Palm Beach (container) Gardens

On a recent trip to Florida, I had the opportunity to take many many pictures of gardens. These are all container gardens located in Palm Beach Gardens (hence the post title).

All pictures were taken before 10am.  All pictures were tweaked a bit in Camera Raw. Not much though.

 Constructive criticism much appreciated!

Transplanting Seedlings to the Garden from a Jiffy Greenhouse

Well, most of the Seedlings are Transplanted today...

Jiffy Greenhouse Part 1 | Jiffy Greenhouse Update

About a month after planting my Jiffy Greenhouse, the seedlings mostly look like this:

The peas have just about outgrown their little peat pot, so it's time to kick them outside into the garden.


For the last week, I've moved the greenhouse outside into the part shade to let the peas get used to the sun.


In the foreground, you can see the peat with nothing growing in it from where the mold killed off the seeds/seedlings.


The two green beans that lived are going to be my little experiment to see if the temperatures are right for the other green beans.




I'm not expecting success in this, (the nights are still below freezing) but it's worth it, for science.

Here's the garden bed I'm using. It is mostly composted horse manure mixed with peat moss and north Georgia dirt, surrounded by wood timbers.


Grass does manage to grow around it in the summer. The fence does a dual job of keeping the dog in the yard and the deer out.


Squirrels and chimpunks, not so much. That's what bird block is for.

Here you can see the peas outside of the greenhouse and in the garden.


According to the box, they don't need to be removed from the peat pods, just plunked down into the dirt with a bit of the top sticking out of the soil.





I placed each plant roughly where I'm going to place the bamboo poles that will help hold them up.



This is as cheap and easy as plant stakes get. They're homegrown, won't rust, and bamboo actually lasts a few years as a plant stake.

The plant on the right is in a huge pot (don't plant it in the ground unless you want a bamboo forest all over your yard) that allows it to grow 8-10 ft. stalks.


The plant is about 12 years old. Regular trimming helps keep it healthy. It needs fertilizer once a month during the spring/summer.

I trimmed two stalks off with rose clippers. I only need a 6ft stake.


You can measure the stalk if you want, but I just eyeball the height I want and cut it off where the bamboo becomes too narrow to use as a stake.


I also use these stakes for tomatoes and other vegetables. I'll also use them to hold up my bird block fence.

There. All trimmed and ready to use in the garden. I just used the rose clippers to trim off the leaves as close to the stalk as possible.

Sometimes, I like to leave a little edge of stem to give the plants something to hang on to as they climb the bamboo.

For example, the pea plants will like to climb up it.

I used garden twine to tie three bamboo stakes together.

Then, I sunk each stake about 6-12in. deep in the soil.

The pea plants went in next.

I followed the directions on the Jiffy box and left a little lip of the peat pod sticking out of the soil.

Now we'll see if they'll grow.

In a week or two, I'll use garden twine to tie the pea plants to the stakes loosely to help them climb it. I may add mesh to the stakes to help them climb upwards as well.

You can barely see it, but this is what the bird block fence looks like.

I used bamboo poles and garden twine to tie a fence around the garden.

The bird block can be reused for a few years before it disintegrates.

I'm using this temporary fence instead of a wire fence because in a few months, I'll change out the plants for the summer cucumbers and tomatoes.

I use marigolds to keep animals away. They work quite well. I also need the room to walk around the garden, and it's annoying to move the fence every 5 minutes.

Visit to Mounts Botanical Garden, Part 2

Previously, on this blog: a Visit to Mounts Botanical Garden, Part 1.

Here are the rest of the best pictures from that trip.  Starting with two plants I actually know about.



  Bougainvillea.


I've tried and failed to grow this in Georgia.

On several occasions, too, so it's nice to see a healthy one.

Breadfruit!

Never tried it.


Heard it tastes like potatoes and potatoes = bread somehow.

Click the link to learn more!


As a bonus, can you tell what I edited out of this picture?

(Using Photoshop, of course.)

Closeup of the breadfruit.




Still not resembling bread.

Closeup of the Desert Rose from the last post.


I did change the exposure of this one in Camera Raw, but nothing else was required.


The flower is naturally that pink-to-white gradient.
  
I'm wondering how well it does in deserts considering it rains a heck of a lot in Florida.

...And the link to the Desert Rose up above shows that in an arid environment, it's actually a lot bigger and healthier looking than the ones at the botanical garden.

This is a closeup of the waterfall in the shade garden.

It actually was a lot darker in there than the picture shows.

Changing the exposure in Camera Raw really helped this picture.

Here's a picture of the canopy of the shade garden.


On the edges are a few angel trumpet flowers.












This flower is another that's completely unknown to me.

 It's really unusual, it was one of my favorites.

It's unfortunately easy to tell that I had to do a lot of manipulation to it for it to look anywhere like it should.

The colors are much harsher than I wanted.  Oh well.  Still like the plant enough to post it.

And that's my trip to the Mounts Botanical Garden in West Palm Beach, Florida.  I really liked how they maintained their garden.  There are tons more flowers than what I posted here.

They'd be thrilled to have you visit!  The entrance fee is a $5.00 donation using the honor system.

Visit to Mounts Botanical Garden, Part 1

 A few weeks ago, I took a few days to visit my family in Palm Beach. 

We took a trip to the Mounts Botanical Gardens, so I could test out the Canon PowerShot S100.



It can save pictures in the Camera Raw format, which helps out tons when editing pictures in Photoshop.

 One small complaint I have about the Mounts Botanical Garden, other than the mosquitoes (I got eaten alive! In February!) is that very few of the plants had plaques telling you what they were.


I'd love it if someone would be able to help me out with some plant names  in the comments.

This is a Desert Rose. I only know that because it actually had a nameplate.



Probably because it's in a pot.


The picture is a bit too bright for my liking but if it wasn't for Camera Raw it would be even worse.

 Hey, a honeybee.  Really happy how this turned out.

I thought the bee would be too small and unnoticeable.

No idea what plant this is.

 This one is a Fire or Mammy Croton.

 I thought it was supposed to be a full sun plant but this one was sitting in the shade garden.

 This one had really soft fuzzy leaves.


I didn't touch it, but I'm just going by how it looks.

Really like how the flowers pop out in the foreground.

 This plant looks like it makes raspberries.

Hint: those aren't raspberries.

I'm a bit disappointed with the blurry foreground but I liked this plant too much to leave out this picture.

The wind was blowing way too hard to get consistently sharp pictures.

 In this picture, if you look closely you can see the sunlight cascading through the trees in the background.


Or its just a glare reflected by the camera.


Either way, it looks pretty.

Still would like to know what plant this is! I've never seen one.

 Okay, enough pictures on this post.  Next post will have the rest.  See you there!