***Official gardening, landscape and yardwork thread***

[KCUnited]

Originally Posted by lewdog

Correct on the Queen Palms but many have them, especially people with pools. I love the look but they are expensive and can die suddenly. Tons in my neighborhood but the brutal heat last summer took out many. They need to be fertilized quite a bit and most people do not provide them enough water in the summer. They need a lot of water to flush the salts here.

Color can be easily had by red Hibiscus and they are pretty forgiving. Pinks are harder to maintain and yellow just isn't worth it for the yard. They have prettier foliage than blue hibiscus too but I'm impressed you have a blue. Not many have them here but they are pretty forgiving too.



Desert yellow bells or orange jubilee are super easy and bloom in the heat. Don't put them by the pool though as they can be messy. Mine are on the opposite side of the yard from the pool.

Not sure how you'd get color from cactus unless you're looking at sticks of fire (succulent) or a purple prickly pear which is really awesome looking?

At some point when you're more able, you'll still need to see how much water is being put to the plants depending on the dripper amount. Under 105 I water every other day for about 30 minutes but many of my plants are getting more water to them than most, as I ran my own line and put bubblers on the drip lines so I can control the volume of water whenever I want. Most yards are set to 1-2 GPH on little drippers and SO MANY plants do poorly on these when people run them for 15-30 minutes a day. The water doesn't penetrate deep enough and the plants roots cook in the summer. Not important for cactus though and actually most all cactus doesn't need to be watered at all, especially agave except for maybe once a month from May-July if we don't get rain. If we get rain, don't water agave for an entire month!

Good info, thx.

I'm thinking color in addition to cactus. Just feels weird not having any cactus. I'll probably wind up doing potted plants for color. I don't have a ton of earth space but a large patio and everything seems strategically landscaped from whenever the pool was installed.

I'm definitely going to dig into the water system more. It seems highly automated but I'd like to learn enough to have more control over the what and why instead of just letting it run as the previous own has it set up.

[lewdog]

Originally Posted by KCUnited

Good info, thx.

I'm thinking color in addition to cactus. Just feels weird not having any cactus. I'll probably wind up doing potted plants for color. I don't have a ton of earth space but a large patio and everything seems strategically landscaped from whenever the pool was installed.

I'm definitely going to dig into the water system more. It seems highly automated but I'd like to learn enough to have more control over the what and why instead of just letting it run as the previous own has it set up.

And not saying you have to redo the sprinklers. Just saying if you know they put out 1-2 GPH, then you may just run your system 60-90 minutes every other day to provide a good volume of water.

So many choices here for plants!