coastal garden | Far Out Flora

Flashback: Kalanchoe prolifera

December 1, 2011 by Megan | 3 Comments

Kalanchoe prolifera all grown up

Matti recently uploaded some super old, embarrassing pics of yesteryear (2.5-3 years ago) to our flickr account. If you want a good laugh, or inspiration that a pit of a not so great garden can turn in to something not so bad, check out the set. About a year ago we started keeping track of pics in our backyard in an organized fashion on flickr, making it really easy to go back and freak out at what our garden looked like a year ago. I’m a sucker for before & afters, so the Flashback posts might become more regular. Our little baby Kalanchoe prolifera is all grown up and looks like it’s going to shoot out some flowers soonish. It’s even taller than me! I do admit it’s not the classiest of succulents in the looks department. Kind of gangly and awkward, but I still love it.

Oh look! There’s a semi-crappy looking container with succulents in it. I’m currently trying to keep a weirdo Sedum from the isle of Cyprus alive in the right hand (empty looking) spot. So far I’ve only killed one of these cool plants, but it’s not looking so good for this second guy either. I’m hoping if I wait out the “collapse” phase good things will happen. It is a succulent after all.

Kalanchoe prolifera baby last November

So, we picked up this freaky little dude about two years ago in Morro Bay. Light Brown Apple Moth (horrible, horrible creature from Australia who thankfully seems to have taken a little nap recently) took a liking to it this summer, along with quite a few of our succulents including the Sedum I mentioned above. I hate to kill the spawn of butterflies and moths, but I busted out the BT on a pretty regular basis this summer in an effort to battle it. Dang LBAM went nuts on a bunch of non-succulents, too. It had no problem flying around the apartment taunting us when the windows were open at night either, which is how I made a positive identification as it clung to the side of the laptop monitor.

Popping in on the Neighbors

June 18, 2011 by Matti | 12 Comments

Neighbor

Is the grass greener on the other side? Well, our neighbors have been clearing out a lot of the junky weeds and getting it prep to do something with it. Their challenge? What to plant, little time to spend, & and not sure where to start… Well, we decided to jump over the fence to our neighbor’s yard to plant some stuff and do a little maintenance.

Before.

Before we get going here, I want to mention one of our regrets. I wish we took more pictures of our garden back in the day, especially the crappy looking parts. There’s nothing better than seeing an old pic of your yard and being able to say…wow…it real does look a lot better…I can’t believe that it looked like that back then.

That said, here’s their before picture. You can see a couple of the succulent cuttings that we plugged in last winter and that’s about it. Not too exciting, but it was a start.

Last February, they did a major attack on the hip height weeds that were smothering their yard and you can see that the baby weeds are coming back. First thing we did was just do a quick razzing of the sandy soil to get reclaim the garden again.

After

A little cleanup and it already looks better. Plus we planted a bunch of rejects that both Megan and I can get from work. The rejects are not bad plants…just not looking their ‘retail’ best.

Before.

On the other side of the yard, we kept the Zantedeschia which seem to be thriving on this shadier side plus the neighbors love them.

After.

To keep the momentum going, we popped in some of our iris that we divided from our garden.

Before.

Here’s the Fortnight Lily (Dietes vegeta) that plucked out of our garden ages ago. We dug it out of our garden and put it at the curb for someone to take. Little did we know that our next door neighbors thought it was cool and replanted it in their space. LOL, we could have saved them a couple steps and just passed it over the fence.

After.

Today, the north side is looking pretty sweet, and those Blue Chalk Stick succulents (Senecio mandraliscae) are coming back. Considering how fast they grew in our yard, they should quickly fill a lot of this space. We are trying to teach them a good solution to the “Hey, we’re on a budget and can’t buy everything at once and need bang for our buck.”

Here’s what you do: Divide plants that grow fast to get some good fill. Keep an eye out for freebies from your friends and neighbors. Keep looking for deals on anchor plants at your local nurseries. Over a short time, your garden will impress your buddies.

Our garden back in the day.

Our two apartment backyards are nearly identical. Ours above, man…I can remember back to when we were amazed how awesome it looked after weeks of experimenting with plants back there. I estimate that this pic was about 3 years ago.