MY JOURNEY TO THE DARKSIDE

Come on now I was referring to the side of my home that gets the fewest hours of direct sun. It is the northeast side and the part of my yard I don't visit that often. It serves as a sort of wild jungle of many plants mostly left to their own means to survive.





This trip revealed my Aloe plants gone wild. They are growing in a large flower pot that I had stuck into this planter box to get it out of the way so I could do some painting. As life often goes despite my intentions of replacing it back to its original location I never did. Now the pot is stuffed full of every size Aloe Vera that need to be thinned and given there own space. I am adding that to my list of things I really should do sometime. The Aloe Vera [ Aloe Barbadensis if you must ] is a succulent semitropical native of Northern Africa perfect for zone 10. It is great to put on burns as its sap takes the stinging away. That's why I planted it in the first place for its medicinal properties. This plant has over 50 different medicinal home uses dating back centuries. If I get a bug bite, scrape or burn I just break off a piece of the Aloe plant and rub the juice inside on it . Works for me. ------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------




This big Florida native is a Sea Grape or Coccoloba Uvifera. I planted two on this side of my house from seeds I found at the beach one day. I wanted to plant something to shade the air conditioner unit to reduce my electric bill and as a privacy shield of my backyard from the street. These Sea Grapes as you can see do both. These are tough plants and require little care just an occasional pruning .



You can leave them as a bush by pruning them or just let them grow into a tree. Mine after about three years has reach up to the top of my house. I think the Sea Grapes are really cool and I want to plant some more. Yes its official, I am adding that idea to my list of things that I really should do some time. -------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------





My other privacy planting is Gardenia or Gardenia Argusta if you insist. This bush produces large white flowers that smell like perfume. I look forward to its bloom each year and take the flowers inside the house. Their smell is sweet and sensual.



The downside is that everything attacks these plants here in South Florida. They like acid soil and of course mine is alkaline so I do give them some fertilizer for acid plants. They don't like to be planted by concrete as the alkaline leaches out of the concrete and gives them a tummy ache. The nematodes in the ground here attack them and mangle their root system. That's why The Gardenia grown around here are grafted onto a different rootstock to better resist the nematodes. Part of my master plan is to use compost from my poorman's compost bin around this Gardenia . Something about the compost is supposed to repel the Nematodes in that your average Nematode doesn't like compost. And yes, I am now adding this to my list of things that I really should do sometime.
-----------------------------------------------sanddune------------------------------------