Well a blog, of course.
Its been a while since January. Lots of things happening.
Biggest event was organising and enjoying the annual Zoo Plant Sale. Took a lot of time coordinating 12 vendors, going begging the local nurseries and garden shops for donations and working with the volunteers to do set up the evening before and take down the following Saturday afternoon. A cold and very wet Friday evening made set up a misery. Some vendors were there putting up 10 x 10 pop up tents and making multiple runs with plants. Saturday morning at 6am we were at the zoo gate waiting for security to open up and watching the wild pigs roam around. But the sun came out, vendors arrived and by 7.30 buyers were arriving for the 8am opening. By 9.00am most good items were sold. Beautiful sunny day, hundreds, maybe thousands of happy plant buying folks. Being the lead organizer I get to meet all the nursery vendors and get the inside scoup of plants.
Back at home:
The Sunken Garden - This is now the orchid garden. All the hard work is finished, just planting and weeding remains as a continuous activity. Lots of orchids have been added but few are blooming yet. Beehive gingers that went in last year are now blooming, lots of new Calatheas have been added following multiple trips to Walmart. Lots of new bromeliads are located in various locations and my latest obsession, collectible philodendrons and rare anthuriums have added to the landscape.
The Woodpile garden has not seen much work.
An area of neglected garden between First Loop and Near Gate is getting a facelift but I have yet to name it. Last week I took down a bunch of overhanging trees and then the rain started so the debris still needs to be removed. lots of new planting area will be available once the clearing project is finished.
Got my weedwacker into the Lost Garden a couple of weeks ago. Looks of great plants put in the ground years ago are still there thriving but need to be freed of the overgrown weeds. But then that why its the lost Garden. Giant white shell gingers, camelias, bamboos Mendinillas and heliconias all there waiting to be revealed.
Other areas of the garden need and receive raking and clearing as time is available. Running bamboo season is just getting started so over the next 5 months I will be focused on kicking over the new canes. The regular clumping bamboos are just starting to show new growth here and there.
That huge stand of giant bamboo that got broken in the storm, well my friend and I name it "The Dragon" and I was Saint George. Over the course of some weeks we slowing cut away at the base of the damaged canes and pulled the canes to the ground. We finally finished the job the day before he returned to Seattle. What a beast to clean up. Some canes were 80 ft high and 8 inches across.
The Orchid Cactus have started blooming again. I worked hard to clear up overgrown and neglected pots and will have a good show this year. Fewer numbers of pots to maintain makes all the difference.
Last week I got to join a group of friends and visited a local private garden. The owner collects rare palms, Philodendrons and Anthuriums bromeliads, bamboos, cycads etc etc Its an amazing 6 acre garden but the problem is he propagates the plants and sells them at really cheap prices. You can imagine the rest of the story. Went back for another visit yesterday cause I forgot to get a root of the giant red hairy hanging Heliconia plant. Added four more plants to that shopping list. All you have to do is point out a plant and say how much do you want for a piece of that, and he says what do you think and then he rips it out the ground or off the tree or says he has it in a pot down in the nursery. One of my best buys was a cluster of anthurium seedlings. They were self sets under the mother plant and the owner just grabbed a handful and said $10. I now have 38 struggling babies to nurture to maturity.
Propagation is my biggest problem. I'm finding self set gingers and anthuriums and feel so tempted to go harvest them into pots. The blue tree hydranger is just screaming "come get cuttings" how can I refuse, large clumps of heliconia need to be divided and spread around, yellow jade vine seeds are coming up in the driveway for me to rescue and put in pots. Say no more.
For the future, the plant sale vendors and customers are all sending the message on facebook that they want another sale in October so I think that will be confirmed at the Friends of the Zoo board meeting next Wednesday. I wonder who will organize that one.
Check out facebook for the Hawaii Tropical Gardening and Landscaping group. Lots of good stuff there.
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