The sun: both an ally and an enemy, especially here in the Desert Southwest. 

We've been talking about the importance of afternoon shade and morning sun quite a bit on this blog. That's because here in the Desert Southwest (and everywhere that has very low humidity, high temperatures and salty soils and water), sunlight has a profound impact on plant health.  Not enough sunlight is a problem everywhere and only a short list of commonly grown plants tolerate low light levels on a daily basis.  But here, excessive sunlight is an even bigger problem.  Our humidity (usually below 20% unless it is trying to rain somewhere nearby) makes the negative effects of the sun, especially drying things out and damaging plant tissue (people aren't the only things that can sunburn) even more intense.

We've recently moved to a new place. this apartment was carefully chosen with the sun in mind.  We chose an apartment that doesn't have an outside wall that faces the West and that has its South facing wall shaded by large trees and other buildings.  Here, it is the long hot afternoons in the summer that make growing so many plants a real challenge.  We managed to find one that had its patio facing the North and with shade from overhead sun thanks to the patio above it.  The only direct sunlight it receives is in the morning from the East. 



Here it is at 7 AM in the middle of May. The sliding glass door opens into the master bedroom.  It's just big enough for a couple of folding lawn chairs and a few potted plants.

You can see in the photo that the sun shines very nicely into the patio in the morning from the East, but from the West, the design of the building makes it so we have full shade in the afternoon from the West and South.


This is the current layout for the left corner of the patio.  The great thing about using crates and carts is that we can move things around easily if we find this set up no longer works as the alignment between the sun and earth changes over time. In this position, each of these pots gets bathed in direct morning light for about 2 hours each morning and has diffuse light all day.  The metal cart has holes in the shelves so that excess water can drip out of the pots and eventually to the ground.  The plastic crates double as both plant stands and storage for gardening supplies. 

Currently in the garden, we have from left to right: garlic, a mix of annual shade loving wildflowers, a pot that is half radishes and half carrots, oregano (still sprouting). On the cart on the top shelf we have: aloe vera, cilantro and on the bottom: chives which are looking a bit poorly because they sort of survived being outside over the winter.  Most of the chives have already been harvested from the pot, but I am leaving some of them in there to see if they'll snap out of it and maybe bloom for me later on. 





Then, in the middle of the patio, we have this lovely young asparagus fern.  I didn't grow this one from seed, but I carefully chose it for its healthy vigor and signs that it is ready to start spreading.  It came in a tiny little pot that was too small for it, so I transplanted it to this larger terracotta pot.  Someday, I'll transplant it again to a pot about twice this size in diameter. The pot that the radishes are in might be the type I'll use. It's the first time I've used a pot of that type and I really like how wide, yet short it is, giving more room for the plants while being less top heavy than most pots I've used are.  I just love asparagus ferns! They look so delicate, yet they are quite hardy and can handle our weather very well. Most plants in my current potted garden are practical being either edible or useful in herbal remedies, but this one is purely ornamental. One might say that it is still beneficial though as having its bright cheery shade of light green year round has a pleasant effect on one's mood.  Mental health is just as important as physical health as one affects the other.




The wildflower mix has Siberian wallflower (Cherianthus allonii) a biennial that will be just leaves this year and will bloom next year; Shasta daisy (Chrysanthemum maxium) one of my favorites; Garland flower (Clarkia elegans) a native flower discovered by Lewis and Clark on their famous expidition across the then, mostly unsettled Louisiana Purchase; Lanceleaf ticksseed (Coreopsis lanceloata) one of the most beautiful and delicate looking yet toughest desert flowers I've seen, grows wild all over the Mojave Desert; Larkspur (Delphinum consolida); Sweet William (Dianthus barbatus) a perennial that will attract bees and hummingbirds; Echinacea purpurea the plant famous for being a natural antibiotic; Baby's Breath (Gypsophila elegans) a must for floral bouquets; Candytuft (Iberis umbellata) a member of the mustard family that I've seen growing among tickseed plants in the desert; Perennial flax (Linum perenne) which will hopefully persist for me; Forget-me-not (Myosotis aplestris); Baby blueeyes (Nemophila maculata) which will work with the Forget-me-nots to add a splash of blue to the mix; and Common poppy (Papaver rhoeas) another deceptively delicate desert flower.   I look forward to seeing which of these grow well in my patio.  I may need to transplant them to a bigger pot or a group of small pots if all of these species sprout. ;)






I transplanted this aloe to a larger pot after the wide shot picture was taken as I noticed that it was already starting to get too big for that little pot. I love aloe but it can be tricky to avoid overwatering it without having it dry out with our low humidity.  Hopefully, the soil mix which is high in perlite will help it drain enough to prevent waterlogging.



I'll keep you posted on how this experiment in taking the concept of morning sun and afternoon shade to this extreme turns out.  It's going well so far, but as in all gardening, time will tell. 

Experimenting with Amaryllis Flowers

The bulb of an Amaryllis (Hippeastrum spp) flower.

Last winter, my sister was given a big bulb as a gift. Not a light bulb, but a flower bulb in a tiny decorative pot with a tag saying "Amaryllis" on it.  She gave it to me to see if I could grow it and the experiment began. 

I started, as I always try to do, with a little research first.  I looked up Amaryllis to see what it was as I wasn't familiar with it already.  I discovered that it is a native of the tropical and subtropical areas of South America, which doesn't usually bode well for trying to grow it in the Mojave Desert and I don't recommend it as a rule.  But it was only one bulb and it was a gift, so I figured it could be fun to give it a try.  I didn't expect it to do well, not even in the house, since even the house humidity doesn't get very high. 

But then I looked further and found that it's native plant community wasn't a rain forest jungle or anything like that, but rather the plateaus and savannas that are also in parts of South America in the higher elevations.  Those places have cool, somewhat rainy winters and rather warm, dry summers, so it looked slightly more hopeful for our new patient. 

So, we planted it, but kept it in the house in the sunniest room, which turned out to be the wash room with it's South facing door that has a window in it and occasional rises in humidity thanks to the washer and dryer.  It also didn't get too warm in that room since it doesn't have a heat register in it. So, it worked out that we were able to kinda mimic the winter conditions this plant developed under as we gave it occasional water.  I planted it in a terra cotta pot (the best choice for most plants really) with a cactus potting soil mix that has high drainage, low organic matter and no added fertilizer as I knew that such places in the wild are rather harsh environments.  Plants adapted to living in rocky or sandy soil with extended dry periods are actually harmed by babying them too much with really moist, rich soil. 

Amaryllis sends up flower stalk before any leaves elongate.

As you can see in the picture above, we did our best to prevent the roots from getting waterlogged by putting the pot on a plant stand but with the drip tray below the stand to keep water from being absorbed back into the soil.  This is also critical when watering with our local water supply that is high in salts. 

Amaryllis is interesting in that it is among those plants that seems to take forever to do anything with its bulb after it is planted (we planted it with the top half sticking up out of the soil as my sources - several websites by university horticulture departments recommended).  Then, just when you begin to think nothing will happen, the bulb splits open at the top and a green spear emerges!  This develops into the flower stalk and eventually, you see leaf tips emerging from the bulb below it.

 

 

Once it got started, it really took off! Now there are two flower stalks.

  The Best place to put our patient wound up being right in front of the air intake vent for the HVAC system, so the plant also got a nice light 'breeze' from the air being drawn in past it every day.  We also put it on this tv tray to keep it up away from the coldest parts of the drafts when someone would open the door that winter. It also kept it from getting knocked over accidentally by passersby.  It looked like this with its big, green spears for several weeks before it showed us why my sister's friend gave it to her....

Isn't it glorious! Soon, there were three spears, each with three of these huge flowers!

Suddenly, our curious green speared thing was a thing of amazing floral beauty!  It began growing these enormous (the size of my palm) flowers as you can see from this picture of the first bloom above.  They had a very pleasant aroma, smelling like really expensive perfume. Some of the scent even went in the HVAC system and scented the whole house. :)  I cut the anthers off the flowers shortly after they developed to keep pollen from spreading though. No one in our house has hay fever, but I figured it was still a good idea, especially if we had guests who did have allergies.  Cutting the anthers off didn't seem to hurt the plant any and the flowers lasted just as long as the websites said they would, about two weeks each.  They reminded me a bit of tiger lilies in form and texture.  Only these have shorter petals and a different structure to the anthers and pistil. 

By the time our winter was over in February, so was the blooming. When the last of the blooms broke down, I cut the flowering stalks off with a very sharp pair of shears cleaned with rubbing alcohol (always a good idea, especially with plants that you aren't sure how sensitive they are to infection yet).  It stayed in the house until my favorite weather service (Weatherunderground.com) stopped forecasting frost for our area.  Then, I moved it outside to the shadiest part of our yard that was also not too cold. At the time, that was the South side of the house up against the North facing wall.  By May, it was getting warm enough that it needed to move to a cooler spot, so I put it along the wall on the East side of the house where it is now.

Shortly after I moved it outside, even though I put it in the shadiest spots, it still lost most of its leaves.  I would have been concerned had I not learned that this is common for plants that are moved from inside to outside, especially ones that have finished their reproductive period.  I'm happy to report, that I've been pleasantly surprised at how well it has recovered and even thrived outdoors.  I wasn't sure if it would grow anything all summer, but it has.


 

Re-sprouting outdoors. This time, leaves are leading the way.

In this current photo (6/16/16) we have two wonderful leaves!

Interestingly enough, now that it is outdoors where it is drier and warmer, it is growing leaves first.  This picture was taken shortly after it started emerging its first new leaf.  They said that it was a very persistent perennial that can do this for years, but I wasn't sure if that would be the case in our climate. So far, so good as you can see by the current photo that I took this morning.  The plant gets watered twice a day by a soaker hose dripping down on it on a timer, so it doesn't get a lot of water at once, but the soil is being kept from drying out completely. It also has partial shade in the morning and full shade in the afternoon thanks to being under a bid shade tree and the branches I've laid on top of the shelves on this West facing wall that is on the East side of the house so that it gets shade cast on it in the afternoon. 

Natural shade from cut branches works well for partial shade.

Will the Amaryllis bloom again this winter? I have no idea, it's an experiment. Stay tuned!