Angel Trumpet (Brugmansia)

I have been reading about angel trumpet and how well it grows in central Florida, so I was excited to grow some.  I bought 3 rooted cuttings on eBay, but unfortunately only 2 came alive.

H E R O

OUR FAVORITE TRICOLOR HERON

Here he is, looking sharp, sporting his "Breeding" colors and his special white hat, it's our boy, HERO!

Wood Ducks 4-19-2018

WE'VE GOT DUCKS! WOOD DUCKS! AWWWWWWWWWWWW...

Here they are on April 18th, the first day we saw them.

Morning duck party at P2

Baby wood ducks

Male wood duck LOVES corn

Another quick look at the baby wood ducks...  The second the mom saw me, she led the kids back to the safety of the tall grass.

Soon Mom flew off for a few minutes, so I walked over to see where she "deposited" the babies in the  tall grass.  She came back shortly, and as soon as she landed in the water she called the babies.  Here's the sound she made.  They quickly came to the mom wood duck once they heard her call, and the family was reunited.

STAR GRASS ORNAMENTAL, AKA LIRIOPE

We have a lot of these little star grass plants in our various beds around the house. We just call them star grass clumps but today we learned they're actually Liriope (better Google it for pronunciation, it sounds like Calliope).

We like them as accent ornamentals against the cyprus mulch, their green color is a wonderful contrast to the brown tone of the mulch.

After trying lots of different mulch and mulch sources we've decided to stay with tried and true cyprus mulch in bags. It's free of insect pests (like termites), it is easy to move and deploy, plus it smells great when it's fresh.

BIRTHDAY BED FOR CROOKED COCO PALM

FUN WITH RAISED BEDS

Landscape timber inventory from Home Depot, we love delivery!

I always loved playing with Lincoln Logs when I was a child, now I'm using power tools and landscape timbers to build raised beds that look cool and provide unique functionality.

Crooked Palm next to newly constructed raised bed

We've had this little coco palm in a pot all his life, his name is "Crooked", we got him in the specials section at Home Depot. He was clearly crooked after emerging from his nut, he looked terrible and that made him an irresistible deal, like picking up a cat at the Humane Society on his last day.

Crooked has had to weather a couple of hurricanes but he has hung in there and continued to grow. Finally I figured out how and where we could plant him, in a location of honor where we can see him every day and watch him grow into a big beautiful tree.

The Paradise Beach end of the pond is filled with tree roots from oaks and other trees we had removed to clear the landscape. It is impossible in some places to dig down at all so this leaves only one solution, build up, in this case, a log cabin style, bottomless pot made from landscape timbers.

Mary and I used my new Makita chainsaw to cut 10 timbers in half, these would be the 20 pieces needed to build a four-foot by four-foot bottomless pot.

I joined the timbers together using 4" coated screws which were counter sunk 2" into the log above the one being screwed in to. I used three screws per log, with one at each end and one in the middle. This proved to be very sturdy with no need to move up to heavier screws or hardware.

Final completed installation

I removed about 75% of the grass at the base of the pot, the remaining 25% was too embedded in roots to extract it in the 85 degree and 85% humid air. It had drizzled for an hour earlier and it drizzled some while I was installing the palm, making the project all the more miserable to complete. Unlike the day before there was zero breeze in the morning, just wet thick air.

I lined the base of the pot with moist cardboard boxes to act as weed block. The center area under the palm was not covered but the all the rest was covered with a double-layer of cardboard, which will be all rotted and virtually gone in three months.

"Crooked" in his new home

It was great to finally give Crooked Coco a home, he's been in that pot for at least two years, now he has a nice big home to expand into and spread his wings into the sky.

This view shows the house end where we watch from

OTHER PARADISE BEACH PROJECTS

Mary's Canna plant on Paradise Beach. 

Mary has planted a Canna down on the Paradise Beach end of the pond. The LED solar lights are cheapie's from the Dollar Store, we won't be buying them again, they're very low output.

Laying out the landscape on Paradise Beach

ABOVE: A wider view of the Paradise Beach garden project, the water is off to the right. I'm still in the design process and working on the exact layout of the perimeter of this landscape project.

Here is a view of Pardise Beach landscape bed and the banana field which lies just beyond.

IRRIGATION NOTE: One Rainbird Impact sprinkler on a five-foot riser pipe waters this entire area. It is so great to be able to give all the area plants a drink, especially during the drought and lack of real rain we're currently experiencing.

VIEW FROM THE KITCHEN

View from our kitchen

This is what we see when we look out across the pond from our kitchen, Palm Island on the right, Big Hedo (the huge Bird of Paradise on the left), the new raised bed with Crooked coco palm in the center and Date just to the right of the raised bed.

View from our kitchen at night

PALM ISLAND UPDATE
The Palm Island project has been one of my favorite builds on our property. We've embellished it with solar powered LED lighting and so it's beautiful to look at both day and night.

Palm Island

Palm Island is home to a Traveler Palm which we grew from a seed (on the right). There's also a big sabal palm and a coco palm we raised in a pot for two years. "Baby Phil" is in the white pot on the left by the sabal palm and Pom Pom is in a brown pot on the right, blocking the neighbors driveway light.

DATE, this beautiful palm was trapped under a massive overgrowth of pepper trees and  invasive plants

"Date" (that's the name we gave him) is actually several date palms all growing together. It's impossible to separate them so we embrace the whole family and welcome them to our landscape. It's a joy seeing their massive fronds swaying and swooshing around in the Florida Breeze.

Massive Queen Palms in our neighbors yard rise in the background and increase the tropical look we love.

Spring Things That Happen Mid April

We have just had an uncanny number of annual cool things happen here at P2, so I figured I'd better capture them to compare next year.  They really all happened between April 10th and today, April 14th.

Happy Spring!

• First sneetch bleaching (just happened 5 minutes ago!)
• Awapuhi bulbs exploding into plants (1-6 inches above the ground)
• Monarchs appearing and laying eggs, depositing caterpillers on tropical milkweed
• The Green Heron appears (not the Green Hornet LOL)

April 2018 Plant Feeding

It's that time of year, spring feeding.  We had an AWESOME Home Depot delivery yesterday including 65 manure bags, 40 Kelloggs potting mix, 100 landscape timbers, and 150 mulch.  So I deployed the 65 bags of manure this morning to start the Spring feeding.

This past week plants have been fed:

• All bananas (except palm beach) got 3-4 bags of manure/compost each
• All palms and bamboo in palm beach got organic Plantone general use fertilizer
• The calamondin and orange trees got organic Citrus tone fertilizer
• All the nursery plants including the baby tomato plants got worm castings and general organic fertilizer

April 2018 Garden Update

There have been a lot of delicious things happening here at P2 as I chip away at my plant projects...   The priorities for April (other than celebrating Mark's Birthday!) in the garden were:

1. Get cherry tomatoes growing so that there are PLENTY of tomatoes coming out of the garden
2. Plant fruit trees in the new "food forest" 
3. Get the Okinawa Spinach started in multiple pots so that there's LOTS for salads every day

Success in all three areas!  It was very exciting yesterday to get a shipment from Fast Growing Trees of some fruit trees that aren't available locally:  loquat, june plum, guava, jaboticaba, and a couple new avocados (Haas and a Cold Tolerant pollinator).  There's a picture at the end of the post.  But now, let's see how things are going...

These two cherry tomatoes look like amazing full size tomatoes, but they're only 1" in diameter.  The goal is to have 20 cherry tomatoes ripen every day...  I'm on it! 

We got Mark two orange trees last year, and they're growing in pots and making oranges!  The largest is about 2" in diameter, and the blooms were so fragrant last month.  We're feeding them lots and hoping for delicious oranges.

Six months ago I didn't know what a Canna was.  Now, I'm enthralled with their amazing leaves.  Oh yeah, they flower too.  But more importantly, these leaves love Florida's hot humid climate, and will grow in sun, shade, pots, ground, or even in the pond.  The "Tropicanna" variety has stunning pink/red/green/orange leaves.  You're going to see a lot of these around....

And now, the tomatoes.  This is a cherry tomato plant from Home Depot, so he got an early start.  Wow, he's doing great.  Mark rigged up the most impressive pond watering system using PVC, Rain Birds, brains, and love.  The plants are SO happy.  Right?

I have a bunch of banana pups that I harvested from their mother mats in December that BARELY made it through the January freeze, but they're in pots and thriving now.  I only lost one out of about 12, so I'm happy about that.  Water, worm castings (aka poo), and more water makes them happy.

This cherry tomato is a beauty!  So happy in his pot with a firmly fastened tomato cage ready to climb on.  

And now, the tomato seedlings.  I found a source online that claimed that these are THE tomatoes that grow well in Central Florida.  We'll see!  I bought a 30% shade cloth for mid summer to keep the ball rolling even when it gets too tropical here.  Mark and I are designing the structure to cover the heirloom tomatoes with the shade cloth.  I have a bit of time to decide on the final design while I wait for these little guys to grow up a bit.  But for now, seedlings in blue Solo cups!

There's always one seedling that towers above the others...

My biggest seedling is a Ukranian Purple, and he's very anxious to start producing amazing purple heirloom tomatoes.

Another happy tomato is Cherokee Purple... also excelling a week after transplanting.

I have a bunch of smaller plants in the nursery...  crotons, split leaf philodendrons, and this lovely mottled banana pup.

I'm hoping this Fuyu Persimmon is a big producer of delicious fruit.  Right now, I'm happy to have flowers.  

My goal is to have plenty of tropical perennial greens growing for food.  The Cranberry Hibiscus is edible and tastes good, but I'm really trying to get the plant HUGE before I graze on it!  Right now, it's good enough to see a pot full of the leaves with some gorgeous hibiscus flowers.  The dining will come soon enough...

The story of the central Florida Lychee....  the leaves did poorly in the freeze of January, but they didn't fall off.  The new leaves are there, but not robust.  I've read that the Lychee is picky...  not sure I'll put up with a picky plant, but for now I'll feed it, mulch it, and hope it does amazing in it's pot.

On to the food forest.  I started this patch last fall with lots of cardboard, wood sticks, top soil, mulch, and water to create a perfect bed for fruit trees.  Mark added the amazing pond water distribution system, and yesterday I planted the fruit trees: Valencia Mango, Tommy Atkins Mango, and Brogdon Avocado.  There are 3 more holes for the 2 newest avocado trees plus the Loquat.  The lovely flowers are black oil sunflowers.

Big bird, spraying delicious pond water on the food forest.

I've extended the food forest south by several feet, adding cardboard, top soil, and a hold for the loquat.  Mulch coming soon (probably tomorrow, today is a rest day LOL).

The Food Forest plus part of the southern extension.

A bamboo update!  Sixish (a Seabreeze bamboo planted near 6 of the original 1-10 field clumps of Emerald bamboo) shot up her first cane of the season.  A nice big thick happy cane, already about 6 inches tall.

The bamboo plantation is looking full, leafy, and green now in April.  Remember how the leaves all got melted in the January freeze?  No worries, all of the mats are alive and happy with new leaves and bananas aplenty.

We have a 5' tall fig tree near the front of the house.  Sadly he doesn't get irrigation except when it rains.  Still, he's starting to produce figs for 2018.  He's happy and healthy.  Looks like the 4 bags of composted manure and 4 bags of mulch last fall made him happy.

Close up of the new figs forming.

And now, the seven new fruit trees from Fast Growing Trees.  Starting in the front, clockwise:

1. Haas Avocado (2-3' size)
2. Cold Hardy Avocado (pollinator) (3-4' size)
3. Guava (2-3' size)
4. Loquat (4-5' size)
5. Jacaranda (3 gallon pot)
6. Jaboticaba (1 gallon pot)
7. June Plum (3-4' size)

In case there's any question, the June Plum is the bare stick.  Apparently he lost his leaves in the South Carolina winter.

The trees all look amazing!  I'll let them sit for a day or so and then plant them.

LOWES CAN SCREW UP ANYTHING

NEVER SHOP AT LOWES

You will be sad, they have a way of screwing up even the smallest order and it does not matter if you're buying more, they will just screw that up more.

Count your pieces, they shorted us a 10-foot piece of PVC pipe and 5-female to female connectors.

Raccoon Bucket Party

Planning For Vegetables at P2

This post is the start of the P2 R&D veggie lab.  It's a work in process and will evolve as I try and fail/succeed with lots of vegetables.  I found a great blog entry here that discussed the three growing seasons for a subtropical zone (albeit Australia so ignore the seasons/months!).

Green font means I've tried it and it grows great here.

1. Temperate gardening season

• Best time for cool season vegetables.
• This is the time to grow cabbages, broccoli, kale, carrots, garlic onions, turnips, swedes, peas, Chinese cabbage and Asian greens, and is the best time of year for salad greens such as lettuce, rocket, parsley and coriander. 
• Collards!

2. Spring through to early summer is more like a warm temperate (Mediterranean) summer and tropical dry season – hot and dry. This is the season for planting artichokes, peppers, capsicum, eggplant (aubergine), zucchinis, squash, cucumbers, pumpkin, sweet corn, basil, tomato, beans, and for establishing tropical veg that require a long growing season like gourds, luffa, cassava, yams etc.

3. Summer to early Autumn is the Wet Season and ideal for crops typical of the humid tropics. Most of these crops are actually planted in the latter part of the dry season and grow through the wet for autumn harvest. Typical summer crops include cassava, yam, taro, yacon, turmeric, snake beans, shallots, warrigal greens, snake gourd, bitter melon, Ceylon spinach (malabar spinach), okinawa spinach, kang kong and other tropical greens.

The biggest takeaway on tropical greens:

• plant collards every winter
• plant malabar spinach every spring
• plant/grow okinawa spinach all year long

WATERING ALL THE BAMBOO AND BY THE POLE BARN

Friday and Saturday were spent installing 1" Schedule 40 PVC behind the bamboo, these are fed by a new manifold at the sprinkler pump that allows the full pump output to be delivered to any of four areas. Now we can get adequate pressure in each of the four areas to really deliver some water.

Zone 1 = South gate pipeline

Zone 2 = Paradise Beach area bananas and Palm Island

Zone 3 = ALL THE BAMBOO on Bamboo Beach

Zone 4 = Food Forest and Polebarn areas.

I've been experimenting with Rainbird impact type sprinklers that I've seen used at commercial nurseries. A single impact sprinkler now waters the entire banana field at the south end of the big pond.

A pair of impact sprinklers are watering the Food Forest area.

A single metal impact sprinkler is watering all the plants by the pole barn.

The sprinklers watering the Bamboo are popup lawn sprinklers that we buy at Home Depot. These have a gear drive mechanism inside and they don't require as much water as the impact sprinklers do. Seven of these are on the Bamboo zone and all run at once delivering very targeted watering to the bamboo.

Melnor yard spinklers and garden hoses are a thing of the past in the bamboo area, I'm sure the lawn guys are going to be happy about this.

TEMPORARY HOSE BRIDGE
To get the water back to the pole barn I tried to keep it out of sight. There are many trees lining the route and this makes it impossible to dig down to bury an irrigation pipe.

To connect the source to the Pole Barn requires a single 50' length of garden hose. This will be replaced in the near future and we'll post pictures when it's complete.

Bamboo Food 3/17/2018

Happy St. Patrick's Day!  Today the bamboo - ALL of the bamboo - got a scoop or two of Osmocote fertilizer to get it going.  We already have two canes....  the 1st 2018 cane was at the south gate, on one of the propagated original recipe bamboo plants.  It popped out in early January, which was amazing.  The 2nd 2018 cane Mark noticed today behind Sam and Dave, two of the three large Seabreeze bamboo 10 gallons that we bought at Beautiful Bamboo last year.  It's a fat Seabreeze cane, and it tells me we're going to have a great bamboo year.

The weather has been SO perfect and dry, it's been bug free.  Which is AMAZING for Florida!  Mark has been bouncing in and out of the A-J and 1-10 bamboo clumps installing an amazing new watering system.  Today is the 1st day that all of the bamboo is being watered simultaneously with one output from the pond pump watering system.

Yesterday was the day Mark revamped the watering distribution system.  Photos to come here....

Feedin' the Coons - aww

Feedin' the Coons

March 10th Banana Update

Between being sick with a virus off and on for a few weeks, plus incredibly busy at work, I haven't kept up on the latest P2 news.  Here's the latest!

• On about March 1st, a flower making battle ensued between old friends Swamp King and Lisa.  You'll recall that both Swamp King and Lisa spent a LONG time in the pool cage side by side.  Even after the other bananas left, they remained since they were spectacular tall bananas with large perfect leaves.  We finally made the decision to get them out of the pool cage when the bugs were nasty last year, and they got planted in Banana Beach in December, side by side.  They did great for a while, lost some leaves in the February freeze, and then came back strong. So when Lisa put out a flag leaf and started to push out a flower, Swampy would not be shown up, and he put out the fastest flag/flower I've seen yet.  Swampy's flag and flower arched over and started opening in 24 hours, well before Lisa's flower even made it up and out of the center.  Swampy 1, Lisa 0.  They both have tiny bananas forming... pictures coming soon!
• The mystery banana near the end of Banana Grand Prix (farthest north) also created a flag leaf and flower a week or so ago, but the flower is taking it's time reaching up and out of the center, so no opened flower yet.  This banana plant had a HUGE trunk, a few inches bigger than Swampy or Lisa, so maybe it takes longer for the bananas to push though when the trunk is that big.
• I planted tomato, papaya, wing bean, watermelon and some other seeds out back a few weeks ago, but the weather didn't warm up as quick as I'd hoped, so they're getting a slow start.  
• A note on the malabar spinach:  It didn't do well in January and February, and is just starting to come back.  Seems that the plant doesn't regrow from the roots, but rather needs to be started from seed.  I'll have more time in April to plot the next batch of malabar spinach, but for now it's hit or miss.

Invaders attack!

Mark spent the day making models of invaders attacking, and here's a gif to show an example of the MANY models he made to use for photography.

It is already March, the critters outside abound, watching them is a wonderful way to pass the time

Father of Permaculture - Bill Mollison

Iggy the Iguana

Panfish Flying at P2

Huge the Peacock Calling

Racon Tree Snack Time

Peacocks Running