{"id":107683,"date":"2025-11-15T13:53:54","date_gmt":"2025-11-15T17:53:54","guid":{"rendered":"https:\/\/agrowingobsession.com\/?p=107683"},"modified":"2025-11-15T13:53:54","modified_gmt":"2025-11-15T17:53:54","slug":"cleaning-up-the-zone-10-summer-garden","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"http:\/\/agrowingobsession.com\/?p=107683","title":{"rendered":"cleaning up the zone 10 summer garden"},"content":{"rendered":"\n
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Aloe pluridens throwing some autumn blooms. Whatever else the garden is up to, the pedilanthus is always in bloom for the hummingbirds. After weeding and clearing out summer growth, there’s a lot of open ground, which makes me nervous! Maybe small-scale succulent ground covers are the answer — and topped-uip gravel mulch<\/figcaption><\/figure>\n\n\n\n

Checking in on the Long Beach garden, it feels a little like cleaning up after a party that you weren’t invited to. In summer’s aftermath, it’s all about reading the seedpods and dessicated growth for clues of what vegetative frivolity transpired while I was away. (I last saw the garden in May 2025.<\/a>)<\/p>\n\n\n\n

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old tillandsia flower. <\/figcaption><\/figure>\n\n\n\n

Judging by the amount of dried bloom stalks to cut down, the anigozanthus had a good summer and bloomed well. Aloe lukeana had several dried bloom stalks. The horned poppy romped through the succulents, smothering them like party bunting in yards of foliage and dried seedheads. But once all the tumbleweeds of summer growth were cleared, the garden re-emerged as I remember it. This holding pattern is of course a relief but also a little bittersweet. It’s the day-to-day adjustments and experiments (and weeding!) that keep a garden fresh and exciting, only possible when living with it full time. <\/p>\n\n\n\n

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Checking weather reports, the heat wasn\u2019t too excessive this summer, maybe a few episodes over 90F.\u00a0<\/figcaption><\/figure>\n\n\n\n

Multiple tree-like sonchus staged a takeover, and older woody specimens where thinned, leaving a few young rosettes. Other insistent reseeders included Manihot grahamii. The canopy of the manihot, a small tree, was cut but the 2″ trunk remains along with dozens of its progeny. Couch grass infests everything, and there’s days left of weeding to deal with it. <\/p>\n\n\n\n

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Buds showing on Aloes ‘Tangerine’ and ‘Moonglow’– most of this couch grass has been weeded out<\/figcaption><\/figure>\n\n\n\n

It\u2019s a lot to ask any garden to manage on its own for six months, but once again I’m thrilled and relieved to find the garden holding itself together somehow.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

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Strobilanthes gossypina made a neat dome after being cut back hard in spring. Trunk belongs to Manihot grahamii which will probably be removed to avoid its fierce reseeding<\/figcaption><\/figure>\n\n\n\n

The garden is scruffy and shaggy with sesleria, which needs raking, but one of this grass’ striking virtues is being able to withstand the infiltration of couch grass. Removing this weed winding through the base of the big aloes has been the trickiest job yet. Yards of dessicated, skeletonized stuff like African basil were pulled. Silvery-leaved Geranium harveyi, so beautiful when I left the garden in April, couldn’t handle the dry summer. But a vibrant dwarf copper canyon daisy, Tagetes lemonii, somehow continued to bloom despite the excessively dry conditions. Working near the daisy releases that offbeat pineappley scent, heavy with tropical resin notes. <\/p>\n\n\n\n

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On the right ‘Pacific Night’ coprosma planted in spring made it through its first very dry summer<\/figcaption><\/figure>\n\n\n\n

Overall, though, it’s the herbaceous stuff that causes the most work, either from reseeding like the sonchus, manihot, Geranium maderense, euphorbias, Tinantia pringlei and Verbena bonariensis, or smothering summer growth, like the glaucium horned poppy. Still, a lot of issues were caused not by reseeders and weeds but by the growth of maturing plants. <\/p>\n\n\n\n

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golfball pitt on the right in 2024, much more rotund in 2025 — a beauty actually but at least three times the size I anticipated<\/figcaption><\/figure>\n\n\n\n

A couple of large restios had to be moved and planted elsewhere, and the deferred decision was finally made to remove the dwarf “golfball” pittosporum, which was needing a lot of clipping to keep to 4×4′. A really good alternative to a box orb, I hated to sacrifice the pittosporum but couldn’t get enough root to move it.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

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opened-up view without the 4×4-foot “golfball” pittosporum, replaced lower right with a small Agave celsii ‘Nova.’ A chondropetalum\/restio obscuring the shapes of the big aloes was also moved.<\/figcaption><\/figure>\n\n\n\n
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Agave celsii ‘Nova,’ said to be quick to bloom (and therefore die) but at least it will stay relatively small in the process<\/figcaption><\/figure>\n\n\n\n
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Plant shopping in the rain followed by planting in the rain on Friday — Mangave ‘Frosted Elegance’<\/figcaption><\/figure>\n\n\n\n
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got carried away and even brought home a begonia ‘Spirit of Pemba’<\/figcaption><\/figure>\n\n\n\n
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some plants improved with neglect, like a potted Agave xylonacatha \u2018Frostbite\u2019 <\/figcaption><\/figure>\n\n\n\n

A neighbor came by to water infrequently, which I think helped with the potted plants even if they were only spritzed superficially. The ground was bone-dry.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

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it seems I absent-mindedly planted a little caput-medusa type euphorbia in the pot with the ‘Medusa’ aloe, and somehow didn’t really clock the horticultural pun until this visit<\/figcaption><\/figure>\n\n\n\n
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caput-medussae-type euphorbia in pot with Aloe ‘Medusa’<\/figcaption><\/figure>\n\n\n\n
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Mangave ‘Lavendar Lady’ and other mangaves seem to be thriving<\/figcaption><\/figure>\n\n\n\n
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the pergola has been invaluable for protecting pots from strong sun and also offering varying light levels at its perimeter<\/figcaption><\/figure>\n\n\n\n
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the funnels and pots planted with succulents and tillandsias were moved out from under the pergola to catch some rain. <\/figcaption><\/figure>\n\n\n\n
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potted cactus getting more light and a sip of water<\/figcaption><\/figure>\n\n\n\n

The drive south from Oregon was harrowing the first day, battered by an atmospheric river and relentlessly pounding winds. We took three days, two nights this time, and stayed the first night in Brookings, near the California\/Oregon border. Driving through the little town, I wasn’t sure I could trust my eyes. Wasn’t that a tree aloe in someone’s garden? Salvia leucantha and a large Agave americana also whizzed by as we drove out of town. Checking the phone proved I wasn’t hallucinating. Brookings is considered the “banana belt” of Oregon coastal towns. Really cool working harbor too. <\/p>\n\n\n\n

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puttering in the rain Saturday morning, trying out a new a bird bath location<\/figcaption><\/figure>\n\n\n\n

Rain predicted all weekend, what a godsend. More soon, AGO.<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"

Checking in on the Long Beach garden, it feels a little like cleaning up after a party that you weren’t invited to. In summer’s aftermath, it’s all about reading the seedpods and dessicated growth for clues of what vegetative frivolity … Continue reading →<\/span><\/a><\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":1,"featured_media":0,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"open","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"jetpack_post_was_ever_published":false,"jetpack_publicize_message":"","jetpack_is_tweetstorm":false,"jetpack_publicize_feature_enabled":true},"categories":[28,550,5120,898],"tags":[],"jetpack_publicize_connections":[],"jetpack_featured_media_url":"","jetpack_sharing_enabled":true,"jetpack_shortlink":"https:\/\/wp.me\/paNJ2E-s0P","_links":{"self":[{"href":"http:\/\/agrowingobsession.com\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts\/107683"}],"collection":[{"href":"http:\/\/agrowingobsession.com\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"http:\/\/agrowingobsession.com\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"http:\/\/agrowingobsession.com\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/users\/1"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"http:\/\/agrowingobsession.com\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fcomments&post=107683"}],"version-history":[{"count":117,"href":"http:\/\/agrowingobsession.com\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts\/107683\/revisions"}],"predecessor-version":[{"id":107840,"href":"http:\/\/agrowingobsession.com\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts\/107683\/revisions\/107840"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"http:\/\/agrowingobsession.com\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fmedia&parent=107683"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"http:\/\/agrowingobsession.com\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fcategories&post=107683"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"http:\/\/agrowingobsession.com\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Ftags&post=107683"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}