Galveston update

It's hard to believe I never did an update post on the Galveston garden that I planted back in 2012.  My life did change quite a bit from that trip onwards, as that is when I found out I was going to be a dad.  My blog posts trailed off a lot after that... Well, it's been over 5 years now, so it seems like a great time to check in on my semi-tropical garden. Most of these update photos were taken in October, 5 years after the original planting of the garden.

Jatropha

Duranta

As with any garden I've ever planted, some plants thrive much more than others, and some succumb to one or more factors.  More often than not, those factors in my home gardens are heat and drought, occasionally to a hard winter.  I can safely say none of those factors have taken a toll on the plants in Galveston.

The garden on the right side at time of planting, October 2012.

Can you even see the Justicia?  It's the lanky little stem with few leaves just below the black Crape Myrtle in the image.

See the struggling Yucca?

It seems my biggest issue in Galveston is competition.  A few aggressive growers have expanded faster than I expected and drowned out all the sunshine from their neighbors.  The biggest offenders are Bougainvillea, Red Shrimp Plant (Justicia bandegeana), Allamanda, Duranta, Plumbago, and Jatropha.

The garden on the right side, as seen in October 2016, before trimming.

The Black Diamond® Crape Myrtle (Lagerstroemia indica) is still alive, but it is struggling to get enough sunlight because of the Shrimp Plant.  That plant and a Yucca (far left of image above) have really surprised me with their rate of growth.  The Shrimp plant was a lanky little twig when I planted it.  Now it's 6 feet in diameter, and only because I whack it back on a regular basis. The Yucca was about 4 feet tall and only had 4 struggling leaves when it was planted.  Now the base of the tree has enlarged, it is about 7 feet tall, and has a nice head of green leaves.  It even bloomed recently!

The Yucca has really grown in height and you can see the remains of an inflorescence in this photo.
Unfortunately I didn't get to see it in flower.

Red Shrimp Plant (Jatropha) as seen from above. The mailbox is becoming out of reach.

We visit Galveston a couple of times a year and on most of those trips I have spent an afternoon out in the yard, trimming. One of my priorities is always to cut back all of the growth in front of the mailbox, so that the postal worker can get to the box, which you can see is hard to access in the photo above.

More accessible mailbox after trimming.

The trimming can be a heavy chore with the rate of growth of some of these plants.  And with the nasty thorns on the Natal Plum and the Bougainvillea, it can be a painful chore. The Natal Plums are covered in little white star-shaped flowers much of the year, which are followed by small edible fruits that my mother-in-law has used to make tiny tarts.

Natal Plum covering the sidewalk. Luckily the sidewalk is just a segment that ends at each end of the yard, so no one used it anyway. It is required by the City of Galveston on all new construction. Who knows when a sidewalk will be installed in either of the neighbor's yards...

One of the Oleander we planted after the initial planting has shot up to the top of the stairs, which is really cool because the flowers are very fragrant and they are at nose level both on the ground and at the landing of the stairs. I still have to spend quite a while trimming the lower branches that grow horizontally.

Large Oleander towering up to the second story, October 2016.

Another view of the dominating Oleander before trimming.

Some better definition, exposure of the yard and garden border, after a thorough trimming.

We also have a few invasive vines that I have to keep pulling up.  I gave up on ever ridding the garden of them, so I just try to keep them in check.  Sometimes it's easiest to just find them where they are coming up from the soil and clip them there.  It takes a long time to unwind them from all of the places they are climbing in the bushes.

The prize for plant that I didn't think would make it at all is a Bromeliad that my mother-in-law received as a gift and didn't want to keep growing in a pot in her home.  She planted it in the garden in Galveston and I figured it would surely be a goner in a few short months.  Much to my surprise, it has done well there and even flowered several times since it was planted in the ground.

Pineapple Guava

Buttonwood

Late last year we added a couple of new bushes, a Pineapple Guava and a Buttonwood. Who knows if either of these will become monsters? To be continued.

New blooms in the greenhouse

Some of my plants have been surprising me with blooms lately.  I figured the lower sun angle would be enough to trigger dormancy in some plants, even in the 65 degree temperatures of the greenhouse.  But none of my plants are going dormant and some of them are blooming for the first time.

Our neighbor across the street (the one who gave me the Begonia cuttings) is letting me overwinter her variegated Bougainvillea in my greenhouse.  It is in a hanging pot along a rod I installed in the top of the greenhouse and has just been hanging in there.  It didn't have a lot of leaves when I took it from her and I haven't seen very many new ones form.  But all of the sudden, it is blooming!  I think I will have to run it over to her house soon (on a warmish day) and show her the blooms.

First blooms from my Bougainvillea plant

I also have a Bougainvillea that was my Mom's.  She gave it to me about three years ago.  It has had moments of rapid growth and lots of new leaves, but always drops its leaves and looks really sad in the winter - until the greenhouse.  It has been pretty happy this winter in the greenhouse and is actually  producing the first blooms that I have seen on it since it has been in my care!

New blooms on my purple shrimp plant (Justicia scheidweileri)

I bought several Shrimp plants last Spring and Summer, most of which were blooming when I bought them and have continued to do so.  One of them, the Purple Shrimp Plant (Justicia scheidweileri), has been particularly difficult, though.  It wilts quicker than another other plant that I grow.  But it also bounces back quickly and is blooming for the first time since it lost its initial blooms.

After forming some small white flowers, which I didn't photograph in time, my Ying Yang Bean plants (Phaseolus vulgaris) are now forming pods of new beans.  I hope to get a decent crop from these plants, so that I can keep a bean or two myself and share the others with other local greenhouse owners.

Newest bloom on my yellow Datura

My lime tree and yellow Datura continue to bloom on a regular basis.  I dropped seeds from the Datura parent plant onto the soil under the same plant and some of the have sprouted and are producing new little plants.

Seedlings of my yellow Datura plant

I am anxious to see some of my Hawaiian ginger plants bloom, but that might have to wait until this Summer.  Some of them are quite large now - over 4 foot tall.  I would expect those are pretty close to blooming size.