esrosedotblog

DOWNTURN

Quite by surprise. The weather here is suddenly cooler at 100.

John says "who would ever call 100 cool in our former life, huh"?

There is a hurricane pushing up through the Baja by Saturday and we are already seeing the cloud cover and a little of the humidity of it.

This is good. It is September. It is cool enough to do some work we would not attempt in the high heat and radiation. Too much stress.

And cool enough for me to go out and fluff the poinsettia leaves that are burned and sort of get the new shoots already coming out in the right position.

It is now in a bit of shade and the cloud cover will help it a lot. It has done well holding up through the ultraviolet exposure but looks kinda ratty. This is the same big poinsettia that we got from the kids at the holidays. We are hoping to keep it going as a perennial.

From there, I went on to trim the gangly growth on the potted lemon and lime trees. A week of cloud and lower heat will help reduce the trauma from the cutting although they are very tough and if I were tougher I could have gone out and trimmed them earlier.

Then on to the back yard hibiscus for a thorough prune of almost every single branch.

Hibisci bloom on new stems so, to keep them growing, means few flowers. Or fewer than if you prune aggressively.

And to get a true bush you really cannot just prune evenly across the top but, rather, prune creatively all through the bush at different lengths to encourage fill in and more flowers. Each cut will produce a few new branches.

And on to the roses for pruning for the fall bloom.

They go dormant in the high heat and, like back east in the winter, we do not prune before the heat but after. That allows the damaged ends of stems to be more distant from the base plant. A quick and dirty prune overall in the fall, which I guess is today, will get a good bounce going for the autumn blooms.

Southern California desert gardening tips.

I feel rather safe actually in doing this a little early. I have a week of low radiation and heat and then we are into the period where the nights are really cool. Last year I was in San Diego next week and when I came back the mountains were in the 40s and the valley was in the 80s. That is why I went earlier this year.

No point on going cool when it is already cool at home

Labels: garden, horticulture