Our Planting Continues

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Don’t ask me how, but this week has turned into Agricultural Awareness Week at the Fox house. Heaven forbid you’re a plant on-the-edge. This week, baby, you’re outta here!

There weren’t too many replacements necessary, but I like making myself sound like a real tough guy when it comes to plants.

We do have one problem area, a large planter near the front door. It gets first sun through early afternoon, but it’s been a dead zone for us! We’ve tried twice and just picked the wrong plants.

Helaine and Stef decided we should give it another go with succulents. This is a dry climate. We have no frosts. In the Northeast they’re houseplants. They live outside in SoCal.

Doppler in tow, we headed to the other side of Irvine and OC Succulents. We’ve been before. We like the place.

I don’t know their backstory but I suspect they started small and just kept growing. In a city of neat and planned, it’s a strange mix of inside/outside with a greenhouse that couldn’t co-exist with winter’s real fury.

As we walked in, a woman obviously in-charge said we couldn’t bring Doppler! Yikes. That’s very unCalifornian.

We decided Helaine would shop and make decisions, leaving me and Dop in the car, a/c running. I got to say yea or nay at the end, but this is H’s vision.

While shopping Helaine did get to hear how dogs became ‘canine non grata.’ They’d always been allowed, but plants and pesticides are dangerous. Somehow, a dog got sick.

Who knows what the cause actually was? The Agriculture Department came in and performed a three day inspection. In the end they had to promise, no dogs.

The people who run the place are as disappointed as we were. I’m sure this costs them business. We almost turned around and left!

So, here’s today’s catch and the finished planter. We were told it’s OK to pack these plants in.

Now grow!

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2 thoughts on “Our Planting Continues”

  1. OK, I’m stealing your last photo to show to my son who has a perfect spot for something like this at the front of his house along the walkway. Hope he likes it as much as I do. The planter and plants really look terrific, Geoff.

  2. Having a similar background to you (climate, meteorology…etc.), it was not until recently I truly learned that so much of the information out there about plant material and how to landscape a home (or even commercial business) is incorrect. Not only are many of us using the wrong plants….but the combined forces of marketing and the old-fashioned way many of us landscape has created many boring landscapes in much of the USA.

    Succulents and Cactus are the perfect example: Most people assume that cactus only grow in the desert (AZ, Australia…etc.). However, many cactus grow in semi-arid, coastal, even mountain environments. Yet, I was shocked to learn there are NATIVE cactus to the foothills of the Rockies, the West Coast, the East Coast, and even the southern Great Lakes. Here in the Tri-State/Middle Atlantic there is the native Opuntia that grows in the dunes/beach environment from Florida/West Indies to Rhode Island (including growing wild here in the coastal Connecticut/Long Island sand dunes). A few years ago I planted just a few pads down near the mailbox (where by mid-July no matter what I planted burned in the hot summer sun). I planted some Opuntia with a mix of native Yucca’s in Xeriscape bed. Today the whole area is covered with tough heat resistant cactus and Yuccas, they looks good (and green) all year, and it looks like scene in some hot dry cay in the Bahamas or arid New Mexico town – lol.

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