Category Archives: Tropical gardening

Six on Saturday – Bees and Bags

Welcome to SOS, December 11, 2021 edition. It is warm and sunny in South Florida and the birds, bees and flowers are enjoying the blue skies. So is the gardener. Though it could be a little cooler (83 F today), are we ever happy with the weather? I am joining Jon at http://www.thepropagatorblog.wordpress.com with the SOS crowd linking to his blog. Follow the link for more garden fun.

I had to share my Malaysian Orchid in full bloom today. This is an amazing sight and the bees are enjoying the flowers. I finally got a picture of the elusive green orchid bee.

This is a very active, flitting bee. I stood and waited to take the picture. These bees are native to Central and South American and are thought to have been introduced to Florida in 2003 via a nest in a wood pallet from Mexico. There are a fair number in my garden.

The bag garden is producing cut flowers and vegetables for me this week. We have been eating green beans, radishes and tomatoes – it is time to plant a second crop of radishes and beans. I am rooting tomato suckers for a later crop of tomatoes. Here is a sunflower and below, the Cactus Zinnias.

The Papaya decapitated last spring is flowering again. The flowers so far are female, they are usually self pollinating hermaphrodite flowers – so, it will be interesting to see if it is self limiting the fruit production due to the pruning.

The hard cane dendrobium orchid I installed in a Gumbo LImbo tree has started budding. I am wondering how long this will take to flower???

That’s all from my garden this week.

Happy Gardening.

In a Vase on Monday – Zinnia Envy

At long last my Zinnia Envy has been cured. I have been cutting the Zinnias to encourage more flowers and it seems to be working. ‘Green Envy’ Zinnias are doing well and may end up being the best of the bunch. I am encouraged enough to try Dahlias now. I have another case of plant envy that includes Dahlias.

It was an oddly overcast, showery day for winter (dry season) in South Florida. This vase lifted my spirits with its brightly colored cast of characters. I had to stop a couple of times and wait for the rain to stop before I could gather more flowers. I am constantly surprised by the quantity of flowers I can cram into a vase.

The vase is a thrift store find I have enjoyed tremendously. The neutral color shows off highly colored plants well and I like the shape.

A closer view:

Purple foliage with white flowers is ‘Purple Prince’ Alternanthera, it seems to flower in the winter, though this is a new plant to me. I sprinkled a few bits of long suffering purple Lantana from my butterfly garden. Green Zinnias are ‘Green Envy’, grown from seed. Pale pink buttons are Globe Amaranth.

Pink and peach Zinnias are from a Cactus Zinnia seed mix. Peach and orangey spike flowers are from Tropical Red Salvia (Salvia coccinea) it is not always red and I love the variety of colors.

Thanks to Cathy at http://www.ramblinginthegarden.wordpress.com for hosting this weekly garden meme. Follow the link to see more vases.

Happy Hollydays!!

A Week in Flowers – Day Three – Orchids

Welcome to the third installment of A Week in Flowers. Cathy at http://www.wordsandherbs.wordpress.com invited us to share a post a day for a week of flowers in our gardens. Today I am featuring orchids from my South Florida garden – they stay outside year round here. Follow the link to find more flowers from around the world.

Fragrant white Cattleya Orchids live in a pot outside my low slung living room window. These bloom every September and I enjoy watching them and usually cut some for a vase to enjoy the flowers and fragrance up close.

Orange landscape orchids (along with Gallardia) are a fairly common sight around here. These are Epidendrums; sometimes called Ground Orchids. I had some in the garden, but they squirrels dug them up so many times they withered and passed on.

The Orchid tree, not really an Orchid, but a very pretty flower. This is Bauhinia purpurea, I think.

This Orchid tree has purple Cattleya orchids that grow on the trunk. This is my neighbor’s tree, so I see it daily when flowering. One of my favorite summer plantings.

That is all for Day Three. Happy Flower Watching!

A Week in Flowers – Day Two

I am joining Cathy at Words and Herbs for the second edition of AWIF, posting photos of floral abundance. Today, Bromeliad madness from my garden to spread some tropical warmth.

This is a Hallelujah Billbergia Bromeliad, perhaps the maddest of them all. Purple, green and white spotted foliage with red, white and blue flowers.

Another Billbergia of unknown name with a much calmer flower.

Little Harv Aechmea, a close up.

Little Harv in the garden. Little Harv is not so little and is another armored Brom. He was moved away from the walkway as I kept getting stabbed in the calf.

Last, but not least, one of my favorites, with six foot tall flowers, no less. – Aechmea blanchetiana.

Thanks to Cathy at http://www.wordsandherbs.wordpress.com for hosting. Follow the link to see more flowery pictures.

Happy Gardening or garden viewing…

A Week in Flowers – Day One

I have been inivted to share flowers from my garden daily for a week by Cathy at Words and Herbs on WordPress. The idea is to brighten winter days and add some color to our cyberworld. Follow this link to see more flowers from around the world. https://wp.me/p1RJ1n-5Ya

I have chosen winter tropicals from my South Florida garden for today. Above is Shell Ginger (Alpinia zerumbet) a favorite of mine that can flower three times a year if in the mood.

This is a winter flowering Bromeliad, Quesnelia testudo. I think of these as tulips for the tropical garden. They flower in February and March and are reliable for returning and increasing in mass over time. The downside? One very sharp thorn on the end of every leaf.

Thanks to Cathy for hosting. Happy Gardening or flower watching this week.

In a Vase on Monday – A Mixed Bag

I am so pleased to have finally successfully grown Cactus Zinnias. Ta da!

My first several attempts resulted in oddly dwarf flowers that were never more than a single flower. These are doubles and the plants are very healthy with big, deep green leaves. This fall, I decided to plant cutting flowers in grow bags to see if it worked better than my futile efforts to amend the existing sugar sand in my garden. After installing bags and bags of compost, worm castings, mulch and irrigation – I still ended up with puny flowers. Here are the happy Zinnias in their bag:

The arrangement is a mixed bag of fall and winter flowers in my garden. Multi colored is probably the best way to describe it. The vase is a pottery candleholder my parents used in summer to hold citronella candles while they sat on their brick patio and drank untold gallons of dreadful Carlo Rossi Chablis. I put a pickle jar inside to hold water and flowers. The vase holds fond memories for me.

A closer view:

The green Zinnia is Green Envy, these are new to me and my garden. I have planted them with Mystic Spires Blue Salvia and am planning to add chartreuse Sedum below. Green tipped salmon flowers are Soap Aloe (Aloe saponaria); purple spikes are “Mona Lavendar” Plectranthus; salmon spikes are Tropical Red Salvia (Salvia coccinea); pale pink clovers are Globe Amaranth.

The other side:

The Cactus Zinnias are in yellow, pink, purple and salmon. Misty pink flowers are from Muhly Grass (Muhlbergia capillaris).

Thank you to Cathy at http://www.ramblinginthegarden.wordpress.com for hosting. To see more vases follow the link.

Happy Gardening..

In a Vase on Monday – Gloom Buster

Gloomy is not usually a term I associate with the “dry season” in South Florida. It has been raining and overcast since the middle of last week. We Floridians are addicted to sunshine. The garden is clearly enjoying the rain and hopefully the good plants will absorb more than the weeds. Though I can see the cool season weeds germinating wantonly as I dodge the raindrops walking my greyhounds.

Our moods, needing improvement with some floral friends made me search high and low from the safety of my covered porches to spy some colorful and hopefully a little bit tropical flowers to grace my vase this Monday. All of the components of this vase were cut within a mad dash from our doors.

Another view:

Some closer views:

Purple berries are Beautyberry (Calliocarpa americana) – planted by the porch to deter mosquitoes. I think it works. Though I have no comparison. Pink cloverish flowers, some free Globe Amaranth I grew from seed I got from Etsy. Fun, but, yeah looks like clover and is a wimpy color. Not a big fan of pale pink. Darker pink wooly worms, Dwarf Chenille Plant (Acalphya pendula), just tropical fun and a great cut flower. Orange flowers, Firebush (Hamelia patens) grows near front and back doors and a perennial (ha) favorite.

White flowers are from Bridal Bouquet Frangipani (Plumeria pudica). These are slowing down though some consider them evergreen, I do not. Enjoying the slightly fragrant flowers til the bitter end (winter 2022?). Purple foliage is Alternanthera “not sure which one”

The weather seems to be clearing and I hope to be back in the garden soon.

Happy Monday and Happy Gardening to you all. Thanks to Cathy at http://www.ramblinginthegarden.wordpress.com for hosting – please follow the link to see more vases..

Six on Saturday – In the Bag

My Bag Garden is coming along. I have two kinds of tomatoes ripening and small green beans on the bush beans. This group has tomatoes, green beans, radishes, dill and zinnias. The seeds were planted in September and I used some different soil mixes to see what works best. Of course, the most expensive mix was doing best at first. So, I amended the cheaper, heavier soil mix with compost and Osmocote. Now the cheaper mix is catching up. The first radish planting was a bust as the cheap soil was too heavy for radishes.

When I tied the tomatoes to the cages I pruned the suckers off the plants and put them in a vase to root for a later season set of tomatoes. The suckers are flowering in their vase on the counter behind my kitchen sink.

I am not sure what to think or do about the flowers – cut them off? There is very little natural light in this area, although there is LED lighting above the sink.

The other bags are in a more protected location where I potted everything up. They seemed to be doing well so I left them in their spot.

I have a couple of different kinds of zinnias, sunflowers and mystery seedlings from a cutting flower mix. Nigella surprised me by germinating, not supposed to grow here, so hopefully I get some flowers. This week, with cooler weather, I planted another big pot with snow peas, spinach and cilantro. The sticks in the pot are rabbit and squirrel abatement. I had a great deal of trouble with squirrels when I planted the sunflower seeds. My snowbird neighbors amuse themselves by growing a highly toxic, poison green lawn and feeding the squirrels peanuts – the squirrels in turn tear up my potted plants. The sticks are 24″ reeds from reed fencing and are working well.

This is not quite in the bag. It is in the bromeliad, specifically a frog I spied while looking for a flower. The bromeliad is a Aechmea ‘fasciata’, sometimes called Silver Vase. I think these bloom in winter, but only frogs so far.

There! my six for this Saturday. To see more SOS posts, follow the link: http://www.thepropagatorblog.wordpress.com.

Happy Gardening!

In a Vase on Monday – Wild Thing

Wild Thing .. you make my heart sing! Remember that? The Troggs are the original artists, here is the youtube version https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=4qHX493bB3U

I truly enjoy the wild things (they make my heart sing) I grow in my South Florida garden and have filled, well, not a vase – but a Portmerion canister with fall wild things. Maybe I should call them weird things, though there is not a song for that!

A closer view:

The pink fuzzzies (hubs refers to them as wooly worms) are from Dwarf Chenille Plant (Acalypha pendula); pale pink chandeliers are from the Chandelier Plant (Medinillia cummingii); burgundy edible flowers are Roselles (Hibiscus sabdariffa); yellow flowers and green beans are Esperanza (Tecoma stans). There is a bit of Asparagus Fern in there for green texture.

Ivory Zinnia is my first flower from Cactus Zinnia seeds I started in September. I have Green Envy Zinnias (started at the same time) budding and am hoping I have figured out when to plant Zinnias here. I noted some mature Zinnias around when I planted seed so it may be a two Zinnia season here?? Fluffy pink grass in the background is Muhly Grass (Muhlbergia capillaris)

My vase from last week (Palm berries, etc.) is holding up nicely. The bits and bobs have settled a bit and are drying in place, colors are deepening. This may end up being a dried holiday arrangement with the addition of some sparklies, time will tell.

Thanks to Cathy at http://www.ramblinginthegarden.wordpress.com for hosting IAVOM. Follow the link to find more vases from around the world.

Happy Gardening!

In a Vase on Monday – Muhly Belles

My garden is in seasonal transition, there are a few flowers, some fruit and buds for the winter flowers – all in all, not a lot of flowers. I enjoy these respites and have cut a lot of the summer performers back as they tend to get buggy as they age. The dragonflies showed up in droves this week and hopefully ate all the mealybugs on the Salvias, portending a new batch of salvia flowers for the winter. Most of the flowers I cut seemed to be bell shaped – and I added some Muhly because, well, everyone loves the Muhly Grass.

Some closer views:

The red belles are Firecracker Plant (Russelia equiseteum); yellow belles are from Esperanza (Tecoma stans); and the orange, admittedly less bell like are from Firebush (Hamelia patens); my perennial favorite for its flowers, ease of culture and butterfly nectar.

The yellow belles are from Tecoma stans, this is also another common name for them. They have several. The background ephemeral wispies are from Muhly Grass (Muhlebergia capallaris). This seems to be everyone’s favorite this time of year. I am guilty of this, currently loving them in the garden and waiting for their full pink floaty goodness. I may need to stop cutting the wispies.

That is the vase for this Monday from South Florida. Happy Gardening and Happy Fall Y’all. I will be in the garden admiring the Muhly Grass. For more vases from worldwide gardens, visit our intrepid hostess, Cathy at http://www.ramblinginthegarden.wordpress.com.