Subtropical Garden in Carmel Valley

What a beautiful, sweet plant! A friend had a few red sugar canes in his backyard. They were about 7-8 feet tall with reddish purple stem and a bunch of green leaves on top. They were really beautiful. I knew sugarcane was commercially grown to make sugar, but I did not realize that it was quite ornamental. I also did not know it would grow in San Diego. To me, sugarcane was also associated with tropical plantations in Hawaii, and Caribbean countries. My friend graciously gave me a few short stems with 2-3 nodes to me in May. I planted the stems horizontally, barely covered with soil. They all sprouted and have grown vigorously. One of the stem is now a clump of 7-8 feet canes. The stem was covered with leave sheath. I peeled the lower leaves to expose the beautiful purple stem. I cut a stem from the ground in October to see if it is ready for epicureans’ enjoyment. Well, it turned out it is a lot of work to get to the sweet pith. First, I had to peel off the tough purple s...

Today (or early this morning) we have the first rain of this season. The rain was quite heavy, but short in duration. It stopped when I got up at 6:20 AM. The sun was out. The air was humid and refreshing. The leaves of the garden plants were still wet and looked very green and clean. Well, they clearly need the rain to clean the dust and debris accumulated during the 6 months of dry season. This must be a great treat for the plants, as they looked so verdant and happy. The iris (Rosalie Figge from Van Bourgondien) decided to take the advantage of rain and opened the dark blue-purple petals. This is the second time the iris bloomed this year confirming that it is indeed a re-blooming iris. I have another white re-blooming iris (Immortality). The white flowers are fragrant and seem to bloom at irregular times of the years, sometimes in the mid-winter. I have divided the single plant to 4 plants and each plant bloomed at different times. So I enjoy the flowers year round. I will k...

The pomegranates are ripe now and will split open showing off the ruby-like seeds (see picture 1) if not harvested soon. The tree I have is call "Wonder". The fruits are huge (see picture 2 with a quarter for size comparison) with very red skin and dark purple-red seeds. The seeds are delicious although it is a pain to get the seeds out from the white membrane they attach to. I like to put the seeds in a tray and just savor the flavor one by one while watching TV. The seeds have a tangy sweet flavor and they look like a plate of precious jewels. The pomegranate is symbol of fertility and is often used in Chinese wedding as a blessing for the bride and bridegroom to have hundreds of sons and thousands of grandsons. Nowadays, nobody really wants to have a lot of children. So, maybe pome is considered old-fashioned. Not to worry, the pome juice is supposed to have one of the highest amounts of anti-oxidants and have all kinds of health benefits including reducing plaque of...

It is the flower time of Mexican bush sage ( Salvia leucantha ). The velvet purple and white flowers are held high above the slender branches and silvery grey leaves. They sway graceful in the gentle breeze creating a sea of purple flags. The flowers are the favorite nectar source of humming birds. Every morning and evening, the humming birds flitted around flowers drink the nectar or chasing each others. There are always a number of them darting around. When sun light hit the throat, the ruby feathers are iridescent. What a sight! Of course the honey bees are humming around the flowers, too. The plants are easy to grow. They don't seem to mind the clay, alkaline soil here. They are also easy to propagate. Just a few stems with roots and stick the new stems in the soil and in a few weeks, they will have leaves and start growing. If it is done early in the spring, they will even flower. I usually cut the down to a few inches from the soil after flowers are over. The new silvery l...