Have to shift to a potted garden

Bought a house where the local ordnance is 'native plants only,' special dispensation for Bouganvillia, oleaner and other drought-tolerant but NOT native plants. In any case, the Home Owners' Association rules say if you insist on non-native plants, they must be in pots. I have observed that those homeowners with enclosed back yards have put into the ground citrus, palms... but I will be a good citizen and not do that.

So far, I have a potted cattlaya and a Meyer lemon. I also have a small pot of herbs -- nothing exciting. I hope to eventually replace the oleander hedges with dwarf pomegranates, but that's probably a year away. The cool growing season here ends in 2-3 months.

I was worried, but now relieved!

Goes to show there's much, much more to know about gardening. I thought moving to the desert means growing cacti and nothing else. Found out that Phoenix is in USDA zone 9-10, not that different from Silicon Valley, just much drier.

When we were here 15 years ago, we had 4 kinds of citrus and two kinds of palms in the yard that were doing just great so I know they are good in this climate. And I had planted a Jamium Nitidum (Angel Wing Jasmine) by my front door that was doing great. It's really fragrant.

There's a great nursery here for RARE and EXOTIC tropical fruits and plants:
        Tropica Mango
They have guavas. I nursed a guava cutting for 2 years on my windowsill in California. It got to be about 2 feet tall. Had to give it to a friend because there was no room in the car to bring it,  but NOW, I can buy a TREE that lives outside!!!!!!

The little house we're renting now has a palm that's making dates. Great!

All I have to do now is to buy a house with room for a garden, and learn how to manage drip systems. Spraying water in 100 degree temperature is wasteful and not effective. Half of it evaporates and only increases the humidity by a bit. With the zillions of pools here, you'd think the overall humidity would increase.

Stay tuned. I hope to buy a house (with a garden) in the next months.

"Movie" of my yard

 

Click image for details about this plant

I gave away all my huge potted roses: Graham Thomas, Evelyn, Peace. Also went was my much beloved daphnes. They were blooming so were in great demand.

I could hardly pry my fingers off the pots of my miniature pomegranate, azaleas, gardenia... Now I am left with those plants that no one wants, but I still love them. Why don't people appreciate Rose of Attar (scented geranium, Pelargonium)?  Don't they know that those are more rare, and are truly collectible, than hybrid tea roses or English roses?

The 'citrus grove' of Nagami kumquat, Bearss lime, Ruby grapefruit and lemon are in the ground so they will stay. The camellias are blooming so they add a little color. The Stephanotis still has not adjusted to being planted in the ground so it hasn't filled in the pillar trellis.  The huge classic roses (Salet, B. de Prevost, Musk) and the lovely Eglantyne are still in their severely pruned state. The rosemary (blooming), tarragon, sage, garlic chives should make the next cook who lives here happy. The yard will look so much better in 3 months.

Even harder to give away is gardening materials and tools. Bags of compost, potting soil, hand tools, soaker hoses, trellises. I had accumulated so much gardening-related things over the years! I had not noticed that I had invested so much in the yard. Even though I had put in so many plants and made so many changes (dug up Nandina hedges and replaced them with roses), there is much, much more that can and should be done to make the garden wonderful.

Why am I destroying 15 years of gardening work? I'm getting it ready to be sold. Boo-hoo-hoo!!!!!! We are selling the house so the yard also must look impersonal, clean, commercial... No more Maria's Garden with pots and pots of flowers being propagated and tropical plants growing wild.

I made a 54-second 'movie' of what the yard looks like now, after $2,500 of removing roots, bushes that were 'in the way,' re-locating paths and decorative stones, and adding tons of mulch and turf. It looks good, but it's not my garden anymore.

Sprinkler problems and alternatives

Being a steadfast fan of automatic sprinkler systems, I was very unhappy when one of my circuits dribbled instead of sprinkled. At first, I thought it was blocked sprinkler heads -- replaced them all. Now I think it's a bad valve. I'm too chicken to disassemble and rebuild a valve, even after watching several YouTube videos on how-to.

What are good alternatives to automatic sprinklers? Hand-watering with a hose and a sprinkler thing on the front. Tedious and probably uneven. In the Northeast where I lived for many years, people used oscillating sprinklers or other temporary measures because it rains every few weeks so you don't need to depend on a big-deal system. The ground freezes so an in-ground system would be hard to maintain. When I was living in Phoenix, I had a drip system. OK, OK, it saves water and is more PC (politically correct) than spraying water into air as much as 50% (or more) evaporates before it falls to the ground, but it DIDN'T WORK. My trees couldn't put down deep enough roots. I could have increased the drip period but the ground is pretty impermeable caliche. The trees got top-heavy and fell over. That had a bad effect on the fences. When the drip system leaked underground, it was undetectable until it flooded the street. No, I am not a fan of drip systems. So, what to do that works well, is easy to maintain and is also PC, and not as expensive as fixing the existing automatic sprinkler system?

Soaker hoses seem to fit the criteria: good for plants, inexpensive, easy to install and PC. I bought enough 5/8 inch-diameter hoses to loop around my flowers and trees in the area where my sprinklers died. I dug shallow trenches to lay the hose in, topped with compost then wood mulch. I ran the water with low pressure for hour-long sessions thinking the moisture will spread out and and soak deep down.  Used this system all this Spring and Summer as well as hand-watered when I got worried.

None of my plants died, but they also did not thrive. I guess such systems are more effective for beds of veggies that have shallow roots.

Now that it's started to rain here, my flowers are blooming even though they don't get as much water from the 10-minute light showers as they had from my soaker hose system. The flowers seem to wave their petals at me while chanting "nay-nay-nay-na! Rain is better than soaker hose."

So, next idea is to get a portable sprinkler system to reproduce the automatic sprinkler system. Or bite the bullet and hire a pro to fix or replace the broken valve. Any other ideas?

Highlights that I forgot to mention

How could I have forgotten to post my blooming Cattlaya?! I've had it for years, gave cuttings of it to many people including my sister. Then the parent plant died -- I think I drowned it. My sister sent me cuttings from the plant I sent her! This year, my plant put out not just one, not just two, but FOUR huge corsage-quality blooms.  When I was tying it up to photograph it, I noticed for the first time that it's fragrant! All these years, I never knew it had a scent. I didn't think cattlayas had scent, but you see, I am a self-taught gardener. Sad news: I drowned the variegated phalanopsis by repotting it in the wrong medium. It was blooming too, 3 spikes. I wanted to replace it with a Brassia Rex but boy are they hard to find, and expensive! I also tried to buy Vanda Cerulea but as you know, Thailand is having problems (and do you believe this, they have an annual week-long holiday when the post office is closed. What a gift to courier services.) Anyway, I got from a group in Florida 2 tiny Vanda Panchera Delight that are 2 years from blooming size. Vanda should be easy to care for. "They" say just wire it to an orchid basket, no medium, and water and fertilize it. We'll see.

Another highlight that I forgot to mention is I received two cans of Orchard Mason bees for Christmas. It had never occurred to me  to keep bees and I know nothing about them other than they sting and pollinate. Well, Orchard Mason bees are also known as blue bees. They don't sting, they don't make hives, they don't form communities. All they do is pollinate, and pro-create. My bees came in a can full of tiny tubes. I am told that each tube contained bee lavae and food for them during hibernation. Yeah, I was surprised that there are hibernating bees. I had to keep the can in the 'fridge because they like 38 degrees to hibernate in. When it got to be consistently over 50 outside, I put opened the cans and put them out. Here's their own little house: After a few days, I looked in the tubes and they're GONE! Out working! I hope they were able to fly the quarter mile or so the the apricot orchard although it's finished flowering.

When I pruned the citrus, it was blooming and there were lots and lots of bumble bees, carpenter bees, yellow jackets, humming birds, ... but I did not notice any blue bees.  Maybe they're the smaller carpenter-like bees that hover?