Garden and Yard Talk

Huntn said:
Bee House- Anyone put these out? Any experts? :) Just bought one, inexpensive, I don’t know who effective they are in giving solitary bees a place to lay their eggs Or how effective they are from year to year. Without cleaning the tubes out. If the babies break out, then maybe the adult bees come back and clean out the holes themselves.

This one looks bigger than it actually is about 14” tall. Looks pretty though. :D


Click to expand...

It's cute... but some of those habitats look a bit like what mud dauber wasps build for themselves... you might end up with more wasps than bees? I don't know much about the kind of insects you get where you are living though.

mud dauber cells.jpg
 
lizkat said:
It's cute... but some of those habitats look a bit like what mud dauber wasps build for themselves... you might end up with more wasps than bees? I don't know much about the kind of insects you get where you are living though.

Click to expand...
Some of the articles I read on placement seemed to have mixed messages comparing them. Wasps prefer to build nests in the shade, we always get their nests up under protected areas. Bees as in bee hives like morning sun, the warmth gets them going. But solitary bees prefer to lay their eggs in the shade In rotting wood.

This house is supposed to be for solitary bees. As far as mud daubers we see wasps landing in the pool all summer fetching water, not sure if those are mud daubers or just plain wasps grabbing water to make their nests. This house is supposed to be a place for the solitary bees to lay their eggs. So we’ll have to see what kind of activity it gets. If I see wasps I will do something to discourage them or move the house out into full sun.

update: fix typos
 
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Freeze Warning Feb 2022-
Tonight it’s predicted to go down to 33F. For the Houston suburbs that usually means a freeze here. Next week it’s predicted to get as cold as 26F for 2 nights in a row but be in the 40s during the day.

So I have to make a decision, option 1 is bring the lemon tree (really a shrub) in a pot into the kitchen. Option 2 is to move it into a small shed and bag it. Option 3 is to wrap the tree with Christmas lights and bag it.

I have time before the serious freeze, but for tonight I’m going with the Christmas lights bagged. Next week, I’m thinking the shed, Xmas lights and bagged, lights under the bag. The material I’m using is from an old 6 layer material that was a car cover.

CB71516A-2A3A-43DC-ADF6-ADA5838AD20D.jpeg​
 
Huntn said:
Freeze Warning Feb 2022-
Tonight it’s predicted to go down to 33F. For the Houston suburbs that usually means a freeze here. Next week it’s predicted to get as cold as 26F for 2 nights in a row but be in the 40s during the day.

So I have to make a decision, option 1 is bring the lemon tree (really a shrub) in a pot into the kitchen. Option 2 is to move it into a small shed and bag it. Option 3 is to wrap the tree with Christmas lights and bag it.

I have time before the serious freeze, but for tonight I’m going with the Christmas lights bagged. Next week, I’m thinking the shed, Xmas lights and bagged, lights under the bag. The material I’m using is from an old 6 layer material that was a car cover.

Click to expand...
Last night at the Cauldron of the Devil, the my lemon tres seen dancing: ;)

91BA0A80-140E-44E0-999C-D4C727AA1F4C.jpeg
​
Now that I’ve been thinking about the upcoming frigidity, why not go all the way and instead of 2 strings of Xmas lights, put a heat light in there! Option 4, tree in the shed, bagged, with a heat lamp inside the bag. Even though this is somewhat of a chore, easier than dragging it into the kitchen,
 
Time to revive this thread for spring and summer.... it's still too cold to plant stuff out here but that doesn't stop me from drooling over pictures of the dahlias on the White Flower Farm (Connecticut) website. Dahlia tubers need to be taken up and stored in sand over winter around here, so it's a chore and the tubers are expensive to start out with, but the payoff in late summer and early autumn is huge. I love dahlias for their variety of color and petal shapes and a shameless display of love for the sun.

www.whiteflowerfarm.com

Dahlia 'Waltzing Mathilda'

The intricate, semidouble blossoms of Dahlia 'Waltzing Mathilda' change color with the light, alternating hues of orange, coral red, and yellow. The 4″ flowers show to full advantage against the plant’s dark purple stems and leaves, which also serve as a fine contrast element in any mixed border...
www.whiteflowerfarm.com www.whiteflowerfarm.com
 
I have seeds that I bought that I didn't get my act together to start inside this year, so I'll have to sow them outside. Our frost date is April 15, so it makes more sense just to wait go directly in the ground. I love zinnias and plant them every year. I also bought some celosia this year, which is new to me. Trying sunflowers again, but in a different spot this year. Last year they sprouted but never really took off. Too much of our lot is shaded by large trees (that aren't ours) that it's hard to grow sunflowers (plus then the deer eat them).

I love cosmos too, but haven't had great success starting them from seed; might just buy those from the plant store this year; I have a local little market that I love so get most of my things right in town.
 
Maybe try coreopsis. There are annual and perennial varieties. They come in a lot of colors and petal types, so some of them offer the color of sunflowers but without the "bait" that sunflowers offer to critters and birds late in season. Most don't need full sun all day to bloom. The perennials can take a couple years to mature but then bloom prolifically, die back and rise up again every year if mulched a little after the hard freeze. They spead slowly via underground stolons but aren't particularly invasive.
 
lizkat said:
Maybe try coreopsis. There are annual and perennial varieties. They come in a lot of colors and petal types, so some of them offer the color of sunflowers but without the "bait" that sunflowers offer to critters and birds late in season. Most don't need full sun all day to bloom. The perennials can take a couple years to mature but then bloom prolifically, die back and rise up again every year if mulched a little after the hard freeze. They spead slowly via underground stolons but aren't particularly invasive.
Click to expand...
i have some of those already. 🙂 i do a lot of flower photography and pick plants that are fun to shoot.

unfortunately i also have a lot of deer around me that tend to eat the prettiest things so it’s an ongoing battle and learning experience.
 
I'm going to attempt to move a palm, it's not huge, it's maybe 8-9 tall but a very small trunk diameter, just a few inches.

Some folks may recall we found a rando coconut palm on the side of the yard, including the coconut source, it was small, maybe 2-3 feet, the roots were pretty tangled in the nearby oak, it didn't make it (RIP).

This other tree is a queen palm, it's on the edge of the property, right in some palmettos, under oaks - it's a bad location and that can be a massive tree, so I'm going to try to move that one too. I think I'll be able to get a much better dirt ball around the roots, and per some recommendations online, I'm going to soak the base really good before moving it. Our planned location get a very good amount of sun, with a bit of shade, but that should be good according to this:

Light & Temperature
The queen palm prefers to grow in the full sun, but still thrives well in partial shade.
For the young plant, it is best to place under some shade with some amount of direct sunlight.
These plants are hardy to USDA Hardiness Zones 9 through 11.
Be sure to consider the plant hardiness zones when growing the Queen Palm tree.

plantcaretoday.com

Growing Queen Palm Plants: How To Care For Syagrus Romanzoffiana

Queen Palm Plant (Syagrus Romanzoffiana) ornamental garden tree, easily accessible, low maintenance, fast growth, glossy pinnate leaves. [DETAILS]
plantcaretoday.com plantcaretoday.com


Pray for our palm ... :LOL:
 
I got a hydrangea plant last week after reading an article on top plants that will increase your property value. Sort of a moot point since we’re renting the house, but whatever. I have a good in-ground location for it, but after seeing that insects reduced the leaves on an artichoke plant in that location to a skeleton I decided I’m first going to let it grow in a container until it’s more substantial. It's currently about a foot tall. There’s established roses and a lemon tree in the location and insects haven’t managed to destroy those.
 
lizkat said:
Time to revive this thread for spring and summer.... it's still too cold to plant stuff out here but that doesn't stop me from drooling over pictures of the dahlias on the White Flower Farm (Connecticut) website. Dahlia tubers need to be taken up and stored in sand over winter around here, so it's a chore and the tubers are expensive to start out with, but the payoff in late summer and early autumn is huge. I love dahlias for their variety of color and petal shapes and a shameless display of love for the sun.

www.whiteflowerfarm.com

Dahlia 'Waltzing Mathilda'

The intricate, semidouble blossoms of Dahlia 'Waltzing Mathilda' change color with the light, alternating hues of orange, coral red, and yellow. The 4″ flowers show to full advantage against the plant’s dark purple stems and leaves, which also serve as a fine contrast element in any mixed border...
www.whiteflowerfarm.com www.whiteflowerfarm.com
Click to expand...
To get you in the mood, the Huntn Wildflower Bed: :)

371F10B7-B266-4636-82EC-DD3438A1E0FA.jpeg
 
Well that's neat! Do they just hang out in them as they're designed, or so they add their own hive materials?
 
DT said:
Well that's neat! Do they just hang out in them as they're designed, or so they add their own hive materials?
Click to expand...
Not at this point, maybe after they hatch.

We just had one of our side fences replaced, so beforehand, I removed a bee house and put it under our gazebo. We noticed a bee flying away from it and then noticed the mud packing several holes. So far I’ve not seen bees hanging out, they come in with their purpose of placing larva and then leave.

i’ll assume after hatching they’ll hang out because one of the notes about how to place a bee house, says don’t place it more than 300’ from flowers because that is only as far as they will travel.

The issue with this kind of inexpensive bee house is that for next year it might be difficult to clean out the tubes. Maybe I can come up with a tool for this. :)
 
Chew Toy McCoy said:
My parents get a bag of wildflower seed for our cabin every year and just toss it on a hill behind our cabin. Zero prep or upkeep and the hill is pretty rocky, but for about a month or two all these amazing wildflowers bloom.
Click to expand...
Do some of them come back every year?
 
Huntn said:
Do some of them come back every year?
Click to expand...


Not sure. I'll have to ask next time I see them, but I think it's hard to say with living in CA and climate change. There's not really any predictable weather patterns. About the only thing we can rely on is a good percentage of the state is going to burn to the ground annually.
 
Three years ago we planted a 2' high single stalk Variegated Echium from a 1 gallon container. And this is what it looks like now. It's 10' wide, 7' deep, and 6 1/2' high. There must have been some serious magic going on along the way. :)

Varieagated Echium 4-2022.jpg
 

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