Our prickly pear cactus is one of the first things to bloom in the spring (after the daffodils and snap dragons), and the bright yellow flowers are always awesome.
We're enjoying another bumper crop of strawberries. I don't eat them, myself, but Mrs. Paco vouches for their delicious taste (just to keep the record straight, I do love strawberry ice cream).
We've got a dozen pineapple plants in pots. We keep them inside during the winter, but take them outside in the spring. Four of them have fruit at various stages of development. They're extremely easy to grow: just buy one in the grocery store, cut the top off and plunk it in a pot of dirt, watering occasionally. We've found that the fruit of the homegrown pineapples is less tart and considerably sweeter than those you buy in the store (although it's all the same variety of plant). As I say, they're low maintenance, but you need to be patient: it can take 2 1/2 years for the fruit to appear, and another 6 months for it to ripen.
Mrs. Paco bought amaryllis plants a few years ago, and studied up on the best way to grow them, watching numerous YouTube videos which advised a fairly complex system of care (putting them in the dark for months at a time, positioning them just so to get the right sunlight, etc). They didn't do that well at first; however, one evening, while we were strolling around the neighborhood, we saw a house that had many amaryllis plants in full bloom. The lady of the house happened to be in her front yard, and we asked how she managed to grow such beautiful specimens, mentioning our own attempts to follow advice provided by various "experts" on the internet. She said she just stuck them in the ground and didn't do anything, except water them during dry spells, and give them a little fertilizer in the early spring. We tried that, and it worked perfectly this year.
This Peruvian lily is currently in protective custody to protect it from the deer, until I can get a batch of my bootleg repellant going.
And I'll close out the post with a photo of another of our magnificent local sunsets...
ReplyDeleteLovely. There’s a lot of satisfaction in growing plants successfully, it must be hard-wired into us. I really miss my garden.
I should probably start planting trees against the day when Mrs. Paco and I won't be able to do all the up-and-down associated with gardening. I'm almost there, myself - I can get down on the ground, but getting up ain't nearly as easy as it used to be.
DeleteBtw, I agree that growing things is hard-wired into many of us. My mother and both grandmothers maintained substantial flower and vegetable gardens until the end of their lives.
ReplyDeleteI would guess most of the "experts" on the internet are self-diagnosed.
ReplyDeleteYeah, actual certificates of knowledge and achievement issued by professional entities are pretty scarce.
Deletespring has sprung in my garden, the daffodils have come and gone, the pionese are blooming, the hostas are up and thriving, i trimmed the dead branches from the mum we got last fall and it is thriving in its pot, a few of the black eyed suzies have come up, I put some strawberry trimmings in a hanging basket (like the pineapple trick) to see if they'll sprout; my father in law did the pineapple trick by his condo in FL, but never was able to get the fruit, someone else was watching those plants too...
ReplyDeleteLots of critters here. Hostas don't last long with all the deer about. Rabbits nipped the heads off of some of my orange milkweeds, so I've had to put them in protective custody, too (i.e., surrounded by chicken wire).
DeleteBeautiful!
ReplyDeleteI would be jealous, but I long accepted that I am not hard wired to be one with plants ... ... I have a "brown thumb", in that I am lucky to get grass to grow decently.
A few years ago my wife was given a small boring looking plant called The Queen of the Night She was told to not over water it and if the plant liked us it would flower one moonlit night.
ReplyDeleteWell around Christmas last year a flower did start to form and on a particularly humid full moon night after midnight a spectacular white flower bloomed about 6 or 7 inches in diameter. The sad part is it only lasts one night had wilted a lot by morning. We got about 4 more this summer and my wife stayed up to photograph them all. It is a South American cactus that grows on other trees and goes well in pots.
https://en.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/Epiphyllum_oxypetalum
Nice! We have some moonflower plants that only bloom after dusk and the flowers are gone by the time the sun comes up. They're a climbing plant in the morning glory family, I believe.
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