Agave desmettiana "Joe Hoak"

There are some plants that I've never heard of that suddenly crash into my awareness and then it's all I think about. "Joe Hoak" is one of those plants.

I first saw it at the Inter City show and it seemed so exotic an unexpected that it almost didn't seem real. There is a softness to it that seems so unlike the other agaves. Even the standard and variegated forms of desmettiana are so robust and almost bullies. "Joe Hoak" seems almost unrelated to those prolific, mounding cousins.

There must be a lot of other people interested in it as well because I started to see it more and more and read about it on other blogs. I actually passed one up at a Huntington sale because it seemed a little seared. I'm glad I waited because I eventually found a happy little plant that has since unfurled into a beautiful languid specimen. I put it in my favorite pot off all time, an original fiberglas cone on a tripod. This plant seems to require elevation, not because it trails, but because I want it to be closer to me, closer to my face, so I can eat it like buttered noodles.

 I wish that Fancy was in one of these shots for scale. The plant is about 2 feet across.

Straw Bale Gardenning

 Squash and Beans

Tomatoes and more squash

Shaw's Agave

The agaves that Sean gave me have been sitting in the back of the truck for months now. Alex and I tried to move them but they were just too heavy for the two of us.

I even tried cutting off a bunch of the lower leaves to make them light enough to move but it wasn't enough. I finally had to enlist the help of my burly friend Bill and the three of us managed to get them out of the truck and up the stairs. 

They'll probably end up sitting in the front yard for months but at least I can use my truck again. 

I am eager to get them in the ground though. They are already sending out new roots so they seem eager as well. They need to go a fair distance up the hill so I might have to schedule a little agave moving party and invite a bunch of people. Who wouldn't want an invitation to a party like that? Maybe I could pay them in agave pups. I have a bunch all potted up a ready to go.

Agave Bloom

The plant that I'm calling Agave potatorum is blooming.

The bloom spike has grown about 7 feet in the last few weeks.


It's kind of hard to see so I moved it to the porch so I could watch the show. I'm not sure what the plant is so I'm hoping the color of the blooms will help me narrow it down. I have a bunch of pups from this plant so it would be nice to know what it is.

Mistakes Were Made

I've posted before about my pruning project. This has been my attempt to make the bushes in the front of the yard at the top of the cliff grow in short and bushy. Although I've managed to bring the height down a little and the top story is nicely filled in there is a lower level about 2 feet high that was bare so you could see down to the street.

I had a brilliant idea to plant something under there that would fill in and screen out the street. My choice, since I don't like to pay for things I don't have to, was cuttings from a couple of giant Euphorbia tirucalli trees that grow in my neighborhood. By giant, I mean about 30 feet high and 40 feet wide. They've grown so big that they are encroaching on the road and sometimes larger vehicles knock branches down. I figured I would be doing the neighborhood a service by thinning them out a little bit.

I blithely drove my truck underneath them and cut a few 2' pieces to plant under shrubs. They bled a bunch of sap that was a little sticky and annoying but I figured it was a small price to pay for some free plants.

Some of you may know where this story is going. It turns out Euphorbia tirucalli sap is poisonous. If you get it on your skin it itches and burns and causes a rash like poison ivy. I can now verify this from experience. If you get it it your eyes it can cause blindness. Blindness! I got some sap in my eyes when I was taking a shower later that night, maybe some got in my hair or something, and although I didn't go blind, it did burn like fire. Now I know.

So a year has passed and aside from its toxic vengeance E. tirucalli has been wildly successful. It had totally filled in the space below the bushes and is now spilling out over the other plants.




It's also now growing taller than the bushes. You can see one poking it's head up above the leaves of the shrub.


This is the same shot about a month later. I swear it has grown about 4 inches.

I admire its tenacity and think it's beautiful it just seems too problematic to have in the front yard where I'm going to have to be working around it. I need to step into that bed to prune the bushes and now I'm afraid that I'll break a stem and get showered with sap.

In my defense, I did have some experience with E. tirucalli in the past. I've had this plant for about 8 years:

I think Samantha brought it home from a job site and left it when she moved. It has stayed the same size and the same basic shape for 8 years. Maybe it's because it's in a pot or maybe I've neglected it, but it never gave me any indication that if I put it in the ground it would devote itself to my destruction through fiery itchiness.

I decided that I needed to take all of the plants out before they got too big. I put on gloves, pants, long sleeves and safety glasses.


They put up a fight but I managed to pry them out with a shovel.
It looks like their roots grew straight out of the cut end. I would have expected roots to grow from a node.


Ahhhh! Sap!

The branches are soft and easy to break so I tried to handle them as gently as possible. The first one was about 4' tall and very bushy.


It makes nice potted plant...if you don't come too close.


So now I have a forest of these in pots. The tallest one is over 6 feet but it's very wobbly because the bush was holding it up. I have it loosely staked but hopefully it will stiffen up now that it's on its own.

I'm not sure what to do with them. I thought about planting them in the empty lot next door but what if the guys that clear the hill get too close with their weed wackers? They could create a poison sap cloud. Yikes.

I could plant them somewhere in my yard but, as I mentioned, these get big and I'm not sure I want 5 giant poisonous trees taking over the hill.

For now they can sit outside my window and think about what they've done.


The front yard is looking a little sparse again. The euphorbias really did do a good job of filling in that empty space.

I have some plans for what I can do to fix it but I'm going to try to be a little more thoughtful this time and plan for the long run.

Repotting

I decided to move some of my potted plants up to the next size. Since I'm not ready to put them in the ground I figured they should be comfortable in the meantime. I got a bunch of one gallon pots at Home Depot.


The first to get bumped up was the sad little agave that I took back from my neighbor with the black thumb. With a little watering it has plumped up and turned green. Someday this little plant will be a beautiful giant.


Adding a little more dirt will help to send it on it's way.


A few of the agaves had offsets jammed in the bottom waiting to get out.


The Agave potatorum Cream Spike had 7 or 8 spiraled around the inside of the pot.


They look much more comfortable now.

Seeds

While I was in a seed planting mood I decided to get some things going for the winter garden. I planted all my favorites.



I put them on the Northeast side of the house. They'll get sunlight until about noon and then be in the shade for the hottest part of the day. I think it's just the heat and moisture they need right now to germinate. Once they start to grow I may try to find a better place for them.


The cover's steamed up right away.


Update 8 days later:

Beans and peas


Beats and raddishes


Chard and cabbage


One little Echium fatuosum out of all those seeds. :/

Agave gentryi

I decided to repot the agave from my shopping post. I also decided to call it Agave gentryi until I get more conclusive proof of its identity.

I cut the pot off so these pups coming out the bottom wouldn't be damaged. It wasn't so much root bound as all the roots were growing right up against the pot. There was a lot of untouched dirt in the middle. This still seems like a good reason to give it more room. Somewhere in the ground would be best but I just can't decide where to put it.


As I was man-handling it this little lovely jumped out. I don't think it was trying to get me, I think it was just appalled at all the thrashing around. I'm pretty sure that this is a brown widow. I couldn't get a good shot of the red hourglass on her abdomen but it was quite distinct.

When I worked at the Natural History Museum, Brent-the-Bug-Guy had a little display with a brown widow in a flower pot. It said that they are even more dangerous than black widows. Super. Nevertheless I just shook her off into the bushes. There are black widows all over the yard and so far I've never regretted it. The only thing I don't like about them is that their webs are so sloppy, very unlike the orb weavers that spin that perfect, archetypal web, usually right where I'll walk into it.

I moved the agave into a five gallon pot. It still looks like a tight fit. I can't believe that this plant used to be in a one gallon.


The two biggest offsets went into their own one gallons and the smaller ones got crowded into some clay pots I had lying around.

The smallest ones had been deep in the original pot so they are still white. I don't know if these will make it but I didn't want to leave them with the parent when I would just have to take them out later. I'm not anti-offset, but I'd like for the parent to have lots of room to grow in the hopes that it will develop a nice symmetrical rosette.

Bloom Day

I don't usually have anything to show on bloom day unless it's a citrus or squash blossom, but this month I have a couple of plants with nice blooms. This first one is a volunteer that poked it's head over the fence and peeks into my bedroom. I have no idea what it is but it survives with no water or attention from me so I like it. I also like hot pink.


The other plant is this sempervivum. Again, I'm not sure what it is but I might have the tag somewhere.

It's hanging off the cliff above the house. I planted it there along with the Echevaria agavoides and Agave parryi several years ago.