I Have a Big Mess to Clean Up

I’m not sure where to start with this.

It’s been another cruel summer for the garden. I know I’m not the only one who has lost numerous plants in the ongoing 110+ degree heat, and everything is looking crispy-crispy.

Whenever we get back from summer vacation it is always sad to find plants that did not survive. RIP gardenia, mandevillas, and peas.

I had a particularly awful spider mite problem that got out of hand. Those little buggers do not discriminate about what type of plant they infest. I had them on the potatoes, the hibiscus, and even a few succulents. I blasted them off with water but they took their toll on the garden.

I had an hour or so in 85-90 degree weather this morning – a big improvement from prior weeks where it was 97 degrees and climbing right when we woke up. And I’ve been itching to get back into the garden.

Yesterday I got a couple bags of soil. I know I’ll need more, but it’s a start. But where to even start with this mess?

So I got a burst of energy a couple months ago and decided to tackle dividing the aloe. I decimated one big clump and saved some of the best plants, thinking someone might want them. Well, you can see how that went. They’re all brown in the corner of the secret garden and need to be thrown out. But I’m scared that they’re full of spiders now so that will need to be a day when I’m feeling more brave.

The secret garden has a vinca and Malabar spinach in bed 1. Looks like some allysum took off here and I have clumps of it pop up and surprise me. I’ll be sure to dig that up and replant it in a pot with some petunias. The soil is very low here. My plan to prepare this bed is to place the vinca in a pot and fill in the bed with dirt. I’ll just plant around the spinach. I’m sure it will be fine with a higher level of dirt.

Bed 2 has become an herb garden. I have two kinds of basil and two kinds of oregano that are very happy. A couple of weeks ago, I tried planting cosmos, lemon basil, and parsley. As predicted, it looks like the parsley will be the one to pop up. I’ll continue to plant herbs here, such as cilantro.

And then I need to brave the spiders and just do some general clean up. I already got rid of the stacks of smallest pots that things like annuals originally were sold in. I thought I would have some kind of indoor starts operation, but when I tried that last year with tomatoes and peppers I just did not have enough light in the north facing windows, or the space to do shelves and grow lights. Kudos to people who can do this but everything just withered and died like it always does in the desert.

My patio looks pretty bad. I lost the original panda plant over the summer (the one that kept falling over and still wouldn’t quit). I guess the heat finally got to it. I have 3 babies from it that are still very tiny, so we’ll see if those live on.

My desert rose didn’t do much this year – one lackluster set of blooms – and I think it’s because I watered it too much while it was dormant. That and the madagascar palm will lose all their leaves pretty soon.

I want to repot that trailing elephant bush into the pot and stand underneath it. It would have been cool to find a statue or face to plant it in as the “hair” but I think having it on a stand will literally elevate it. I also probably overwater this poor baby.

So my gardener (aka guy who mows the lawn and hacks my real plants and leaves the weeds) knocked a few babies off the daddy cactus so I have 4 or 5 of those to repot. This tells you how many times he has hacked my plants but I digress. I was just inspired today to maybe put them in the window box I usually use for strawberries instead of the random pots they are in. I think they might look interesting there in a row, and it would be cool if they would fill it in.