Looking for other landscaping sites to get more knowledge, recommendations, and insight on planting, watering and nuturing of the local fauna in our "zone". You guys get real good with info. for a while, but you've been kind of lame lately. Maybe it's just too hot right now to mess with. But it's good and necessary therapy for me to be outside and working with the plants around the house after work and on weekends.  Always looking to modify and upgrade my little slice of paradise.   

International Palm Society is a good one for palms...There's another one for tropical fruits, but I forget where. It's usually specialty stuff like that.


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If you're not part of the solution, you're part of the precipitate.

LOL. I just complain about no rain nowadays. That is all I got!

Fruit:
I harvested my first sugar apple ever and planted three more that I grew from seed.
I scored a couple bags of local longan lately.
Nanners everywhere. Some fell over due to drought though.
Had a neighbor who helps out in the garden sometimes butcher my fruiting red jaboticaba with a set of hedge clippers. I could have strangled him.
Still can't get my dragon fruit to pollinate.
Grew a few jaboticaba seedlings from a certain local Jaboticaba King.
Tons of pink guava. Many have a few worms. I refridgerate immediately to kill them in place. As long as they ain't moving I don't have a problem with one or two in my smoothie.
Black Sapote is loaded this year.
May have finally gotten a couple sapodilla to pollinate.

Palms:
Sabal lisa is showing a lot of growth despite heat and drought.
Kings and Veitchia bordering sidewalk and stone paths have been absolutely baked and broiled from radiative heat and sun above. Poor things are crispy brown.


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If you're not part of the solution, you're part of the precipitate.

Ouch on hedging the jaboticaba. That hurts. They aren't easy to grow and that doesn't help!

I'm just about out of mango for the season. Only a couple left in the fridge. But, eating a lot of longan lately. I like the longan. How it is late summer fruit after the lychee and mango are gone. Kinda extends our tropical fruit season!

And, again, wish it would rain...its been a week long drought...

Also, I've heard when you look at grocery store canned jelly there is some protein listed. I'm not sure but I don't think fruit has protein in it. Probably from the insect larvae that is left in it!

really good tropical fruit forum:

http://tropicalfruitforum.com/


International Palm forum:

http://www.palmtalk.org/forum/

The International Palm Society has an increasingly busy Facebook page.  

Florida Native Plant Society doesn't yet have much of a forum going.  Should.  

 

 

Working on my new yard. Planted mango, peach, avocado, pineapple, banana, papaya, raspberries, blackberries, Barbados cherry, Surinam cherry, jaboticaba, red and yellow passion fruit. Still want to plant sugar Apple, miracle fruit, moringa, grapes, dragon fruit, and anything else I can fit. I learned an expensive lesson. Don't buy plants that you have not seen. I trusted the guy from Twigs and Berries in Titusville after people on here recommended him. He no longer has the nursery but said he would get me trees. I should have refused to take all but one. The guy at Tropical Nursery on Plumosa has helped me a lot and has nice trees. Started seeds for fall veggies. Set up rain barrels. Now, like Dave said, we need rain!

Unfortunately Facebook has done a good job of killing internet forums.

Now instead of people leaving informative posts that you can find through Google searches. all you get is likes and emoticons and short little replies to pictures without much useful information attached.. and almost impossible to find through search engines since Google and Facebook have it out for each other..

Most good information on some obscure plant that I find these days is ususlly old and from the pre Facebook era :-\

Amen to Facebook killing forums.  

I always keep my eye open for an attractive home landscape and try to identify all the plants and (more) how these are arranged so well. With native plants, there's usually a member of the local chapter of the Florida Native Plant Society who can point out good examples of landscaping in your area. Sometimes government buildings or those of non-profits (e.g., Audubon) are landscaped only with native plants. Long ago, I read a book by Garret Eckbo, a noted landscape architect of the 1950s. I think it was called "Landscape for Living." It was set up so homeowners understood the principles of organizing plantings--so that you don't wind up with one plant here, another there, all helter skelter.

     Appreciate the response. Checked out the International Palm Society.  Lots of great palms to add to our local landscapes. I have consulted with and bought a lot of stuff from G.T.C. Palms, Exotica Tropicals and "coconuts" on this forum.

     Latania, at the risk of upsetting others on this forum, I have to say that I'm not a big fan of the native plants. I know that they are "politically correct" to have in the yard at the moment, but most of them just look like weeds to me. Sorry. I would venture to say that more than 90% of the palms and shrubs used by the forum members on this site are not classified as native.  

Plants and grasses in peoples yards should not be "demonized" because they are not on the list as "native plants".  I would be glad to debate this issue one day with anyone, but not today.

I unfortunately missed a yard tour to a Vero waterfront yard that's nearly all native and a model of good landscape design.  We have natives with quite a variety of colors and textures.  Of course my own yard is loaded with palms, cycads, bromeliads, and a few fruit trees.  The tree rats got their mangos this year.  Lots of GTC stuff.  

Ginny Stibolt's book on maintaining a native plant yard is a good start for yard planning, oddly enough. 

There's real value to butterfly and/or native gardening.  At Fairchild, in Miami, I've been struck at the amount of bird activity in their "Florida Keys" section down in the lowlands.  It looks like a thicket, except for having passable paths and lots of labels on the plants, and some mist nets set up.  In my yard, I suspect I'm getting a fair amount of mileage out of a single hercules-club (Zanthoxylum clava-herculis), an ugly thing that's hidden behind some palms.  Feeds swallowtails, seems to make birds happy.  Pretty soon, there should be Atala butterfly larvae to eat the coonties--they've shown up in Vero.   

BTW, Searle Brothers and Palm Beach Palm and Cycad Society sales are Columbus Day weekend.