Citrus

“Another Grass Bites the Dust”

ESPatch Mar 28, 2011 22 comments

Hot temperatures and humid conditions combined once again with dusty, dry conditions almost had me reaching into my freezer for a ready-made iced-turban this past week as I continued to perform late clean up chores and a few on-the-spot area reorganizations. This warm spell has broken the winter dormancy of many plants in the Patch, filling out the artemesia, greening up the feather grasses and re-emerging the canna lilies…almost everything has greened up with the exception of my Mexican lime tree (you cannot miss it in the distance, I hate walking past it), but it is always last to show signs of life. I am considering removing this tree and replacing it with another sabal major palm, I have the space and sun here.

My Japanese maple has fresh spring foliage next to my pond, it always looks its best at this time of year, before it gets sun roasted,

and this pyracantha

Pyracantha coccinea

is currently filling the back third of my yard with its distinctive pungent aroma, an aroma that is pulling in all manner of insects like this:

Mournful thyris,

Thyris sepulchralis

It appears that this genus has been changed from Thyris to genus Pseudothyris? Entomologists help here please?

Another apt name for these stout moths is: picture-winged leaf moths. This one was way too busy on these pyracantha blooms to even care about the camera.

Another insect-first in the Patch.

I have my pyracantha tucked well away, squeezed between my garden shed and my neighbor’s fence. This plant is dangerous, and it ranks right up there with bougainvillea and pampas as a shrub wielding an attitude of malicious, flesh-slashing intent to the unacquainted. This plant needs a really quiet place, an out of the way nook, a never-to-be-entered area to flex its gangly and gnarly thorny sprawl. The aptly named firethorn, if appropriately positioned, does provide an impenetrable barrier from any uninvited guests, its defenses also provide protected cover for birds. Check out some amazing pruned pyracantha hedges, berries and more general information here:

http://www.pyracantha.co.uk/

I personally prefer the more natural habit this plant exhibits if left to its own vicious meanderings.

These tiny bugs were all over the blooms of this pyracantha, I pulled a flower cluster from the plant and placed it on a tree stump…this one quickly found a hiding place. Anybody have any ideas what these are?

Thanks for the ID meredee (see comments section)

You can see my pyracantha safely positioned to the left of my shed (right picture).

While I was nosing around in this rather gnarly corner area of the Patch, I unconsciously walked into my shed, grabbed a thin shovel (my now preferred implement of choice for this activity), and took out yet another old pampas grass. This grass has served me well but it was getting rather long in the tooth as you can see, and besides, after taking out its partner-in-arm-slashing-crime a few weeks back, it has sort of been floating in space in all its straggly glory…it simply had to go, I mean look at it! A couple of rugby tackles and some ridiculous jujitsu kicks and lots of root cutting later, it was out and hoisted high onto my already ridiculously high compost pile,

…note to self: I must get some Milorganite…immediately! (Thanks for this volume reducing tip Andrew)

I decided to remove this black bamboo out of this stock tank, (an activity that actually turned out harder than extracting the pampas grass!) I had new plans for this stock tank.

Phyllostachys nigra

I trimmed the root ball significantly and placed the bamboo in its new container:

With the stock tank now empty, I rolled it through my gate into its new position among the Persian ivy.

After back-filling it with scrap aggregate to take up some of the volume,

I filled it up with dirt, then water, and transplanted bunches of horsetail reed for future vertical evergreen structure. A word of warning, when you first fill with water the tank has a tendency to aggressively “burp”, mine actually made a very realistic flatulent noise before proceeding to “throw up” a small amount of dillo dirt onto my shoulder…nice. I will eventually train the Persian ivy into a circle around the tank, now to finish the surrounding hardscaping.

Moving on:

While I was planting the black bamboo I noticed that all of the main branches on my adjacent mock orange had developed cracks, splits and fissures in them.

This shrubs inner bones were exposed as the outer bark was peeling away, surely this had to be a natural growth habit? Just to be sure I made a detour to visit one of my favorite trees at the Zilker Japanese Garden at last weekend’s garden festival, a monster pittosporum, about the same age as me:

There it is on the left.

I was happy to find the same fissures and splits albeit on a much grander scale. These shrubs / trees have an insane trunk structure.

The Hinckley’s columbine, azaleas and sago palms were also putting on a great display…

Back in the Patch I snooped into the hearts of my own sago palms and was happy to find, although now pruned completely bald, new spring growth was slowly unfurling.

On a darker note: (insert…

labored breathing just about now)…Sheee…Cuff

I pried out my final agave americana from the ground after discovering once again a weevil hole in one of it’s sharp blades. I lifted it up onto my operating picnic table, (I thought it a more appropriate extraction setting for yet another patch postmortem).

While I was whistling the theme tune from “Dexter”, my daughter excitedly pointed out yet another Darth Evil Weevil running for safety toward the edge of the operating table. It is funny how these long-snouts seem to emerge after the agave is out of the ground, it is like they are “inconvenienced” and already grumpily looking for another “undisturbed” agave to move into and destroy, but not this one…no chance.

She spotted it, and in a true Rock-Rose fashion http://wwwrockrose.blogspot.com/, she squished it and immediately made me a proud parent.

“I promise I will not mention the weevil ever again…Jenny” :-)

Between the weevil and the frosts of last winter, my agave population has been substantially diminished. I thought this would bother me, but it has not. The process, like my recent purging of four pampas grasses, has opened up new areas to fresh evaluation and potential new plantings and hardscaping opportunities. Also my planting tastes have changed significantly since these beasts were placed in the ground.

For now, the new gaps in my cactus and succulent bed will be taken up with this mammoth ceder carcass courtesy of Bob at Draco Gardens, http://dracogardens.blogspot.com/

it fits in Patch perfectly.

Finally:

A sotol wearing a bright ragwort tie…

…and more new mountain laurel growth then I have seen in a number of years.

The best things this week: an Austin bloggers get together at Pam Penick’s garden http://www.penick.net/digging/ and afterwards a daddy-daughter dance / date…dinner at Guero’s, then onto the dance to trip the light fantastic.

Okay so we finished at 9:30pm, but it felt like midnight to us both. I had a great date Miss P, and I am eternally sorry that I broke out into a habitual rock / goth dance as soon as Joan Jet: “I Love Rock ‘n’ Roll” came on, I could not help myself…still, better get used to it now, it will be even more humiliating when I perform it with my customized satin black walking frame…it is only a matter of time.

Thanks for my birthday dinner, cake and Wii fun G&T.

Stay Tuned for:

“Plants vs Zombies”

All material © 2011 for eastsidepatch. Unauthorized
intergalactic reproduction strictly prohibited, and
punishable by late (and extremely unpleasant)
14th century planet Earth techniques.

“Up Front”

ESPatch Mar 8, 2011 16 comments

“Planetary surface topography now visible on main viewer captain.”

“Magnify…”

“More detail is now coming in sir, it appears that the planet’s surface has suffered major trauma, probably the result of a sustained hard freez…”

“Spock, this is the dead leaf of a frost-bitten agave Americana, isn’t it? I should know, I just pruned one back on the hydroponic deck…look at my face! And besides we are still in space-dock.”

“Your logic is of sound origin captain.”

I have not had too much luck with agaves of late it seems.

All of my mature Americana agaves will ultimately pull through, but I have lost a lot of younger ones in pots. Well hasn’t everyone? I see the remains of their sad bodies drooped all over Austin like sad drunks – flopping over retainer walls, buckled over and grumbling nonsense in hell-strips, most should now be cut back to their short and curlies to stimulate new growth. As if the frost was not quite enough, I believe I have another, much “graver” agave issue…

Remember this Nazgûl?

Well things have got worse.

…the dreaded Agave Weevil.

“Why, you little…”

What started as small brown scratch marks last year, has turned into ominous black holes and now dark cavernous pits. This borer has gone to the center of the plant and the terminal damage has already been inflicted.

“Scyphophorus acupunctatus!”

This creature ultimately tunnels into the base and root system of the agave. Adults chew into the lower leaves of agave and introduce a bacterial rot that is believed to be necessary for larval development. They lay eggs into these holes and the larvae then burrow deep into the plant’s heart carrying the bacterial rot with them.

Image by: Machele White

Adults are dusty black weevils about an inch long, with a long snout, they do not have wings. The larvae are whitish grubs without legs.

To help prevent this from happening to you:

If you notice an adult innocently whistling and lurking around one of your agaves with it’s dark collar turned up, immediately apply diazinon granules to the soil around the base of your plants every two weeks mid-May through June. Remove and destroy infected plants as soon as damage is evident. Remove larvae and adults from the soil around the area where the plant was removed, and do not replant another agave in a hole where a plant has died from this borer, chances are it may happen again.

Moving more happily on:

One of the ESP’s “borrowed’ scenes. I love the way the Texas red bud looks set against the contrasting foliage of Texas sabal major (with an understory planting of Texas sabal minor to continue the foliage theme all the way down to ground level) – a very tropical planting scheme, and one that is totally frost-proof. The pink emerging blooms of the red bud are punched out set against this dark olive backdrop.

The tropical look is further enhanced by the use of decomposed granite that hints at a beach. This would make a stunning scene against a pool setting…note to self.

Everything is emerging fast with spring officially in the air,

even this tiny sotol in my circular bed seems to finally moving into it’s gangling adolescent phase. All manner of plants are popping up in here, some known, some volunteers and even some mysteries waiting to be solved.

“What is that pass-along plant from Bob at Draco gardens that is growing over that Texas holey rock to the south-east of the sotol Watson”?

“I believe it to be

phacelia congesta

or blue curls, it is a great plant with great blue flowers…

it is also a prolific seeder, usually found in large colonies”.

A great plant and easy to keep in check by pulling up the unwanted small plants.

My frost stripped satsuma is making a new and really fast foliage rally (as it always does), and my gopher plants, with their strange flower heads are once again showing-off. These signs of spring in the Patch always coincide with our now annual family outing to the Sunshine Gardens plant sale, and this can only mean one thing, actually quite a few things…

…tomatoes, peppers, basil and fennel to name a few. I knew that the soil from all of my dead aloes and agaves would go to a good home.

The milder weather also brings some of the years first flies:

and this one, that alighted on my wife’s knee was an absolute whopper…Brrr

Finally:

I will leave you with this front garden design that I am about to install for some very good friends of mine around the corner from the Patch in East Austin. The client wanted some ‘loose’ privacy from the street and to retain their existing pathways and eliminate their weedy grass, (I seem to be doing a lot of this of late). It is a low cost design scheme with the minimal of plants that packs a punch in all the appropriate places.

Before picture.

My goal here was to create loose privacy looking from the house to the street and to open up the entryway into the property to make it more inviting. The small existing pathway was visually widened by using gray shingle which complements the color scheme of the house, breaking up the linear pathways. Boulders were also chosen for their complimentary gray color with softening plant selections to integrate the gate and hardscaping. If you are thinking you have seen that gate before you are of course correct…it is the same as the one in the Patch, a prop from the “Spy Kids” movie. These are the great folks that gave me it!

Oh just one last story:

A recent visit to the now famous sarcophagus restaurant yielded another priceless moment that almost rivaled the infamous “nose boulder” incident of last year http://www.eastsidepatch.com/2010/07/12865/ .

On entering the establishment, our usual family chair shuffle ensued with the accompanying condiment knocking over glitches, the shuffle moving each of us from one chair to another until we were all comfortable psychologically. All was relatively normal, a waitress came, took our order, our youngest played “Plants Vs Zombies” to keep him quiet before the food arrived, I looked on enviously…etc. Suddenly my eldest decided that she needed to go to the rest room, she left the table and came back a while later with some interesting information that would normally not be shared in a dining environment, but she is six.

“Did you wash your hands?”

“Of Course”

“Everything Okay?”

“Muhhuh”…Oh, and there was a paper thingy on the door, it spelled…o..u..t..o..f..

“Order?”

Yes! (Accompanied with a how did you know? Look)

Is that the one you used?

“Yes, but the handle was broken and it was full of water, it was DISGUSTING!”

I really hope nobody from that restaurant ever finds this blog.