Pop Quiz: Seedlings, Cuttings and Dragonfruit

I'm giving a pop quiz to use... I mean, test your knowledge of propagation.  Here's question number one!

Chamaedorea Seedlings

As some of you know, I have this odd habit of planting seedlings of different species together in the same container.  I have a few good reasons, one of which is derived of sheer laziness...

If they're all planted together I don't miss any waterings and I save water at the same time.  Since I have to water everything on my balcony the old fashioned way with a watering can, one less trip is a good thing.

I've also noticed that the ever present damping off disease and its attendant fungus gnats leave seedlings alone when there's other plants in the container.  Not a single one of the seedlings in this container or any other that I've tried this way have "damped off".

The other reason is so that when I eventually transplant the container to my parent's place, there's built in shade so that the transition from my full shade balcony to the very sunny garden is an easy one.

Boy is my hand pale.  Anyways, here's the container up close so that you can see the chamaedorea radicalis seedlings beneath the butterfly cassia and scarlet butterfly weed.  The ones with the big leaves germinated first, but the smaller ones in the lower left are yellow and a little anemic looking. I'm worried that the other plants are being nutrient hogs, but I'm still on the fence over dividing the palms or leaving them as a "multiple trunk"  So here's question  #1:

1.  Should I 

(a)  Go ahead and plant this in the garden now,
(b)  Cut back all but a few of the butterfly weed and butterfly cassia,
(c)  Forgo my method and just attempt division?
(d)  None of the above

Mystery Seedling

Okay, so there's another downside to my crazy an mixed up habits. In my carefully (I'm not fooling anyone) arranged container of wild coffee, cherimoya and coontie cycad, I have a mystery seedling popping up.  Of course it wouldn't be a mystery if I was more organized.

I could have planted it after an excursion to south Florida, possibly a "Pink Dwarf Poinciana" aka caesalpinia pulcherrima from a seed collected at a city park.
To make things more complicated, I've also planted jacaranda, yellow poinciana and poinciana seeds over the last couple of years as well, and when they don't sprout or the other seedlings damp off, I transfer them to another container with plants already growing.  Like I said, It does cut down on dampoff that way.

2.  What is the mystery seedling?

(a)  Pink Dwarf Poinciana
(b)  Jacaranda
(c)  Yellow Poinciana
(d)  Poinciana
(e)  None of the above.

Mystery Sedum

Another NOID question!  This sedum cutting comes to us from Chicago, via a coworker of mine. 

Its the silvery one in the middle.

When it grew in Chicago, it showed a typical upright growth habit and flowered.  Now that my coworker has taken it to Florida, it sprawls and flops over, taking root via its aerial roots!  He says that it grows completely differently.

This is a good one for anyone who lives or has lived up north, since nothing in my personal library of Florida and tropical gardening is of any use.

3.  This sedum is ___________.

Dragonfruit Seedling Division

Note the pineapple seedlings in the middle!

These dragonfruit plants were started from seed last fall, and I didn't know the first thing about dragonfruit cultivation back then.  All I wanted was to just germinate them and keep them alive, with the possibility of fruit not really crossing my mind.  

Since then I've found some great resources...

Here's some photos of commercial growing methods at http://www.vivapitaya.com/grow.htm like the one pictured to the left.

I discussed growing dragonfruit on the Florida Gardenweb Forum and they had some great ideas...

So now it seems like it would be a good idea to divide the seedlings and transplant to individual pots!  I have a cell pack tray I could transplant them to, and maybe even provide some sticks and twine to train them vertically!  Eventually I could pot them up, sink them into the ground for stability and take them indoors in winter!  Any ideas?

4.  Essay Question:  Share your ideas concerning the preceding selection on dragonfruit.

Extra Credit:  What do you think of my business card design?  This is only the back of the card.  I was inspired by Danger Garden's superb stationary design and decided to bite the bullet and get some printed.  I provided a link to her current post, so you can see her awesome garden all in one posting!

Magical Ideas for Your Garden

I've always had these crazy ideas for what I called an "enchanted garden", but it turns out that to most people "enchanted garden" means lots of little houses for fairies grown amongst herbal remedies.  To be honest, I find that a little creepy.  My version doesn't involve fairy houses, but would still be an awesome garden for imaginative kids or adults.
Lets call this the "Enchanted Rainforest".  My idea of an enchanted forest is one where lush ferns carpet the forest floor and exotic flowers "magically" appear from the finely textured foliage.  The best flowers for this are bulbs that appear to have no leaves that pop up without warning like these suggested plants, most of them commonly called lilies though they bear no relation.

Rain lilies are also known as "Fairy Lilies" and they usually spring out of the ground following a heavy rain.  Since their foliage blends well with grass, they can be naturalized on a lawn and eventually cover huge swathes of white, pink or yellow. 

Blood Lily forms bright red puffballs that appear to float over the ground as if by magic.  I once saw a photo of a drift of these with two kids in the middle and thought, those kids are so lucky!  They are poisonous, but only if eaten.

Surprise Lily (or Naked Lady) collectively describes several plants in the Lycoris genus.  They appear on long stalks in late summer and open up to reveal pink flowers similar to those of amaryllis.  Hurricane Lily is another Lycoris, but instead has wildly exotic red flowers with long stamens.  Because they open in late summer or early fall they are associated with the hurricane season.  Photo courtesy of Floridata.

Gloriosa Lily actually is a lily, but is unlike any other!  It rambles up adjacent plants as a vine and bears a magnificent show of flaming downward facing flowers with upturned petals fading from yellow to scarlet.  Like blood lily, these are poisonous but only if eaten.
Siam Tulip is a ginger in the Curcuma genus that holds its pink inflorescence high above the foliage like a torch.  I can see a resemblance between these and tulips, but these are much more exotic looking. 
Other Flowering plants for your consideration are Coral Hibiscus, Passionflowers, Globba gingers, Medinilla and Billbergia bromeliads.  If you live where its warm enough, try growing orchids from the branches like Encyclia Tampensis or Oncidiums.

Theres more to this garden than elegant flowers, though.  As you walk down a winding path, stone relics become grown over by ferns, mosses and creeping vines, and gazing balls are scattered around and clumped together to play tricks of light on your eye.  Use whatever ferns and mosses you have available for a soft and dreamy look, and use Asiatic jasmine and creeping fig to grow over walls, pottery and relics of statues.  Just be sure to control the creeping fig so it doesn't get away from you!

Shaving Brush Tree also looks magical!

Make your way to the end of the path and in a corner of the garden would be a resting place with a bench and a pond with mirrors submerged to form something of a looking glass for deep introspection... maybe there would be strings of foil or tinsel in the water to catch the light.  Surrounding this opening would be large leaved alocasias to make you feel dwarfed in an "Alice in Wonderland" way but without Johnny Depp or Tim Burton, who I also find more than a little creepy.  Just imagine sitting under the leaves of an Alocasia Odora or a Xanthosoma Sagittifolium and listening to the sound of running water.  The only thing cooler than that is having an Easter egg hunt in this garden!  For the kids, I mean.  Yeah.

Rainforest Garden Facebook Group is Live!

I just started a facebook group so we can all converse without limiting ourselves to our blog entries!  Its pretty much a group for anyone who ventures outside the norm in gardening by growing unusual plants, pushing the limits of your hardiness zone or by using interesting themes in your garden design.  This group is open to the public and you can share it with anyone you choose.

Feel free to share links, photos, events or anything else you can think of too!  There have been plenty of times in which I've wanted to share things with you and couldn't contribute a whole post to it, so feel free to share those little tidbits with the group!  This is also a great way to share that new orchid bloom with other gardeners who will "ooh and ahh", without posting it to all the friends and family who couldn't really appreciate it anyways.

Also, if you have questions you want to ask other members, just post it in the discussion board!  I look forward to seeing you guys there!

The Rainforest Garden Facebook Group

Heliconia, Passionflower and Gloriosa Lily Blooming!

This is one of those hodge podge posts in which I share everything going on in the garden as of today.  I think that posts in the form of articles are great and all, but sometimes its important to keep a record of events to show progress on a everyday basis.  Maybe I should do what "Plants are the Strangest People" does and have "Random Plant Event" posts to differentiate between Mr. Subjunctives great articles and his journal entries.  Oh well.  Besides, I consider you guys my best of friends and can't wait to share my excitement with people who "get it"!  Thank you all for being so supportive.  Without further ado I present to you... My "Jungle Journal!"

Heliconia "Costa Flores" Starts to Bloom

This is just the bud of the inflorescence, but it won't be long until I see the red and orange bracts attracting hummingbirds!  I thought it was amazing enough that my heliconia made it through the coldest temperatures this zone has to offer, but to find confirmation that it can bloom just five months after being frozen down to the ground is more excitement than I can take.  Some of the stalks are almost up to my nose, and its increased its spread two times since I bought it in winter!  And to think that people even further south are reluctant to plant them.
I will say that it did get some protection in the form of a tarp this winter, so I would still advise anyone to protect them where they even get close to freezing.  This coming winter I'll probably divide it, putting half in a container and leaving the other half very well mulched so that I'll be able to see which protection method is more effective.
"Costa Flores" is a cultivar of Heliconia Hirsuta and has a zingiberoid leaf pattern, meaning that it looks more like a ginger than a say, canna or banana in its form.

Passiflora Alatocaerulea is Blooming!

My passion vine has been especially prolific this year, and already has about five branches filled with blooms, each opening in succession by the day.  The downside of this hybrid is that it doesn't produce fruit, but I'll let it slide on account of those insane flowers with a perfume like lemon pledge.

Gloriosa Lily is Blooming Too!

I finally ended up planting some gloriosa lily tubers this year, and am finally being rewarded with blooms!  Its branching out and rambling over the hollies and azaleas, and seems to have taken off since I gave it some fertilizer and minerals.  My parents have pointed out that formally pruned shrubs by the front door was an odd place to put them, but I rather like the effect.  In any case, next spring I'll plant them at the base of our confederate jasmine trellis for summer interest.  After they die back, I'll have sweet peas planted to take their place in winter, and the evergreen confederate jasmine will continue the show in spring!
There's an azalea hedge in our neighborhood that gets covered with gloriosa by fall, looking for all the world like shower of flaming comets falling to the earth.  Imagine seeing a show like that against a dark green backdrop!

Bottlebrush Has Hit its Stride

I planted this callistemon citrinus last spring, and though it has had sporadic blooms now and then, its never had more than 3 flowers at once.  Now its blooming at full throttle and the place has been busy with hummingbirds and many different kinds of bees and butterflies.
The tree is already starting to give the front window some privacy, and it won't be long before it provides the courtyard with some much appreciated shade!

In Other News...

-  The Musa Velutina seedlings are still doing great despite the drought
-  My dragonfruit seedlings are starting to branch out at the base!  I'll be dividing these soon, one to a pot so that I can train them up in a tree structure for better fruiting.
-  I've identified one of my mystery seedlings as a cassia bicapsularis now that its gotten bigger... now I remember collecting those seeds.

 -  The ice cream banana is doing well and putting out leaves in rapid succession. 
-  Oh yeah!  The sea bean vine (entada gigas) has gotten much bigger and has pinnate leaves now.  Its rambled through a weeping yaupon holly and reached the top.
-  So that's it for my random ramblings.  Take it away, Gilly!

Sorry.

Some Thai Spices You Can Grow!

Make that Southeast Asian for that matter, since Thai is only one manifestation of these wonderful cuisines!  For the most part, the plants I've included are suitable for growing in warm climates such as zones 8-11, but you're only really limited in your enthusiasm.  Regardless of where you live, put a tropical spin on a plain jane herb garden, and give your cooking a kick!

Lemongrass in the garden.

An important element of Southeast Asian cooking is the harmonious union of sweet, sour, salty and hot flavors, and sweet elements like fruit are even used like spices to impart a tangy or sweet note to dishes.  This post is about spices, but if you want to try growing some fruits for thai cooking, try lychee, rambutan, pitaya (dragonfruit), pomelo, tamarind and bananas.  You can even use the flower of the banana as a vegetable!

"Kung Pao" Chili in the garden.

First, lets start with the plants that provide heat to our dishes, moving down to the sweet end of the spectrum.  Unless you live in a totally tropical climate, black pepper is out of the question since the species of peperomia it comes from is not cold tolerant in the least..  That's okay though, since its the most common spice out there.  Its also interesting to note that northern regions prefer peppercorns  over chilies to add heat to their dishes, likely out of necessity.  Moving on...

Chili Peppers

The hotter the better!  Even if you don't like your food too spicy, peppers are great for balancing the other flavors in a dish to make it exciting and harmonious.  Pictured to the left is "Kung Pao", and other varieties include the "Bird's Eye Chilies" like the appropriately named "Thai Hot", which are just slightly cooler on the Scoville scale than the Habanero. The habanero makes an appropriate substitute, since its much more common at the grocery stores. You can get away with using just one or a few slices of the habanero in a dish, so don't overdo it!
You can grow them much like their relatives, the tomatoes.  Give them full sun, good water and protect from frost.  Try growing them in containers and bring them in on cold nights!

Ginger

Zingiber Officinale is in the same genus as the ornamental shampoo ginger, and also related to other gingers in the garden.  Ginger adds a pungent, nutty flavor to food, relieves nausea, and makes a wonderful tea.
Grow in full sun to part shade, well drained soil, and keep the soil moist.  You can actually plant the roots you get at the grocery store.

Shallots

Thai shallots are more of a pinkish color than the one pictured, and have a stronger flavor.  However, common store bought shallots work just fine and seem to be a nice middle ground between garlic and onions.  Grow as you would onions, and in warm areas like Florida these are best grown in the cool season.

Lemongrass

Related to citronella, this incredibly useful herb adds an aromatic citrus quality to curries and soups but without the tartness of a lime or lemon. Harvest the stalks when they've gotten thick, and use the base in the same way you would garlic, by crushing, chopping or bruising to release the oils.  Use the stalks for stirfries and flavoring your meat and seafood, and use the bruised leaves for a light and fragrant tea, removing the leaves when finished.  This makes an excellent architectural ornamental in the landscape and even comes back from freezes through zone 8.

Citrus

I know, citrus is a fruit!  But it is often used as an herb or spice to add tangy flavor to food, especially limes.  Pomelos are also popular in southeast Asia, and are best served with some spices and salt.  Try it!  The kafir lime's leaves are an essential element to flavor meals, and lemon or lime zest makes an acceptable substitute.  You can also try the leaves of rangpur lime, which is a gross between the mandarin and lime.  If you live where it freezes, rangpur lime is probably your best bet since the tangerine parentage helps it to survive harsh winters.

Turmeric

Another member of the big family of gingers, this one is great for curries, and is what gives them that distinct rich yellow color.  They're used to color all sorts of products, edible and inedible and were even used as a substitute for saffron!  To use the rhizome, dry in the sun or oven and make a powder of the dried root.  In the garden these look lush and beautiful, and the leaves reach over five feet tall.  Give them lots of water in the growing season, and leave them in the ground where the ground doesn't freeze.  I divide them and get a bigger crop every year!  Delicate inflorescences bloom in tones of green, white and pink with little yellow flowers peeking out of the bracts.

Heres the result of the aforementioned herbs and spices, put to use on chicken and rice noodles!  It was dee-lish!

Anticipation in My Tropical Landscape

If patience is the food that fortifies gardeners in a journey to botanical bliss, anticipation is the blend of savory spices that pulls us out of bed every morning with the promise of inevitable progress.  I often have dreams in which I awaken years later to come upon my garden complete with a mature canopy of trees and an understory jam packed with gingers and bromeliads.  Its often hard to see the potential in plants without a little imagination and optimism.  For example, look at how my clump of Alocasia "California" has grown!  Please pardon all the crappy cell phone shots.

This is the planting site a little over two years ago, before the alocasia was planted as a 3 gallon plant from Lowes.

After flourishing for a little over a year, the record breaking winter ended up killing all the leaves and even damaging the stems.

This is the clump at present, in mid July.  It is now up to my nose.

Here is an eye level view from behind the clump.  Why don't more people grow this around here?

Since I live thirty to forty minutes away from my parent's house, I'll often go a week or so without witnessing the drama of my plants unfold.  Sometimes when I come back to the garden everything has already changed: Trees have grown taller, bananas have put out new leaves, and vines have taken claim over new territories.  The downside is that when a plant is struggling, its often too late to save it from pests or drought and all I see is a withered form stretched out over the soil or a present from my dog right in the cup of a bromeliad.  However, everything fills back in before you know it, and you learn to pick plants that grow taller than your dog's legs.

This is what the garden along my fence looked like a little over a year ago in early spring.  I have since pulled up the creeping fig under the birdbath just in case it gets a little too vigorous.  Notice the little tabebuia tree to the left.  The other trees such as bottlebrush and weeping yaupon holly are to the left and right of this scene.

Now look at the explosion of growth taking place right now! The firespike, gingers, pentas and tibouchina have returned, the tabebuia in the back is growing like crazy, and there are some new faces too!  Heliconia "Costa Flores" overwintered from last fall, and a purple crinum forms a focal point in the middle. The trees will, in time, form a protective canopy over the understory but by anticipating that happening I've made sure that the understory also thrives in shade. 

The back corner is frequently flooded, so anticipating this, I planted everglades palm, false cardamom ginger, philodendron and ti plant, and all of which have proven to handle wet feet in my garden.  Behind those I planted trees over the last couple of years.  Three native yellow anise trees will provide evergreen foliage and a shady canopy, while a native weeping yaupon holly ties in with the other two I have planted elsewhere in the backyard.  I also have three bottlebrushes in the backyard, as well as one in the front.  I'm aiming for consistency, so that I can create a more believable "forest" by the time it matures. 

The most important plants in my garden are trees, if only for their obvious role in what we perceive as a "rainforest".  I could have all sorts of tropical plants in the landscape, but it would be pointless without that extra vertical dimension to add mystery and depth; to make the visitor anticipate what's around the corner.  If everything was laid out in flat and static beds without any curves or obstruction to our view, what would be there to satisfy our curiosity?

Often the only thing that gets me out of bed in the morning is curiosity.  I rejoice over every new leaf that opens on my balcony, and I check for new stems or germinated seeds every day, as if missing the event would make me wonder all day.  Its not a necessity to do these things, just a daily affirmation of the insistence of life to continue growing.  To those of you who feel that every day is a repeat of the last hundred mundane ones, I recommend watching a plant and recording its growth even if only as an afterthought on the way out the door or on your lunch break.  Just be sure to pick something that won't get hacked down like a hedge or a crape myrtle, because let me tell you, that gets depressing.

An agapanthus bloom stands guard over the entrance to the forest.  What lies beyond?

Spider Lilies, Sea Bean, and a Freakin Big Moth

Today I made a rather unbalanced trade with a very charitable gardening friend, and ended up with a plant that I've been looking everywhere for.
Actually she was kind enough to give me a whole lot of that plant.

When I say a lot, I mean A LOT of Spiderlily bulbs!

I don't know which species it is, but it doesn't really matter since I've been wanting a Hymenocallis for the longest time and ended up with... we'll stick with "a lot".  Its likely either Hymenocallis Caroliniana or Hymenocallis Latifolia, and both supposedly handle consistently moist soil pretty well.  They should be delighted to live in my wet and squishy backyard alongside other florida swamp natives like my everglades palm, yellow anise, dahoon and yaupon hollies and all the trees like sweet bay magnolia and gordonia! 
She was even nice enough to give me a division of "Spanish Tarragon", (also known as Mexican Mint Marigold) so that I could use it in my cooking, some Cassia seeds and pink rain lily seeds, freshly collected! 
Not only did I leave with plants, I also got some great info.  For example, she has also sprouted pineapple seeds recently and some of them were already quite large!  There was an abundance of herbs too, but the pots of tropicals being started from seed is what really got me excited, since that's an odd little habit I've picked up too.  For example...

My seabean!  Its gotten to be almost 2 feet tall in about a week and has already become rootbound, so I've given up on container culture and planted it in the ground between an evergreen weeping yaupon holly and a (also evergreen) yellow anise.  Hopefully their leaf cover will help protect the base of the plant.  I'll just train it along the ground so that I can cover the trunk with mulch in winter and then let it clamber up my bottlebrush, wax myrtle, and into the canopy of pines and cypress.  Yes, it will grow that fast. 
And don't you guys worry about it being invasive, since it only propagates itself with its rock hard two inch round and flattened beans, which require specialist fish and mammals in Costa Rica to crack the shell.  Mine only sprouted after spending years at sea coated with barnacles and other fouling marine life, time baking and composting in seaweed on a shelly beach, a few more years in my collection, and a good sanding on the already crackled outer layer of the bean.  The other seabeans in the container without that abuse still look polished and clean after being in the wet dirt for months.

In other news... 
-  The pineapple lilies (eucomis) are finally starting to flower
-  The climbing gloriosa lily will also flower soon
-  The bottlebrush out front is getting large and has more flower buds than I've ever seen.
-  Baby green lizards everywhere!  Take that, bugs!
-  The yellow tabebuia has gotten huge, and has forgotten all about winter.

-  Oh, and I saw a cool moth at the gas station.  It was 3 or 4 inches long, brighter orange than this photo can show you, and as beautiful as any butterfly in the garden. 
-  Okay, a big orange moth is no big deal, but it was kind of neat.  Yeah.

Too Much Sun in the Courtyard Garden!

Neoregelia "Tequila" finishing its bloom cycle.

As any gardener in Florida can tell you, its not only been hot and humid, but uncharacteristically devoid of rainfall lately.  My "Balinese Courtyard Garden" in my parent's front yard gets a lot of sun this time of year, so my shade loving chamaedorea palms, lady palms and bromeliads have been showing a goldish tinge.  No burning, mind you, but I did need to come up with a solution to the brutal sun.  

My bottlebrush and pineapple guava were planted to eventually shade the courtyard, and though they are growing fast it will take a while for them to get tall enough to help out my radicalis palms and bamboo palms.  Even the large live oak in the background of this photo has been growing quickly this year!

Some of the struggling bromeliads were relocated to a newly planted bottlebrush in the backyard where they'll get more shade, but I really do like having them in this area, as they are the most eye stopping features the visitor sees upon entering the house.

The above photo says it all.  You can see how intense the sun is for my radicalis palms, but since the spot is so close to the house its hard to simply plant a tree or shrub to shade them.  The taller palm in the group is actually an aerial trunked sport that will continue to grow taller until there's no shade to be found!  The palms you see actually consist of two clumps, so I may just divide the areal trunked one and plant it under a taller canopy out back.

In the foreground you can see the vigorous bottlebrush trying to shade the area and the encroaching branches of the live oak right above it.  I have since cut the oak's lowest branches for obvious reasons, but it should be able to shade this area in a couple of years.

Here's another view of the house so you can see it in context.  I'm going to train the bottlebrush with an asymmetrical trunk, leaning out over the courtyard and away from the future shade of the oak.  The grassy area will eventually be planted with a couple of schillings hollies to complement those on the other side of the sidewalk, and the paved area will be extended to allow more room for my mom's wheelchair.

Here you can see my replacement for the fried birds nest fern, (it got way too much sun and heat) a papaya!  Since this is the warmest part of the garden it has the best chance of overwintering, and it will at least help to shade the lady palm and bromeliads otherwise.  In winter I may get a large tupperware container or cardboard box, cut a slot, slide it into place and then cover with leaves and mulch.  That way the base of the trunk will remain unharmed by frost so it can branch back out.

Here are some other photos of the front yard as of late:

Here's another view of the papaya, so you can see the surroundings.

I also found some Galangal, or Thai Ginger to complement the supermarket ginger and lemongrass.  I can't wait til I can harvest some for cooking!

Lemongrass is looking pretty good next to the bromeliad!  In the background I have Nandina "Firepower" and the ginger I started from the produce aisle.

Here's a Neoregelia "Red Bands" blooming!  I hate it when people call neo's flowers "inconspicuous". 

Bonus shot!  Neoregelia Pauciflora climbs up the base of the oak tree with its long stolons.  You can also see my Quesnelia Arvensis and Macho Fern.  Check out all the lichen on the oak trunk!