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.