LATE JUNE RAMBLINGS

With the summer heat bearing down it seemed like a fine time to work in the shade.

I have been eyeballing this area beside my shed for some time . It is under my Avocado tree and stays in the shade most all day or at least heavily filtered light.

I use it to stick some of my heat stressed plants in containers here sometimes to recover when they got too much sun.

So this week the shade area got transformed into a small bed for some of my shade plants to have a new home and not require so much Summer care.

Here is the finished bed into which went some shade loving Bromeliads and their divided pups.

The short fence is there to keep the dogs from running around the corner by way of over the plant bed.

The Passion Vine that I let grow up my back porch awning is really going wild.

It has reached the awning top and grown sideways to the house in two directions . This vine is at least 12 feet long.

It has produced Passion Flowers which last for one day before falling off the vine.

We had ten Passion Flowers in bloom at the same time this last week.

It is really neat to watch and this is the first time this vine has bloomed here for me. It is a volunteer that started itself from a vine around the corner.

The vine will be safe until the first hurricane gets close to the sandpit when I will have to cut it out to close the awning.

In the meantime it is producing an abundance of flowers and has numerous butterflys on it throughout the day.

We also gave the Bird area a rearranging. This corner I save for the birds and have planted protective bushes to encourage them .

There is Orange Jasmine shrubs in the far back and a large Cassia bush to the right of the bird feeder.

These bushes give them a lot of hiding places which birds seem to like.

The bush in front of the feeder is an American Beauty berry that I started from seed two years ago.

It is almost chest high now and will produce clusters of berries that the birds eat from the stems. I think it is related to the Mulberry tree.

Anyway the birds have more cover and seem to like it . There are two Northern Mockingbirds and a Loggerhead Shrike that hang out here eating bugs every afternoon. Free bug control for the organic garden.

And speaking on bugs here is one of my Spider lilies that has bloomed this week.

For some reason I find this plant fascinating .

It is just able to display a subtle simple beauty that appeals to me.

And as far as the home made bug repellent for the vegetables I have started mixing up the ingredients for the folk brew.

The first step was to get a bar of Ivory soap. It is supposed to be soap not detergent although I really don't know the difference or why it would matter. But it might so we got the soap bar.

Now this has to be whittled down into slivers and put into a container with a bit of water so the bar will melt into a liquid slurry.

Done and done for step one. Going to let the Ivory slurry percolate a few days and shake the container every time I go by it to mix the soap well.

More on the mixtures progress next time.

--Sanddune--

EARLY SUMMER RAMBLINGS

With the Summer heat bearing down more each day it seemed like a good as any time to plan for the next three months.

Lots of plants are already struggling in the sun and wind. Ever since I lost my big Mango tree to a hurricane several years back my backyard shade is mostly gone. Best I can figure about 3/4 of the yard is in the tropical sun now as long as the sun is up.

It's kind of similar to growing plants on the beach. Full sun all day and no shade to escape to until the sun sets.

So here are some of my South Florida favorites that thrive in the tropical summer heat.

One plant that I can always count on is the Mandevilla.

It is a tropical plant and seems to grow better for me the hotter that it gets around here.

It doesn't like the cold at all and every year around March I cut the vine back to about a foot tall. As it warms up the Mandevilla vine takes off and produces flowers up until about January. This guy will grow a good ten foot tall by the end of the summer and will be continuously covered in blooms.

Another hot weather favorite at the sandpit is the Desert Rose.

It stays in the full sun and never complains. The Desert Rose is native to Africa and likes it hot.

This plant never gets much water from me and seems to bloom better being a little water starved or so I have concluded.

Had worms eat all the leaves off it once until it was just sticks. A month later the leaves popped back out and it was blooming again. This is one tough plant great for South Florida.

One other proven hot weather survivor in the sandpit is the Everglades Wild Tomato.

They grow dime to quarter size fruit and are the best tasting cherry size Tomato that I have ever eaten.

They reseed themselves and pop up all over the garden as volunteers. I suspect the birds who also love to snack on the fruits spread the seeds.

All the better cause I like to snack on a handful straight from the bush while working outside. There are like five bushes growing now in the garden. None of which I planted.

These guys take the heat when other Tomato's are long gone. They will continue to provide tasty handfuls of fruit all summer long. They are wild so if one plants looks bad you can count on more popping up to take it's place.

And here is my great hope to help with my lack of shade .

It is one my baby Neem trees that has sprouted from seeds that I got from Zanzibar East Africa.

Actually I have three baby Neem tree sprouts growing for the nine seeds that I attempted to sprout. That is pretty good because the seeds are very time sensitive and must be planted quickly after harvest.

The Neem tree might not look like much now but it will grow quickly into a mighty pillar of a tree to solve my shade problems. Anyway that's what I keep telling the Neem sprouts.

They will have to stay in the pots until they grow to 50 cm tall. One cm is about the size of a pinky nail turned sideways so I figure by the time I figure how tall 50 pinky nails turned sideways is they should be ready to plant in the yard.

And as to strange new plant experiments here is my latest entry.

I picked up some hybrid Sunflower seeds a while back called Teddy Bear. Here is the results.

All I can report is that they are pretty weird looking and that the bugs absolutely find them irresistible.

Going to sprout some more later in the summer when the bugs calm down a bit.

I don't use pesticides anymore but have been spraying with Neem Oil to get some of the bugs under control naturally.

As for the pipe dream department here is my Zinnia attempts. I like Zinnia's and try to grow them every year with less than stellar results.

This one is a Giant Violet Queen. It has been afflicted with some unknown plant affliction as well as being ravaged by hungry bugs.

But with all that against it it still blooms for me. Now that's tenacity a trait which I admire.

So if the Zinnia's keep trying so will I.

And as to a summer suprise here is my Passion Vine flower. It is the first time that the vine has bloomed here.

For the past couple of weeks there are 3-5 blooms that open each morning than close and fall off that night.

Is that neat or what?

The bottom line is that in South Florida heat and weather you have to plan ahead to make it through the summer months.

Speaking of which it is now officially the start of hurricane season. This means it is time to plant some Moonflower seeds.

My theory is that a well grown Moonflower vine can actually bend a hurricane away from it. There's not a lot of science behind the theory but seem to me every time I have had Moonflower Vines growing the hurricanes have bypassed the sandpit.

More research may be required but it has worked in the past.

--Sanddune--

PASSION ON THE BACKPORCH

-CLICK ON PHOTO TO ENLARGE IT-

Well maybe the Title is subject to different interpretations. The only thing steamy going on around here is the weather. Summer is fast approaching and the South Florida heat and humidity is fast climbing.

This week has been hotter than a goat's butt in a pepper patch as we say in the South.

Anyway the Passion that I am referring to happens to be the Passion Vine.

I had one growing last year and now they spring up on their own at random points in the yard.

This one sprung up next to the concrete on my back porch. Instead of pulling it up I let er grow up the support of my back porch awning.

After it reached the awning roof I strung out some wire in both directions and the passion vine has been growing sideways along the wire.

It has gotten pretty big and I can sit on my back porch and watch what's happening with the vine. Turns out to be kind of interesting. The passion vine has lots of activity going on.

The Butterflies are attracted to it as a place to lay their eggs. There have been both Gulf Fritillarys and Zebras on the plant every day this week. It's what's known as a host plant for these Butterflies and they have flocked to my back porch to get to this plant.

Once the eggs are laid and hatch the Caterpillars emerge and start eating the Passion vine leaves.

This Caterpillar here shown munching away is from a Zebra Heliconian Butterfly.

Apparently they just hang around eating all day getting fatter and fatter. Kinda like humans in a way seems to me.

This Caterpillar is from a Gulf Fritillary Butterfly.

It too is enjoying the salad bar of the leaves of this Passion vine.

But you have to be tough to be a Caterpillar because as they are busy eating away other insects are eyeing them as a tasty lunch.

The Mockingbirds sure wouldn't pass up one of these plump morsels. But for now they stay away whenever someone is on the porch.

However their are other Caterpillar predators lurking in the Passion Vine .

This little fat cat fell victim to one of the many other insects that like to call the Passion vine home.

For those Caterpillars that survive they stop eating and move on to the next evolution which is forming their chrysalis.

This is one of the Zebra Caterpillars that formed a chrysalis on the Passion vine .

I watched it the other night as it gyrated itself around repeatedly weaving itself into a case.

It will stay this way for around 10 days and emerge as a new Zebra Butterfly.

The Passion Vine is covered in different insects as it gives out a sweet scent that is attractive to them.

I don't mind that the Caterpillars are eating the vine as it is cool just to sit and watch everything that is going on. And to be surrounded by Butterflies throughout the day is kinda neat also.

So now the Title becomes clear as I do have passion on the back porch :-]

--Sanddune--

TIME TO RELOAD

---CLICK PICTURE TO ENLARGE IT---
It looks like my container Tomato experiment has succumb to old age and the elements. This was the first time that I was able to harvest main season Tomatoes here after many attempts. I gave up trying to grow them in the ground {nematodes} and stuck them in some old 5 gallon buckets. They have for me preformed well and provided many a BLT sandwiches during December.

The container Tomatoes were an experiment and here are some observations.
1- Growing in the containers gave several advantages. The plants can be moved around to the best spot for sunlight. The containers get the plant up off the ground and away from some of the hungry bugs.

I still need to fine tune the watering as growing in the containers cause the soil to dry out rapidly.

This Tomato bush is being cut up and going in the compost bin so nothing is wasted.

.
This means it is time to reload the 5 gallon bucket for another round.

I mixed in a couple of shovels of Compost from the bin and worked it into the soil. Then stuck in some Park's Sweet Success Cucumber seeds for the next crop. I have read it is best not to plant the same vegetable but to rotate something different in between. We will see how this one turns out.

Anyway here is some more of the recent cold effects on the garden.

I noticed that some of this Lantana bush's Leaves have turned a dark purple color. Maybe this is normal but it is suspect after the recent freeze.

I did get a variegated passion vine out of the freeze. Not to many of these around. Kind of cool looking.

I read that when water freezes it expands. Since plants cells are made up of a lot of water in prolonged freezing temperatures they expand and rupture . Some plants are more susceptible than others.

And the last casualty of the freeze is my wife's planter. We were taking some of the plants inside when it was knocked over and broke.

Not to worry', she was the one who knocked it over and broke it. I thereby avoided gettin' the evil eye .

---sanddune----

----------------------------------------------------------------