The Stick and Grow Garden

Another of my favorite gardening techniques is to stick something in the ground and hope it grows. Maybe I should change the name...it's not much different from the throw and grow concept, except with this method I dig a hole with my mini-shovel and just stick my hope in the ground.

Plumeria (flor de mayo, frangipani) is the easiest.  You can simply break off a branch from a healthy - even flowering tree - and stick it in the ground. This one looks pathetic, but check out the determination of this cutting!  The flowers and new leaves are desperately trying to reach for the sky, while the older blooms don't seem to understand why they had to undergo surgery in the first place.  What's important is....it's growing! And it's the rainy season.

In Hawaii, they bag and sell six inch cuttings to tourists who dream of enjoying the sweet scent of the flower at home in their backyards in Kansas.  Most of those pieces don't survive in colder climates, but snipping a stick from one side of the wall and planting it on the other in the tropics is almost a sure bet.  I'll concede the cutting doesn't appear to be real happy about its relocation. For now.  Give it some adjustment time. We overflow the pool a lot and it'll get watered regularly.

Many succulents are perfect for stick and grow.  Everything in the pot below was just stuck in there.  It may be time to remove the overpowering plant and stick in a few smaller cuttings.  It's growing out of control. I don't know what this plant is, but it could easily overtake your property if you aren't careful. It multiplies faster than bunnies or cockroaches. But check out the stick cactus. It's great stuff.  My friend Mike gave me a sizable cutting last year, and it's been stuck all over the property since.  It's nearly impossible to kill and gives an eclectic look to any succulent arrangement.

This old sink is home base for the stick cactus, I take cuttings from this now misshapen plant to electicize the rest of the garden!  In front of it is another sad example of the plumeria we trimmed from the neighbor's tree. We didn't go out and steal flor de mayo branches, although I have done that after too much wine in Hawaii.... The blooms falling from the abandoned property next door into the pool gave it a Balinese feel, but they'd start to rot by the side of the pool and that ruined the effect. So we cut the bugger back.

Pineapple is always fun. In Hawaii, Maxine grew the absolute best white pineapples and always gave me plenty. I got into the habit of planting every pineapple top.  After a couple of years I had quite the crop of my own.  Here I have had trouble with soil, but the zen garden seems to work for this one. 

For me the miracle of all stick and grow is the poinsettia pictured below.  I dutifully cut back our other poinsettia plants (that Pablo successfully transformed from Christmas containers to beautiful flowering bushes two years ago.)  One of them needed to be evened out, and I cut a few good sized branches.  Below is the result of that cutting and the branch I stuck in the ground in April.

I haven't ever been able to transplant a poinsettia, let alone get one to grow from a stick. I didn't even have Root Tone!  If it flowers it will be the miracle Christmas flower. From the size of it, I'd better wait until next year before I get too excited about blooms.

The Throw and Grow Gardener

I’ve never been much of a gardener. My best garden was in Akumal, when I lived on Yalku Lagoon in the early 80’s. The soil was very sandy, so plant choices were limited. I worked 7 days a week, so I hired my first (ever) gardener. He planted cilantro, green onions, little tomatos, and chiles, plants that would grow in the sand. I loved making salsa right out of the garden!

That was the last real garden I had. Once we moved to Hawaii, I became a throw and grow gardener. If I could clear some weeds to expose the beautiful black volcanic dirt, throw some seeds into the ground and watch them grow,  I’d succeeded. I always planted some chile seeds, usually piquín or tepín, typical to Hawaii, and they thrived. Spearmint grew voluntarily as ground cover in the front yard of our coffee shack. Every pineapple top I planted grew and gave us fruit. I once tossed two squash down into the lower level on our hillside and the result could have been horror movie theme. I thought the vines were going to take over the house. I had so many squash I didn't know what to do.  Throw and grow had backfired!  It did so again when I threw and grew some cherry tomatoes. They also thrived in uncontrollable overabundance. 

When I finally tried to make an enclosed garden in Hawaii I had to move giant lava rocks around and build a little wall to accommodate the dirt. Like the Yucatán, when it rains there is pours and washes away the topsoil.  As I was nearly finished stacking the rocks, one fell on my finger and through the suede gloves and all, my fingertip popped open like a grape. That was the official end of gardening for me there.

Here in Mérida, the patio has slowly taken shape with a nice and sometimes colorful array of plants. I have my zen garden, which currently has only decorative plants. The cactus/succulent garden is bizarre and it's fun to watch it take shape.  But the coup de gras is the chile bush in the back yard.

The chiles are similar to what the Mayans call chile maáx, (mah-ahsh)…we brought some with us from Guatemala and applied the throw and grow technique. There are actually two thick stems but the two chile bushes grew up together and are the cheeriest bunch of chiles I’ve ever seen.

There is an habanero plant next to them that enjoys the company and has begun to put out some beautiful chiles also. I'd better mention that the habanero was introduced to our garden as a little plant, it's not a throw and grow. This one takes some extra attention, but it's worth it.

I threw some basil seeds around.

The first basil bush was magnificent – not only for pesto sauce and cooking in general, but the flowering basil wafted aromatic waves past us while we were in the swimming pool. Eventually the plant got too old and I pulled it, threw new seeds in the area and covered them with a little layer of dirt. There are going to be plenty of basil plants this season, as you can see from the photo above.

I have been enjoying working outside in the little gardens around the property. My garden areas are small enough for me to take on in sections...and I'm happy to work with the throw and grow method again - with some success. 

Papaya

This is our papaya tree.

It sits in the front Zen garden (and cat box).

 

I planted it from seed approximately a year and a half ago.  We have finally harvested two fruits!  The first one I blended with vanilla ice cream, a banana and milk.  It was delicious.  The second one we ate like fruit, though it tasted more like candy.  The third fruit is almost ripe.

This was grown from a local Yucatecan papaya seed.  It is not a seedless variety and I have no idea why it has no seeds.  It was delicious though, and the tree is still healthy and sprouting new fruits. 

Since the early 70's when I first started traveling through Mexico, I tried to like papaya. To me it tasted like my dad's stinky feet. Although I have never chewed on my dad's feet, my brothers used to have sniffing contests.....and I was put off papaya (among other things) forever.  Or so I thought.  I spent over 20 years in Hawaii and came to love papaya.   The best Hawaiian variety is called strawberry papaya; it's the cream of the crop! It's colorful and sweet like the papaya pictured above and not at all reminiscent of my dad.  I planted two batches of papaya seed at the same time last year, but unfortunately the strawberry papaya seeds I brought from Guatemala didn't fruit.  Or did they?

Succulents and the Zen Garden

This is one of the permanent planters at the corners of the pool. Below are stick cactus, jade plant and two Mayan gods from Copán protecting them. The geranium that used to live here didn't make it.

I am still working with the Zen garden (and catbox). While the backyard has more fruit and flowery plants, it also has Pablo, who enjoys his meditation time watering the plants when rain is not abundant. I take care of the little front patio. Therefore the plants must be of the ‘throw and grow’ variety, or very low maintenance.

The Zen garden has gone through several changes since its creation. The ti plant, papaya tree, sago, diffenbachia (dumb cane), philodendron, and the palm tree are doing great. The sand, pounded nearly into cement by the harsh rains, no longer interests the cats as a place to relieve themselves. The driftwood and canoe are happy there. The two plants in the hubcaps are surrounded by seashells and river rocks; you can hardly see them.

The plants have changed a bit since the first attempt. I planted some melon seeds and they rapidly spread. But there was a sweet potato (camote) sprouting in the hanging basket in the kitchen, so I buried it in the Zen garden. It seems to be stronger than the melons and may just win out. I like vines, but only the kind I know I'll be able to control later. This is a small area and they can’t take over like the throw and grow squash that consumed our property in Kona one year. I really made a bad decision tossing one innocent squash in front of our coffee shack. We had squash growing up the side of the house. (Ok, that is an exaggeration.)

We recently brought one spider lily home from the beach. They can grow in lousy soil, and they flower all the time. They have only a faint scent, but the white flowers can add dimension to an arrangement or cheer to the Zen garden. Once they start spewing seeds, I will have to be watchful. This is another plant I had experience with in Hawaii. In the long run I like spider lilies around me, I just have to keep up with removing the seeds. This one pictured above looks sad, but it will revive itself once it's familiar with its Zen-ness.

The spearmint in the pot below didn’t survive my watering plan, which is basically rainfall. But I have hope for the Serrano chiles planted in here now, as several seeds have sprouted and it is the rainy season. The light green vines are the sweet potato.

Below is the melon vine. There is some aloe vera hiding behind it and a few other things. Oh, and the chayote that grew in the frig. I thought I'd see what happens to it in the throw and grow garden.

Along the wall in the carport I planted a variety of succulents. We brought some nopal home one day, and some of the cuttings have sprouted interestingly shaped arms. It reminds me of one nopal I had in Kona a long time ago that grew little arms and a little head, and we put a little hat on him that came on a tequila bottle. Ah tequila memories….

Here I am with my pet cactus, Pancho, in 1989, in Kona, Hawaii.

I spread out some mother-in-law's tongues along the lengthy narrow garden. I had lots of them in Kona, and after a while they were like weeds. Once you plant one you can’t get rid of them. But they are very low maintenance and they look good.

There are lots of jade bush cuttings. The planters in the back patio are supposed to be bonsai, but they grow so fast! There is one more little cactus mixed in here. One day I bought a plant from a little Mayan lady downtown for ten pesos. The day I brought it home was the day the succulent garden took its shape and all its components were assembled. I think it looks pretty cool. Not too bad for a throw and grow low maintenance gardener.

You can see below that the pineapple plants have not embraced their location. This is one of two that look pekid. They are alive and have a Mayan god to aid them in their search for chlorophyll or whatever it is they are lacking. I think they look good in the giant planters that square off the pool, especially with their flowering miniature succulents.