High Density Gardening Downtown Houston
alexisreal
10 years ago
A few pics of this summers garden, in the heart of houston. Mango trees, avocado trees, grapes , bananas, oranges , lemons , papaya, peppers , tomatoes , flowers , coconut trees, jack fruit tree , and much more in a very small space .
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stanofh 10a Hayward,Ca S.F. bay area
6 years agoRelated Discussions
Discussion: Perceptions of a garden being 'dated'
Comments (32)Again, a lot of these things are a reaction to economics and some by availability. Some are a reflection of values at the time. Used ties were a very cheap construction material that allowed people to manipulate grades in big ways at comparatively low costs. This is what is now going on with modular block walls. Bark mulch was a byproduct of the timber industry and got to be useful re-use of a waste product (it used to be very cheap 50 years ago). It eventually became a commodity on its own. Now other waste products (old fences, pallets, and some demo material) are ground up to supplement or replace bark mulch. It is helped along by the values of the time which include the notion that recycling a waste product is "the right thing to do". It always helps when these materials are making somebody some money as well. Recycled tires are definitely more embraced by eco-superheroes than by high end consumers. This is a head scratcher to me when I visit a town owned park that has this under a swing set adjacent to a salt marsh. The stuff is kicked around everywhere, looks bad, and smells. I don't know how you can clean it up without removing an equal volume of soil effectively doubling the volume of waste. I don't get the idea of why dumping it here is better than dumping it somewhere else. But, some people felt they were saving the world doing this. I'm sure they will blame "industry" for misleading them. Availability also affects fads when something that was not widely availably becomes widely available and people react to the novelty of it. Red lava rock in the eighties, bright colored dyed mulch, strong colored concrete pavers, granite cobbles from India, ornamental grasses, ... These existed for quite a while before they became widely available. When they did become available a lot of people rushed be on the cutting edge of doing "new things". Novelty goes a long way, too. I'm fascinated by the way western cities and the people in them find so much beauty in colored concrete pavers and modular blocks while here in the Northeast they are viewed as extremely cheesy and tacky. Even multi-million dollar homes out there are fully dressed out with it. What is embraced here is possibly old and passe there....See MoreGarden Report after the storm
Comments (12)I feel blessed that the storm did minimal damage to my little green acre, it almost makes me afraid of what the next one might bring. Other than some small branches and leaves on the lawn, there's not much in the way of debris. Water did get in the cellar but so little a few paper towels would dry it up. I set my rain gauge in the lawn away from any tree canopy and it measured just 5" after the storm passed. That's a lot and would normally mean a flooded cellar but it's not as much as we've had with other storms that didn't have official names. The power was out 48+ hours so everything in the 'fridge will need to be tossed out, but that's a very small pricetag compared to the cost of what could have happened. Lots of folks lost their end-of-season vegetable harvests, including tomatoes that were just beginning to ripen and I passed by cornfields where huge swaths of tall cornstalks were flattened. Another blessing is having power restored when thousands are still in the dark, including my son and a dear friend who lives in the same town just a couple miles from me. There are houses with huge trees that fell on them whose occupants may wait weeks or longer for help, and at what cost? There is a street I pass on my way to work (and just about everywhere else) that is closed to traffic as they try to remove a tree that seems to have fallen across the road and landed on the power lines as well as other trees so it's dangerous to cut and even more dangerous to let it fall. How do you untangle a mess like that without someone getting hurt...or worse? Are those who take on this work getting paid enough to take such risks? Then there's the uncertainty still about the extent of the damage in Vermont. So many small rivers are swollen and raging out of their banks and over 200 roads have been washed away, it will be months if not longer before the full extent of the devastation is known. I wish all Vermont folks well......See MoreUnique planter box instead of lanai
Comments (4)sierraeast - The views are somewhat subjective. The city/ocean view is on the west side of the property. The east, south and north sides have OK views, but nothing dramatic. The units already have lanais on the living floor not to mention an accessible rooftop deck. In a condo setting where people have no access to exterior living areas, I agree... a lanai would be preferred so people have some place to be outside while in or around their home. But in this case, people have a couple options to enjoy a little outdoor living. Also, the traffic noise can be loud during some times of the day and evening so I wouldn't think people would want to stand outside the lanai, especially in a bedroom. Believe it or not, most condo owners in Hawaii have their lanais enclosed if the governing association allows it. I guess if people want to be outside, they just go down the street to the beach : ) lorraineal - yes, I thought about that. I would think that people would clean the area as they would any other interior plant collection. From a cleaning perspective, having this exterior planter is no different than having a few plants inside your home. You have to pick up the leaves every now and then but in an exterior setting, this can be done less frequently than if the plants were indoors. The plants will be mostly accessible from a sliding door (center sliding door, similar to a french door so 50% of the area is accessible directly from the edge. The area is not large - only 26" deep, so it should be fairly easy to reach/maintain. I was hoping to get a few thumbs up... so perhaps my idea is baked....See MoreHigh density fruit tree planting/BYOC
Comments (13)Hi Max, I don’t have room for fruit trees (oh, how I wish I did!), so I don’t really know what I’m talking about here, and if I had to try to pick just one or two fruit trees to plant I don’t have a clue how I’d pick them, but I just want to “throw out” one other possibility that doesn’t usually come up when talking about fruit trees. If you do decide to grow one/some, a really easy to grow one (I believe) is the Italian prune/plum tree. The plums are small, but if you let them ripen completely they’re incredibly sweet and yummy—I don’t like a lot of plums because they get so tart near the stone. There was one of these growing behind the greenhouses in one of the perennial growing fields at Paulino’s when I worked there, and it got NO care whatsoever—except watering, which it got when the perennials were watered—and it bore (a lot of) fruit almost every year. It stayed fairly small—with no pruning. I ate my lunch in that field, and every year I’d be watching the fruit start to ripen—and then some of the laborers would come out (en masse) and pick almost all of it before it was really ripe. I always got a little bag full for myself after they were done (I’d sorta “climb” it to reach the ones they hadn’t bothered with) and I’d take them home and let them ripen the rest of the way there, and they were so good—but they would have been even sweeter if they had ripened fully on the tree. I googled for a page with some good info for you, but couldn’t really find a very useful site, but here’s a pic of the plums, and that really is what they look like. I’m salivating! http://www.gardeningknowhow.com/wp-content/uploads/2013/07/prunes.jpg And while I was looking for the Italian plum info I never found, I ran into this “Growing tree fruits in short-season gardens” pdf from the University of Idaho. Skimmed thru it and it looks like you might find some useful info here—just not much about Italian plums! http://www.cals.uidaho.edu/edcomm/pdf/BUL/BUL0867.pdf Montrose is my favorite “little” mountain town! (But it’s sure not as “little” as it used to be, especially out along the highway!) Skybird...See More
Jacob Dickens
6 years agostanofh 10a Hayward,Ca S.F. bay area
6 years agomorkhandesigns
6 years agostanofh 10a Hayward,Ca S.F. bay area
6 years agostanofh 10a Hayward,Ca S.F. bay area
6 years agomorkhandesigns
6 years agoJacob Dickens
6 years agolast modified: 6 years agomorkhandesigns
5 years agostanofh 10a Hayward,Ca S.F. bay area
5 years agomorkhandesigns
5 years agoJacob Dickens
5 years agomorkhandesigns
5 years agomorkhandesigns
5 years agostanofh 10a Hayward,Ca S.F. bay area
5 years agomorkhandesigns
5 years agomorkhandesigns
5 years agoWanted to share the progress of the mango trees planted outdoors. Here is a shot looking down,
hey are coming back nicely after this winter!Jacob Dickens
5 years agostanofh 10a Hayward,Ca S.F. bay area
5 years agoJacob Dickens
5 years agolast modified: 5 years agomorkhandesigns
5 years agoIs this a noni fruit tree? I brought it back from a tiny sprout while on Hawaii but am not sure what it is
stanofh 10a Hayward,Ca S.F. bay area
5 years agomorkhandesigns
5 years agolast modified: 5 years agoI think I am an official plant hoarder..watching the sun set from a different angle today!
morkhandesigns
5 years agoI took a cutting off a plumeria obtuse in Hawaii, after seven months, it finally started showing leaves and a flower spike , it looked dormant that long! This variety has shiny leaves.
stanofh 10a Hayward,Ca S.F. bay area
5 years agolast modified: 5 years agomorkhandesigns
5 years agostanofh 10a Hayward,Ca S.F. bay area
5 years agolast modified: 5 years agoJacob Dickens
5 years agomorkhandesigns
5 years agomorkhandesigns
5 years agoWhat are these fruits?, found this tree growing on an abandoned lot near the street
stanofh 10a Hayward,Ca S.F. bay area
5 years agomorkhandesigns
5 years agostanofh 10a Hayward,Ca S.F. bay area
5 years agomorkhandesigns
5 years agomorkhandesigns
5 years ago
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alexisrealOriginal Author