over the last week or so. The forecasters are telling us to expect a warmer and drier summer than usual, so I'll take the rain every day possible. Side note: We had a week of consecutive 107+ degree weather last summer and NO rain for the entire month of June last year. Let's hope it's not hotter and drier than last year!

I think our plants are settling in pretty well, minus the two loropetalum I was lamenting last time I posted. We have such a tiny little blueberry bush, so I don't expect we'll get more than four or five blueberries for each member of the family. But it is fun to see the berries forming, even if there are only a couple of them.

The tomatoes are coming along as well.

The Bell Peppers have just started to appear as well, though they seem to be plagued by something that is eating holes in the leaves. I need to figure out what the problem is and if it is going to disturb the peppers as they develop. It's odd that they leave all the other plants around it alone, but have really gone all out on attacking this particular plant.

Bad news, Bad News, Good news

Well, first the bad news. My two loropetalum that were struggling to make it last week appear to be toast. It's positively baffling because all the other loropetalum plants are doing fine. I really don't know what went wrong with those two plants, but we're heading into summer soon, so I'd rather wait and replace the two that died this fall. I just hate that I lost two plants though. Here's one of them, in all it's misery... :(








The other bad news was the discovery that I had not bought inert bird food and the seeds that have fallen to the ground have sprouted in my mulch in one of my landscape beds. Ugh. I can't believe I bought the birdfood I bought wasn't labeled as non-germinating. I even knew better! I'm almost out of food anyway, so I think I may just put up a bluebird house in the place of the feeder. Less messy! Less weeding. Look at this disaster under the feeder - I'm going to have to shovel it all out and put down new mulch. D'oh!













The good news was that in examining my magnolias it appears they are doing just fine. A week or so ago, I had some spider mites on them. I postponed treating them and examined them carefully today. There wasn't a significant increase in destroyed/eaten leaves. And in checking the leaves, I discovered ladybugs were between the leaves - some even resting in old web of the spiders. Ladybugs to the rescue - hurray for natural enemies of those pests! I wasn't sure there were enough ladybugs around to find my spider mites, but it appears they found them just fine. (of course - why do I doubt nature?!) My trees are young and short - just six foot or so - so I believe the ladybugs will get the job done. I also had been noticing that the leaves looked rather tired and gradually they were turning yellow and falling off. It's rather hard to miss the giant leaves when they fall off the tree. After some quick research and inspecting my trees, it appears the buds of new leaves are coming in above the old leaves and are pushing off the old leaves. Since they are evergreen in the winter, the tree starts to look a bit worse for the wear as spring comes around. But soon those new leaf buds will push out some fresh leaves and the beautiful white blossoms will appear. I see evidence of both new leaves and blossoms on each of my trees, so I feel very optimistic that the trees will be just fine. That's a welcome relief!

Look just above the existing leaves and you'll see the new leaf buds. As they grow in, the leaves below them will yellow and fall off. The second picture is a magnolia flower bud. The whole tree should be covered with gorgeous white blossoms soon!

Didja Know: Apple Tree Propagation

Today's Didja Know came to my attention while watching a Netflix documentary called "The Botany of Desire" by Michael Pollan. Did you know that if you have a wonderful apple tree that produces spectacular quality of fruit, taking a seed from an apple that has grown on the tree would be highly improbable to grow a new tree with edible fruit? That's because the seeds for apple trees contain the genetic code for many possibilities of tree characteristics and any number of the characteristics can develop when the seed sprouts and grows. It's due to a property called extreme hetrozygosity in which something called the alleles of each gene of the seed can be radically different from each other. With an apple seed, each potential variation affects any number of qualities in an apple, including the color of the skin, the size of the fruit, the sweetness of the fruit, disease susceptibility, etc.

Humans, for what it's worth, also exhibit hetrozygosity in reproduction, but it's not nearly as extreme as what you find with apples. Family members may look different from each other, but frequently share familiar features.

Anyway, with regard to apples, the preferred method of propagating a quality apple tree is by grafting. A bud is taken from a desirable tree and grafted onto a young developing tree, which results in an exact copy of the original. Grafting takes all the guess work and thousands of possible variations out of the equation and provides predictable results.

That's not to say it's bad for there to be apple trees grown from seed. Having trees grown from seed allows for biodiversity which creates opportunities to explore more characteristics and cultivate new varieties of trees better suited for various environments, better disease resistance, and preferred flavors. We need to have biodiversity because if we only have limited varieties, over time those varieties become more and more susceptible to disease and pests. It's just important to know that those new cultivars are not easily developed from seeds.

Another contribution from seed-grown apples over the centuries has been its use in creating hard cider, where even bitter tasting fruit could become useful after pressing, storing and fermenting it to create an alcoholic beverage. In fact, according to the Michael Pollan documentary, before 1900, 99% of apples were consumed in beverage form. It wasn't until after 1900 that apples were cultivated to the varieties that we so commonly consume in their natural form. Interesting huh?

So now you know...plant an apple seed for fun, but don't expect edible fruit if you do. For home grown apples, you'll want to seek out a sapling that has been grafted from an already proven tree that has demonstrated the ability to grow well in your area.