Summer’s Garden

The entries from time to time will deal with the current condition of the garden: what is good, bad and what I try to do about it.

Let me tell you what’s going on in my garden at the moment.

I use palm special fertilizer on this wonderful palm (Kerriodoxa elegans). For information on how to select palm fertilizer, see this University of Florida Institute of Food and Agricultural Sciences article.

I have discovered several overgrown wild coffees that are loaded with lobate lac scale. The scale appears from time to time on fire bush as well. Imidaclopid is the best chemical but no one wants to use that horrible thing, so I am trying to prune the plants for better air circulation. Some of them will be cut back to the ground. (The coffee pops up here and there on its own — birds is my guess — so I won’t be losing any significant portion of the garden.) I also have many crotons, and have tried to avoid scale by pruning them for air circulation.

This philodendron (Philodendron tortum) is a climber, so I have put this young plant on a fern totem and then added a board covered with hanging basket material. The little white thing is a tea bag filled with slow-release fertilizer. You can buy empty tea bags, add slow-release and attached them to various pots.

Vines have exploded over this past summer. Aristolochia is especially aggressive, so that is being cut back and pulled out. I planted them for the polydamas swallowtail butterflies, but now have only a single vine remaining. My neighbors have not paid attention to their Clerodendrum x speciosum on the back fence but I am going to confer with their gardener next week about what to do. Sky vine, Thunbergia grandiflora, coming from the side yard and is headed to the top of my sapodilla. I have trimmed as much as I can reach, but no one is living there now and their wall is 9 feet tall, so it is a challenge.

This anthurium (Anthurium superbum) is best grown on rocks.

Because of the very tropical conditions these past few months, I’ve paid close attention to my aroids. I use a fertilizer that contains compost tea, apple cider vinegar, molasses, fish emulsion, and seaweed. It’s called Garrett Juice and I buy it on line. I learned some years ago of an orchid grower’s recipe that combines 1/2 Tbs unsulphured molasses and 1 cc of 150 proof cheap white rum with 1/10th strength Peters Excel. And every couple of weeks, we should spray orchids with 1 Tbs of epsom salt and 1 Tbs of potassium nitrate per gallon of water. Otherwise, for palms, begonias, and aroids in the ground I use 8-2-12 palm special, lightly every 3 months.

This is Buddha belly bamboo. The spotted leaves are those infested with bamboo mites; the new growth is clean after treatment with Avid.

Buddha belly bamboo came down with bamboo mites, causing round white spots on the leaves. Avid is a systemic miticide that I used and new growth is mite-free.

For weeds, I use 30% horticultural vinegar mixed with regular vinegar and some epsom salts.

That’s it. If you find any of this of interest, let me know. This year, I created caladium beds here & there; last year, I moved amaryllis from the back yard to the two front beds and they make a great show. My father grew them years ago and I’m pleased to keep them going.