‘CHRISTMAS’ CACTUS GALORE? SOGGY LOW SPOTS IN YARD?
BY BRENDA BEUST SMITH
TALIA GREEN in New Caney is concerned about her Christmas cactus. It’s blooming now! Easy answer: Probably not a Christmas cactus. Probably an Easter cactus. They bloom now. Truthfully most “Christmas” cacti sold are really Thanksgiving cacti to catch Christmas shoppers. REAL Christmas cacti bloom around late December, Too late for big sales!
Eyes crossing? Remember, cactus are all succulents. These are among “motherly-type” succulents: tenacious, strong, selfless, filled with love, reflecting our general collective concept of mothers.
These similar-but-different succulents are nicknamed for the start of their individual bloom season, which makes Easter cactus a great gift for Mother’s Day.
Christmas and Thanksgiving cacti are hybrids of Schlumbergera x buckleyi. Easter cactus is actually a totally different plant: Rhipsalidopsis gaertneri, native to Brazil.
stock) shares these care tips — same for all three: good light and not too much water. They are not cold hardy. Although the three look somewhat alike, Beverly points out differences (besides bloom periods) lie in slight variation of “spikes” on the foliage. (see photo above). And, she adds:
“The leaves of the Christmas cactus have a more rounded, scalloped edge. The tip of each segment is slightly curved but they can look almost straight across. They typically bloom pink and white.The bloom on the spring cactus is shaped differently but are vibrant in color.”
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PS. Thanksgiving/Christmas/Easter cacti can live 20-30 years (if they like you). Perfect Mothers Day gift, eh? I stick mine outside in the shade (VERY well drained site) and truly do forget about them until color appears next (yes!) Thanksgiving, shocking my memory.. They are sweet plants that droop when they want water during winter stay inside, usually once every 2 +/- weeks.
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SHOPPING FOR PLANTS? If for
yourself (not Mother’s Day), use plants covered with flowers to decide what colors you want. BUT, BUY plants with mostly buds, not open flowers which will quickly fade, from change of environment as well as bloom lifespan.
Growers shoot flowering plants with bloom hormones so they’ll be pretty on nursery shelves. In most cases, after those flowers fade and the few remaining buds open and close, you’ll have no color. With mostly or all buds, you’ll at least have some lasting color while the plants are setting strong roots. Of course, serious gardeners will tell you to remove ALL flowers and buds to help roots establish more quickly and efficiently. But . . . what the heck?
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Design & excerpted text from the “Lazy Gardener’s Guide” by Brenda Beust Smith
ANITA NELSON OF NELSON’S WATER GARDEN was the first, decades ago, to actively promote rain gardens (aka bog gardens) in area landscapes. She helped design this one above for my book. Rain gardens caught on with savvy gardeners at the time, but haven’t gotten much publicity since. Maybe they will again as our water table drops and increasingly heavy rains create poorly-drained boggy many plants do not like. Ah, but many others do!.
Even if you don’t have slowly-draining soggy spots, wouldn’t it be wonderful to be able to safely store, deep underground, all that rainfall that runs off your yard so it could later be used by your trees during summer droughts?
Even more important, keeping soil moist helps prevent the expensive subsidence damage (cracked sidewalks driveways and ceilings, doors and cabinets that don’t close or stay shut, etc.) that plagues the entire Greater Houston area. This same runoff is filling our bayous and Galveston Bay with dangerous-to-wildlife landscape chemicals. It’s a win-win situation.
A naturally low spot, where water stands or collects during a heavy rain is ideal. It is NOT a mosquito breeding ground because as soon as the rains stop, the water soaks downward. Rain water drains into the area from the rest of the yard (making adjacent beds healthier) and is absorbed by lower soil levels. You can go one of 2 routes:
- Dig the area (if necessary) to make it 8-15” below ground level. Fill half full with pea gravel and/ or rocks plus very coarse mulch. Plant into the mulch/rock level. The soil normally attached to nursery-grown plants will mix with this mulch layer, providing sufficient growing medium. Fill to top with leaves, pine needles and/or a very coarse mulch.
- (Lazy way) Plant right into the low spot. Fill with leaves, pine needles or a coarse mulch. These beds may have to be watered to get the plants started and during extreme drought periods. But the more mulch you use on top, the more moist the bottom will stay during the summer.
If you’re already in an extremely high or well drained area and simply want to grow boggy plants, use a liner. Dig as above. Line the bed with plastic. Fill and plant as described above. A lined bed holds water better during the dry periods but won’t help with subsidence or provide water to trees.
Rain Gardens can be as sophisticated as you want — or as simple as throwing bananas, cannas, crinums, elephant ears, LA iris or ruellia into a low area that takes forever to dry out after a rain. These root without planting and love this “difficult” situation.
In a rain garden, the center will be the most moist. Edges are less moist and a better area for experimenting with regular garden plants. Lobelia (cardinal flower) and creeping jenny often do better on a bog edge than they do in regular gardens. If you have a natural edge pond, consider expanding the sides to create a Bog Garden border!
This garden was designed larger — with far more plants — than you will probably want. But this gives you a selection of very common ones that should be easier to find. Once established, this garden should be carefree. Unless, that is, some decide they like you TOO much and take over! There is a whole world out there of Gulf Coast-hardy “bog or swamp plants” that would also work in this bed.
* The Lazy Gardener’s Guide” is no longer available in print. For a free copy on CD, email lazygardenerbrenda@gmail.com
Brenda Beust Smith’s column is based on her 40+ years
as Houston Chronicle’s Lazy Gardener Email: lazygardenerbrenda@gmail.com
— Note: This column’s gardening advice focuses ONLY on
the Greater Houston area. Personal reports MUST include your area.
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NEWS FROM THE WONDERFUL WORLD OF SOIL AND PLANTS # 237
A question I have been asked hundreds of times over the years is: “I have weeds in my (lawn, garden, flowerbed, etc.) where did they come from?
There are many sources and factors that affect weed germination and growth. 1st. – weed seeds were already present in the soil.
Chemicals applied to one’s lawn or garden cans stimulate the germination of many types of weed seeds. For example, a fungicide kills off all fungi (good and bad) leaving the soil dominated by bacteria. Weeds love bacterial dominated soils, hence soil conditions now favor weed seeds that will easily germinate if a seed is present.
Some species of weed seeds require a lot of available nitrogen for quick growth. Hence water-soluble artificial fertilizers encourage many weed species to germinate.
Soils (lawn, flowers, or vegetable) if not mulched will encourage weed seeds to germinate. Many species of weed seeds requires sunlight to germinate hence if the soil is not covered by mulch, they do what nature has taught them and they germinate. Nature hates bare ground.
Over watering favors the germination of many weed species. Think of dollar weed or nutsedge for examples.
If compost is used to top dress a lawn it will often wake up seeds lying dormant in the soil that were waiting for soil conditions improve, to wake up and grow.
Numerous species of weedy plants have seeds that can lay dormant for many decades.
Some weeds prefer or even require compacted soil that is low in oxygen. Their role in nature is to correct the problem. Earthworms, ground loving beetles, microarthropods, etc. all help aerate the soil. When one applies a pesticide, one loses the benefits they provide.
Other weed species thrive on soils that are low in certain nutrients and the weeds’ role in nature is to produce deep roots that will find the element in the sub-soil and bring it to the surface to correct the deficiencies. This is why applying re-mineralizer every few years helps eliminate this issue not to mention its other benefits.
2nd. – weed seeds come from an outside source
Wind often blows seeds in. To determine if it is windblown or bird droppings look for where the seed is and its germination. If the seeds (junction of plant leaves and roots) are on or near the surface, it most likely came from the wind or birds. If the seeds are a mix of germinating at different depths from 1-4 inches, then most likely it was in the soil or product.
Often tilling the soil brings up buried weed seeds and exposes them to sunlight hence they germinate.
Neighbors using rotary mowers are a common source of weed seeds as they throw the seeds into the air where they can travel hundreds of feet.
Often a gardener will find different species of weeds in different parts of their yard, One species in the front yard and a different one in the backyard. This often occurs in the spring when many trees are producing their seeds and many are designed to be spread by the wind, so one gets different species in different areas (front yard versus back yard for example).
Animal and bird dropping are often a source of weed seeds that we have no control over. Many seeds require passage through an bird or animals digestive system to germinate.
Another source of weed seeds include dump trucks, loader buckets, trailers, etc. that were not cleaned before loading. Typically, this would only be a limited amount of weed seeds. Equipment is used for multiple things and often picks up weed seeds from what it is carrying. Hence, when the new product (soil, mulch, or compost) is loaded into the delivery vehicle it may be contaminated with a few seeds from the previous load. This is common for many landscape companies where they haul off weed contaminated soil to make a new garden bed for someone. They then load up the new soil from a supplier and the weed seeds get transferred. This is more common when they are working in damp conditions.
3rd. – deceit
Another common source of weeds is from the “Bait and Switch” often used by some landscapers or truckers. The customer asks for a good product and then the landscaper or trucker buys a low cost (low quality) product from a competitor. They then sell it to the customer at a much higher price increasing their profit claiming that it came from NWR or other good quality provider.
Most soil companies use topsoil that was scrapped off abandoned properties or fields since it is cheap but loaded with weed seeds. They also use bank sand in their mixes as it is much lower cost than washed sands. The low-cost providers do not compost their products, and often use sewage sludge or other
toxic ingredients as they are cheap. Hence, their products are cheap.
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ABOUT US
BRENDA BEUST SMITH WE KNOW HER BEST AS THE LAZY GARDENER . . . but Brenda Beust Smith is also:
- a national award-winning writer & editor
- a nationally-published writer & photographer
- a national horticultural speaker
- a former Houston Chronicle reporter
When the Chronicle discontinued Brenda’s 45-year-old Lazy Gardener” print column — started in the early ’70s as a fun side-project to reporting, it then ranked as the longestrunning, continuously-published local newspaper column in the Greater Houston area. The name, she says, is not just fun, it’s true. Brenda’s gradual sideways step from reporter into gardening writing led first to an 18-year series of when-to-do-what Lazy Gardener Calendars, then to her Lazy Gardener’s Guide book which morphed into her Lazy Gardener’s Guide on CD, which she now emails free upon request. Brenda became a Harris County Master Gardener and, over the years, served on theboards of many Greater Houston area horticulture organizations. She hosted local radio and TV shows, most notably a 10+-year Lazy Gardener specialty shows on HoustonPBS (Ch. 8) and her call-in “EcoGardening” show on KPFT-FM. For over three decades, Brenda served as Assistant Production Manager of the GARDEN CLUB OF AMERICA’S “BULLETIN” magazine. Although still an active broad-based freelance writer, Brenda’s main focus now is THE LAZY GARDENER & FRIENDS HOUSTON GARDEN NEWSLETTER with John Ferguson and Pablo Hernandez of Nature’s Way Resources. A native of New Orleans and graduate of St. Agnes Academy and the University of Houston, Brenda lives in Humble, TX, and is married to the retired Aldine High School Coach Bill Smith. They have one son, Blake. Regarding this newsletter, Brenda is the lead writer, originator of it and the daily inspiration for it. We so appreciate the way she has made gardening such a fun way to celebrate life together for such a long time.
JOHN FERGUSON John is a native Houstonian and has over 27 years of business experience. He owns Nature’s Way Resources, a composting company that specializes in high quality compost, mulch, and soil mixes. He holds a MS degree in Physics and Geology and is a licensed Soil Scientist in Texas. John has won many awards in horticulture and environmental issues. He represents the composting industry on the Houston-Galveston Area Council for solid waste. His personal garden has been featured in several horticultural books and “Better Homes and Gardens” magazine. His business has been recognized in the Wall Street Journal for the quality and value of their products. He is a member of the Physics Honor Society and many other professional societies. John is is the co-author of the book Organic Management for the Professional. For this newsletter, John contributes articles regularly and is responsible for publishing it.
PABLO HERNANDEZ Pablo Hernandez is the special projects coordinator for Nature’s Way Resources. His realm of responsibilities include: serving as a webmaster, IT support, technical problem solving/troubleshooting, metrics management and quality control. Pablo helps this newsletter happen from a technical support standpoint.
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