As leaves fall and the call to “leave the leaves” rises—from major news outlets to your next door neighbor—you may find yourself scratching your head as to how, exactly, to leave the leaves.
The slogan is a fun way to get people to consider a serious problem. We are in the sixth great extinction event in the history of the earth, which is directly affecting our food web. When one species goes extinct or its population declines severely, it can have a negative ripple effect on other species and the ecosystem as a whole. How does this tie into leaving the leaves in your own backyard? How does it help? And how do you do it?
Doug Tallamy can explain. He is an entomologist, a conservationist, and a professor in the Department of Entomology and Wildlife Ecology at the University of Delaware. He’s even written a book, Nature’s Best Hope, which is a blueprint for saving the earth one backyard at a time. (It’s on Gardenista contributor Melissa Ozawa’s list of favorite gardening books: see In Gratitude: How a Gift from a Boss Led to a Love for Gardening Books.) Below, Doug gives us the low-down on leaving the leaves.
Photography by Joy Yagid.
Q: Why do you think people don’t leave the leaves?
Above: We’ve been conditioned to think that we have to clean up the leaves, but fallen leaves are not only beautiful, they help the soil.
A: We do what we observed when we were kids. It’s been part of our culture to get rid of the leaves. You either burn them or you put them out in the curb for the city to take away, but you have to take them off your lawn and do something with them.
Q: What’s the easiest way to start?
A: Well, there is a conflict between having that perfect lawn and and the leaves that fall on the lawn. So people say “I gotta get the leaves off the lawn.” [The solution is to reduce] the area you have in lawn. The perfect way to start doing that is to create beds under the trees that you have. And you do that by raking the leaves into those beds. And in the beginning when you’re trying to actually smother the grass, [to make the beds] you rake a lot of leaves, you make it pretty thick. My son bought a house and the first fall, he called me up and said, “Dad, I got too many leaves. What should I do with them?’” I said: “Put them in your flower beds.” He said: “I don’t have enough flower beds.” I said: “Exactly.” You increase the amount of flower beds and that’s where the leaves go. The extra ones that just don’t fit in those flower beds can go into a compost heap.
Cherry Ong is taking us on a look back at her garden over the past summer.
I bet you’re all enjoying autumn but somehow miss summer. I miss this summer and look back with much fondness and happy memories of the garden. Here are photos of a favorite corner this year.
The addition of a DIY greenhouse last year (October 2022) resulted in this graveled corner, where I was picturing the outdoor chairs and table could be moved. My family couldn’t imagine how that would look, but the corner has been tweaked further (to include another table and more plants—what else?) this year. I embraced all kinds of color this summer, including red, and this spot transformed into a happy corner that the hummingbirds visit multiple times each day. The corner also has a sweet view of the garden. Even my dog sat and enjoyed this area when he was out in the garden.
I wish you all a wonderful autumn!
Cherry’s new small greenhouse is perfect for overwintering precious plants.
The container’s colorful foliage from a wide range of plants, including many succulents, forms the foundation, while the bright flowers of fuchsias (Fuchsia hybrids, hardiness varies by cultivar) provide even more color as well as nectar for visiting hummingbirds.
Aeonium ‘Zwartkop’ (Zones 9–11) is a stunning succulent, with its little rosettes of dark leaves growing on tall stems.
A variety of container-grown plants put on a show in front of the greenhouse.
Abutilonmegapotamicum (Zones 8–10) has yellow flower petals emerging from a bright red calyx.
Cherry fills every corner of the rest of her garden with beautiful plants.
Broccoli, Cherry’s dog, enjoys the new sitting area.
How did your garden do this summer? We’d love to see it, so send us some photos!
Have a garden you’d like to share?
Have photos to share? We’d love to see your garden, a particular collection of plants you love, or a wonderful garden you had the chance to visit!
To submit, send 5-10 photos to [email protected] along with some information about the plants in the pictures and where you took the photos. We’d love to hear where you are located, how long you’ve been gardening, successes you are proud of, failures you learned from, hopes for the future, favorite plants, or funny stories from your garden.
Understanding amaryllis dormancy is key to helping your plant bloom consistently year after year.
In this guide, I’m going to explain everything you need to know about this natural part of your plant’s life cycle, including the timing, how to care for your dormant amaryllis, and how to revive it after.
I’ll also tell you how to spot the difference between a dead Hippeastrum and one that’s hibernating, so you don’t accidentally discard the bulb when it’s still perfectly healthy.
Does Amaryllis Go Dormant?
In their natural habitat, amaryllis (Hippeastrum) plants go dormant as the temperature cools down in the fall or early winter. This rest period helps them restore their energy so they can bloom. But they don’t always go dormant on their own.
If yours is indoors, consistent watering and warm temperatures will encourage it to stay awake. In that case, it will just continue growing leaves and probably won’t flower.
Though that’s not necessarily a bad thing, because they do make lovely green houseplants (which is what mine were for many years before I learned about their dormancy cycle).
Should I Let My Amaryllis Go Dormant?
If your amaryllis starts going dormant on its own, then you should definitely let it happen naturally, rather than attempt to stop it, even if it’s the wrong time of year.
Trying to prevent it or keep your plant awake by adding more water, light, fertilizer, or heat could end up damaging or killing the bulb, and you don’t want to risk doing that.
Unlike many other bulbs, amaryllis plants don’t actually need a rest period. The plant will continue to grow just fine without it, and it may even flower for you occasionally.
However, they do flower more reliability, and the display is much more impressive if the bulbs have a proper rest period in the fall. Plus you can time it for the perfect holiday display every year.
In their native habitat, Hippeastrums hibernate in the fall through early winter, depending on the weather. So you should mimic that natural timeframe.
To time it for the holidays, put your amaryllis into dormancy 10-14 weeks before you want the flowers to open. So, for Christmas blooms, that would be sometime in September.
How Long Do Amaryllis Need To Be Dormant?
On average, the bulbs need to be dormant for 6 to 8 weeks. This gives them time to rest and regenerate their energy.
How long they will actually stay dormant is another thing, and the timeline can vary. Sometimes they’ll start to wake up earlier than 6 weeks, or it can take longer than 8.
So check on your amaryllis often during hibernation for ones that might be waking up early, and also be patient – don’t give up on the slowpokes.
To get your plant ready for hibernation, reduce the amount of water you give it and stop fertilizing in late summer. The leaves might start turning yellow or brown, or they may stay green.
Sometime in late September, move your amaryllis to a cool (45-60°F), dark, and dry location indoors, even if the plant is still green and healthy looking. An unfinished basement or unheated garage are perfect.
You can use pruning shears to cut all of the leaves off right away, or wait until they die back on their own before you remove them. Whichever you prefer.
Why Won’t My Amaryllis Go Dormant?
If your Hippeastrum won’t go dormant, that means it’s getting too much warmth, water, and light.
If this is the case for yours, move it to a dark closet, basement, or garage and stop watering it all together. Eventually it will decide to rest.
You’ll know when your plant begins its rest period because the leaves will start turning yellow in the fall. Then they’ll eventually shrivel, turn brown, and die back completely, leaving you with nothing but a bulb in the soil.
So, unlike some other plants that just stop growing during this time, it’s pretty obvious when an amaryllis is dormant.
There are a couple of different ways to tell whether your plant is dead or dormant, and you’ll know pretty quickly which one it is.
First, consider the season. If the foliage is dying back in late summer or early fall, then your plant is probably entering its rest period. Otherwise it may be dying.
Next, check the bulb itself. If it feels plump and firm and you can see healthy white tissue, that means it’s still alive. Otherwise, if it’s soft and mushy or smells bad, then it is probably suffering from rot and dying instead.
Fortunately, there’s not too much you need to do to care for your amaryllis bulbs during their rest period.
Simply check on them once a month to make sure that they are not drying out too much or staying too wet.
Monitor the temperature too. It should stay under 60°F (15-16°C) and above 45°F (7°C). If the bulbs get too warm or too cold, they may rot.
Do You Water Amaryllis During Dormancy?
Since their rest period is so short, you shouldn’t have to water your amaryllis at all during dormancy, especially large bulbs.
However, if the bulb begins to shrivel considerately, you can spritz it lightly with a plant mister to rehydrate it.
Otherwise, if yours is in a pot, lightly moisten the soil, but only if it’s bone dry. In either case, do not to get your bulb overly wet or it can rot.
When To Bring Amaryllis Out Of Dormancy
You should bring your amaryllis out of dormancy 6 to 8 weeks after you put it in the dark, or earlier if it starts to grow on its own.
Don’t worry if you don’t see any signs of life when you first bring it out. It can take another 4-6 weeks for them to wake up and start sprouting new leaves again.
Amaryllis bulb coming out of dormancy
How To Revive A Dormant Amaryllis
To wake up your plant, first pot it up if you stored it bare-root. Then give it a good drink to rehydrate it, allowing the excess water to drain from the pot.
I also recommend giving it a half-strength dose of fertilizer at this point, such as compost tea or a liquid plant food.
Move it to a bright location in your home where it will get plenty of sunlight. If the room is too dark, use a grow lamp to supplement.
As soon as you see new growth appearing, you can resume your normal watering schedule.
How Long Does It Take For An Amaryllis To Break Dormancy?
Your amaryllis bulb may begin to break dormancy within a couple of days, or it can take a few weeks, depending on the conditions. On average, it takes 4-6 weeks for them to bloom.
It will take longer if they’re in a cold or dark room. So to speed things up, make sure your bulb gets plenty of light and warmth. You can run a space heater in the room, or try placing a heat mat under the pot.
Gorgeous amaryllis flowers after dormancy
FAQs
Below are my answers to the most frequently asked questions about amaryllis dormancy. If you don’t see yours listed, please ask in the comments below.
What time of year do amaryllis go dormant?
In their natural habitat, amaryllis go dormant in the fall or early winter. This is when the cooler temperatures and shorter days tell them it’s time to take a rest.
What do you do with amaryllis after dormancy?
You can wait for your amaryllis plant to wake up on its own after dormancy, or take steps to revive it yourself. These include watering it, giving it a dose of a fertilizer or compost tea, and moving it to a warm location with plenty of bright light or sunshine.
How long do amaryllis bulbs need to rest?
Amaryllis bulbs need to rest for between 6 to 8 weeks to generate enough energy to form flower buds.
How long can amaryllis stay dormant?
Amaryllis bulbs can stay dormant up to 12 months without any issues, as long as you store them properly. However, for the best results, I recommend planting them every year, otherwise they will dry out and eventually die.
How do you keep amaryllis bulbs dormant?
To keep amaryllis bulbs dormant you need to place them in a dark location with a steady temperature between 45 and 60°F (7-16°C). The best places include an unfinished basement, heated garage, or cool closet.
When should I bring my amaryllis out of the dark?
Bring your amaryllis bulbs out of the dark after 6-8 weeks of dormancy, or around 4 to 6 weeks before you want them to flower.
If you want to learn all there is to know about maintaining healthy indoor plants, then you need my Houseplant Care eBook. It will show you everything you need to know about how to keep every plant in your home thriving. Download your copy now!
More About Overwintering Plants
Share your tips about amaryllis dormancy in the comments section below.
There are some plants that are overhyped and others I totally understand what the fuss is about. You see hollies in lots of gardens, and I think they absolutely deserve their popularity.
Hollies are typically evergreen, provide year-round interest with berries and leaves, and they’re super easy to maintain.
When we talk about holly, most people think about the type with the spiky leaves and bright red berries often used as holiday decorations.
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But there is so much variety within the Ilex genus.
There are smooth-leaved types, those with variegated foliage, some with black or yellow berries, and types that crawl along the ground or grow into tall trees.
If you’d like to learn more about the various plants in this diverse genus, here’s what you can expect in this guide:
Let’s start with what the plants in the Ilex genus have in common.
What Is Holly?
When you think of holly, you probably picture the glossy, alternate, spiky green leaves of common holly (llex aquifolium) – but the Ilex genus includes over 500 species, many of which don’t resemble the familiar holiday greenery one bit.
Some species are low-growing shrubs, others may be climbers, or trees that tower up to 80 feet tall. Some need full shade, and others bask in full sunshine.
There are evergreen types and those that lose their leaves in the fall.
Some have leaves with pointed edges called spines. These sharp bits are a defense against browsing by herbivores.
For plants that grow prickly leaves, the entire plant may or may not have the sharp foliage.
They might have some smooth leaves, a few completely prickly leaves, or some that have just a few spines. If an animal browses on the plant, it will respond by growing new leaves that have lots of prickles, and the spikiest foliage is usually concentrated on the lower part of the plant.
These plants grow natively in North America, Europe, Africa, and Asia in temperate and subtropical climates from sea level up to 7,000 feet in elevation. English holly is the only broadleaf evergreen native to the British Isles.
Most hollies are dioecious, which means the male and female parts grow on separate plants.
If you like the berries, you’ll usually need both a male to pollinate the flowers and a female plant to produce the fruit, though there are some cultivars that are parthenogenetic.
That’s just a fancy word for being able to reproduce asexually, which means no male is required to produce fruit.
Speaking of flowers, they’re usually white and the berries are red, yellow, black, orange, or white, depending on the species.
Technically, the berries are actually drupes, but most people know them as berries, so we’ll refer to them that way in this guide.
Yerba mate lovers might not realize that they’re drinking the dried leaves of a holly plant. Ilex paraguariensis is the species where the beloved South American staple comes from.
Cultivation and History
Hundreds of years ago, holly and evergreen oak trees (Quercus ilex) were classified in the same genus because of their similar leaf shape.
Now, we know they’re not closely related; they just look like they are thanks to the shape of the foliage.
A majority of the species in the Ilex genus are native to North and South America.
Smooth winterberry (I. laevigata), mountain winterberry (I. montana) mountain holly (I. mucronata), American (I. opaca) winterberry (I. verticillata), yaupon (I. vomitoria), and dahoon (I. cassine) are a few common indigenous North American species.
These plants have been and continue to be important to the indigenous people in their native areas, both for the wood and for medicinal purposes. The leaves of many species are used to make tea, though the berries can be toxic.
Depending on the species, various parts of the plants are used to treat fevers, to purify the body, to wash the eyes, to improve vigor, and to ease sleep talking.
As more people began cultivating gardens, they wanted broadleaf evergreen options and hollies fit the bill. The most popular species are, by far, the evergreen ones. There are tons of cultivars that have been around for centuries in Europe, Asia, and North America.
In the US, Christmas holly (I. opaca and I. aquifolium) is grown in the Pacific northwest and shipped across the country for use in holiday decor.
A Ilex few species are endangered, and one, the Indian native Nilgiri holly (I. gardneriana), is now extinct due to habitat loss.
Holly Propagation
Most of us will buy potted transplants from nurseries and home stores, but there are options for propagation if you don’t mind a little work.
You can propagate hollies by seed or via cuttings.
From Seed
It’s possible to grow holly from the seeds inside the drupes, but unless you are using seeds from a species plant, the seedlings might not grow true.
Hybrids, for instance, might have sterile seeds. Some cultivars are patented, so check before you start breeding away. This process also takes a long time.
To propagate seeds, pluck ripe drupes off the tree in the fall. The berries should be their mature color, which varies by type, before you pull them.
If in doubt, wait until mid-winter to harvest because then you can be sure they’re mature.
Pluck out the seeds by using your fingers or a knife to dig into the flesh and pull it off, then rinse off any remaining flesh.
Place one seed about an inch deep in a mixture of equal parts sphagnum moss and horticultural sand. Each seed needs a few inches of space, so either plant them four inches apart in a large pot or sow one seed in the center of a four-inch pot.
Place the pot outside in dappled shade. The seeds need to be exposed to low temperatures, which varies depending on the species. So long as the plant is hardy to your Zone, it will work fine.
Keep the medium moist but not wet, and sit tight. You’ll need to wait through an entire year and into the following spring before you might see any signs of growth. It’s possible that the seedlings might emerge in the first spring, but there’s no guarantee.
Once you see new growth emerging from the medium, gradually move the seedlings into the kind of light the species requires.
For example, if the species needs full sun, you’ll want to move the seedling into full sun over a period of a week, starting with just an hour of exposure the first day and adding an hour each following day.
Keep the soil moist but not wet. If you’ve ever wrung out a sponge really well over a sink, that’s the sort of moisture level you’re going for.
Once the plant is at least six inches tall, you can transplant it as described below. Transplanting should ideally be done in the spring or fall.
From Cuttings
Propagation via cuttings is the most common way for growers to produce plants and it’s the best way if you want to faithfully reproduce the parent plant.
This process is easily done in the spring and works well. Look for a pliable branch that is at least six inches long. The diameter of the branch doesn’t matter, but it should be soft and bendable. This usually means you’ll need to take last year or this year’s growth.
Before you take your cutting, loosen up the soil in the area where you’re planting by adding some well-rotted compost.
While we often start our cuttings in pots, we want to put holly in its growing location straight away because these plants don’t like being transplanted.
Make the cut just below a leaf bud at a slight angle. Remove all but the top two leaves. Dip the end in rooting hormone and poke a hole where you want to plant.
Insert the cutting into the hole by an inch or two and firm up the soil around it. You might want to put a small cage around the cutting if you live in an area with hungry herbivores like rabbits or deer.
Moisten the soil and keep it evenly moist as the roots develop. This can take months, so be patient.
Transplanting
Hollies don’t like to be transplanted. Once they get their roots all dug in and happy, they don’t do well if you disturb them.
To reduce the amount of disturbance, prepare your hole in advance and cut the pot away from the roots if it isn’t compostable. Dig a hole the same depth as the growing pot and two to three times as wide.
Don’t worry, most plants actually do best if they are given a solid base to grow on. You don’t need to dig deeper than the existing root size. But you should dig out wider to make it easier for the roots to expand.
Mix in some well-rotted compost with the removed soil. This loosens the soil and provides nutrients that the plant can use as it becomes established.
Typically when transplanting, I recommend removing some of the existing soil from around the root ball and loosening up the roots a bit, but don’t do this. Try to disturb the roots as little as possible.
Don’t worry, the roots will eventually grow out and into the surrounding soil. It’s a gardening myth that roots growing in a circular pattern because of the shape of the nursery container will continue to grow in a circle.
Place the root ball in the hole you made and fill in around it with the soil you removed.
Firm the soil down gently and water well. If the soil settles, add a bit more. You want the plant to be sitting at the same height it was in the growing container.
How to Grow Holly
Most hollies grow best in partial sun or partial shade. A few cultivars or hybrids will tolerate full sun and a few will thrive in full shade.
All Ilex species need regular water when they’re young and all will require less water during the winter than they do in the growing season.
During the growing season, their needs range from preferring consistently moist soil to allowing the top few inches of soil dry out between watering, depending on the species and even the cultivar.
Check the plant’s water requirements before you bring it home to be sure you can provide what it needs.
If you want the berries, you need a male nearby to pollinate the flowers on the female specimen so the plant can produce the fruit. There are a few exceptions to this, but not many.
You’ll have to hunt the self-fertile ones down. We mention some in the section on best species and hybrids below.
If you grow a male plant, you need one for every ten females or so, and it needs to be situated within 50 feet of the females.
Most hollies like slightly acidic soil with a pH between 5.0 and 6.0, but they will tolerate neutral soil as well. Avoid alkaline soil, which will cause yellowing leaves and stunted growth.
A few species like even more acidic soil and won’t thrive even in neutral soil, so be on the lookout.
If you have alkaline soil, rather than constantly trying to fight your soil pH, grow in a raised bed or container instead.
Similarly, if you have heavy clay, you might want to grow in a raised bed or container. These plants generally won’t do well in wet soil, with a few exceptions.
Feed the plants once in the spring with a mild, balanced fertilizer or one formulated for acid-loving plants like Down to Earth’s Acid Mix.
Available at Arbico Organics, it’s my favorite for plants like rhododendrons, blueberries, and hollies because it’s made with cottonseed meal, a waste product that acid-loving plants thrive on.
Growing Tips
Provide acidic to neutral soil that is well-draining.
Ilex species generally need partial sun to partial shade.
To produce berries, female plants need a male plant nearby.
Pruning and Maintenance
All plants in the Ilex genus handle heavy pruning extremely well. If you don’t like the shape of your plant, you can trim it back drastically and then allow it to regrow and reshape it as it grows.
I have taken a 10-foot holly back to the ground and it returned just fine.
That’s not a guarantee, though, so I wouldn’t recommend taking a plant back by more than half unless you don’t mind the risk of losing it.
Keep in mind that a plant that is heavily pruned might not produce flowers or berries the following year.
Don’t move your holly once it’s in place. While these plants tolerate heavy pruning aboveground, they don’t like you messing with the roots. As I mentioned, they don’t transplant well.
Feel free to shear the plants or you can do more judicious pruning.
You should always take off any dead, diseased, dying, or deformed branches. Then, remove whatever you need to provide some shape.
Try to cut the branches in front of a leaf node to encourage bushiness, but the plant will grow around any bad cuts, so don’t stress about it too much.
Holly Species and Hybrids to Select
With so many species in the genus, you know there are lots of options out there. We’ve narrowed it down to just a few of the best for home growers.
Any species that typically has spines will have at least one spineless cultivar, if that’s important to you.
Remember that you should always have a male nearby if you want to produce fruits. We will call it out when there is an exception.
American Holly
American holly (I. opaca) differs from its English cousin (I. aquifolium) in that it has matte leaves rather than glossy ones.
Otherwise, it looks similar, with oval, frequently spiky foliage and red berries that can each be up to half an inch in diameter.
It’s often called Christmas holly because it resembles the English species people have traditionally used to decorate for the holidays.
In the eastern United States, where it grows indigenously, it can reach up to 45 feet tall and half as wide, but most cultivars on the market are much smaller.
‘Satyr Hill’ is an extremely popular cultivar for several reasons. It’s a female, so it produces large, dark red berries in abundance that are evenly distributed throughout the branches.
It also has attractive olive-green, tortoise-shaped leaves that are very large at three inches long and two inches wide.
A clever breeder hybridized pretty English holly (I. aquifolium) with tsuru holly (I. rugosa), known for its unusual leaves, cold hardiness, and prostrate growth habit, to create the glamorous blue holly (I. x meserveae).
It takes its botanical name from its breeder, Mrs. F. Leighton Meserve, who developed a passion for hollies after learning about them at a gardening club lecture in Long Island in the late 1940s.
Thanks to its tsuru heritage, this hybrid is hardy down to Zone 5 and up to Zone 9.
The foliage has a bluish hue, which is where the name comes from, and an elongated oval shape covered in spines along the edges.
The leaves are waxy and somewhat rubbery, making the spines less damaging than those on some other species.
There are several exceptional cultivars, but ‘Blue Princess’ consistently ranks as a top seller. The young leaves are lemon green before deepening to a rich dark blue-green.
The red berries decorate the plant from fall until the birds pluck them from the trees during the winter.
It maintains a petite shape naturally, growing to just 12 feet tall and eight feet wide.
Ready for some garden royalty? ‘Blue Princess’ is available at Nature Hills in #1, #2, #3, and #5 containers.
Chinese Holly
Chinese or horned holly (I. cornuta, previously I. fortunei) is covered in “horned” rectangular leaves covering a shrub that grows up to 20 feet tall, though many cultivars are much smaller. The cheery red berries add color to the winter landscape.
Hardy in Zones 7 to 9, you can shear it into shape to create a topiary or a dense hedge to replace a fence.
Let it grow taller for use as a tree-like specimen. It’s drought tolerant and isn’t harmed by heat and humidity.
‘Needlepoint’ is a cultivar with smooth leaves and an extremely dense growth habit, making it perfect for hedges and living fences.
I. cornuta ‘Needlepoint’ is available at Nature Hills in #3 or #7 containers if you’d like to add one to your yard for some broadleaf evergreen appeal.
Common or English Holly
Good old English or common holly (I. aquifolium) is the one that many people think of when they imagine the plant used for holiday decorations.
It has glossy, oval leaves, often with spiky, prickly protrusions and clusters of bright red berries.
This type is hardy in Zones 7 to 9 and is tough as nails. So tough, in fact, that they might survive and spread too well. They are listed as a noxious weed in Oregon and as invasive in certain parts of Oregon.
But for the rest of us in the right climate, they’re fabulously low-maintenance, with year-round color. They might take up to 20 years to start flowering and fruiting, so you’ll need some patience.
There are over 200 cultivars, ranging in size from two to 50 feet, and some even have variegated foliage with cream or white accents.
Dahoon holly (I. cassine) is native to the southeastern areas of North America, which means it isn’t phased by heat and humidity.
It grows in swampy areas and in shade, so it’s ideal if you have a soggy area that defies other plants. Just don’t grow it outside Zones 7 to 11 or in a dry, sunny spot.
If left to its own devices, this species grows in a treelike habit and can reach up to 30 feet tall. But it looks equally attractive when trimmed into a hedge or topiary.
The orange-red berries persist through the winter, surrounded by elongated oval leaves that lack the aggressive spines of some species.
The variety angustifolia has long, narrow leaves and small, abundant berries. I. cassine var. myrtifolia has petite leaves and fruit. Some cultivars have yellow berries and dark green leaves.
Walmart carries three, 10, or 20 live plants ideal for those who want to create a hedge screen.
While it’s not the most common species out there, it’s worth seeking out.
Finetooth Holly
You probably won’t see finetooth holly (I. serrata) in gardens too often, and that’s a shame.
It’s cold hardy, with glossy, serrated leaves that add texture to the garden. Even without a male plant, it produces bright red berries in the fall.
I. serrata is also known as Japanese winterberry because they closely resemble winterberry (I. verticillata) except with smaller berries and leaves.
The berries tend to persist on the plant much later than most other common Ilex species. It’s hardy in Zones 5 to 9.
Foster’s Holly
Topal or Foster’s holly (I. x attenuata) is a naturally-occurring hybrid between dahoon and American holly that grows in Zones 6 to 9.
The result is something in between the two, with glossy, dark olive-green leaves and persistent red drupes.
While the leaves do have spines on the edges, they are small and widely spaced.
‘Longwood Gold’ has bright yellow drupes. ‘Fosteri’ has extremely abundant fruit and is more cold hardy than the standard hybrid, growing down to Zone 5.
They grow almost anywhere in Zones 5 to 9, so long as it isn’t too hot and humid or super dry. If you need a crawling cultivar, ‘Kufujin,’ with its variegated foliage, is an exceptional option.
‘Soft Touch’ is a particularly nice choice because its foliage is downright soft and the plant matures to just three feet tall and wide.
I. latifolia, commonly called the lusterleaf holly, isn’t well known, and in my opinion that needs to change.
This Japanese native grows in Zones 7 to 9 and up to 20 feet tall in partial shade to full sun, and moist to dry soil.
But what makes it so fantastic are the massive leathery leaves. Each individual leaf can be up to eight inches long and four inches wide, making them some of the largest in the genus.
Along with the bright red drupes, it makes for an eye-catching specimen or hedge in the garden.
There are many attractive cultivars out there, including ‘Agena’ and ‘Venus,’ and I. latifolia is used to create hybrids with other Ilex species.
Oak Leaf Holly
Oak leaf holly (I. x ‘Conaf’) is a hybrid cultivar of I. x ‘Mary Nell,’ part of the Red Holly™ series hybridized by breeder Jack Magee at Evergreen Nurseries in Mississippi.
The plant gets its name from the foliage that, if you squint, looks a bit like an oak leaf. The leaves emerge as bronze in the spring and turn deep green as they mature.
One of the characteristics people love about this plant is that it’s self-fertile, so you will see the greenish-white blossoms and orange-red berries even if you only have one specimen.
It takes on a beautiful pyramidal shape naturally and grows well in Zones 6 to 9.
Possumhaw or meadow holly (I. decidua) is a North American native, hardy in Zones 5 to 9, and one of the deciduous species, so you’ll have red berries on bare branches throughout the winter. Birds, possums, and raccoons love them.
This small tree can grow up to 30 feet tall, but it typically stays smaller. The dark green leaves lack spines and turn yellow in the fall.
Round Leaf Holly
This beautiful Asian evergreen grows in sunny areas on hillsides and goes by the name round leaf or Kurogane holly (I. rotunda).
It’s a small tree or large shrub, though there are many cultivars in different sizes.
It gets its name from the round-oval leaves and is hugely popular in Japan but harder to find in the US.
If you live in Zones 6 to 9, you can enjoy this spineless sun-lover and its large clusters of small red berries.
Don’t confuse this plant with round leaf Japanese holly (I. crenata ‘Latifolia’). They have a similar look but different growing requirements.
Winterberry Holly
Native to the eastern United States, including chilly areas in Zones 3 to 9, winterberry (I. verticillata) is a medium-sized deciduous shrub that handles soggy soils with no problem.
True to its name, the yellow, red, or orange berries persist from fall and through the winter until the wildlife gobbles them up.
Happy in full sun to part shade, it tops out at about 15 feet tall and wide, but it will send out suckers and gradually spread even further.
The oval leaves are spineless and the colorful berries appear at the end of the branches, making them more prominent than some species.
Little Goblin® (I. verticillata ‘VCIV2’) is a compact option at just four feet tall and wide with bright orange berries and vibrant green foliage. Grab one in a #3 container from Nature Hills.
Native to the southeastern parts of the United States, yaupon holly (I. vomitoria) is a gorgeous evergreen that can be grown as a large shrub or small tree, with dark green, oval leaves with toothed margins. In the fall, there are bright red berries that stick around through late winter.
It loves moist soil but can tolerate some dryness and will thrive in some shade or full sun, making it a versatile garden option. It’s also a valued source of caffeine for indigenous people.
‘Schillings’ is a dwarf cultivar that stays just six feet tall and wide.
Pests and hungry herbivores are going to be the biggest threat to your plants, but if you have heavy clay or you tend to overwater, you might run into root rot. Let’s look at herbivore threats first.
Herbivores
You’d think that a spiky plant would be safe from herbivores, but you’d be wrong. Both deer and rabbits will munch on them.
Deer
When I first started planning my garden at our cabin in a deer prone area, I talked to the local nursery about which plants deer would avoid.
They recommended things with spikes and prickles, so I thought hollies would be sure-fire options.
Imagine my dismay when I watched as those fearless deer nibbled on my holly shrubs, and they didn’t even avoid the spiky leaves in favor of the softer leaves higher up!
All that is to say that hungry deer certainly won’t pass up a holly snack.
If you deal with deer already, you probably know the routine. Protect young plants with fences or cages and use your favorite repellants.
It’s not their favorite meal, but rabbits will eat holly, especially the bark and berries. They’ll even go for the leaves, especially on those species that lack spines.
Pests
I’ve never been tempted to take a bite of a holly before, but then again, I’m not a plant-eating pest. Apparently it’s delicious or nutritious because there are several pests that feed on hollies.
Leaf Miners
Leaf miners (Phytomyza spp.) are the larvae of small black flies that chew tunnels through the inner layers of the leaves of many different garden plants.
When they’re present, you will see squiggly thick yellow lines through the leaves. It can be ugly and might weaken the plant.
You can spray for leaf miners, but keep in mind that it will take repeated treatments. Once the larvae are inside the leaves, sprays won’t reach them, so you need to spray to kill the adults.
Any spinosad-based spray will work. Apply it every two weeks at the first sign of leaf miners and keep spraying for at least two months.
The lifecycle of a leaf miner is just two weeks and there can be up to ten generations per year.
Bonide makes a killer product called Captain Jack’s Deadbug Brew, which is available at Arbico Organics in 32-ounce ready-to-use, concentrate, or hose-end, and 16-ounce concentrate.
Red mites are closely related to ticks and spiders, and though they are tiny, they can cause serious harm to your hollies.
Southern red mites (Oligonychus ilicis) are the most common, but there are several species in the Tetranychidae family that will feed on hollies.
These pests use their sucking mouthparts to draw the sap out of the plants, spreading disease and draining plants’ energy. They tend to focus their efforts on the undersides of leaves and the joints where the leaves meet the stems and they’re most active during spring and fall.
When they’re feeding, the plants will be stunted and the leaves might take on a bronze hue.
Mites are present in every garden, so finding them is not necessarily a sign that something is wrong. The problem is when they become overabundant.
Typically, natural predators like ladybugs, predatory mites, and lacewings will keep them under control, but if the balance in your garden is off, the spider mite population can grow out of control and that can spell disaster for young or small plants.
The easiest way to deal with spider mites is to blast them off your plants with a steady stream of water once a week.
You can also introduce natural predators such as green lacewings. These beneficial insects eat all kinds of bad bugs, so they’re definitely something you want around.
I won’t sugarcoat it, nematodes can be difficult to diagnose unless you send in a sample to your local extension office for testing. That’s because the symptoms are extremely generic.
Your plant might be a little stunted or maybe some of the leaves will turn yellow and drop to the ground.
There are several nematode species that might infect your plants, including root-knot (Meloidogyne spp.), ring (Criconemoides spp.), stunt (Tylenchorhynchus spp.), sting (Belonolaimus spp.), and spiral (Helicotylenchus spp.) nematodes.
If you can confirm that your plant is infected, the only option is to dig up the plant and dispose of it. There is no treatment option.
Scale
Scale insects feed on many different species, including those in the Ilex genus. Chinese holly is especially susceptible.
These pests are small, flat, and covered in a waxy coating that might be white or gray. They use their sucking mouthparts to feed on the sap of the plants, resulting in yellowing leaves and stunted growth.
Hollies are mostly disease free. But if they are overwatered or growing in poorly draining soil, root rot is a possibility.
There are two pathogens that can make the roots of a holly plant turn black and mushy, rotting away until the plant dies. The first is the fungus Thielaviopsis basicola and the second is the oomycete Phytophthora cinnamomi.
Both thrive in moist soil and both cause the roots to become black and soft. Aboveground, the leaves will wilt, growth will be stunted, and the foliage might turn yellow and drop from the plant.
Ensuring good drainage can help, as can being careful not to overwater, but both pathogens can persist in the soil for years and can easily travel in water, so it’s hard to avoid altogether.
Japanese hollies (I. crenata) are extremely susceptible because they can’t tolerate poor drainage at all. If you have heavy clay with poor drainage, don’t even think about growing a Japanese type.
Chinese (I. cornuta), yaupon (I. vomitoria), and American holly (I. opaca) are all somewhat resistant.
If your plant is infected, you can do your best to support it with appropriate food and water, but you’ll eventually need to pull it and dispose of it.
Best Uses for Holly
Depending on the species, hollies can be stately trees or large shrub specimens.
There are some that stay compact at just a few feet tall, or those larger varieties that work as hedges or living fences. There are even some creeping or ground cover options.
It might not be the first plant you think of for bonsai, but many species make extremely pretty bonsai specimens.
For a genus with dozens of popular and reliable species, you can’t do better than Ilex.
There are piles of deciduous and evergreen options in sizes from itty-bitty to towering tall, with or without spikes, and with or without colorful berries.
Are you growing holly? Which species do you fancy? Share your plans with us in the comments section below.
Did this guide help you figure out how to grow hollies and which will work for your space? I hope so.
That is a bulbil from one of the rare edible forms of Dioscorea bulbifera.
For multiple years (about 8), I have tried to grow a quantity of edible D. bulbifera bulbils but keep getting derailed by having to move or by poor years or by lack of stock.
The edible varieties are not aggressive like the wild poisonous forms that have invaded Florida. Since the plant is rare and expensive (and because of our lack of stock), we haven’t ever eaten any of our seed bulbils, so I still haven’t tasted one.
We’ll plant all the ones we grew this year and see if we can build up our stock to the point where we can use some to make meals from.
I’m tempted to put a few up for sale on ebay, though, since I think we’d get some bids!
David shares an amusing validation of our pumpkin-growing methods:
“Hi David,
“In some areas, such as tropical Goa in India, pumpkin vines seem to grow effortlessly from seeds left in compost bins after the flesh is used to make curries.”
Like you, they too have replicated Cucurbita moschata var. compostia “Effortless” 😊
Hope you feel scientifically validated.”
Thank you. That cracked me up.
I actually piled up some grass clippings, chicken bones and 1.5 banana boxes full of shrimp shells at the edge of the garden today and I plan to throw pumpkin waste on top of it, once we make it into a much bigger mound of garden prunings and kitchen waste.
While I like to dive into the Halloween mood by decorating with pumpkins on the porch and a strings of orange lights, I have never thought to spruce up my garden for the holiday. But, according to the almighty TikTok, Pinterest, and Instagram apps, others are—by partaking in some goth gardening, an aesthetic that’s even made the list of 2024 garden trends.
So, what, pray tell, is goth gardening all about? To help me sort through this latest garden trend, I’ve asked Janet Sluis, director of the Sunset Plant Collection.
What is ‘goth gardening’?
Above: A Halloween-worthy all-foliage composition of purple millet, black mondo grass, and sweet potato vine. Photograph by Meredith Swinehart, from DIY Patio Planter: Dark and Stormy Shades.
Also known as Gothic gardening, and referring back to the Victorian Era, this style of gardening lets you embrace your dark, mysterious side, regardless of the season or the size of your space. If you have only a tiny deck, you can add some darkly hued containers filled with moody, broody plants. If your garden is larger, you can pick and choose several features of a goth garden to implement: winding paths that snake though a garden, moss-covered stones for a vintage vibe, densely planted secret areas with surprises around corners, and slightly sinister looking plants. Goth gardening isn’t reserved just for the Halloween season, though its dark drama certainly feels very appropriate for the holiday.
Why is the goth look trending?
“As far as hardscaping goes, there has been growing interest in all things old: crumbling stonework, rusted wrought iron, repurposed art. In general, gardening trends are moving away from straight edges and formal shapes to more winding paths and wilder looking plantings,” says Janet.
What plants are perfect for the goth garden?
Above: A Nandina ‘Flirt’ shrub has red foliage year-round. Photograph courtesy of Sunset Plant Collection.
Focus on plants that are dramatic, eerie looking, and/or have dark-as-midnight foliage or flowers. You can also search for scarlet red, dark purple, and burgundy-hued plants. “Now is the time to stock up,” says Janet, since nursery growers produce black foliage plants and flowers for Halloween and dark plants can be hard to find at other times of the year.
Below is a very incomplete list of potentially perfect plants. Remember: Although it is tempting and easy to pick plants based on looks only, please consider your growing conditions before purchasing, such as the climate, soil type, light exposure, and whether or not deer visit your garden.
Above: Phormium ‘Black Adder’ has been a long-standing favorite for Janet. “This is one of the darker leaved flax plants and is reliably shorter (4 to 5 feet in the garden) than others. Structurally it provides height and form to both borders and containers.”
For smaller gardens and more urban settings, Janet recommends getting creative with containers. “Repurpose scavenged items to use as planters and place found objects in and around them. Hunting thrift stores and salvage yards can yield all kinds of interesting pieces and are zero-waste (certainly more eco-friendly than importing heavy pots from overseas). Just make sure anything used for planting has drainage holes or can have holes drilled into them.”
Scrap yards, thrift stores, and flea markets are great places to find affordable weathered items such as old urns, fountains, lanterns, gargoyles, wrought iron gates, even old animal cages. Creepy shadows also add mystery. You can get the effect by hanging some string lights, decorating with LED candles, or positioning spotlights on the faces of antique statues.
Consider leaving dead leaves, fallen stumps, brown seed heads, and faded flowers. This hands-off maintenance regime should be very welcoming to most—and especially to beneficial creatures like birds, frogs, worms, and even friendly snakes.
The bottom line is to use your imagination while exploring this trend. “Gardening should be fun, not anxiety-provoking,” says Janet. “Decorate your outdoor space with whatever brings you comfort and joy. Bring dark toned tapestry rugs and pillows out, use memory evoking scents (in plants or candles), and place a comfortable chair along with a small side table someplace where you can sit and enjoy your outdoor space.”
We’re back with more from Susan Esche’s visit to the beautiful University of British Columbia Botanical Garden in Vancouver in early September. It is open to the public and has many different sections and types of gardens to explore.
Roses are best known for their flowers, of course, but many have very ornamental fruits—called rose hips—after the flowers have faded. These look to be the hips of Rosamoyesii (Zones 5–9), which has deep pink, five-petaled flowers in early summer that are followed by these lovely hips.
The physic garden is full of plants that have been used for medicinal purposes in the past.
Japanese maples (Acerpalmatum, Zones 5–9) are beginning to change color for the fall against the backdrop of a classic Pacific Northwest evergreen forest.
Hardy plumbago (Ceratostigmaplumbaginoides, Zones 5–8) is a ground cover that is slow to emerge in the spring and not very noticeable in the first half of the summer. In late summer and fall, however, it really shows off with abundant true-blue flowers that keep on going even as the foliage shifts to red and yellow for fall.
Carefully arranged perennials, shrubs, small trees, and taller trees produce layer upon later of beauty in this garden.
I think these brilliant fruits are those of mountain ash (Sorbus sp.). The color is absolutely fluorescent!
Have a garden you’d like to share?
Have photos to share? We’d love to see your garden, a particular collection of plants you love, or a wonderful garden you had the chance to visit!
To submit, send 5-10 photos to [email protected] along with some information about the plants in the pictures and where you took the photos. We’d love to hear where you are located, how long you’ve been gardening, successes you are proud of, failures you learned from, hopes for the future, favorite plants, or funny stories from your garden.
If you’re looking for a versatile blooming shrub, it’s hard to go wrong with spirea.
The many species within the Spiraea genus are easy to grow and hardy in USDA Zones 4 to 8, depending on the type.
They deliver three-season interest, with clusters of flowers appearing in either May to June or July to September, and eye-catching foliage that turns into a riot of colors in autumn.
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What’s not to love? Well, if you’re seeking year-round foliage, this shrub can’t give you that. Spirea plants are not evergreen.
These deciduous plants lose their leaves and go dormant in winter.
That may be a minor issue that you can easily work around, given all the positive traits of these plants.
Or maybe its lack of evergreen foliage will disqualify this woody shrub from a spot in your garden design.
But before you decide whether this shrub is right for you, let’s look at these topics:
Does Spirea Lose Leaves in the Winter?
Before you decide to grow spireas and then are disappointed in their winter appearance, it’s important to remember that while they are perennials, they are not evergreens.
What’s the difference? Perennials live year after year, though they may experience a period of dormancy in between seasons of growth.
Some live for a couple of years, others grow for decades.
Evergreens are perennials that keep most of their leaves (or needles) throughout the year. They may shed a portion of older foliage on occasion but never become bare.
Those plants that drop their leaves during the winter months are described as deciduous, and in many cases the foliage changes color in fall before it is shed, leaving behind bare branches.
Spirea are not evergreen, they lose their leaves in the winter. Read on to learn more about their life cycle.
The Spirea Life Cycle
The genus Spiraea includes about 80 different woody shrub species.
Their hardiness range is between USDA Zones 4 to 8. Depending on the species, they may be more or less cold hardy, but they can be grown as perennials in most of the US.
Their appeal begins in spring or early summer when they blossom with clusters of pink, purple, or white flowers. These are nectar-rich and will draw hummingbirds and pollinators.
Once the flowers fade, consistent deadheading might encourage more blooms, but eventually, only the green or yellow leaves will remain.
As summer gives way to autumn, the leaves change color while remaining on the plant.
Some varieties are considered a top choice for beautiful orange fall color, while others sport leaves patterned or edged with bronze, burgundy, yellow, or various other hues.
With the advent of winter cold, or merely the shorter days in warmer areas, these shrubs lose their leaves before going dormant.
They’re not evergreen, but some gardeners consider the stark branches with the dry seed heads attractive in the winter landscape.
Before deciding where, or if, to grow spirea in your garden, consider its winter appearance.
If your area doesn’t experience much snow in winter, for example, you may not want to plant a sprawling type somewhere it will be visible to all when it’s bare and the stems are brittle.
You may want to avoid growing it in the front garden, for example, or right outside a vast picture window.
Dormancy Workarounds
If you’re already hooked on spirea, I get that. These plants offer so many advantages, from the three-season beauty to the appeal to pollinators and hummingbirds.
So, if you’d like to grow them but aren’t enthusiastic about having dead-looking, dry shrubs in the winter landscape, consider a few of these workarounds.
First, you can grow your spirea in containers and spirit them away to a protected but not conspicuous area for their dormant months.
Or, consider choosing one of the smaller varieties to grow so you can place it next to an evergreen in the landscape.
When you plant a Japanese spirea (S. japonica) like Magic Carpet that spreads two or three feet instead of eight feet, it’s pretty easy to tolerate it sparse in the winter landscape.
And don’t forget you can always plant the spirea where you want their blooms and colorful foliage during the growing season, then camouflage them with strategically placed container-grown evergreens in the cold months.
These plants are so beautiful and versatile that it seems reasonable they’d need one season to lie dormant.
After all, the shrubs bloom in spring, stay green and leafy throughout the summer, and then color up beautifully in autumn. Shouldn’t they be able to take the winter off?
Have you determined whether spirea will suit your garden design and growing needs, or do you still have questions about their winter dormancy? The comments section below awaits your input.
This spring we crossed together a handful of daikon radish varieties, mostly red and white.
We saved the seeds and then I planted two long rows this fall. Now they’re starting to come in:
The color mixes are quite interesting. I don’t think we’re going to beat the beautiful and vigorous Red King II radish hybrids that were part of the original mix, but are getting good radishes without having to buy more seed.
We’ll have to save some more seed from this batch to plant in the spring. Winter permitting, that is. It looks like we might get our first freeze this week on All Saints Day:
It’s been terribly dry and we’re going right from drought into cold, so there’s really no more hope for a great yam, cassava, or sugarcane season. Yet we’re still going to hit 2,000lbs of food this year, thanks to a productive spring and lots and lots of watermelons. God is good, all the time, and we (try to) thank Him for whatever He sends. It’s nice to get another round of radishes we can ferment and save through winter.
I’m off to work in the garden. Time is burning and we have a lot to do.
It’s time to deck the halls and turn your home into a cozy winter wonderland. Rather than pull out the dusty, plastic garland that sheds or shell out the big bucks for a custom-made garland, try making your own cedar garland. Here’s how to make a cedar Christmas garland using minimal materials.
From Christmas trees to wreaths, it’s no wonder we love to decorate our homes with fresh greens during the holidays. In the darkest days of winter, we like to be reminded of the lush greenery of spring and summer. Luckily, we have evergreens to keep us company in the winter!
Fresh garden greens aren’t just for wreaths. An evergreen garland, or swag, can instantly cheer up a porch, banister, or fireplace. Garland can be made from many types of evergreen boughs. Generally, anything you can use for outdoor wreaths can be used for outdoor garlands.
But some greenery is better than others.
If you plan to bring your garland inside, the conditions are much drier, and watering will be difficult. I like cedar because it holds its leaves when dry and doesn’t turn brown for a very long time. I also love the look of the draping cedar leaves as they flop over the edges of a banister or fireplace.
If you want to make your own whimsical and natural cedar garland, keep reading!
Here’s what we’ll be covering today…
First, a Note on Accessibility
I have a bone to pick when it comes to garlands. For a long time, I’ve avoided posting a Christmas garland because I didn’t want to encourage people to block off railings for those who might need them.
Hand railings are essential for accessibility. People with mobility issues rely on them to get up stairs and avoid slips and falls. There are many invisible disabilities, so never assume your space is exempt from the rule.
Whether it’s the postman delivering your holiday packages or Christmas carolers who come to brighten your day, you never know you may be visiting your space and using the railing. Plus, you always want them something to grab in an emergency, like slipping on ice.
So please, if you’re making a Christmas garland with cedar, do not use it to decorate and block railings.
Add garland to railings outside that won’t be used, draped over windows, or lining the porch.
How to Make a Cedar Christmas Garland
You don’t need many materials to create this cedar Christmas garland. You can keep it as simple as you like, using cedar alone or adding in other greenery and decor for texture. And if you have a cedar tree in your yard, this is the perfect opportunity to prune it back and make something out of its branches.
Materials
A thick wire can also act as a base, helping to hold the garland shape if you’re winding it around something.
Make It!
Start by cutting the jute or rope to the length of the garland that you want to create. If you plan on hanging your garland, add extra length on either end to make loops for hanging.
It helps to tie my rope to something sturdy while making my cedar garland, allowing me to pull the rope tight.
Wrap your floral wire a few times around the base of the bunch until it feels secure.
Gather a nice handful of cedar and align the stems. If you’re adding more greenery than just cedar, alternate your types of greenery for a more natural look.
Secure this first bunch to the top end of the rope by wrapping it with floral wire. With one hand, hold your bunch and the rope tight while you wrap the base of the bunch with floral wire with the other hand.
Green floral wire gets hidden under the leaves.
Then, you’ll continue snipping cedar branches and securing bunches to the rope. As you layer them, overlapping and hiding the wire of the previous bunch. Alternate the direction that the bunches face for a more natural look.
When you get to the end of the garland, tie a few smaller cedar branches pointing the opposite direction of the other branches. Tie with floral wire to disguise the stems of the end branches.
It’s easy to tuck in the last bunch and hide the end of the rope.
Add Décor to Your Christmas Garland
This garland has a casual form and makes a wonderful backdrop to display holiday décor: natural elements, such as oversized sugar pinecones, mixed with unexpected items, such as sparkly, vintage mason jars lit with a string of fairy lights, create an eclectic-natural look.
You can make pinecone spheres to add to the cedar garland by gluing the bases of many mini pinecones onto a Styrofoam ball with a hot glue gun. Be sure to dry the pinecones first, so they are fully open.
Pinecone spheres are best made with small pinecones.
Garland Not Kindling
Take caution if you decorate your fireplace with soon-to-be-dry plant material (AKA kindling). Do not build a fire if there is any spark danger at all.
In my home, the gas fire is completely behind glass. Even still, the fireplace is kept on a low setting and is never left unattended. Safety comes first and beauty second.
Yes, fresh greenery is flammable still! So be safe.
Frequently Asked Questions About Making a Cedar Garland
Why you should use a real cedar garland?
Christmas garlands with cedar are quite simple to make. You can even forage for the clippings, making it an affordable option. The best reason to opt for a real cedar garland instead of a faux one is to avoid plastic. Faux Christmas greenery doesn’t usually have as long a lifespan as we might think; most faux Christmas trees are only used for six years.
After the season, you can compost the leaves and even the twine, saving the floral wire for another project or next year’s Christmas garland.
How long will a cedar garland last?
Cedar garlands should last about two weeks indoors if they’re kept away from heat sources. Cedar keeps fairly well compared to other evergreens. If you place your garland outside, it will last much longer, upwards of a month.
How do I keep my garland alive?
The key to making your cedar Christmas garland last is to keep it from drying out. Avoid placing it by any heat registers or fire. So yes, while it may look good above the fireplace, it’s probably not the best spot for the garland if you intend on having a fire. It’s also a major safety concern.
To keep your cedar garland hydrated, you can spritz it daily with a spray bottle on a misting setting. If possible, aim for the base of the plant.
What’s the best way to add lights to a cedar garland?
You’ll want to add lights (and other décor) once you’ve made the garland rather than wrapping it in the garland itself.
Start at one end of the garland and start zigzagging the lights across the garland. Tuck in some lights to be nestled in the greens and have others sitting on top.
In fall, when I move my potted citrus trees indoors until spring, I know that it’s time to start hurting blewits. These pretty edible autumn mushrooms pop up in lawns and in woodlands after a serendipitous combination of a cold snap and rain. Blewits feed on fallen tree leaves and evergreen needles (they like wood chips, too), and the mushrooms appear in the same spot annually, often in fairy-like rings, or clustered closely. In the Northeast, they fruit in time for Thanksgiving dinner. Mildly flavored and substantial, their juicy nature makes blewits a succulent substitute for canned mushroom soup (sorry, Campbell’s), in that icon of the Thanksgiving table: the green bean casserole.
Here’s a guide to identifying blewits, and a recipe ready for the season.
Above: A plateful of blewits. Above: Lawns near deciduous trees are a good place to hunt blewits.
The name “blewit” generally refers to two* species of mushroom. One is the so-called wood blewit, classified as Lepista nuda and sometimes as Clitocybe nuda (the names are synonyms). The other, the field blewit, Lepista personata (also called Lepista saeva), is associated more with Europe. Despite two common names that seem to decree where your blewits must grow, the so-called wood blewits I find grow in wide lawns (near leaf-dropping trees) that look a lot like fields, to me.
For mushroom-hunting cooks wanting dinner, the precision of names is less important than knowing what a blewit looks like, and being sure that its spore print is white, or very pale. That’s an essential tell, when distinguishing blewits from a potentially toxic lookalike.
* As the science of mycology evolves, more blewit species may be parsed.
Above: In lawns where trees preside, blewits can be camouflaged among fallen leaves (on which they feed).
Above: A symphony in the key of lilac.
Blewits are chameleons. When they are young the color of their cap, stem, and gills can include swoon-worthily deep or ethereally delicate shades of amethyst and lavender. But these vivid colors may fade to pale buff and cream, sometimes pale tan.
Observing that color transformation is key to learning how to identify blewits, a view endorsed by MushroomExpert’s Michael Kuo.
Above: Blewit caps laid gill-side down on cardboard for spore printing.
Above: Ghostly, Halloween-ready blewit spore prints are white, or very pale.
Essential to identifying blewits is the color of their spore print. A blewit’s spore print is white or very pale. Never brown.
To make a spore print at home, slice the mushroom’s stem from the cap. Lay the cap gill-side down on paper (a recycled shopping bag is perfect), foil, or cardboard. Cover the mushroom with an upturned bowl, or a cloth if you have lots, to protect the dust-like spore from drafts. Leave overnight. Unless the mushroom is ancient and has already shed its spores in the field, in the morning its spores will be beautifully arranged in the shape of the gills.
We’ve visited Susan Esche’s home garden before (A Garden Wedding, the Flowers, and the Deer), but today she’s taking us along to visit a public garden in Vancouver, British Columbia.
The Pacific Northwest is home to huge, beautiful trees. Here you can get a glimpse of a hydrangea tucked into the lush greenery and behind this massive trunk.
I think the hydrangea is Hydrangeaaspera (Zones 7–9).
The large blooms on the outside of the flower head are sterile, producing no seeds; they just serve as advertising to pollinators. The center is made up of hundreds of tiny fertile flowers that will produce the actual pollen and, eventually, seeds.
Native sword ferns (Polystichummunitum, Zones 6–9) thrive in the deep shade of the woodland garden. These evergreen ferns are an iconic part of the native woodlands along the western coast of North America.
Kirengeshomakoreana (Zones 5–8) has bold foliage all summer, but it really shines in late summer and fall when these beautiful, waxy yellow flowers emerge.
These trees have grown on the decomposing stump of another tree. Another bold sword fern shines in the front.
The vegetable garden shows how a garden can be both edible and beautiful. Colorful stems of Swiss chard (Beta vulgaris, usually grown as an annual) echo the bright, edible flowers of nasturtium (Tropaeolummajus, Zones 9–11 or as an annual).
We’ll return with more photos of this garden tomorrow!
Have a garden you’d like to share?
Have photos to share? We’d love to see your garden, a particular collection of plants you love, or a wonderful garden you had the chance to visit!
To submit, send 5-10 photos to [email protected] along with some information about the plants in the pictures and where you took the photos. We’d love to hear where you are located, how long you’ve been gardening, successes you are proud of, failures you learned from, hopes for the future, favorite plants, or funny stories from your garden.
It’s pretty hard to miss when a rubber tree (Ficus elastica) starts dropping its leaves.
Those thick, glossy leaves are so large, you could probably hear them falling to the ground with a thunk from a mile away.
Okay, they aren’t that heavy, but you get what I mean.
When a rubber tree loses its leaves, it’s much more obvious than it would be on some other houseplants.
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It’s not always possible to prevent foliage drop, since it’s an evolutionary tactic that these plants have developed in response to stress, but if you see foliage starting to fall, quick action can save your tree from ending up looking like a bunch of naked stalks.
It’s a defense mechanism that the plants have developed to deal with adverse conditions.
So if you’re seeing that foliage falling, it’s a cry for help. Let’s dive into the causes:
1. A Recent Change
All members of the Ficus genus drop their leaves readily as a method of adjusting to environmental changes.
Some are more dramatic than others. F. benjamina, for instance, has a reputation for tossing its foliage at the drop of a hat.
Rubber trees are less prone to throwing their leaves on the ground in a huff, but they will still do it when you alter their environment dramatically without a transition period.
That means if you want to move your plant from one end of your house to another, you should do it over a period of a few days. This gives the plant some time to adjust to the shift in light and temperature.
It’s not always possible to do this, so just know that if you lose some foliage, it’s totally normal, and the plant will grow back once it settles into its new home.
If you need to repot your plant, there isn’t much you can do to lessen the shock except to make sure you work quickly.
2. Extreme Temperatures
Rubber trees can tolerate a pretty wide range of temperatures, with brief periods down to 50°F. But anything lower, or temperatures around 50°F for too long, and you can be sure you’ll be finding foliage on the floor.
They also thrive in temperatures above 80°F, but if the temperature climbs to 90°F or above for too long it could also result in leaf drop, particularly if the air is also dry.
Ideally, keep your plants in temperatures somewhere between 60 and 85°F.
3. Inappropriate Light
Many plants will drop their leaves when they receive too much or too little sun.
Most will replace their leaves with ones better suited for the light available, but there is only so much that a plant can do to adapt.
Rubber trees need quite a bit of light, so the issue is typically not enough sunlight rather than too much.
F. elastica does best with two or three hours of direct sunlight in the morning and four or five hours of bright, indirect light each day for the best growth.
Of course, these plants will adapt to less light, but if the light is too low, they will start dropping those leaves.
A rubber tree placed in bright, direct afternoon sun or more than a few hours of morning sun will typically react by dropping leaves. This type of light is far too strong unless the plant has been slowly and gradually introduced to the brighter exposure.
Typically, you’re going to see other symptoms before the leaves start tumbling down, though.
Yellowing, fine webbing, speckling, or brown areas are all common signs that spider mites are making a meal of your plant.
Brown areas, yellowing foliage, and speckling are also common signs of aphids, mealybugs, and scale.
If you look closely, you’ll probably be able to see some of the critters themselves.
If so, once you send those pests packing, your plant will recover and stop dropping leaves.
One of the things that I love most about rubber trees is that they don’t really suffer from diseases. The one biggie you need to watch out for is root rot. This goes hand in hand with overwatering.
Root rot can be caused by watering so much that you simply deprive the roots of oxygen, and they start to turn soggy and brown as they rot away. But it can also involve the fungus Rigidoporus microporus.
Root rot generally causes the foliage to lose color and turn soft before they drop off the plant. You’ll often see browning at the edges in the early stages.
Dealing with root rot, whether it involves a pathogen or not, involves removing the rubber tree from its pot and removing all the soil from around the roots.
Spray the roots with copper fungicide and wipe out the pot with soapy water. Make sure that the drainage holes are open and not clogged up.
Place the plant back in the pot and refill with fresh, new potting soil.
Going forward, you need to be extra careful about watering.
6. Watering Issues
I admit it, I’m a chronic overwaterer. I have to hold myself back from watering too much. In the past, I had to sweep more than a few leaves off the floor under my rubber tree before I got the hang of caring for my plant.
I figured that, like many houseplants, rubber trees like the soil to stay moist but not wet at all times. Nope. I was so wrong!
You should allow the top third of the soil to dry out completely before you water. Those thick leaves retain a good amount of moisture, and the plant can go longer than you might think without additional water.
And overwatering can quickly lead to root rot, as discussed above.
On the other hand, if you’re not providing enough water and the soil is dry beyond the top third, then the plant is not receiving enough moisture and is likely dropping leaves because it can’t support them.
The solution, in that case, is simple. Water more!
Put the Glue Away, Those Leaves Will Stay
Falling foliage is your plant’s way of telling you it’s having trouble.
Sometimes it’s just a warning that your rubber fig is mad about a recent move, but it can also be a sign that there is something bad happening. Now, hopefully, you know how to tell what’s going on and how to fix it.
What was causing your problems? Is your plant still struggling? Let us know what you’re seeing in the comments, and we will do our best to help.
I’ve spent the last year building new sunken garden beds in Southern Arizona. I live in the Sonoran Desert, about 25 miles from the Mexico border. This region is very hot from May through October. We do get monsoon rains from July through September, but it is very dry otherwise.
The heat, intense sun, and dry conditions create challenging conditions for gardening. However, it is possible to create a productive garden in the desert. I want to share how I’ve been able to do just that.
To begin, I had a few requirements:
Water Efficiency: I needed to find a way to use as little water as possible. I didn’t want to spend several hours and hundreds of dollars every month watering this new space.
Time Efficiency: I needed to find a time-efficient way to maintain my new garden. I work, so a high-maintenance garden was not for me.
Productivity – I wanted to maximize the space to grow as much as possible. This would allow me to eat fresh, organic produce in season.
That’s a tall order for a little desert garden. I began experimenting to find a way to meet all 3 of those requirements.
History of Basin Beds in the Sonoran Desert
I am fascinated by the relationship between people, plants, and places in the Southwest region. The Sonoran Desert is the most biodiverse desert on earth, and I love living here. Isn’t it amazing that 3500 species of plants, 500 species of birds, and 1,000 species of bees call this beautiful region home? I’m learning all I can about the history of this place and the people who thrived in such a beautiful yet challenging environment.
The U.S. Forest Service defines ethnobotany as “the study of how people of a particular culture and region use indigenous (native) plants.”
Through Gary Nabhan’s book, I began learning about many different gardening methods in arid climates. One of them stood out as a possibility for my garden: basin beds, also known as sunken beds.
What is a sunken garden bed or basin bed?
Basin or sunken garden beds were used by the indigenous peoples in this part of the Southwest. Basin beds function just as any traditional garden bed or raised bed, but are recessed or sunken.
Sunken beds are dug down several inches, allowing irrigation water to slowly sink in rather than run off and keep soil and roots cooler during hot seasons.
Since I didn’t have to construct a raised bed, the start-up costs were low. Using a basin-style sunken bed would help me with the water and heat challenges, but what about the time efficiency and productivity piece?
I’m sure many of you have heard of the square foot gardening method, introduced in 1981 on a wide scale when Mel Bartholomew published his book, “Square Foot Gardening.” In this book, Bartholomew introduced a straightforward method to save time, effort, and space in gardening.
Instead of long rows and wide paths between, he focused on using a 4ft by 4 ft square to grow intensively in a small space. Along with the 4×4 design, Bartholomew increased productivity through intercropping, succession planting, and amending the soil. If you haven’t read this book and want to garden in a small space, on a small budget, or with a busy life, I highly recommend it.
I combined the two methods, sunken basin beds and square foot gardening, into one hybrid method. Maybe then I could get all the benefits of each.
Sunken Garden Beds Step One: Test Your Soil
An in-ground garden bed will only be as good as its soil, so the first thing I did was take some soil samples. A local lab tested the soil to give me an idea of the soil makeup and which amendments I needed to add. I chose the “Complete Soil Test with Soil Amendment Recommendations” for $85, which included a nutrient analysis of my soil profile and amendment suggestions.
I started with a very bleak space; not much of anything was growing here, except for wild amaranth and Bermuda grass, so I was surprised when the test results came in a few days later, showing I didn’t need to amend much.
Sunken Garden Beds Step Two: Remove Unwanted Vegetation and Weeds
My chosen garden area had Bermuda grass that needed removal before installing the new beds. The simplest way to remove vegetation is to use solar energy to do the hard work, something we have plenty of in the Southwest.
Two methods create a greenhouse effect and work well for this task: solarization and occultation.
Solarization controls unwanted vegetation by covering the area with clear plastic. The 2 – 6 mil thickness plastic allows solar energy to penetrate, heating up the soil and creating a greenhouse effect that smothers the vegetation in as little as 3 weeks.
Occultation is similar to solarization but uses a black plastic tarp instead of a clear one. This process takes longer as the black material absorbs solar energy and reduces the heat passed to the vegetation. A heavy opaque plastic, called a silage tarp, is used and the process takes 4-6 weeks.
An additional benefit of both solarization and occultation is the reduction of pathogen and nematode populations in the soil below.
I used occultation and laid a thick silage tarp to cook the weeds and seeds underneath for 6 weeks. When I removed the tarp, just like magic, there was nothing but bare earth and some decomposing plant material.
Sunken Garden Beds Step Three: Make a Plan for the Space
I planned just four beds in the beginning. Every gardener knows that plans tend to grow exponentially, and I ended up with twelve beds. For now, let’s focus on those first four beds!
Sunken Garden Beds Step Four: Dig Out Beds and Add Compost
I measured out and marked an exact 4ft x 4ft square. After digging down 6 inches, I removed that soil. I mixed the native soil with compostin a 50/50 mix and then filled the beds with a little of that mixture. I ended up with a bed recessed by about 4 inches.
Now, you may be thinking…“wouldn’t doing that remove all the good soil you had tested?” The answer is…not at all! When doing a soil test, you dig down about 6 inches to the root zone, where the plant will be accessing all that goodness. That is still there once I dig out the top, so what I’m doing is adding some amendment in the form of compost to the top while leaving the soil in the root zone intact.
Sunken Garden Beds Step Five: Create Pathways Between Beds
My backyard is covered in Bermuda grass, and if you’ve ever dealt with it, you know it’s tough to eliminate. I decided to cover the ground with landscape fabric around the garden beds and then layer wood chips to smother and suppress the Bermuda grass. This was after using a silage tarp for occultation before beginning the garden project. That’s how tough it is to get rid of the stuff!
Generally, I don’t like to use landscape fabric. I think it’s best for soil health to cover the ground with a thick layer of untreated wood chips. This keeps weeds in check and adds organic matter to the soil as the wood breaks down. When planning this garden area, I made an exception.
Once the beds were dug and amended, I needed to make a square-foot garden grid. To save time in measuring, I made a template grid that I could use each time I plant a new bed. I used 4ft. green plastic garden stakes, measured and marked 1 ft sections, and fastened them with outdoor-rated zip ties that will withstand the high UV here better. Using a grid template allowed me to plant each square quickly.
I used the tons of rock around my property as a border for all of my garden beds. It’s rustic, but I’m happy with the results. Best of all, it was free!
The next step was to select varieties of plants that are well-suited to this region of southern Arizona. I start nearly all my plants from seed, but if you don’t want to sow seeds, many great organizations in the area sell arid-adapted seedlings at seasonal plant sales.
After moving from the Midwest nearly 20 years ago, one of the first gardening lessons I learned was that what grew there probably won’t grow here. Varieties matter, so choose wisely! There are so many varieties that perform well here. Don’t be afraid to explore!
I planted herbs and flowers amongst my vegetables (polyculture style), hoping this would give a habitat to many different pollinators and beneficial insects.
Sunken Garden Beds Step Eight: Add Mulch and Shade
Next, I added mulch to the top to prevent moisture loss and shade cloth in certain areas.
I use shade cloth when planting new seedlings. The sun here is very intense, and it takes those little seedlings a while to toughen up. Shade cloth is also important to use in certain seasons for established plants.
Adding Long Basin Beds
Late this summer, I dug a new bed – the garden is never done, remember? This time I wanted to experiment with a long basin bed, rather than a 4×4 square. The new garden bed was 3 feet wide and 28 feet long.
I am a little (okay, a lot) obsessed with the beauty and variety of dried beans and wanted to grow them. So, I added a new long bed with a cattle panel down the middle. This would allow me to grow pole beans down the center and other crops along the bottom.
I made the most of that space, growing beans,okra, squash, roselle, and zinnias. This bed became a superhighway of butterflies, bees, and hummingbirds. It was a great success; I’m putting in a second long bed this fall. Because, you guessed it, the garden is never done!
The Result: A Thriving Garden in the Desert
Overall, I’m so pleased with the results of this gardening season. I’ve happily watched this dusty, bare backyard transform into a space alive with color and the hum of pollinators. I’ve learned a few lessons, of course, that I’ll change next season, but that’s true of any garden. I don’t think a garden is ever truly finished – there is always something new to learn and just one more plant to add.
Most importantly, I’ve done almost no weeding and only had to water the beds twice a week during the hottest part of the year. As the temperatures cool, I will change the watering schedule to once a week. This winter, I’ll install rainwater harvesting tanks to water the garden, reducing the water I must pay for.
Sunken garden beds are an effective, water-wise, efficient, and affordable option for any space
Even if you have a small space, one of these sunken square-foot garden beds will allow you to grow a surprising amount of food.
If you have little money to start a garden, this method can fit any budget.
If you’re short on time, gardening this way can be done in just a few minutes a day.
I hope this encourages you that any space, no matter the size, the climate, or the time constraints, can be a place for you to sow your dreams.
Kara Adams is a gardener and writer from the Southwest who is passionate about the interconnection between plants, people, and places. Her love for all things growing has blossomed into a lifelong commitment to the art and science of gardening.
Kara is an advocate for sustainable gardening practices and environmental stewardship. She creates written content and educational videos on Sonoran Desert plants, gardening practices, and soil health. Her topics include organic gardening, pollinator-friendly landscapes, and water-efficient gardening practices. Follow Kara on her journey through the garden, where her love for it continues to bloom, one word and video at a time. You can follow along with her journey on YouTube and Instagram.
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Looking to add to the tropical vibes of your landscape? With a Hawaiian ti plant or two, you’ll definitely be able to pull it off.
With its beautifully lush, colorful leaves, and upright stature, Cordyline fruticosa has the goods for attracting and holding the gaze of onlookers, especially for those who have never seen it before. Not that an eyeful of these bad boys ever gets old, of course.
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Whether you’re new to growing a tropical landscape or a seasoned pro, caring for Hawaiian ti plants outdoors definitely requires some specialized knowledge. But once you’ve got it down, they’re quite easy to maintain.
This guide has all the information that an outdoor ti plant parent needs to hit the ground running, so to speak.
From starting them off to keeping them healthy, you’ll have all the necessary details to start growing ti plants in your garden. And believe me: you’ll want to.
Here’s what we’ll cover:
Let’s begin, shall we?
Ti Plants 101
A member of the tropical Cordyline genus alongside 23 other woody-stemmed and broadleaf evergreens, C. fruticosa is hardy in Zones 10 to 12, and originates from maritime Southeast Asia, north Australia, and west Oceania.
Introducing the species elsewhere has caused it to naturalize into the rest of Oceania, as well as into Central and South America.
Typically reaching a height of 10 feet and a spread of five feet when grown outdoors, C. fruticosa features thin, lanceolate leaves, each with a length of one to two feet and a width of about four inches.
Set on two- to six-inch-long petioles, the leaves typically start out purple to red, may mature to deep green or remain colorful, and are arranged spirally around the stem.
The lowermost leaves drop with age and leave leaf scars, while the portion of stem below the leaves matures into a woody tissue.
Below the soil line, a rhizomatous root system keeps the aboveground shoot tissue anchored, quenched, and fed.
Come spring- or summertime, clusters of little star-shaped flowers bloom in hues of white, pale yellow, pink, or lavender. If those flowers are pollinated, then they’ll later give way to small red, yellow, or green berries.
From root to shoot, the entire plant contains toxic saponins, which household pets shouldn’t be allowed to consume, lest they suffer from hypersalivation, bloody stool and vomit, depression, and anorexia.
If your cat or dog does happen to consume C. fruticosa, then you should quickly take them to the vet or call poison control.
A former member of the Dracaena genus, Hawaiian ti plants are also known colloquially as good luck plants, cabbage palms, and palm lilies, as well as simply “Ki” – that last one comes from the Hawaiian tongue.
Speaking of, Hawaiians have found many religious, culinary, constructional, and decorative uses for ti plants, many of which are still popular today.
The leaves are used in floral arrangements, and the entire specimen is simply gorgeous, whether they’re outside or indoors.
Before you dive in too deep, it’s important to pick the right variety of C. fruticosa for your ornamental needs.
For your Hawaiian ti to become part of a cohesive and effective landscape design, then there are many color factors to consider, such as light vs. dark hues, monochromatic vs. multicolored.
To meet your ornamental needs, there are tons of different cultivars to choose from.
For dark selections with black, crimson, and other dark, brooding colors, try ‘Pele’s Flame,’ ‘Kilauea,’ or ‘Graveyard Red.’
‘Florica’ is fantastic as well, with deep burgundy foliage accented in cream, green, and pink.
You can find ‘Florica’ available in a three-gallon pot or a two- to three-feet tall specimen ready for transplanting from FastGrowingTrees.com.
Looking for specimens that rock brighter shades of red? Opt for ‘Red Sister,’ ‘Maui Beauty,’ or ‘Floozie.’
‘Red Sister.’
Oranges and yellows tickle your fancy? Look into ‘Haole Girl,’ ‘Bob Alonzo,’ and ‘Lau Kea.’
Want to stick closer to a more standard green? Hedge your bets on ‘Kahuna,’ ‘La’i,’ and ‘Lovely Hula Hands.’
Of course, there are many varieties with a blend of multiple colors that defy standard color palettes.
C. fruticosa ‘Kiwi.’ Photo by David J. Stang, Wikimedia Commons, via CC BY-SA.
‘Amabilis’ has lustrous green leaves speckled with rose and white, the green leaves of ‘Baptisii’ have pink and yellow stripes, and ‘Kiwi’ has cream, pink, and green foliage.
If you’re jonesing for a multicolored specimen, go with the green, yellow-striped, and pink-tinged ‘Rising Sun’ cultivar, available in six-inch or three-gallon sizes from FastGrowingTrees.com.
Add variations in height and size to the mix, and you’ve got a smorgasbord of possible selections to choose from.
To do some more browsing, try visiting tropical plant nurseries, searching online vendors, or leafing through botanical catalogs.
Placement Tips
It’s important to consider how and where you’ll place your Hawaiian ti plants in the landscape.
A single C. fruticosa can look fantastic as a solitary specimen or as an accent to other tropical flora.
A small grouping of them could add colorful interest to a corner of your garden, while a mass of them can create a vivid backdrop for other, smaller species of different hues.
Hawaiian ti plants can also be used to spice up an otherwise conspicuous hardscape feature.
A line of them against the foundation of your home can mask a boring structure with a work of art, while a tall C. fruticosa can hide a light or fence post behind some lovely leaves.
Your outdoor ti plants aren’t confined to in-ground garden soil – they can also be grown in containers.
While in-ground specimens have lower irrigation requirements, containerized C. fruticosa are more easily movable, which comes in handy if your garden isn’t warm enough for a ti plant all year-round.
Plus, you can dress them up in a swanky pot and use them to liven up patios, entrance ways, and the like.
Propagation Protocols
A handful of propagation methods such as cane cuttings and air layering are already covered in our indoor ti plant guide, so let’s go over some that are more suitable for outdoor specimens.
Seed Sowing
Since sexual reproduction inherently results in genetic diversity, growing from seed can leave you with offspring that vary a bit from the parent.
While this is suboptimal for producing perfectly identical specimens, it can be fun for the backyard grower. And who knows, a seed could end up yielding a really cool mutation!
To collect seeds, you’ll need a C. fruticosa that has already yielded fruits. Alternatively, you could acquire seeds from a seedsman from late summer through early winter.
For DIY collection, you should start to keep your eyes peeled for red, yellow, or green berries once the flowers show up in spring and summer.
When the berries appear, you’ll need to wait until they’re ripe before harvesting them. Look for a slight softness upon squeezing, as well as bright, vibrant color.
To harvest, gently pluck the berries from the stem. From here, you can either sow them whole, or gently mash up the pulp by hand for quicker germination. But don’t try to sow individual seeds – at 16 tiny seeds per berry, they’re pretty difficult to handle.
Whether whole or mashed, the berries should be sown a quarter of an inch below the surface of the growing medium, spaced at least an inch apart.
Moisten the media and keep the seeds indoors at a minimum of 65°F and a humidity of 40 percent, all the while exposed to bright, indirect light.
Keep the media moist as the seeds germinate. If sown fresh, the seeds should germinate in two to six weeks. As the seedlings start to compete for space, thin out the smallest, weakest-looking ones.
When the seedlings are two to three inches tall and develop strong root systems – which should take a couple of months – pot them on into their own individual four-inch containers, filled with a similar media.
Keep them indoors and maintain even moisture until the following spring – if applicable, wait until all risk of frost has passed. At that point, you should harden them off outside before transplanting.
To do this, leave the seedlings outside in full sun to partial shade for 30 to 60 minutes before bringing them back inside. Each following day, add 30 to 60 more minutes of outdoor exposure until they’re able to spend a full day outdoors.
Now, they’re ready to transplant!
Division
This method works when you’ve got a ti plant with multiple stems coming up from the ground.
If a specimen has outgrown its home, then dividing it kills two birds with one stone: more plants and more space!
Select a healthy-looking, multi-stemmed C. fruticosa in spring and dig it out of the ground or gently remove it from its pot.
Brush the soil off the roots and use a sharp, sterile blade to cut the root system and separate the plant, leaving one or more stems per division.
Now, all of your divisions can be transplanted!
Transplanting
Before you go and prepare transplant sites in early spring – after the frost-free date, if your area has frost – you need to decide whether you’ll put your ti plants in the ground or in a container.
Either way, ensure that the transplants will have partial shade to full sun exposure.
For in-ground transplants, prepare sites with well-draining, fertile soil that has a pH of 5.5 to 6.5. Make sure each site is spaced at least 18 to 24 inches apart.
Prepare pots by filling them with a 50:50 mix of either peat moss or coconut coir and vermiculite.
Choose pots that are about an inch or two wider than the transplants’ root systems, and don’t forget to pick pots with drainage holes.
Once you have your sites prepared, dig holes wide and deep enough to fit the root systems.
Lift the transplants from their original containers, lower them into their new homes, then backfill. Moisten the surrounding soil, and you’re done!
Growth Requirements
Now that your ti plants are nicely settled in, it’s time to keep them healthy and happy.
Just a quick reminder: for optimal growth, C. fruticosa needs partial shade to full sun exposure, along with temperatures of 65 to 95°F.
To grow them outdoors year-round, your garden must be in USDA Zones 10 to 12. Otherwise, you’ll have to bring them inside from the cold whenever temperatures dip below 30°F.
Ti plants won’t perish at the slightest breeze or anything, but they’ll definitely do better with some wind protection. A line of dense trees or shrubs such as arborvitae can provide a solid windbreak.
In terms of soil, both drainage and water retention are super important, along with a pH of 5.5 to 6.5.
High organic matter is also optimal – don’t forget to amend your garden beds annually with a couple of inches of compost, well-rotted manure, or some other kind of humus!
For container-grown C. fruticosa, try this Tropical Potting Mix from Miracle Gro, available in two six-quart packs from Amazon.
In the absence of rain, be sure to water whenever the top inch or two of soil feels dry to the touch and use fluoride-free water whenever possible.
Additionally, adding a balanced fertilizer to the soil – once in spring, once again in summer – will help keep your Hawaiian ti plants fed and flourishing.
If your soil is naturally rich and fertile, you may not even need fertilizer.
Need fertilizer? This granular, slow-release 14-14-14 fertilizer from Osmocote should do the trick. It’s available in various sizes from Amazon.
Maintenance Tips
As leaves turn yellow, die, or are damaged, they should be promptly pruned.
Pruning can also be used to keep a specimen’s size down, if necessary. If you want to rejuvenate the specimen a bit for increased vitality, cut it down to a height of six inches before the flush of new growth in spring.
Container-grown ti plants should be repotted whenever their root system lacks that extra inch or two of wiggle room.
If your outdoor ti plants are located in an area that’s colder than USDA Hardiness Zone 10, then be prepared to bring your specimens inside and care for them whenever temperatures are predicted to dip below 30°F.
Pest and Disease Management
If your Hawaiian ti plants are to thrive outdoors for the long haul, you’ll need to keep them safe from pests and pathogens… or at least manage them whenever they show up.
In those cliched “hacking-through-a-tropical-rainforest-with-a-machete” scenes in adventure movies, the protagonists are never not surrounded by a swarm of bugs. And the creepy-crawlies that aren’t swarming our heroes are crawling on any bit of flora they can find.
All of this to say: pests love the hot and moist conditions that ti plants need.
Leaf chlorosis, foliar distortion, and sooty mold are just a few symptoms that can result from pest infestation, not to mention the disease transmission and structural damage that can result from the feeding itself.
Strong sprays of water or manual scrape-offs can physically remove pests from leaves and stems, while applications of insecticidal soap or horticultural oil can suffocate and kill them.
If more control is necessary, then there are plenty of systemic insecticides like permethrins and spinosad available for you to wage war.
In addition, you can find Bonide multi-purpose insecticidal soap at Arbico Organics, as well.
As a rule of thumb, the healthier the specimen, the less susceptible it is to an infestation. So the better you care for your specimens, the less likely that bugs will come along and have a field day.
Same goes for pathogens, too. If a C. fruticosa is already sickly from poor cultivation, then it’s all too easy for an actual sickness to take hold.
In addition to providing the proper care, you should avoid both overwatering and overhead watering – excess moisture on the leaves promotes pathogen growth, and soggy soils can suffocate the roots.
But despite all your efforts, disease can still show up, unfortunately.
Various bacterial and fungal leaf spot diseases will manifest with the eponymous spotting, while root rots cause deterioration both above and below the soil line. In the case of a severe infection, plants can perish.
Regardless of the disease, you should respond promptly by removing symptomatic leaves, and if you notice the powdery spores of Fusarium rots or the slimy-looking symptoms of Erwinia leaf and stem rot, discard infected specimens entirely.
Fungicide applications can protect nearby healthy specimens, as well as prevent infection in susceptible areas from the get-go.
It’s Ti Time!
And just like a mouth-watering cup of chai, a well-placed C. fruticosa can really hit the spot.
Whether you add a mass of Hawaiian ti plants or just one to your landscape, you’re sure to be pleased with the result. But be forewarned: when it comes to a beautiful ti plant, moderation is dang near impossible.
Curious about an aspect of outdoor C. fruticosa care that I may have missed? Have experience of your own to share? The comments section is for you.
ARE ANY OF YOUR houseplants edible? A new book by the owners of the beloved rare-plant nursery called Logee’s Greenhouses suggests that we make room for some delicious candidates among our potted indoor plants—including some of the many choices of citrus that are well-adapted to growing in containers.
Byron and I talked about the best citrus for indoor growers (perhaps treated to a summer vacation outside), and how to care for them.
Plus: Enter to win a copy of the new book by commenting in the box near the bottom of the page.
Read along as you listen to the Oct. 30, 2023 edition of my public-radio show and podcast using the player below. You can subscribe to all future editions on Apple Podcasts (iTunes) or Spotify or Stitcher (and browse my archive of podcasts here). (Photo of Byron and Laurelynn Martin, below, by Dan Kennedy via Storey Publishing.)
citrus in containers, with byron martin
Margaret Roach: I’ve been enjoying the book. I had no idea about some of these… I mean, I knew vanilla was an orchid, but I didn’t think about sugarcane being in the grass family, and cinnamon related to laurels, and, oh my goodness, there’s a lot of possibilities, huh?
Byron Martin: There are, and we keep discovering more. So the book has been a while since it’s been written and published, and there’s actually chapters that could be added to it.
Margaret: Uh-oh: Part two [laughter].
Byron: Right.
Margaret: The sequel. I think with readers and listeners over the years, that among the edible plants that they can live with indoors either part or all of the year, that citrus are the most common that I hear about. I don’t know if that’s the most popular category in your edible part of your business, but I… yeah.
Byron: Yeah, so citrus definitely have a place in the indoor culture, and there’s a couple of reasons for it. One is that they fruit relatively young and are quite prolific. And the other is that they do tolerate indoor growing conditions very well. And there’s just a couple of things in terms of the culture that once you get it down, you pretty much can grow any citrus and still keep it small enough. So we always think of citrus as large trees, but small enough in a container for many, many years.
In our book we have a picture of a Calamondin orange, a variegated one, that’s got to be over 35 years old now, and it’s stayed in that same pot for at least 30 years.
Margaret: Wow.
Byron: So they’re long-lasting, they go on for a long time. They’re very productive. Some of these citrus plants put out tremendous amounts of fruit on a yearly basis. And the other thing about citrus are is they’re pretty forgiving to erratic watering [laughter]. And yeah, right—we as gardeners, it’s a hard thing; I mean, your dog will tell you when it’s thirsty, but the plant probably doesn’t tell you as loudly.
Margaret: Right.
Byron: Yeah. So you may forget, and then a lot of plants collapse, particularly if they’re soft-growing or transpire very easy.
Margaret: Yes, but these are tougher than that.
Byron: Yes.
Margaret: So I wanted to talk about recommended varieties for those of us who want the best chance of success if we’re getting started with citrus and want to adopt something.
But first just—and you’ve alluded to some of it—are there some basic citrus-growing pointers and kinds of conditions that we need if we’re thinking about delving into the world of citrus? Is it a lot of light, or is it certain temperatures or humidity, or what are the basics, if there are basics?
Byron: So basically there is going to be a need for good light. And this is the limiting factor, of course, with growing anything in your home, whether you have the quality of light that’s needed for whatever plant you’re trying to grow.
And citrus, really, I mean, you look at citrus groves and they’re out in the open, they’re getting full sun, so they really need a south window if you have it, or an east, west, or a combination southeast, southwest window to grow them with direct light coming on them. And many people, of course, grow them, put them outside for the summertime, where they grow very vigorously—that’s obviously their growing season—and then bring them in to lower light conditions in the fall and hold them.
And the downside to doing that too late, and under too low a light, is you’re going to get leaf drop, and you usually get some leaf drop, anyway.
We have a lot of questions about this. Not only houseplants but many plants: You put them out and then it’s really about that reduced light. And I always say that for humans to sense light is entirely different than a plant. I mean, we have a window, and light comes in, and we see everything in the room, but for a plant it’s a whole different ballgame.
They really need that higher light level, the high-light plants. And that’s why there are low-light houseplants, and there even are some that will grow and do quite well in shadier conditions in the home and that can yield fruit, or something like cinnamon that can yield a spice for you.
Margaret: So I watched a video of you, a basic overview of growing citrus. And you recommend growing, especially if people are having trouble, transferring the plants to clay pots. Why is that helpful, a terracotta clay pot?
Byron: So clay transpires, or lets out water, and if you’re growing in clay as opposed to plastic you’re going to get a quicker dry-down.
Margaret: O.K.
Byron: So one of the great limitations in growing citrus is root disease, and these are pathogens that get into the root system. Generally, the stress on them is during the wintertime. So whenever somebody sends us a picture of a sad citrus plant and wants to know what it is, the answer is, first tap it out of the pot and look for live, healthy roots and/or brown, dead roots.
And those roots didn’t die from old age, they died from a pathogen. And so the pathogens that generally affect them are Pythium and Rhizoctonia, or there’s a couple other organisms that affect them, and they generally thrive under damp conditions. So when the soil remains wet or moist for too long, that’s when these problems start to arise.
Now, it’s also a relationship between the disease and fertilizer, which… Yeah, that’s excessive amounts of fertilizer tend to make bigger cells in the plant. We don’t ever see them of course, you have to use magnification. And those larger cells are not as tough and hard and resilient. And so the pathogens have a way to get into them when the tissue is softer. However, if you grow a plant—and it’s not only citrus, this is the other plants that you might struggle with that have these susceptibilities—if you grow them under stress it tends to eliminate that problem. And a clay pot is definitely going to give the plant a quicker dry-down, more drought stress than a plastic pot.
Margaret: Interesting. So we want good light. There’s this advantage of avoiding the potential for root disease by letting them drain well and so forth. You just mentioned fertilizer. I’ve always backed off on feeding once we get into the lower light. I’m a Northern grower like you are, and once we get into the lower-light season… Yet, I know some people who fertilize year-round with their indoor plants. I don’t. Would you back off in this time of year, into the late winter?
Byron: It depends upon the light level that they have.
Margaret: O.K.
Byron: Now, most every plant, not all plants, but most every plant that we have that we grow has a very slow period or stops growing in the winter. Because here, we’re in Connecticut, and when you get down to the depth of winter, which is the 21st of December, and that period going in and coming out into January, there is just enough light outside to grow a plant. When you go inside, or you get into a greenhouse with all the structure over the top of you, it’s gone. And so everything slows down to a crawl, or stops.
And that’s actually an important time for citrus, because it’s that flush that happens, usually in February, when we see things starting to wake up, that all your buds appear. So citrus, if you go into citrus-growing areas in late winter or very early spring, they’re all in bloom and you can smell the orange blossoms and flowers.
Margaret: Yes.
Byron: Yep. And so, generally, we don’t want to fertilize at that time of year. However, you can do that; you just have to make sure that you’re not putting so much on that you damage the plant. And there’s no real good reason to force growth at that time of year because whatever’s forced is still going to be struggling under that low light level.
Margaret: Right. So I want to talk about some of the… I mean, in the book there are so many other kinds of plants, but we’re just talking mostly about citrus today. But the range of diversity even within the citrus! A lot of people have probably heard or had recommended to them or seen at the nursery in the indoor-plant area, ‘Meyer’ lemons [below]. That’s one of the most popular ones, but there’s so much more.
Byron: Right. Well, ‘Meyer’ is a very good one, and of all the lemons, if you line all the lemons up and you try ‘Meyer,’ it has the greatest flavor. But there are other ones. So the limes and lemons tend to not have a set flowering time. They do flower, like most citrus, at the end of winter or early spring, but they also can flower offseason. But also the finger limes will do that. And so there’s a long period where these plants can have more fruit on them than what we normally would see on just, say, a tangerine or a grapefruit or a navel orange.
They also grow faster. So the edibles like the Citrus sinensis, which is our juice orange or edible orange, or tangelos and such things as that, they have a specific growth cycle that they go through—grapefruit, too—where they grow in that first spring flush, they may put another flush out and then it’s over. So you get two flushes, maybe three flushes a year. However, lemons and limes don’t ever stop.
And we have this old ‘Ponderosa’ lemon in our greenhouses, for any of your listeners that want to come to the greenhouses, you can see it. Actually the fruit is ripening right now. It’s been in our greenhouses since 1900, and it’s been planted in the ground, so it happily lives in this old greenhouse. It’s one of the original greenhouses that the business started in. And we harvest off of that thousands of cuttings a year. That just keeps it from going up through the glass.
Margaret: Wow [laughter].
Byron: So we prune off everything from the glass, and we root them, and we sell them. And this flowering set, you can almost, almost, all year round have fruit on the tree. And that’s because it’ll do its spring flush, and then there’s some stragglers that come along. And then in the summertime you’ll get some blooms. And so there’s fruit on it almost… There’s a period when usually it’s pretty thin, and that’s because it’s a lemon or a lime. And so the Key lime, the Persian lime, that would be our commerce lime that you find in the grocery store, and then lemons, ‘Eureka’ lemon, the ‘Ponderosa’ lemon. And there’s lots of others, but those are some of the more popular ones.
They’re really great houseplants, but if you’ve done that or you want to get out to someplace where you can eat something that’s really sweet, then you need to move into the oranges and all those subtypes: tangelos, Temples, tangerines, Citrus reticulata, and even grapefruit do very well.
Probably one of my most favorite of all the citrus, at least for us in the North here, is the ‘Ujukitsu’ lemon, and it’s really not a lemon. It’s a tangelo with yellow skin.
Margaret: Oh, is that the “sweet lemon”?
Byron: It is. Well, I mean, we have a lot of fruit here over the season, and it has got to be the sweetest thing you can ever taste. And I’m sure that it has something to do with holding its sweetness in a greenhouse in Connecticut as opposed to growing in Florida or Southern California or Texas, where probably sweetness is in everything.
But that’s a very good one, and it really looks like a tangelo, but it has a yellow skin to it. And yet those, I go back to that growth, those have that cycle of growth that’s much slower for the gardeners to bring them into fruit.
Margaret: Yeah. So for a lot of us, space is the thing. And I have friends who have lemons and limes, and they’re growing them in really, really, really big containers and they’re decent sized small trees, but you know what I mean, they’re big. It’s not a little, small thing.
I was fascinated to see, again in that video I watched of you talking about citrus, a sweet orange, I think it was called maybe ‘Cipo’ [above] that’s pendulous or weeping and can be grown in a hanging basket. And then also a miniature tree, the very heavy-fruiting and bushy-looking, the Calamondin orange with the variegated leaves, and I think even the fruit was variegated. Some of these that are a little bit special in their habit, and, in the case of that Calamondin, even extra-showy because of the variegation. So are those some that are good for us to try, to start with?
Byron: No, I mean, the question is, how much room do you have?
Margaret: Right.
Byron: So my house has just normal windows in it, so it’s going to be hard to put a 6-foot tree in there and have it do anything. However, there are the pruning shears, and they work very well at maintaining plants at any size. I always say, always whenever you have a question about it, think about a bonsai and how they’re cut back.
However, there are citrus that are relatively small. The finger limes, actually, are pretty small plants. We have one that is a hybrid. It’s called the Australian blood lime or Australian red lime that’s a hybrid between Citrus australasica sanguinea, that’s the red finger lime, and a ‘Rangpur’ lime. And it’s a weeper. It doesn’t ever go up. It only goes down and it’s this kind of bush. I think maybe on our website we have some mature pictures of the mature specimens of that plant.
I have one that’s been in a pot, it produces maybe 50 or 60 little round red limes a year, and it’s no more than a foot and a half, 2 feet tall and it never gets any bigger. It just weeps and we trim it. You have to always use pruning shears whenever you’re managing it.
Margaret: Yeah, the finger limes, I was going to say, the finger lime are so… A friend of mine, Ken Druse, grows… I don’t know which one it is, but it’s a little more upright and the fruits are long. Small, but long and dark green on the outside. And inside are those, I think they’re called vesicles. He calls it “lime caviar.” Inside are these little beads of flavor, incredible flavor. It’s really wonderful. And it’s not too big a plant and yet he gets a lot, like you’re saying, a lot of fruits.
Byron: I mean, any of the finger limes [above]… This is a hybrid. So the juice vesicles are a little bit more elongated than the round ones that you find, but they work just the same. And finger limes actually work very well as a container plant. We grow the regular green one, and we also have one called ‘Red Champagne’ that has red fruit and darker pink flesh inside, or the beads or vesicles, are darker pink. They’re great indoor plants. I mean, they come from Australia so, first of all, they’ve got a tolerance to drought stress, and they’re very bushy, but erratically bushy. So they do need, just to make them look nice, you need to cut them back. And they also will flower on and off all year-round, similar to what a regular lemon or lime would do.
Margaret: Great. It’s a great plant, yeah.
Byron: But, that said, we have an old employee, a friend that had worked for us for quite a few years and took a lime home, and that was about 20 years ago or so. And they contacted me and said they had to give it away and did we want it? And they sent me a picture of it, and it was a good size, probably something you couldn’t fit in your window, and she just didn’t know what to do with this thing. It produced dozens and dozens of… And I said, just take a pair of pruning shears and cut it really hard.
Margaret: Oh!
Byron: So you can prune citrus really, really hard. And you do that right as they begin to flush in the springtime, just head that thing back down until it fit in the house. And the only downside… And they respond great to it, as long as the root system’s healthy, obviously.
The only downside to it is they’ve got to make that first growth before they’ll start to produce fruit again.
So coming off of some bud way down low on a stem, there isn’t that whole organization of, “I want to fruit,” type thing going on and to flush out. So it’ll be two growths beyond that that they’ll start to flower and fruit again. And it worked for her. And now that plant, which is, I don’t know, 30 years old or so, stays in the home and produces limes in its place.
Margaret: Wow. One group, one kind of citrus that includes a lot of oddballs, if people like eccentric things, I think, is Citron; there’s giant fruits and oddball shapes. Is that where the ‘Buddha’s Hand’ [below] fits in, I think?
Byron: Yes. That’s a Citron. Those are relatively tall growers. There’s no way you’re going to keep that at 2 feet high in a pot. You can initially, but they are relatively tall growers. And by tall I mean you probably can max out at 4 feet and then do some pruning on it. And we have the ‘Turunji’ variety, which is this massive fruit. It’s huge. And then the ‘Buddha’s Hand’ that we grow, and then a standard Citron, which would be a medium-sized fruit on that. They’re great. And the interesting thing is the rind that is good to eat, it’s sweet and you can just bite into it. And of course they candy it and it has a connection to the Jewish faith also.
Margaret: I wanted to ask about pests. A friend of mine who grows a number of lemon and lime trees and puts them out and then brings them back in in the winter, or fall, he said he had just been trying to clean up scale insects on one of them before he brought it back in and so forth. Is scale a thing that happens? Are there any other pests that we should be on the lookout for, and how do we tackle those?
Byron: Right, so there’s three insects that can affect them. The mites, and there’s several mites that can get on citrus, and they’re fairly easy to control. Then there’s scale, which actually is fairly easy to control if you’re persistent. And then there’s mealy bug, which can be problematic.
Margaret: Oh, yeah.
Byron: The good news is citrus have shiny leaves so they are very tolerant to sprays. And what we recommend doing is, before you bring them in, maybe a week or two before you bring them in, and just as you bring them in, make sure that they’ve been sprayed thoroughly with either a ultra-fine horticultural oil or Neem oil. The Neem oil will be just a straight oil that you’re going to dilute with dishwashing detergent.
The problem with the last two, scale and mealy bug, is they have a very long life cycle to them, and they can hide under the scales or in the cracks and crevices of the tree and under leaves. And so the first thing is to have really good coverage, which isn’t going to happen with a little hand spritzer. You need to get a pump spray that puts pressure on it and really blast the entire plant with it.
For the scale you need to hit them, preferably you need to keep your eye even on the summertime when the soft shell is present. That’s not that hard little brown bump, but it’s a thin light scale on the surface and you get the crawlers along with that, and that is pretty effective. We’ve cleaned plants up of scale and never seen it again so it’s something that you can eliminate, but you have to be persistent. One shot on any of those, even the mites, one shot is not going to do it. It has to be repeated.
As far as mealy bug goes, you need to do that probably on a weekly basis for three, four, or five weeks. Just continue to spray it, because what you’re trying to do is really get things you can’t see, which are the crawlers, as they emerge from that cotton mass.
Margaret: Yeah, mealy bug; ugh.
Byron: I mean, if you’re persistent and you spray… Oh, there’s one other thing. Once you’ve sprayed an oil on a citrus plant, make sure that a day or two later you go and you wash it off with clear water before you put more oil on the leaf. It’ll build up and cause damage.
Margaret: You mentioned this tree, one of your citrus trees, that’s been there forever, for since, what, 1900 or something, growing in the in-ground part of one of the older greenhouses. I mean, it really is a destination nursery. It’s also a mail-order business. You ship plants, I assume, all around the country. I mean, people order from all…
Byron: We’ve been shipping since the 1930s, so coming to 100 years.
Margaret: Some of my oldest houseplants that live here with me are from… They got their start at Logee’s. So my Bowiea which now has, I don’t know, a billion [laughter] of those green, onion-y looking things at its base, a lot of them started their lives there with you, so I know I’m grateful. But it’s really a great destination, almost like a tour, because the collection is so like a museum of unusual plants, yes? I mean, people come just to look around and shop, but to have fun, I think.
Byron: Yeah, it’s a great place to visit, particularly in the wintertime when everything’s drab and gray outside.
Margaret: Yeah. So you’re in Danielson, Connecticut. I’m so glad to talk to you again, and congratulations to you and Laurelynn again on the new book, “Edible Houseplants.” And I hope I’ll talk to you again soon. And I think I might be ordering some citrus [laughter] so thanks, Byron; you got me in trouble again.
No answer, or feeling shy? Just say something like “count me in” and I will, but a reply is even better. I’ll pick a random winner after entries close at midnight Tuesday, November 7, 2023. Good luck to all.
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MY WEEKLY public-radio show, rated a “top-5 garden podcast” by “The Guardian” newspaper in the UK, began its 14th year in March 2023. It’s produced at Robin Hood Radio, the smallest NPR station in the nation. Listen locally in the Hudson Valley (NY)-Berkshires (MA)-Litchfield Hills (CT) Mondays at 8:30 AM Eastern, rerun at 8:30 Saturdays. Or play the Oct. 30, 2023 show using the player near the top of this transcript. You can subscribe to all future editions on iTunes/Apple Podcasts or Spotify or Stitcher (and browse my archive of podcasts here).
As cold weather slowly creeps in, we find ourselves spending more and more time indoors again. Remodelista this week showcased interiors that know how to commune with nature—all from the comfort of your home. Plus: Steal This Look: A Communal Family Kitchen in a Brooklyn Townhouse Trend Alert: Tattoos Move In, Line-Drawn Rug Edition 10 […]
“Welcome sweet November, the season of senses and my favorite month of all.”
Gregory F. Lenz
The Arizona garden in November is a beautiful place to be. In the low desert, the cooler temperatures of November bring a less frantic pace to the garden. Much of the fall planting was done in September and October, with some harvests beginning this month. Favorites like sweet potatoes and pomegranates are finally ready for harvesting in November as well. Spending time in your Arizona garden in November is one of the reasons we love to live in Arizona!
Keep reading for garden inspiration, a low desert November garden checklist, and a list of which vegetables, herbs and flowers to plant in your low desert Arizona garden in November.
Low desert includes elevations below 3500 ft in the Southwest, such as the Phoenix and Tucson metro areas.
Disclaimer: this post contains affiliate links. See my disclosure policy for more information.
Vegetables growing in the low desert Arizona garden in November
Tomatillos are often ready for harvest this month. Read this article for more information about how to grow tomatillos.
Eggplant harvests continue during November. Read this article for more information about how to grow eggplant.
Beans planted in July – September are producing. Pick beans often to encourage production.
Cucumbers planted in mid-August through September are producing. Pick cucumbers young and often to encourage production.
Brassicas (which include broccoli, Brussels sprouts, cauliflower, kohlrabi, and kale) are all growing well in the garden this month. Look to harvest when young and tender for best taste. Continue to succession plant through the end of the year.
Luffa is growing well in the garden this month. Harvest luffa when less than 6 inches long if you want to eat it. When growing luffa in the garden for the sponge, leave it on the vine until it is yellow and feels lightweight and hollow. For more information on growing luffa, read this post.
Radishes are one of the easiest vegetables to grow. Radishes that were planted back in September are ready to harvest. Continue to plant radishes through April for a continual harvest.
Flowers growing in the low desert Arizona garden in November
Check the end of this post for a list of cool-season flowers that do well in Arizona. Many of them can be planted in November. Petunias planted now will thrive until it gets hot in April or May.
Coral Vine (Queen’s Wreath) continues to put on a show this month. Enjoy the bees and beautiful blossoms of this frost-sensitive, vigorous vine. Cut back to the ground in February, and it will return quickly each year.
Consider adding cool-season edible flowers to your vegetable garden. Nasturtiums (pictured here), borage, calendula, and pansies are all edible, attract pollinators, and add beauty to the garden. This article teaches how to grow nasturtiums.
Sunset cosmosPurple hyacinth beanOrange Tecoma in bloomRussian sage and guara in bloomDesert milkweed attracting wildlifeFall rose in bloom
Fruit trees in the low desert Arizona garden in November
Pomegranatesare ready to harvest this month. Check for a deep red skin color and splitting of skins. Most varieties are sweetest when the arils (seeds) are deep red.
Lemons, calamondin, and limes are beginning to ripen this month, with more citrus to come in December, January, and into spring.
For more information about growing citrus read this article.
Many varieties of figs are ready to harvest in your Arizona garden in November. Figs do not continue to ripen once picked. For ripe fruit check for soft fruit and the aroma of nectar.
Herbs in the low desert Arizona garden in November
Lemon Grass
Low desert Arizona garden in November to-do list:
If you put smaller containers away for the summer, November is an excellent time to bring them back out. Fill containers with soil and plant bulbs and other annuals.
Water trees and shrubs deeply but less often than in warmer temperatures. Water no more than every 10-14 days. Wateruseitwisely.com is a helpful resource for landscape watering guidelines.
Prune dead branches out of frost-hardy trees and shrubs.
Plant cold-tolerant trees, bushes, and perennials. For a list of over 200 landscape plants that do well in Arizona, visit amwua.org. A few ideas include penstemon, globe mallow, Chaparral sage, and Mexican honeysuckle.
If queen palms did not survive summer weather, consider replacing them with something different. Queen palms are not adapted to growing in the low desert of Arizona.
Flowers to Plant Outside & Seeds to Start Indoors Each Month in the Low Desert of Arizona. • PLANTING GUIDE: Each month lists annual flowers and bulbs to plant outside & seeds to start indoors. • BLOOMING GUIDE: Photos show what may be in bloom that month.
Flower seeds to start indoors during November
(Click the link for seed sources.)
If this post about gardening in Arizona during November was helpful, please share it:
citrus in containers, with byron martin
Byron: Right. Well, ‘Meyer’ is a very good one, and of all the lemons, if you line all the lemons up and you try ‘Meyer,’ it has the greatest flavor. But there are other ones. So the limes and lemons tend to not have a set flowering time. They do flower, like most citrus, at the end of winter or early spring, but they also can flower offseason. But also
Margaret: Yeah. So for a lot of us, space is the thing. And I have friends who have lemons and limes, and they’re growing them in really, really, really big containers and they’re decent sized small trees, but you know what I mean, they’re big. It’s not a little, small thing.
Byron: I mean, any of the finger limes [above]… This is a hybrid. So the juice vesicles are a little bit more elongated than the round ones that you find, but they work just the same. And finger limes actually work very well as a container plant. We grow the regular green one, and we also have one called
Byron: Yes. That’s a Citron. Those are relatively tall growers. There’s no way you’re going to keep that at 2 feet high in a pot. You can initially, but they are relatively tall growers. And by tall I mean you probably can max out at 4 feet and then do some pruning on it. And we have the ‘Turunji’ variety, which is this massive fruit. It’s huge. And then the ‘Buddha’s Hand’ that we grow, and then a standard Citron, which would be a medium-sized fruit on that. They’re great. And the interesting thing is the rind that is good to eat, it’s sweet and you can just bite into it. And of course they candy it and it has a connection to the Jewish faith also.
