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The Tropical Grower welcomes you to the online version of Our Garden. Check out our What’s Bloomn’ slideshow featuring last week’s flowers, cruz the latest topics at the Blog Page for information, enjoy the Photos, or just check out what’s happening this week in Garden Dirt. While we are Growing Tropical, growing is for everyone, and we’re here to share the green.

Garden Dirt

March 31, 2025

Where did March Go?

It’s one of those unwritten laws of the universe, if you’re really, really busy and don’t have enough time to get everything done, time magically vanishes.  I’m pretty sure that’s true.  You turn around and a whole month is gone.  Since I have some major deadlines over the next 2 days, I’m feeling the pressure a little bit, and I’m wondering where the month went.  LOL!

The good news is part of all that included Our Garden starting to look manicured again.  Ahh.  It’s a good feeling, walking out the back door and seeing all the pretty things instead of all the things on my to-do list.  Don’t get me wrong, it’s not that I don’t see all the pretty stuff, it’s hard to miss, it’s that my attention doesn’t keep getting drawn to all the outstanding stuff.  I don’t want to walk around with my mind on overdrive, making lists.  That is neither fun, nor relaxing.  Dang.  It’s certainly not the vibe I want in Our Garden.

So, I’m exceedingly happy, overjoyed really, when I catch back up after the long cold winter.  LOL!  Yup, for us tropical growing zone people, I mentioned last week, it was a cold one.  Chilly, limited daylight hours, winter projects, and our mower always failing to mow regularly in the winter makes Our Garden feel messy.  Weird, right?

Around Our Garden

We started out last week with chipping, in desperate need of a bunch of mulch.  Yes, I could have absolutely gone to the store and got some.  That would have been easy.  LOL! But, yes, a big ‘But’ here, I have been stockpiling branches and such while we were clearing, specifically for mulching the new berm and dry detention area.

Maybe it’s just me, a bit of whimsy if you want to call it that, but my plan and goal for clearing the area of pepper bushes and constructing the new drainage area, included reusing everything.  I didn’t take anything away, I just changed where it was and how it was being used.  All the dirt is just shaped differently, disturbed only where necessary, which was a lot, don’t get me wrong.  And all the branches, logs, roots, leaves, sticks, vines, etc. are mulch and borders stabilizing the new shape.

The problem with using sticks for much is they are big and don’t cling to the dirt.  Lose leaves will just blow around.  You have to make a mix of chipped wood, sticks, and leaves.  We had piles.  Everything that could go through the chipper dry, did.

Chipper

You may have read this before, but I love chipping.  The smell is awesome.  It requires ear plugs, a bit noisy.  The nice part for me is I can’t hear any random noise.  No neighbors, cars, or loud people walking by.  I can’t hear any work going on in the neighborhood.  Just the drone of the chipper behind the ear plugs.  Nice.

It also requires enough attention for my mind not to wander, which it does, often and wildly.  Sticks have to be a certain size, no side branches.  You can’t force it, the machine eats the wood.  Your job is merely the stabilizer.  Slow and steady.  One after another, apparently until I had 2 giant bags.  Woo-Hoo!  And, super relaxing to boot, at least for me.     

We only have a little chipper for small stuff, but it does small dry stuff easily, especially the Cabbage Palm Fronds.  Since we have lots of the long sticks from the fronds and inflorescences, that hold the tiny flowers, it’s great for me.  Well, it was.  I went to unplug it, and the plug melted to the extension cord.  Dang!  At least I was done chipping all the big piles.

Rainbows

After my nice morning, which ended poorly, of chipping, there was another, much less relaxing morning mixing and spreading mulch.  I got the new construction covered much more completely with this 2nd layer.  While I would have liked to have finished mulching around the rest of the garden beds, I was too tired.  Way too tired.  It was all I could do to stand there with our 1000 pound hose (yes, that is an exaggeration) wetting it all into place.  Because the sun was blazing at that point, the up side is I got to stand there the whole time making rainbows.  Small joys.

While all this sounds like an entire week’s worth of work, it wasn’t.  Writing it, maybe I realize now that it felt like it.  I should mention we were expecting, and got rain both Saturday and Sunday.  The new construction had to be stabilized before the rain as I did not want all my work to wash away.  Spoiler Alert: It did not.  Everything is where it should be.  Woo-Hoo!  Let’s hope it stays there. 

Fertilizer & Other Spring Prep

The rain also meant I needed to get our yearly fertilizer down.  We like to get the no-burn slow release granular plant food down before a rain to really get it worked into the ground.  It’s always best to work any surface application of granular fertilizer into, at least, the top 2 inches of soil.  You don’t want to disturb the roots, but you want it in the soil.  Then, a good watering into place.  We prefer to use rain if we can.  What you don’t want is to spread it on top before a rain and have it all wash away.  That’s not good for your plants and it’s not good to have too much fertilizer down stream.

Of course, to get the fertilizer down, I needed to get the weeds off of them.  We absolutely do not want to fertilize weeds.  Since My Mom was feeling well enough to do a good bit of trimming and general clean-up around the yard, I was able to finish most of the weeding.  Yeah!  Hence Our Garden starting to get that really manicured look.  At least, we think so.  Others may not feel the natural mulch and leaf look is clean enough for them, but we like it.

Harvest

Last week, I took pictures of our Tomato Harvest every day Wed-Sun to show the volume of Tomatoes we’re bringing in.  Some days it’s a few, others more, very steady.  We have 6 plants, 4 producing regularly.  The Cherry Tomato plant only grows very small Tomatoes, and we only get a few.  The 2nd Flame Tomato plant hasn’t produced a single fruit.  So, we’re hoping for even more.

The Pineapple plants have finally started growing fruit on 2 plants.  My Mom and I started growing them a couple of years ago from the tops of ones we bought at the grocery store.  They’re Bromeliads and grow that way.  We’re hoping to start a big patch.  For more on Pineapples try How to Grow Bromeliads At Home.

I also took a bunch of Swiss Chard that was blocking the irrigation.  One of the wildflower pots dried out.  Dang.  Same with some Broccoli.  Never underestimate a plant’s ability to grow out and steal all the water.  LOL!             

Flowers

We’re Featuring the Fivespot, Nemophila Maculata from last week.  It came up in one of the Wildflower pots.  Wonderful surprise.  Neither My Mother nor I recall ever having seen one in person before.  We’re quite fascinated by its eye-catching purple spots and hoping for more amazing surprises from the mixed wildflower seed bags.  There’s a reason we dedicate lots of pots to wildflowers.

It was another spectacular week of Amaryllis.  The extra large Pink Candy Cane ones were in full bloom, and I might have gotten carried away taking their pictures.  It’s the sparkly parts.  The Bougainvillea is at it again flashing whole areas hot pink.  We also have whole beds of Indian Blanket Flowers, changing colors, and the Desert Rose is a full pink bush of flowers.  It’s Spring out there.  Enjoy!

Check out What’s Bloomn’ slideshow for more flowers or visit Garden Dirt Diary to catch up on what’s been going on around Our Garden.