Gardening with "living fossils"

Long before mankind started gardening, Mother Nature was already growing gardens of her own.

By growing these ancient plants, even today we can create a garden reminiscent of a time when dinosaurs ruled the animal kingdom and the dominant plant types ruling the plant kingdom were cycads and ferns.

My Cycad - Cycas Revoluta (Sago Palm) July 2013 

The Sago Palm is native to the Far East and the cold hardy Sago Palm has been used as a choice container and landscape plant for centuries. The growth habit of Cycas revoluta displays an upright trunk with a diameter of typically about 20 cm (7.9 in) in diameter, sometimes wider, depending on age, topped with stiff feather-like leaves growing in a circular pattern.

Regardless of age or size, the Sago palms (Cycas revoluta) are one of the easiest plants to grow and care for, indoors or out, by beginner or expert. Sago Palm plants adapt to a wide range of temperatures from 15 to 110 degrees F (-11 to 42 degrees C), Sagos accepts full sun or bright interior light, thrive with proper care and maintenance, and tolerates neglect. In addition, Cycads are extremely long-lived.
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My Cycad when planted in 2007

Cycads are often referred to as “living fossils” because they date back to the age of dinosaurs of which only fossils remain today. Some scientists believe cycads date back as far as 250 million years, but reached dominance about 150 million years ago - widely known as the age of dinosaurs. During this period they were a prominent component of the earth’s vegetation and a very important part of most herbivores’ diets.

Cycads are arranged into numerous families and genera. Most southern African cycads belong to the genus Encephalartos in the family Zamiaceae. This is said to be the second largest genus of cycads and consists, to date, of about 63 living species. They are all endemic to the continent of Africa.

 My Cycad almost two years later in 2009

Cycads are slow growers and therefore need time and patience to grow. They can prove difficult in some instances and may require a little more effort to grow successfully, but they are well worth the time and effort spent on them.

Cycads do best in areas with a moderate climate. Certain species however prefer tropical to subtropical areas and there are a few that are able to survive in cold, dry areas. Extreme climates with prolonged periods of intense heat or cold are not suitable, unless the cycads are in greenhouses where the conditions are controlled.

My Cycad in 2010

The basic requirements to grow cycads are: unimpeded soil drainage, good soil, warmth and plenty of water. Your pH should be neutral to slightly alkaline, not acidic. I know that my soil is slightly alkaline, as most of my nearby hydrangeas are pink, the colour of which is caused by alkalinity in the soil. They are sun loving, although some forest species requires some shade.

 

My Cycad in 2012

The Sago Palm growth rate is extremely slow and are extremely long lived and old specimens can grow in curious ways. Many Sago have multi-trunks and multiple branches.
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Uses and cultural aspects
In the past, the pith from the stem of cycads was removed, then enclosed in an animal skin, fermented and ground into a meal which was used to make bread. Hence the Afrikaans name of broodboom. Cycads develop into attractive feature plants and E. transvenosus is a particularly attractive species provided it has sufficient space and ideal growing conditions.

UPDATE : My Cycad below in March 2015

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Here's what's blooming in my garden in September 2013

"Winter ends, and Spring comes, 

and he who would have it otherwise 

would have high tide always 

and a full moon every night."

September has brought many surprises - virtually no Spring to speak of, no usual early Spring rains and boiling hot weather. I've virtually had to have my sprinklers running every day, early morning, so as not to scorch the plants in the mid-day heat, with the ground being bone dry again the next morning. 

The area where I live is blessed with good, deep top soil with no rocks or stones but contains no clay, with the result that water quickly disappears down to a level that the plants can't reach. That again has the advantage that our water table is quickly replenished and Tarlton is renowned for its strong boreholes. But it is still worrying having to pump water to fill the tanks everyday when I water the garden so much. 

The borehole is the lifeline of a smallholding. The Spring rains are always eagerly awaited. Having a borehole dry up on you means great expense to either deepen the hole or drill a new one. It also means no water for the garden, no drinking water for the animals, no water to bath or wash dishes, flush toilets or even for washing hands. So roll on Spring rains, we eagerly await you!

Most of my Spring chores have been done - all dead growth has been removed now that the fear of any more cold or frost is gone and the whole garden has received a good sprinkling of compost. I've divided my geranium and managed to get three more plants to put in pots. One of them is even flowering already. When they are stronger, they will go into the chicken run where I'm slowly building up a little garden area for the chooks.

The Zebra Grass was cut down and received a good sprinkling of compost. Zebra grass (Miscanthus sinensis ‘Zebrinus’) also known as Chinese silver grass, Eulalia grass, maiden grass, zebra grass, Susuki grass, porcupine grass and which gets about 1.5m tall, has emerald-green foliage which develops golden stripes in mid-summer, and silvery plumes appear in autumn and last through the winter, after which the plant turns dry and yellow, needing to be cut down after winter. It is native to eastern Asia throughout most of China, Japan, Taiwan, and Korea and one of the few non-indigenous plants in my garden. It makes a great screening plant if planted close together (they spread quite profusely, I've already removed and transplanted clumps a couple of times) and it's also quite impenetrable. During summer my chooks love to hide under them from the hot sun.


Plumes of the Zebra grass

 

The Arums lasted well through the winter but unless they get enough water in this hot weather, they will soon be dying down.

Bulbinella

Bulbinella flower

The herb garden looks rather bare minus the Marigolds and Spring Onions, but hopefully these have seeded well and will be appearing soon.

My four Clivias are still going strong and are in full flower now.

Erigeron daisies - what a joy to have in the garden! Erigeron karvinskianus (Mexican daisy) has Grey-green foliage with masses of white to pink small daisy-like flowers most of the year. Evergreen, hardy, drought resistant, realiable. They self-seed and also have a spreading habit, making for a lovely ground-cover. They are also a lovely hanging basket specimen. This wildflower is orginally native to much of South America but has naturalised in Africa and has a maximum height of 15cm and prefer full sun.

Geranium flower

 

 

Monkey-tail cactus and my transplanted Geraniums on a pallet on the patio.

My Phormiums seemed to have doubled in size during winter. Phormiums are endemic to New Zealand and also known as New Zealdn flax. The tough, sword-shaped leaves grow up to three metres long and up to 125 mm wide. They are usually darkish green but sometimes have coloured edges and central ribs. This Phormium tenax was one of the first plants I planted in my garden before deciding to go indigenous.

Never have my Black Karee's (Rhus lancea) been so full of seeds as this year. This is a small to medium-sized evergreen tree indigenous to South Africa with somewhat drooping branches. They grow to between 6m to 17m tall and mine are now about 7m. They are a wonderful tree to have in the garden as they attract fruit-eating birds such as bulbuls, guinea fowl and francolins. Bees and other insects are attracted by the flowers and baboons absolutely love these berries. At our previous smallholding we often had troops of baboons visiting in Spring to feast on these seeds, not to my delight at all. The dogs would go into a frenzy and we had to keep them locked up all the while the baboons were there - a large male baboon is NOT something you want your dog to tangle with!

The Sympervivums have weathered winter well and have made quite a few pups.

The Echeverias I transplanted from the garden into this old wooden wheelbarrow have taken nicely and are starting to look great once more.

My Cycad - Cycas Revoluta (Sago Palm) - is also looking great. It is a palm-like cycad in the family  Cycadaceae, native to southern Japan.

I planted this one in 2007 and I am so blessed that it has just gone from strength to strength.

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Gone is the rational woman!

In my garden, after a rainfall, you can faintly, yes, hear the breaking of new blooms. 

- Truman Capote 

My wooden garden barrow filled with Azaleas and two Terracotta pots ready to be planted. 

Does gardening also crazily inspire you? I turn into a totally different person when faced with some seedlings, my trowel, garden spade and fork and some terracotta pots! Gone is the rational woman who knows there is going to be back-ache tonight, gone is all thought of the 'perfect' nails I've been trying to cultivate and gone is (almost) all thought of sunburn, although I do mostly remember to put on the sun-screen, wear long sleeves and plonk a hat on my head. Mostly the gloves come off because I love the feel of the soil between my fingers and who can use the hosepipe with gloves on?! 

Heaps of pebbles, rocks, paving stones, logs, driftwood and tree stumps have me watering at the mouth with ideas! Broken pots and other discarded items suddenly take on a beauty of their own and sometimes even household furniture will also find their way into the garden. Just to be dragged back a couple of days later as I see the weather starting to take its toll! 

 And NOTHING is more satisfying than seeing the results of your handiwork a couple of weeks later... 

"The love of gardening is a seed once sown that never dies." 

- Gertrude Jekyll, garden designer. 

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Gardening at night

Have you ever gardened at night? I mean really AT NIGHT, 3am in the morning? Well, that's what I did this morning. I woke up at 2am and for the life of me couldn't go back to sleep (it happens quite often, I believe it's an "old age" thing. I've always been an early-to-bed early-to-rise person, but it's never been this bad!)

I discovered it was warm and balmy outside when I took my cup of coffee out to the patio. We have quite a few garden lights which stay on at night, and as I sat drinking my coffee, I noticed that one of my Nasturtiums in a pot looked like it had been broken off, so when I finished my coffee, I went and had a look, finding that something had eaten the stalk off, probably some cut worms. I immediately emptied out the pot onto a piece of plastic sheeting I found in the garage and proceeded to search for the culprit.

Image credit 13 Organic Non-toxic Ways to get rid of cutworms

And find him I did! Two of them! They immediately went into a jar that I kept for insects to feed to my chickens and this they were going to love!

I then had to put all the soil back, added a bit of compost and planted a few Nasturtium seeds I still had from last year, waiting to go into the garden this month.

I also noticed that the river pebbles flanking the pathway were full of soil, a mole had surfaced right in the middle of the pebbles! That's always such a nuisance, it means getting rid of the soil and re-packing all the pebbles again. Which is exactly what I did.

I have this mole, or probably a whole mole family, traveling around under my garden, surfacing and leaving their mounds in the most annoying places, like in the middle of my river pebble arrangements. I don't mind in the middle of the lawn, I just level the heaps over the grass, it's the most wonderful top soil that they deliver, ready to use as topping! And to top it all, it is the common Mole Rat (Cryptomys hottentotus), found throughout Africa, that I have here - They are herbivorous, mainly eating geophytes (plants with underground storage organs) and grass rhizomes, in other words, the roots of the plants in my garden!

Mole (Cryptomys hottentotus) Image credit

I don't use any poison or traps to get rid of them, usually I just put the hosepipe down their hole, hoping to make things so wet and unpleasant for them that they would move to the other side of the wall outside the garden. But they must have a maze of tunnels, sometimes the water can run the whole day without it getting full or surfacing anywhere else.

Mole Rat (Cryptomys hottentotus). I apologise for the image quality, but this fellow was hopping mad and wouldn't stand still for one second, looking for a way out of the bucket. I caught him to release him on the other side of the garden wall. 

The Golden Mole, native to Southern Africa (family Chrysochloridae) and one of the ten most endangered mammals in South Africa, which eats termites, insects, earthworms and snails, would be most welcome here!

After all that, it was 5am and time to go inside for another cup of coffee and to sit down and write this post. Hope you all have a perfect day!

 (Photos taken in my garden at 3 am - Camera : Canon EOS 500D. Setting: 'Night Portrait')

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