Post rain weedorama

Matt and I hit the garden for the volunteer day and kicked out some serious weeding. 

I turned the hot, steaming compost piles (reignited after being rained on this week) and removed piles of nasturtiums and horsetails from the front bed. When that was cleaned up, I rearranged some society garlics, and Matt rescued an Agave filifera and arranged the pups near it. 

Matt staked the recently planted Phormiums, then dug up a big Phoenix canariensis (Canary Island date palm) volunteer and potted it for planting tomorrow. Volunteer Emily cut back the Salvia elegans (Pineapple Sage) by the bench, and Anna and Mary planted loads of Agapanthus in the triangle garden. 

Good times. 

Bill's Big Blue begone!

Matt has conquered Bill

Another fine day in the neighborhood, and since it's planting time in the Bay area, that also means plant moving time at PG. In other words, enough wetness has fallen from the sky to allow plants to be moved to better places in the garden.

We do this pretty often it seems. Usually there are a few causes.

1. A plant we bought as a 4" baby just grew as big as the label, nursery specialist or Google said it would, but at some point between garden center and hole in the ground we had decided to disregard fact and plant it too close to something else. Reality check!
2. A volunteer sprang up, seeding itself from who-knows-where, and we waited for it to disappear until finally accepting the fact that it had dug its' roots in needed to move. See yesterday's palmstravaganza post.
3. The plant was the right size, right water, right amount of sun, and spaced just so.  But then the plant next to it went rogue and grew so large it started spoiling the conditions for the first plant, causing it to pout and look sickly.
4. Some plants just need to be kept on their toes and a change of scenery is good to keep them from getting too cocky. Not feeling so smart with half your roots missing now, are you? Ha!

Finished!

Plants that got moved today were:

1. A yellow striped Phormium that went from being shaded out by the bench to a sunnier spot in the middle front bed. Hope it makes it.
2. An Impatiens from the left bed that went behind the bench. Seems a bit floppy, but they are a cheap thrill so if it dies no biggie.
3. Agave gypsophila from behind the wrong way sign to the middle back bed - we completely obliterated Bill's Big Blue, the obnoxious aster, to do this and I am not sorry. Bill was a jerk.
4. 8 Dyckias of unknown species, deep reddish color, liberated from pots on the terraces at last to frame the aforementioned Agave.
5. 4 Echeveria secunda which moved from the Triangle Garden to near the bench where they'll be much happier.

We also tied the Phormium that got run over again, turned the compost, weeded a ton at PRG, picked up two bags full of trash, and planted the final Canary Island Palm (Phoenix canariensis) there too.

Palmstravaganza

Today Matt and I went out to do one task, and we achieved that! We decided to move a Canary Island Palm (Phoenix canariensis) volunteer to the middle front bed - a bed normal plagued with weeds and sogginess.

We found that the one palm seedling we wanted to move from where it had grown was actually three palms. So out they came. 

We weeded the spot they were to go into and planted two, taking one home to grow on. 

Mission accomplished!