It's Spotted Spurge Time. Oh, Joy!

Agave 'Ivory Curls'.  Not a weed.  Just pretty.

Garden weeds in Southern California largely appear during the winter rainy season.  Two notable exceptions that prefer warm soil are trash palms (Washingtonia) and Euphorbia maculata (common name Spotted Spurge). 

 Since the trash palms were removed on an adjacent property, trash palm seedlings have dwindled to one or two.  E. maculata has become the weed of summer.  It's vital to pull them when they are tiny, because one small plant can produce thousands of seeds.   Miss one newly-emerged plant and it can get three feet across in just weeks.  

This gardener's major task of the past few weeks has been pulling them whenever they appear.  Other activities:  too-late buying and planting of a few  Salvias and Pentas, enjoying Agapanthus, spot-watering, and fussing over Dahlias and Zinnias.   Most all the Dahlias are flowering.  No buds on the Zinnias, but they are growing and branching.  

Dahlia 'Lover Boy'.  This was the single spout that  emerge from a clump I thought had died last year. Moved to a good location, it's grown surprisingly well: 

 The warm purple (reddish) color of the 'Marble Ball' Dahlia looks like ripe summer fruit.  So does the cool purple (blueish) of Trachelium.  Cherry and blueberry flavors for the eyes.

Add the dark red of a Gerbera daisy for raspberry.  Yummy!

 'Cafe au Lait', not fruity, but beauty.

Episode 17 of Gardener's World this past week featured an expert Dahlia grower.   I was floored when he said this year he'd grown close to 3,500 individual Dahlia plants in 2022.  Dedication.

Lessons learned from starting Dahlias in pots:  yes, that works fine, but...don't use clay pots because they dry out too fast.  Once the clump is growing well, either move it to the ground, or sink the pot into the soil deeply enough so that irrigation sprinklers water it. Otherwise the gardener must water it, daily.   

While spurge-pulling, seeing Fuchsia sunburn.  This spot is too sunny. 

Somewhere else next year.

Gladiolus (Acidanthera) murielae status:  blooming. The flowers show some heat damage, indicating their pot may be too shallow for good root development.  I'll keep the bulbs and try them in a deeper,  slightly wider pot next year.  Foliage and now flowers have been a fun, temporary accent for an empty spot.

Excellent at hiding the messy base of the Trachelium: 

Slightly toasted petal-tips

 Also suffering from heat damage were several small Aloes and Agaves that were happy and growing all winter and spring, but suddenly damaged by summer.  Emergency move to the veggie/cutting garden.  Placing plants in a fragile state adjacent to any path motivates me to give them the extra care they need to recover.  

I pulled the outermost, dead or dying leaves off some of them so they could grow new roots more easily.  This works with both Aloes and Agaves.  New roots sprout from the areas like seams where leaf bases are removed:

An important lesson learned:  if the root system of the Aloe or Agave looks bad, best to pull off almost all of it and, in the case of Aloes, cut back to fresh, healthy stem to re-root:

Agaves seem more able to re-root even with dried up (not soft and rotting) stem still attached.  Aloes are much more likely to need to re-spout roots from a clean, dry, callused stem.   Precious wonderful Aloe capitata nearly died because I didn't do that.  I stuck it in a nursery bed with its mostly dead roots still there.  It managed to survive for months until I admitted to myself it was in trouble, pulled it up, pulled off the lowermost leaves and cut to clean, healthy stem.

It has now re-rooted and is actively photosynthesizing--the all-red (stressed) foliage is greening up again and new foliage is appearing.  Whew!  Got it in time.  

Now where to plant so that it can thrive long term?  Always something!

Hopefully the little plants moved path-side will recover also. 

Two recent purchases of Salvia 'Mystic Spires Blue' were inspired partially by empty spots and partially by a visit to a garden buddy's most excellent garden.  She had a parterre filled with 'Mystic Spires Blue' (I think), beautifully grown.  The flowers were crawling with fat, happy bees and butterflies.  

'Mystic Spires Blue' is an irradiated version of 'Mystic Spires', which is a seedling or sport of 'Indigo Spires', thought to be a hybrid between S. longispicata and S. farinacea. It was a chance discovery at Huntington Botanical Gardens in 1979.  'Indigo Spires' has a very floppy growth habit.    

'Mystic Spires' is a more upright version of 'Indigo Spires'.   The 'Blue' version has shorter length between leave nodes (more compact growth) and flowers with a slightly bluer color.  Irradiation is a technique botanists sometimes use to produce variations of a particular plant--color sports, variations in growth habit.   

My plants are just four inch size.  First copy went by the bird's urn, where it's doing okay.  Newest replaces an old woody 'Wendy's Wish' and could hide the base of 'Golden Celebration' #3 if it survives and grows.  'Golden Celebration' #3 got a larger rabbit-guard, when I realized the  $%%@#^ rabbits were eating it.

Eucomis 'Sparkling Burgundy' doing well.  I'm enjoying this plant, which is somewhat uncommon in Southern California, though it seems to grow easily here.

Mulch whimsy.  I mulched this pot of Cordyline with the dried cones of Leucadendrons 'Pom Pom' and 'Wilsons Wonder'.   Uniformly dark and even, perfect for a mulch.  Both those Leucs are male plants that produce only pollen, so no reseeding worries--not that a free Leucadendron seedling would be a bad thing.

I shake my head in wonder every time walking past Leucadendron  'Harlequin'.  An impulse buy from a big-box home improvement store, regretted upon arrival home and reluctantly planted, one of the best plants in the garden.    Constantly gorgeous foliage color since purchase.

Dumb luck:  you can't beat it.   

Got the new Avocado tree potted up to a squat-five. 

Beauty shots and birds, to end this post.

Pentas:

'Souvenir de la Malmaison'

'Charles Rennie Mackintosh':

'Molineux' has been flowering non-stop since January

Agave marmorata has an undeniable magnificence.

Leucadendron 'Sylvan Red'

Mangave 'Silver Fox':

Hawk in neighbor's Jacaranda:

These two doves often sit on the wall together in the late afternoon or early evening.  Just sitting with each other for 20 minutes or so, as the sun goes down, like a longtime married couple who are still in love.  

The things you can see in a garden, if you will look. 

 3,500 Dahlia plants.  All hail that guy! 

 (text updated/corrected 6:37am pdt 7/11/22