Ground cover and recalcitrant canines

Okay it has been a while. First I moved in before work on the house at Alafua was completed. Although the contractor and his men have been gone a while now they have not quite completed all what they were supposed to do so the place is not exactly all ready. The main problem is the wiring as well as the lights and electrical outlets of the kitchen, bathroom and toilets have yet to be installed among a few other things.

However, that is all out of my control so I have been busy with the "landscaping" which at the moment means planting as many of the plants that need to be transplanted into the ground (rather than other pots or poly bags). It also means planting a hedge or rather several hedges and plant barriers between the various neighbours, the road front and the access road that runs down the back of the property to the creek.

I started by transplanting Flame violets (Episcia) as ground cover around the side where the bedrooms are and along the front of the house that looks out down the street. I have two varieties one with green leaves and bright red flowers
and another with burgundy leaves and pink flowers.

I have had to put cocoa wire over them to keep the four resident dogs (the owner has not come to take them yet) from digging the plants up. I had to rake and remove a whole lot of stones, bones and other rubbish from the area. The dogs were used to digging the soil up and making themselves nice soft beds there as well as all around the house. So far the cocoa wire has kept them off the plants and most have not only recovered but are flowering and look on their way to establishing a nice ground cover.

Unfortunately for some reason the burgundy leaved Flame violets do not seem to be doing too well. Admittedly I did not have that many of them to start off with and very few of those were in top condition. I suspect that the fact that the area these are in has a lot more sun may be a factor.

I also took some Heliconia and Hedychium from Malifa to plant at Alafua.

I planted them both on the side of the bedrooms along the fence with the Helliconia along the fence and the Hedyciums further in. The Heliconia were Heliconia caribea which are the giant ones. One of the varieties I am certain is a cream and the other I am not so sure but is alot more showy than the cream. Once they grow into a decent sized stand they will provide a tall leafy  screen and produce nice flowers as well.

For the Hedychium I have three varieties so far and decided to plant the Yellow Hedychium (Hedychium flavenscens) in this location because they have very big flower heads and a strong scent. The other two varieties seem to be Hedychium coronarium since it is white and the other is sort or salmon coloured but I have not been able to identify it yet. I think it is Hedychium augustiflolium "Peach" I will also plant these two at Alafua although I am not sure when or where. I may try planting some along the creek bank which has been greatly eroded over the last 20 years since I used to go swiming and exploring there.


Flora and Fauna - Plants and Critters Blog by Vincent Albert Vermeulen is licensed under a Creative Commons Attribution-NonCommercial-ShareAlike 3.0 Unported License.
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Glorious Lilies

I bought one plant about a year ago now. Since then it had new plantels and I divided it transplanted them. Now two are flowering. Sorry I have no idea what they are called.

I have moved since my last post and have done quite a bit of planting since then. I had to move all the plants I had at Fagalii Uta to our house at Alafua.

I had planted some pink Zepheranthes and Flame violets (Episcia) in the ground at the house at Fagalii Uta. I had intended to leave them for the next tenant but then thought that knowing how some people operate they might weed them out so I decided to take them out. Unfortunately on the day that I was going to dig them up the people who look after the property i.e. take care of the grass etc who had been in the process of mowing the grass and trimming the hedges had added a new thing to their activities: spraying the strip around the house with herbicide!

I guess it makes sense as it kills those hard to reach plants against the houses. Unfortunately this included the strip of Zepheranthes I had decided I should remove. I guess my prescience was correct but I did not act in time.

To make it worse there are cats and dogs in the neighbourhood and when my neighbour who has three dogs and a cat complained they ignored her concerns that the pets might get poisoned as well.


Flora and Fauna - Plants and Critters Blog by Vincent Albert Vermeulen is licensed under a Creative Commons Attribution-NonCommercial-ShareAlike 3.0 Unported License.
Based on a work at http://plantsandcritters.blogspot.be/.
Permissions beyond the scope of this license may be available at http://plantsandcritters.blogspot.be/.

Serendipitous Tomatoes

Several months ago I noticed that in one of the pots that some Flame Violets (Episcia) had grown into, a tomato plant had appeared. Well that was not really surprising since when I do not throw stuff into my compost pots I sometimes drop fruits, coffee grounds etc into other pots. So I put the pot by the side of the house whereI wanted the flame violets to spread and act as ground cover.
These ones have silvery green leaves and bright red flowers. 

I decided to leave the tomato plant and let it grow with the Flame Violets. I have grown tomatoes before on the farm and know you are supposed to stake and tie them and pinch back the little side shoots etc all supposedly to ensure that each plant produces the maximum amount of tomatoes. I did not do any this to this plant and it has grown and spread over quite a bit of ground and has been bearing lots and lots of tomatoes.

It turns out it is a Roma Tomato and I remember buying some a while back and then throwing them away because I did not use them in time.

 And YES that is one single plant. And it is still growing and spreading.

The combination of Tomato plant and Flame Violets seems to be good as the flame violet acts as ground cover letting the Tomato plant grow without too many weeds.

I took some pictures of the flowers because they look quite nice, not that they could ever end up in a flower shop or a flower bouquet since they are far too small. Still I think that their delicate simplicity and the fine hairs of the stalks and leave are quite interesting and came out reasonably well using the macro.

Its strange how you usually do not notice flowers of "edible" plants as being attractive ... well except for cherry blossoms and certain other fruit trees, but tomato flowers?