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

July 6, 2026

Planting Frenzy!

Woo-Hoo!  There are few things we like better than spreading the green.  That absolutely includes Our Garden.  And it’s that time, past any chance of several dry days in a row, the sweet spot for planting tropicals.  Anytime after the rains start is good, really.  You just have to make sure they get watered on dry days.  It’s way too hot for a new plant to be without water.

Mostly, that sweet spot happens at the beginning of June.  Not so much this year.  The 2 Counties directly next to us didn’t even get to set off fireworks last weekend.  No One.  They are still in a Burn Ban from the severe drought and hard freeze.  Yes, that’s right, even raining every day.  Dang.   They still have a bit before their water levels are back to normal, that includes the plants, trees, and watering down all the dead stuff.  I imagine it was a very unpopular decision.  But, we’re no strangers to wildfires.  Our area has them every year.  The lightning is risky enough.  Luckily, Our Garden is damp and quite ready for new green babies.  Woo-Hoo!

It starts by gathering pots.  They’re everywhere.  Once the nursery fills up, we start sticking things in any shady spot with water.  Since we not only have a habit of sticking broken branches and bulbs overflowing the beds in pots, we have to trim, lots.  So there are always cuttings.  LOL!  We do enjoy making green babies.  For fun.  LOL!   We’ve also been specifically focused on Schefflera and Bougainvillea for the new landscaping wall.  There were many.

Around Our Garden

Yup, you guessed it, we used our extra holiday time to plant the inside of the tunnel.  Mostly.  Everything we had rooted.  About 40 Schefflera, 20 Bougainvillea, 2 Laurel Oaks, and 4 Queen Palms are planted and growing happily.  We still need to dig up several Hong Kong Orchid trees growing in the Traditional Veggie and Herb garden.  They can’t live there.   And we need to make about 10 more Bougainvillea cuttings.  You’d think 20 would have been enough.  LOL!  All planting holes are ready and waiting.  We just need the plants.  So, we know what we’re working on this week.  LOL!  

Because we’re talking about a continuous landscaping wall along the road, it’s a bit of a run.  We weren’t able to actually lay-out the planting holes until the tunnel was fully cut.  So, it was a pretty good guess with the number of plants we rooted.  We would have had already potted Hong Kong Orchid trees and more Bougainvillea, but it all died after the hard freeze.  Dang.  It’s okay, we have the young trees that need to be dug up, and we have lots of old growth Bougainvillea branches.  Those root well.  Woo-Hoo!

And More Plantings

Also planted, along the new Rock Path.  My Older Brother and his Girlfriend brought some pretty colorful Plumed Cockscomb or Celosia for my B-day and My Son and Hannah had brought over some new bigger flower variety of Canna for Mother’s Day.  Both went in along the path with some bunches of White African Irises and a ton of compost we pulled off the undeveloped lots and from our yard piles.  In fact, we spent a whole morning cutting up a pile, using the cuttings for mulch along the dry detention and digging up the compost for the new plantings.  There are still 3 more piles.  Dang.  

Then, there was a shape problem.  We had a round pot of Cannas, but we wanted a line of them.  So, we pulled the root bound bunch from the pot, inserted the gardening knife to carefully separate and open them up like a book.  Line of Cannas to plant, check.  We finished everything off with Mulch, a necessity this time of year to help hold the moisture in the soil.  The whole stretch looks really nice.

Also on the agenda for last week, a soapy bath for the Florida Peach tree that has been battling some insect infestations on its trunk.  It’s just what it sounds like: a big soft sponge and a bucket of soapy water, like washing the car.  We use the regular Dawn dishwashing soap.  First, we cut all the fishing line out of the branches.  We only install and leave it there while the Peaches are growing.  Don’t want any of the fishing line to restrict branch growth.  Then, we trimmed the Lumquat or Japanese Plum and Oak trees.  Yeah, we’re partial to the Peach tree, want it to have lots of room to grow.  LOL!  And then, the bath.  We’re hoping this time does it.  Stupid insects.  Finally, we reset a new 2×4 stake.  It’s very stable and looks good.  Fingers crossed.

Butterfly House

It was another week of Ravenous Beasties.  They really are cute and mesmerizing with their little rolling leg shuffle.  Despite being worried about providing enough food, we found Parsley.  You can buy lots of fresh Parsley at the store fairly cheaply.  That was important because Caterpillar food is specific to each variety.  

Ours, found on the Dill plant, are Eastern Black Swallowtail Caterpillars.  They like food in the Carrot family like Carrot, Dill, Fennel, and Parsely.  Since they like the thick stalks the most, they didn’t quite like the Parsely as much as the Dill or Carrot.  This is based entirely on the rate of devouring, not any scientific data.  But we ran out of stuff from Our Garden, it is the Rainy Season, and the veggies are dying.  Luckily, the cute little things started disappearing.  The last one, not cocooning, was seen yesterday, not this morning.

There are a few visible Cocoons and one actively Cocooning in plain sight.  The rest are just gone, probably down inside the pot.  There are leaves and other brown stuff there.  We’re hoping they’re just good hiders, and we’ll have plenty of Butterflies beginning this week.  Hopefully.

Flowers

The Feature went to the ever lovely Pink Rain Lilies.  As one of the most photogenic flowers in Our Garden, it’s hard not to feature them more.  LOL!  Some flowers embrace sunlight, hug it tight, and throw it back out into the world more beautiful.  The light sparkles and dances off the light pink petals attracting pollinators with such amazing iridescent accuracy.  They do this in whole areas, again and again, after the heavy rains.  As a place that gets some rain, Woo-Hoo!

Also going crazy, the White Dendrobium Orchids.  We have whole fences and trellises of them.  Long, ever blooming, stalks are replaced again and again. The Orange Cosmos is also looking quite lovely on its large plants, calling in brilliant orange to the Bees and Butterflies.  In purple, we have the Coneflower or Echinacea and Zinnias to round everything out.  Just Lovely.  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.