This Shasta Daisy died in front of me of transplant shock. All leaves of this 3" starter nursery pot plant browned, shriveled and died away. Believing in allowing soil microbes to feed on plant roots no longer alive in let it stay. Upon return to cut it down to soil level, I found a return of green leaves a week ago. Now it's about as wide as a dollar bill and had grown 2", measured
This oxtail fern hasn't had its pot changed since being bought 2 days before my dad passed in 2017. It stays and returns annually, however weak it may be, in the same 20 gallon plastic pot that once saw massive tails growing from it. It breaks my heart how attached to this plant, as is, my mom is. She refuses to allow me to re pot and refresh the soil, divide the tubers it grows from, and return it to a healthy state. While true I may fail with such a delicate task differing wildly from pulling crowns apart with ease instead requiring the same care a dahlia left perennial in place inside a container would require surgical tuber extraction of the few healthy ones and discarding the varying stages of decay the mass of tubers forming a clump crowding the plant is, I understand her fear that it's a living thing attached so patently to the memory of her deceased life live where no other memory of him had life in it.
The landscape papers forming a circle housed a Japanese blueberry tree, 1 of 6 in my backyard, with rocks acting as mulch, ineffectively if I may say so, and since it's demise last year, my mom is gifting me the space, after being weeded, rocks within removed, and soil amended from whatever healthy soil lay above central Florida natural soil of clumping sand which is clay and rock in properties with deceitful appearance of free draining sand like that at the beach. Its 12 feet across the middle circumference so I can plant a spherical pyramid size descending from tallest center to size consistent rings around which will be carefully planned crops that will mature over several years before needing division and will fill in the spaces left at mature stages of growth which I can start using my mature bulbs for and put annuals, ,both large and dwarf hybrids, interlocking the spaces in the meantime while I cultivate mature perennials in grow bags over several years. We have very limited space out back to grow on as our community landscaper mows thru, both figuratively & literally, weekly now and monthly in winter.
This skeleton of a jade looking tree in center of image was a wildly overgrown autograph tree that munched it's own invasive growth casting a canopy over tropical plants below that by nature grew with 4 to 5 leaves and suffocated the agave and umbrella shrub to the right. Plus above are 2 live oak trees, one in our and 1 in our neighbors yard which hand above this bed each half of its own canopy dumping leaves every December without being raked away, live oak tree leaf deposits being an excellent mulch for Florida regenerative gardening, and for 10 years mulch fed the soil while protecting the plants with access to the sun, ie the autograph tree, and fueled a nitrogen rich vegetative growth stage that never went to flowering, fruit, or seed pods, flowering and fruit should occur every year as a succulent that flowers. These plants shouldn't reach 12' tall with 34 branches that were pruned off this weekend, reaching average of 4' long each and containing 70 leaves on average. My mom wanted it pruned hard and off schedule, during peak growing rather than early winter or late winter before it's growth resumes, potentially killing it. Since Saturday, I see signs of new growth all over the plant. Its gonna be fine.
Below it are 6 snake plants each born out of the original as suckered propagation with a brand new suckered forming a new plant at right. For now it's attached to the Stalin underground rising up as a single blade of thick and pointy plant with the ridges showing where it'll fan out to form the pattern it's recognized from etched into the bottom and getting more pronounced each week I look at it. The salon is as thick as 3" in spherical circumference. That's as thick as 1 of the 2 forearm bones.
The garden out back, both in ground and unassembled container garden, as it looked today, Tuesday 9/9/2025
#gardening #organic-gardening #containergarden #floridagardener #zone10a #banana #agastache #lilies #dahlias #Lantanacamara #cannas #succulents #Aloe #kalanchoe #shastadaisy #sedum #begonias
