Greetings Growers & Lovers of Green Things

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

June 9, 2025

Weird Weather

June is notorious for weird weather here in our Zone 10, or maybe it’s just us.  LOL!  There are rare years with early tropical storms, even hurricanes, and rarer years where we get no rain at all.  Hot or super hot, dry or wet, it’s a spin of the big wheel when the rains will actually start and remain a consistent afternoon or evening visitor.   By July, we’re wet every day.  But June, she’s a tricky one.

Why does any of this matter?  Because the start of the Rainy Season is when we plant our tropicals, trees, and shrubs.  No rain = dry planties in their new homes.  Dang.  Yes, growers are absolutely obsessed with the weather.  LOL!  Last week, we had 2 straight days without rain, preceded by 4 straight days of clouds with rain.  I’ve mentioned before, our rain comes in bands.  The sun is out, the rain band passes over drenching us, and then, the sun comes out again.  Tropical weather.  Think, wall clouds.  They move off the ocean onto shore that way, even when they aren’t circular storms.  Last week, the rain came in bands, but no sun, complete cloud cover.

If you’re planting big hearty stuff, cloud cover with rain is good.  Delicate, new sprouts, or seeds that might wash about, not so much.  Luckily, our hearty stuff is going into the ground.  So, awesome planting weather, until this weekend when it all dried up.  Dang.

Around Our Garden

You guessed it, we started out last week planting.  Woo-Hoo!  The Orange Birds of Paradise, that’s the shrub version most people picture, went into the ground.  Of course, that meant fixing the plants along the brick walk because they had an edge of going-back-to-the-wild to them.  As usual, it took longer than I thought.  LOL!  But, we did get the Cannas under control, as much as anyone can actually control Cannas, the new Giant Yellow Hibiscus Planted, and the Orange Birds of Paradise in the ground.  I say again, Woo-Hoo!  They are doing nicely, despite the rain being weird.

We took some of those crazy Cannas and transplanted them to the new berm where we sprinkled seeds last week.  There were also several Buttercup sprouts around the main plant, it’s a spreader, we moved to the back planters where the others died.   Since there was no rain, it’s anyone’s guess if they will survive.  Everything else we planted last week looks okay.  It’s pouring right now as I write this: chances are very good everything will be fine.

The exciting fun from last week came from the newly planted Gladiolus Bulbs.  In the ground less than a week, and 6 of the 12 already have sprouts.  Woo-Hoo!  We switched commercial growers for the bulbs to CZ Grain.  While we have not had any luck with their seeds, their bulbs are full of life.  We’re keeping our fingers crossed for a nice showing of Gladiolus blooms in a few months.  I want to give that a Woo-Hoo!, but I shouldn’t.  Nothing is guaranteed.

Harvest

Our 2nd sprouting of Cabbage is ready all over the place.  The good thing about Cabbage is it can usually stay in the ground, growing, until we’re ready to eat it.  The problem once the rains start is Cabbage likes to hold water in its leaves.  We’ve been going around making sure the bottom leaves are not full.  Not only can it rot the leaves, mosquitoes can lay eggs.  Standing water anywhere here is free game.  Yuck.  Don’t want to come across that at all.

There were 4, smaller 2nd sprout, Cabbage heads, the final Turnip, Tomatoes, Broccoli, and a small Eggplant.  The Eggplant came from a cutting of the main big Eggplant I whacked off last Fall and planted.  We want the new plant big and healthy before it really starts producing.  So, we’ve Harvested any fruit before they get too big.

Flowers

Our Feature this week is a fuzzy Orchid.  The Rhyncholaelia Digbyana, formerly Brassavola Digbyana Orchid.  If you ask My Mom, she will tell you this is her favorite, even though I suspect it’s actually the Gold Coins, Dendrobium Orchids, which are also still in bloom.  The Digbyana is so unusual with its both fuzzy and sparkly white petals highlighted with different shades of green.  Definitely worth seeing.  We got 9 softball size blooms on our main plant.  Wonderful!

The Pink Rain Lilies popped up all over Our Garden.  That is absolutely by design, and that trend will continue because we found new places for the bulbs this week.  There are hundreds of them in the Bulb Garden.  So, endless supply.  Woo-Hoo!  We now have 3 areas of Orange Wild Cosmos that are taller than me.  LOL!  Such beauties.  The Wildflowers in general look amazing, and we got our 1st Dahlia bloom from the Purple & White one.  Amazing.  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.