Mary, you convinced me to get one of these "giant pipevine" / "Dutchman's pipe vine" plants (Aristolochia gigantea). It's been doing really great, producing lots of these awesome, large heart-shaped leaves. I'm hoping for blooms some day, but even without it's providing a nice visual block for my messy potting area/trash can area, hah! When does your typically flower? Does yours die back each winter? Happy gardening all!

Hi Grant, I'm beginning to regret this vine. It's a monster. Has not died back but our recent winters have been mild and it's in a sheltered spot. It Is Huge and is eating everything in its path, including a small shed!! It quit flowering when the heat kicked in. Checking my Pictures folder, the dates are November through about April. Good luck and keep us posted.

Thanks for the information, Mary, I appreciate it. I've got mine in a very large container off the east side of the house, with a built in trellis but it sounds like that may not be large enough, hah. I'll keep an eye on it for sure. Thanks for the information on the blooming season too. That helps! I don't keep a garden journal, but I DO label my pics and toss them in albums month by month--like you mentioned, it helps me search to see what plant is doing what, when. :)

Here are a couple of things looking good in the garden right now.

'Parfianka pomegranate' coloring up nicely. It's the first crop for this plant so I'm excited.

Echeveria 'Blue Spike' that I've been growing here for over fifteen years now in pots and in the ground. It has proven absolutely immune to anything our weather can give it, summer or winter. Afternoon shade or bright shade all day, and water only when dry. Nice orange flowers in late winter too. So easy!

Merremia dissecta flower and fun flower-shaped seed pod. Fun, VERY vigorous vines that will eat your house if you let them, hah. Full, crazy hot sun and occasional water (and something to twine up) are all they ask. Not for the faint of heart!

Okay, only a tiny bit of a plant is showing, but here's a hummingbird on the very tip of a leaf on my 12 foot tall hybrid tree Aloe 'Hercules'. So cute, and not shy at all!

Finally, two different color forms of crested Mammilaria elongata. Afternoon shade and water only when dry. So easy and so interesting.

Happy gardening all, let us know how things look in your garden!

Grant

How lovely was this morning? It was a shocking 72 F this morning when I went out to quietly weed and water before work. Love it!

Here's a few things looking good:

Crinum lily 'Ellen Bosanquet' coloring up nicely. Great plants for afternoon shade here in pots or in the ground (she's in the ground). Can't wait for thos big reddish pink flowers!

My favorite hybrid aloe, 'Cynthia Giddy' really wants a touch of afternoon shade, but I've spread her all over my garden including a couple in crazy hot full sun like this one. The foliage is a big annoyed in full summer sun, hah, but she'll survive AND she flowers a couple times in summer, so I leave this one put. Quick pic with a Mexican fencepost cactus in the background.

Finally, a couple of rain lilies are in bloom since my little garden got a nice deep soak a week ago. They are like clockwork, blooming 5-10 days after a rain. Lots of us have tried to trick them into thinking they've gotten rain but it seems to never work. In any case here's a quick pic.

What's looking good, bad or awful in your garden? We want to hear, pics or not. Happy gardening!

Here's a few pics from today in the back yard.

Cherokee purple tomatoes are still going strong. This plant has gotten really big (it's about 5 feet tall, by 5 feet wide now) and this one plant produces way more tomatoes than I can use (even for extra stuff like salsa).

I keep cherry tomatoes in a container near the patio. the branches get weighed down with tomatoes and droop down the sides.

I'm finally getting pomegranates this year too :)

Does anyone know what this little plant is? I have a few growing in my containers and I've never seen them in my yard before so I'm assuming they might have been failed seed experiments that made their way into the potting soil of these containers. (the main plant that's growing in this container is a Vitex agnus-castus.)

However, key lime season has begun!

Great new pics and updates, all, thanks for sharing your awesome gardens. Beautiful harvest, iAndy, I'm envious of those tomatoes especially. Your fun seedlings sure looks like a cedar/cypress? There are a few types that grow and love it here. Let us know if you decide on a firm ID. It's cool whatever it is!

LOVE that dragonfruit, Kevin, let us know how it tastes. Looking great! Nice Key lime, Marianne! I grew them at my last local garden and loved them! I've got 'Bearss' limes now but they don't ripen until autumn/winter. You're giving me a craving, hah! Perfect looking fruit!

Here is that crinum lily, 'Ellen Bosanquet' open and looking/smelling great:

A fun, otherworldly flower on Aristolochia fimbriata. Great, scrambling more than climbing pipe vines.

Finally, a quick pic of Gomphrena globosa variety 'Fireworks' with good ol' chartreuse 'Margarita' ornamental sweet potato vine in the background. Great, durable heat lovers for our climate. Happy gardening!

Great pics Grant, I don't know how you fit all that 'stuff' into you yard!

Kevin

Love the weird Aristolochia!

Everything in the garden seems to be liking the cloudy weather. My Bauhinia mexicana planted in a large pot last fall is hanging in there. It has been flowering continuously since March.

Thanks, Kevin, *I* don't know how I fit it all in too, hah. You've gotta watch your step at my place, hah! Glad you like the pics though, I appreciate it. Isn't that pipe vine fun, Mary? It stays nice and short and dies to the ground in winter so it's easy to manage. Here's a new one for me this year, that's done great (autumn blooming so I haven't seen the flowers yet), Aristolochia quercetorum. Nice green leaves, wet from this morning's sprinkles. It's about four feet tall so far and climbing.

LOVE that Bauhinia, Jon, so pretty. It looks very, very happy! How tall is it?

Happy gardening all!

Grant

It's a shame they don't sell Bauhinia mexicana around here very often. It's flowering season is much longer than the more commonly sold Bauhinia lunarioides. I got mine online from Zone 9 tropicals. The quart size was 19 inches tall when I got it in October, it is now about 30 inches tall and wide.

A plant that was sold to me as "Aristolochia quercifolia" is blooming now, I think it's the same species as yours. The same plant also has two Pipevine Swallowtail butterfly caterpillars eating it, which is unusual, they normally prefer my A. fimbriata plants.

Great pics and info, Jon. I'm not very familiar with B. mexicana at all. I love the idea of a longer bloom season, and such nice growth. You're giving me a craving, hah. Your pipe vine foliage sure looks like my A. quercetorum to me. And you're right, that caterpillar is uber-orange. I like it! I don't have any cats on my quercetorum or my gigantea (I think Mary has mentioned THAT one has too highly concentrated toxins even for the pipevine swallowtail caterpillars?) but I DO get them on my A. fimbriata too. Seems unfair, LOL as that's the smallest of the bunch. I only get them rarely on A. watsonii, the mouse ear pipevine (which is having a banner year for seedlings this year, even though I've had several 7-10 day trips away from the garden (they get no irrigation)). Fun plants and awesome pics!

Happy gardening all,

Grant

OK, I have uploaded all my pictures and written most of my comments down twice now and had issues where safari reloaded and wiped out my post making me start over. Im going to do this in 3 or 4 seperate posts in case it happens again so I wont have to start over completely.

My pineapples are doing great. I tried to force them to fruit about four weeks ago there is absolutely no sign of success. I have read that it can take up to six weeks to flower after doing the "apple technique" but I'm thinking it didnt work. The One in the middle was just planted a couple days ago and is already getting new leaves. I'm probably going to need to transplant the larger one to a bigger pot or into the ground soon.

My wisteria is doing much better now that I put shade cloth on the west side of it. The people at Moonvalley nursery I still swear to me that it can be a good vine for my pergola and can take the sun as long as I establish a good deep root system but it just seems like the foliage might be too delicate for our sun. If anyone has seen these take full sun or live on top of the Pergola in our area Id love to know about it. I may need to just end up replacing it with Tangerine crossvine.

Ever since I planted this Italian Cyprus in the ground it has refused to grow even half an hour inch. Starting to get brown to now. My member seems to think that it is because it is right next to the hot cinderblock wall but I've seen many of them next to walls like this. Does anyone know what the volunteer is next to it? Ive included a couple of more pics of it below.

My watermelon plant gone from 6 inches to 10 feet in a month. I even got at least one watermelon growing on it. It naturally pollinated i'm guessing by the bees that love the flowers of the phoenix canariensis right above it.

That looks like spurge weed and it's probably not doing your Italian Cyprus or your watermelon plant any good. It robs your plants of water and nutrients, and it harbors native fire ants. Here's a U of A Link.

If your Italian Cyprus wall is facing south or west it would benefit from some shade cloth until it is established.

Italian cypress trees are susceptible to spider mites. Giving the foliage a good spraying once a week with the garden hose will help to control them.

colinhanke your spurge weed is also called purslane or verdolaga in Spanish and is very edible! It can take over really fast, when it does that at my house we just yank it out and cook it all up! Yum!

The stuff to the left of the Cyprus is edible, the stuff to the right is not. The verdolagas apparently goes well cooked with tomatillos and peppers. I need to try making it.

Unfortunately, most of the Italian cypress in my area are slowly declining because of spider mites that seem impossible to get rid of on mature tall trees. Mine look bad, but it will cost a lot to have them removed.