Garden Activities: October 28, 2025

Today there were many hands on deck! Monica Barton put in an appearance as she was collecting the donations left in the iron rangers. Dale Harshberger brought about a dozen native plants in gallon pots to donate to the garden; we’ll plan to use as many in the garden as practical. The rest of the Tuesday crew comprised Beverly Kemmerling, Julie Moffat, Katie Shank, Daryl Stutley, Nancy Taylor Walker, Janet Wall, Marna Wensil, Ann Wright and myself.

Janet had brought 2 Joshua trees she had grown from seed, so our main objective was to get those planted in the Desert Garden.

Ann digging the hole while Janet was extracting the plant from the pot.

Janet uses “tree pots” to raise tree seedlings in as they are tall and narrow to accommodate the developing tap root. We made sure they were planted in spots that receive irrigation.

While up at the top of the hill, some of the volunteers saw that there was new evidence of aloe mite infestation on the yellow aloe at the entrance of Desert Garden.

Julie just before cutting off an aloe mite gall.

This must be an unusual year. Usually a single removal of the galls a year is enough, but, this year, we’ve done this job at least 3 times now.

On the way down the hill, we stopped to sample the ripe strawberries on the strawberry tree (Arbutus unedo). There were some doubting Thomases, but Katie, Daryl and I didn’t keel over after eating one or two so some of the rest tried them as well.

And the saga of the island oak and its sole acorn continues. The protected seed is still protected and not yet ready to be separated from its cap.

While checking on the stage of ripeness of this acorn, Janet noticed a seedling on the edge of the path between the rocks.

Below is a closer view with the rocks removed.

Janet and Daryl carefully dug this out and put it in a pot with native soil. Janet took it home, replanted it in a large tree pot and will eventually bring it back for planting in the garden near the parent or in the island-native section. We speculate that this is from the seed we saw but didn’t protect last year (again we only found one acorn last year). When it disappeared, we figured it had been eaten or lost, but this seedling may have arisen from that acorn as it was on the tree just above where this seedling was growing. 

While this was going on, the rest of the group focused on the S. African Garden where we dead headed society garlic and other things. A sub group of Nancy, Katie and Dale freed a plumbago of its now unnecessary and constraining cage — cutting it away slowly, so as not to damage the plant, using clippers as wire cutters.

Katie and Dale.

Finally in the S. African section, I noticed the cape honeysuckle (Tecomaria capensis) of which we have a couple of varieties including the common red/orange one.

These have beautiful and abundant blooms which attract nectar-feeders like humming birds, bees and butterflies. Speaking of which Beverly spotted a gulf fritillary butterfly elsewhere in the garden.

Thanks to Nancy and Beverly for their images.

Enjoy the garden!    KMM