Water Conservation

It's that time of year again where you're starting to see signs and reminders that we need to be conserving water.  Of course a scene like this one isn't uncommon but it's also usually fixed promptly.  If not then so much water really can just go straight down the drain.  That is to say the storm drain which we have an ample amount of on our street.  It's great.

This of course applies to residential systems too though.  There are a lot of neighbors who are still having their sprinklers aiming badly and streaming straight to the lake.  Sure it helps the lake level (not really) but it's more or less just wasting their money and the water resources.  Of course no matter what we're losing more water due to evaporation from the lake than we're actually using.  It's a huge lake and one of many in the area.  The lake has gone down several feet since the heavy rains that made ramps disappear.  Still haven't made it out to the lake properly since we moved out there though.  Gone to look by but no boating, fishing, swimming, or even just laying a blanket out for a nice picnic. 

That's not to say we don't need to water though.  Watering helps keep the grass from completely dying out and the foundations of all of the houses from cracking and making a total mess of a brand new neighborhood.  Also trying to get trees, bushes, and other plants to be established.  It's quite an undertaking to be sure.

Among our plants we're getting up and going are of course the fig tree, a lovely addition to any home and the joy to many a bird that will without a doubt get used to its presence.  We also have our daylilies going.  At first I though I had killed half of the plants we got since they immediately died back to the dirt.  It's since been put in a pot and has now grown back in several places in the pot, doing great!  Our green onion we've had since forever (I think some of it was from the first house) is bouncing back so well we're ecstatic.  The chives as well are flowering.  The plumeria has roots I can see but so far the leaves haven't unfurled yet.  Super waiting for it.  I also planted three passion fruit seeds.  They've yet to show themselves but you never know with a seed until you know, you know?

One thing I'm thinking of getting is a bay tree.  I know they can grow in this area since there's one in Fort Worth in the historic pioneer house attraction but not sure how much care it's going to need.

If you have a favorite plant you've grown, please let us know in the comments.  Especially if it's something I can grow in my own yard.

Cluster of Figs

Figs like so many other fruits grow in stages.  Here you have a fig just about ready to eat next to four others in different stages of development.

At this point if you want the fig to continue to develop on the tree but speed up a little, you can nick it with a knife or other pointy object and it will ripen a lot faster. Typically you wouldn't want to do this with a lot of fruit, like apples, because they would not just ripen but also start to rot.

I went ahead and picked this one though so as not to attract too many birds to the tree.  I know they will eventually see this as a good source of food but I wanted to get first crack at it.  Some birds will nick the fruit themselves once they get used to the fig tree fruiting.  They know that this will ripen the fruit and give them a treat for their troubles.

Talking with Amber we thought of some other fruits that have to be picked individually because they don't ripen at the same times.  To name a few: Figs, Coffee, Cacao, Strawberries, Cherries, Apples, Oranges, Pears, and Grapes.  These last few might be a little surprising but they too ripen at different times.  Some of them are picked by machines though but this lets in less ripe fruit along with the ones that are ready to pick so you don't always get the best quality fruit in that case.

What is your favorite fruit to eat?

Plumeria Sprout

So, my wife had the chance to go to Hawaii recently and took a couple friends with her to cat sit for another friend.

One of the things that was brought back was this plumeria stick.  This is the easiest way for you to get a plumeria from Hawaii since they don't have any leaves to bruise and they are more or less dormant until you get it planted.

This one seems to think it's already planted and ready to go.  Unfortunately it's still in the bag and stored in a drawer.  It's for one of our friends but in asking what to do with it came to find out that it's for her mom.  So I still have no answer as to what to do with it.  So what do I do now?  Part of me says to go ahead and plant it and see how long it takes for it to get picked up.  I don't think I should charge a babysitting fee though.

The other thing she left to get later are sticks for hibiscus.  I've never heard of those being propagated that way but I don't know everything.

I'm almost hoping that I can plant and get a stick from it myself before it ever gets picked up.  What would you do if someone left you a plant with no real timeline when it was going home?

Lovely New Fig

My new fig tree is doing well.  It originally came with figs already on it.  A couple of them have fallen off but for the most part the figs have hung on.

To plant it I of course dug a hole.  I've done work with landscapers so I have a good idea of how big.  Typically you want a hole at least twice as big as the pot it came in.  I dug out a little more than that because our soil is clay.  If you don't know anything about clay, it doesn't do well with water and drainage.  It's also hard to dig in.  So, the dirt (mostly clay) I dug out, I mixed with a bag of potting soil.  In the end it was still a bit hard since clay will dominate a mixture down to around 20 percent.

Then I put it back in the hole until it was about deep enough for the plant with the soil ball to sit a little above the previous ground elevation.  Then I back filled the rest of the dirt mixture on top making a mound and watered it for nearly an hour, saturating the dirt so it would settle in.

I have since added even more dirt from an old pot to further give it nutrients and ability to absorb water and retain it.  I water it daily dissolving the bits of clay that I wasn't patient enough to mix in.  The resulting water slurry I'm sure it filling in the gaps that remained in the hole.

After visiting some friends a little south of us we got some mint that I planted on top of the dirt around the fig tree.  At first it was still wilting but now there are new leaves popping in on some of the stems.