awesome as always :D

My Hong Kong Orchid tree is blooming like crazy right now. I just don't have any pics yet. They're way to high lol

Grant, I always so enjoy your pictures. I love your lobelia, and your euphorbia has such gorgeous color contrast.

My garden is mostly in transition at the moment, but I have a few things looking spiffy.

Alaska mix nasturtium. The plants have been up for months now with no flowers, and I was starting to think that I was going to have to settle for enjoying the pretty variegated leaves when this little blossom poked its head up. I'm seeing lots more buds coming too, which I'm pretty stoked about.

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Anaheim chiles.

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Celebrity tomatoes that hung on through the winter and the December frost, and are starting to ripen.

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Fava bean blossoms. The plants are looking a little unhappy, and I've no idea whether or not I'll actually get any beans, but even if not, it was worth trying to grow these just to see the blossoms, which are plenty fun in themselves.

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Thanks for looking/commenting/sharing! Congrats on the Hong Kong orchid tree blooms, that's always a favorite! Love them.

Plstqd, great pics! Looking good! I've got a lot of 'Alaska' nasturtiums too and really enjoy them whether they bloom or not. I also have lots of the non-variegated trailing types getting obnoxious around the garden--fine by me. :) I really like nasturtiums so I tend to grow a lot of them, plus they self sow too so I let them pop up wherever they like. Yours look really nice. I'm super envious of the tomatoes and peppers, you are way ahead of mine. The fava beans are neat as well. That's one of my favorite winter veggies, although I haven't grown any in this garden, so keep everyone posted on how productive they are for you.

Great stuff all around!

Just for fun here's a small bistro set on my back patio. I'm sure everyone can recognize the plants, from left to right: red zonal "geranium" (Pelargonium)in a bright Talavera pot, pink with yellow throat "mini-petunias" (Calibrachoa) in terracotta, an old rosemary topiary that I've carted around for years and years, white flowering "paperwhite" narcissus, and a 'Blue Spike' Echeveria in a small Talavera pot, oh, and Wilson the tennis ball temporarily placed (hah!, I don't keep him there) to show relative size.

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Take care and keep the pics, updates, and comments coming. February is long this year, so we get an extra day for this thread. :)

Happy gardening!
Grant

Beautiful Pictures! I have a question for any and all. I have a pretty large back yard, big lot. What should I ammend the soil with? I would like flowers in the ground here and there and everywhere..I use a three way mix for veggies, but am told that would be too strong for flowers. And does anyone grow Petunias? Love the smell and bright colors. What exposure should they have? Thanks for help..Steph

I grow a TON of petunias each year (remember they're autumn, winter and spring here, not summer). Mine are blooming away right now and I am loving them! Here's a pic of a big pot from this morning:

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I grow a lot of petunias (and geraniums, pansies, violas, and snapdragons) in pots of just basic "potting soil" and they do really well autumn through spring.

In the ground, I grow them in native soil that's been amended with good compost (either commercial or home made). The in-ground flower beds are probably 50% native soil and 50% compost. That's worked out really well for petunias, calendulas, and pansies in winter and zinnias and vincas in summer.

I've even been naughty and been in a rush and used potting soil mixed 50/50 with native soil to make a flower bed in the ground and it worked out fine too.

Whether in the ground or in pots, I do give my flowering plants alternating water-soluble tomato fertilizer and then bloom boost fertilizer.

I'm curious to hear what other ways folks grow their flowery stuff. Let us know what you do and how it works out.

Happy gardening!
Grant

Here's a couple of other pics from this week. Enjoy this gloriously beautiful weather everyone. Happy gardening!

Solanum hindsianum, which blooms at least a bit every single month of the year. Full sun, water once a week when it's hot and once a month when it's not.

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Indoors, here's a Griffinia cv 'Supreme' starting its main winter flush of blue-purple blooms. I LOVE the purple pollen! This has a big flush of blooms now, and then random blooms throughout the year.

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No pics ... house buying and getting ready to drive to NM and take possession, and finishing projects here have taken up most of my time. Not enough garden time :(

BUT ... I hurled my teensy Royal Chico tomato seedlings into the dirt because I know the SO will forget to water them and kill them. If they survive, good. If they croak, I'm no worse off than if I let him kill them. Also planted out the seedling herbs (basil, oregano, thyme) for the same reason.

I'm taking the chilaca chiles with me. They are too small to plant out and need a nursemaid.

Something - Armenian cukes or maybe the scarlet runner beans, or both, is sprouting under the west-side arbor. We added remesh to the top so we'll have lots of shade on that side of the house this summer.

And the chayote made it through the winter in good shape, so it should head for the top of the arbor when it warms up a bit. It's going to be interesting with cukes, beans, chayote and queen's wreath all fighting it out.

Tomatoes: Matt's Wild Cherry ... never stopped blooming and setting fruit this winter. It's HUGE! The Indian heirlooms are coming back from the stems, as are two of the Royal Chico plum varieties.

Chiles: Serranos survived the frost and have been pruned back. With luck we'll have a big early crop this year. Mesquite-smoked serranos are wonderful in BBQs.

Eggplants: refused to die, so I dug them out.

Everything else is a desert native and doing as usual for this time of year.

We're going to be growing okra ... lots of Clemson Spineless in one of the raised beds. SO's office has many Indians and they can't get enough og okra and cukes. I sent in a dozen packets of Armenian cuke seeds last week.

Fun update, Lazy, good luck with the purchase. As usual, I like your approach to gardening. :) I'm taking the plunge this year too and will be growing a lot of okra as well, since it's very ornamental and I do like it. I have you and this forum to thank for the urge.

Currently I'm awash in lovely leaf lettuce, oranges, lemons and tangeloes, plus lots and lots of flowers too (and literally many dozens of open and soon-to-open aloe blooms too). This cool snap this week is not my favorite, LOL, but hopefully we'll return to warmer weather by later this week.

Here are a couple of plants looking good regardless of the weather:

Nasturtiums blooming away. They're so easy autumn, winter, and spring, so I grow a lot of them (plus they grow themsevles by self-sowing around the garden too).

A parma type violet, that is very, very scented (like violets, LOL). I got it in a plant swap several years ago and I thought for sure it would die the first summer, but it's done great for several years now and slowly spreads around the garden. I love it.

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Happy gardening everyone,
and Happy 100th Birthday Arizona (yesterday, the 14th).

Here is a link that might be useful: Grant's pics from his garden Feb 2012

Okay, one more that I noticed this morning, some fun "cape cowslips" (Lachenalia) blooming on the east side of the house. I bought a single bulb several years ago and it's become a very nice clump that emerges in late autumn, blooms in mid-winter, and then disappears back underground for summer. I slop water on it once a week when it has leaves, and none at all when it doesn't. Easy, colorful (some might say TOO colorful, LOL, but I like me some color), and fun.

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What's looking good in your garden?
Happy gardening,
Grant

Wonderful flowers, Grant! Love the Cow Lips!!

Thanks Grant, have picked up some compost and will get going. Has anyone tried the Surfinia Petunias? They are awesome looking, trail up to 8 feet the catalog states. Everyone's gardens are looking beautiful.

Got some Kiwano (horned melon) seeds started and growing, got a few starfruit to germinate. Waiting on 2 different varieties of passion fruit seed I brought back from Maui. Just bought a walk-in greenhouse from Big Lots for only $70!

Mexican Papaya has survived the summer, as has the bananas and the plumerias. Bamboo is growing like...bamboo, crazy plant.

finally got some pics of my Hong Kong Orchid tree.

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its got a ton more that haven't even opened yet :)

Here are pictures of my mini-orchard. To save bandwidth, I put them into a Photobucket Album, link is below. The file names are descriptive of what you are looking at.

Here are some comments:

1. I have 2 Almonds and 1 Apricot along with the Citrus. This is the first year they have bloomed this much!
2. The Key Lime and Variegated Pink Lemon were almost killed last year. When I was done pruning the dead branches etc from them, there was almost only the main trunk left. Now the Key Lime is almost 9 feet tall and the Lemon is about 5 feet tall and 4 feet across.
3. The Moro Blood Orange is over 5 feet high (at its highest point). The fence behind it is 5' high.
4. The Valencia replaced one that died last year. It grew like crazy last summer and is now almost 7-8' high. Considering the amount of new growth now, I can'[t wait to see how big it will be at the end of this summer.
5. The Meyer Lemon was new last April (2011). It is growing very aggressively as you can see.

Sorry these aren't as colorful as some other pictures, but they portend some fruitful harvests in the future. And, I am glad I partially fertilized early (see my other post about when to fertilize considering the warm winter).

Happy gardening!

Peter

Here is a link that might be useful: Photobucket Album of Spring in Tucson

Raimeikin your Hong Kong Orchid tree is beautiful. I planted one last October. Many of the leaves have dried up brown edges, kind of looks like salt burn, but some of the dryness goes as deep as the middle of the leaf. I have lost some leaves but am getting a little new growth. Any ideas what I'm doing wrong? Too much water? Too little water? It's on a drip that has been watering 3 times a day for an hour each time, every 8 days.

can you provide any pictures of the leaves?

I don't have mine on drip. I flood it once every two weeks this winter and once or twice a week during summer.

Some of the leaves on mine actually started to yellow up but the veins were still green, which is a sign of iron chlorisis. So I sprayed the foliage with iron chelate. And also I bought this Iron and soil acidifier. (not exactly this product but a similar one)

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I got a gallon of it from Berridge nursery. It helps acidify the soil and supplies iron.

Awesome new pics, everyone! Love those Hong Kong orchid tree blooms for sure. So lovely! Thanks too for being so generous about information regarding what and how your sprayed yours. Gardeners are the best. :)

Nice spring pics too, Peter, looks like you're set for a good, bountiful harvest. Love it!

Happy gardening everyone,
Grant

Grant, I love your Petunias! Your Nasturtiums are also gorgeous :D
Raimeiken, your Hong Kong Orchid Tree looks really neat, do people commonly have those here in Arizona? I don't think I've ever seen one.

I decided to try doing a strawberry tower this spring :D It's more of a short/squat one, made out of a 5 gallon bucket. I got 6 transplants into it the day before yesterday and will add 4 more in the coming days :) Today, I went to check on them and look what I found!
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I was very excited haha (this is my first time doing strawberries). I will get a photo of the tower once I get them all in :)

Sirenita, your strawberry looks great--delicious actually, LOL. Definitely post some pics as it progresses, and of the whole tower, we'd love to see!

Thanks to everyone for sharing your gardens with us, they're really fun to see and share. :)

Happy gardening everyone!
Take care,
Grant (ps: here's a pic of the east side of my house--it's full of all sorts of plants, but I really like the different textures, colors, and growth habits. If you look waaaay in the background you can see one of my three concrete bird baths, plus some nasturtium blooms, a white obelisk/armillary that I train Merremia dissecta on, etc).

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Here is a link that might be useful: My Garden Pics February 2012

My Brugmansia finally bloomed for the first time! :D
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Pink hibiscus starting to bloom as well. This one produces so much bloom in the spring-summer but it doesn't grow too many leaves for me. I don't know why it's like that. The little leaves its got are small too compared to my other hibiscus.
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I found these at a local Lowes. I'm pretty stoked about it. I've been wanting to grow this tree for a while now. I used to eat the fruits from this tree when I was a kid.
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What a gorgeous plant, and beautiful blooms, raimeiken. I've never heard of guamuchil -- what's it like?

it's like a tamarind, but the meat around the seeds taste kind of like coconut. Moist and sweet.

Congratulations on the great blooms raimeiken, that's exciting! The brugmansia is great and the hibiscus is really pretty (and nice and early too!). The foliage on that brugmansia is PERFECT. Lookin' good!

I'm curious about the guamuchil too. I see the genus is the same as our local Texas Ebony (prior to a recent re-naming, grrr), which does so well here. I may have to do some research on this one. Sounds really tempting--thanks for sharing about it, plus all of the other great pics too.

Happy gardening!
Grant

Grant... ahoy mate!!

Question...with all your container plants on your back porch and yard....
How do you keep the plants from getting so hot during the summer months?

My containers just get so hot that the plants suffer and die. Do you double pot? Stick with plants that love the hot weather and take the hot sun? OR are they on the north side of the house?

We want to plant more in containers to have flowers closer to the windows, but I am just not successful for all year long foliage.

Help me please!

Thanks!!

Hiya AZbookworm and all,

I grow a lot of cacti and succulents in containers and they do great year round. When it comes to leafy/flowery things like petunias, lobelia and geraniums, I DO grow a lot of them (full sun) autumn, winter, spring and early summer when I can get a nice long 8 or 9 month season of blooms from them. When it gets blast furnace hot, I do cut back quite a bit and put many of the pots I use for flowery things in storage. I still grow some flowery things in summer like vincas, but not nearly as many pots as in autumn, winter and spring.

Something like vincas in a pot in full sun will want water almost every day in mid-summer. If I head out of town for work or vacation, I run a temporary automatic irrigation line to those pots and then hope for the best.

The main framework of my pots is cacti and succulents, with lots of leafy blooming things in the cool months, and then just a pot or two of leafy blooming things in summer.

Happy gardening bookworm and everyone!
Grant

Here is a link that might be useful: Pics from my garden so far March 2012