Category Archives: South Florida Winter Cut Flowers

In a Vase on Monday – Tropical Spring Roll

My spring roll is filled with different ingredients than one found in a Thai restaurant. A bromeliad leaf is wrapped around delicious contents from the garden. The names of some of the contents could be considered food – asparagus (fern), sage (salvia) – but I think we would be hard pressed to chew through the roll. It could possibly be considered high fiber/low carb for oh, say rodents or a passing iguana. My plan is to admire the flowers.

The ingredients:

My salvias are having a great year. Here they are again, Mystic Blue and White Flame. The pink flower is known as the tulip of the Treasure Coast. They don’t really remind me of tulips, but I get it. They are actually bromeliads, Billbergia pyramidalis. Green foliage is Asparagus fern and the wrapping leaf is from Blanchetiana Bromeliad (Aechmea blanchetiana). I love the green/mahogany coloration of the Blanchetiana leaves in winter, they are chartreuse in summer.

The weather here has finally turned in favor of gardening. My tomatoes are ripening and spring is in the air. On the down side, the moles ate all the bulbs and tubers, making me realize I should stop wasting money on these lovelies. I also accidentally grew some rabbit tobacco I thought was Chinese Forget Me Nots, oh well. Rabbit tobacco is a weed and a rite of passage in my youth. Boys would smoke it pretending like it was cigarettes! I am told it was harsh, but I never tried it.

Thanks to Cathy for hosting this weekly meme. Follow this link to see more vases.

In a Vase on Monday – Wintry Whites

Sometimes I like a little reminder of winter, something that doesn’t involve actually being cold. With temperatures hovering around 80F/26C and the air conditioning running it is not very wintry in my garden. I decided to concentrate on frosty white flowers in a vase for this Monday.

It has been very pleasant outside this week, so I have been clearing things out and moving things around. I planted a couple of packages of seed ahead of a predicted day long deluge (Sunday) hoping to get some different cutting flowers going (Bupleurum and White Finch Orlaya). I decided to plant these in a bed instead of pots as I have this magnificent vegetable bed I prepared a couple of years ago lying fallow since it became infested with nematodes almost immediately after completion. The reseeding salvia is very happy there so I’m hoping for more flowers. Upon returning to the house I read the packages – both said they need to be chilled for two weeks prior to planting. Oops. I hope the deluge helps.

The vase is a thrift store find. Flowers in frosty tones:

White Flame Salvia is cascading over the edges. The purple stemmed fuzzy flowers are Red Velvet Aerva.

White daisies are Bidens alba. Varigated foliage is ‘Bossa Nova’ Neoregelia Bromeliad. The airy grasses are dried seedheads from Muhly Grass (Muhlbergia capillaris).

That’s all from not so wintry South Florida this Monday. Visit our hostess, Cathy, at her blog to see vases from other gardeners around the world.

In a Vase on Monday – November Candy

November in South Florida brings some sweet and unusual treats to the garden. When living further north I doubt I could have dreamed of finding something like this in flower this time of year. Actually, I am not sure I could have dreamed up the flower at all!

The purple flowers in the vase are ‘Candy’ Portea Bromeliads. I’m thinking they resemble Good & Plenty licorice candies, just not quite the right color. This is a good one to cut as for unknown reasons it flowers on the backside of the plant and can barely be seen. A pair of loppers accessorized with a suit of armor is a good ensemble for cutting these as the foliage is very sharp. The older I get, the less appreciation for thorns I have.

After some puzzling and tromping through the slightly storm ravaged garden (we had 50 mph wind gusts and I had not realized the volume of branches down, a task for another day) Here are the components of the vase:

Fan shaped foliage in the back is a trimmed frond of Cabbage Palm (Palmetto sabal); pink flowers are courtesy of the storm, Rain Lilies (Zephyranthes spp.); purple flowers are ‘Candy’ Portea Bromeliads; foliage is from Asparagus Fern (Asparagus sprengeri).

Dark purple foliage is Purple Queen (Setcreasea pallida) – I have a feeling some botanists changed this name, but am getting over it. The grey roses are Graptosedum succulents.

That’s all from my garden this week. I will be planting tomatoes and herbs I started from seed this week and starting seed for a few new varieties of cut flowers. And picking up branches.

Thanks to Cathy for hosting. Please follow the link to visit her blog and see more vases: http://ramblinginthegarden.wordpress.com

Six on Saturday – Succumbed to Temptation

SOS time again! Here is the pretty picture this Saturday. To see more SOS posts for a fascinating tour of what grows where in this world, visit Jim at http://gardenruminations.co.uk

Below is a Dwarf Red Ixora (Ixora taiwanensis) having a really good year.

It’s Saturday morning and after looking around my overgrown garden – I decided to make a confession. I have succumbed to the End of Season bulb sales. The dahlias and gladiolus were too cheap to resist, so I stocked up. The bulbs and tubers arrived in wonderful condition. Stored in dry peat moss and holey plastic bags.

In South Florida, the state of garden weirdness rules and I had to dither about storing the bulbs for a couple of months until I can plant them for winter cut flowers. I asked fellow bloggers about storage and dithered until the dahlias started sprouting. This spurred me into action. I cut the sprouts off, shook the peat moss off and laid the tubers out to dry. Then, decided on the Mousseau method (Chris at County Gardening) wrapped the tubers in cling wrap, rolled them into a paper bag and put them in the refrigerator.

These shall luxuriate in cool, dry air until October at least. I suppose I should have a look at them to make sure they aren’t molding. I could not cope with the idea of sprinkling fungicide on something and keeping it in the refrigerator.

Green Flash Parrot gladiolus joined the dahlias in the fridge. I marked them so my husband won’t eat them. Ha! The last instructions I read about growing glads in Florida was they needed to be coated in DDT to keep insects or everything away. Not happening here and crossing my fingers for future flowers.

All the bulbs made it necessary to reclaim a bed that has been lying fallow for a year due to root knot nematodes. The weeds must be removed and a layer of clear plastic put over the top of the dirt to solarize the bed and kill the nematodes.

Root knot nematode damage. This is a tomato plant that has passed on. You can see the thickened roots and knots on the roots. Nematodes infest the roots and feed on the nutrients, the plants come up, look great and slowly wither away. I have grown some really wimpy vegetable plants, not realizing what was happening. This plant was in a pot, these microscopic worms amaze me, they have gotten into pots set on pavers on my front porch while I wondered why I had the worst herbs ever! Solarizing that pot, too.

Of course, after the bulb and tuber event some new types of seeds were required. The Moonflowers were sent to me by a friend. I am going to try to grow these along with the Bougainvillea for scent this fall. I have not had Orlaya or Buplerum before and look forward to trying these as cutting flowers. I should have some mad green bouquets this winter. Hopefully with dahlias!

Happy Gardening!!!