Saturday 8 October 2011

Dry bed in Autumn

My last update on the dry bed, was all about it being low maintenance, at this thime of year it looks a bit different.


I would show how well the yucca bright star, and agave bracteosa have done,  but it is hard to tell:


The echeverias did well and the e. roseas are nice bushy plants, surrounded by e. agavoides and a few other more hardy varieites:


As you can see, at this time of year we have a slight leaf fall problem.  We are surrounded by big trees, which I love, but at this time of year creates a little extra work.  This is only two days worth of leaves, and over the next month or so I'll be out every day trying to stay on top of it. It would be very unhealthy for the plants to be covered in wet and rotting leaves. Sadly They have to be picked up by hand, which is a dangerous job with hidden agaves and delicately fishing the plants out from between the spikes!

Having collected them all, depending on how full the compost is, they often moved out into the street to form a nice neat pile. It usually doesn't stay neat for long though, who can resist a fresh, crisp pile of leaves.  Don't you just have to shuffle through them?

4 comments:

  1. Hi !
    I noticed your leaf problem, can't you hang a net or a white curtain above your cacti and succulents like we do with our pond in Autumn ?
    If you have to pick the leaves one by one....what a job !!! and dangerous too !

    greetings,

    rita

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  2. Rita: It would be possible to cover it with a net, but I promised my OH when I built the bed that we would be able to look at the bed all year and not have it obscured. A friend suggested a leaf blower would be a good solution.

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  3. Beware of leaf blowers, they blow illnesses arround ! They usually can be turned into leaf suckers, maybe that would be better ?

    We too have had a horrible Summer here in Belgium, I really felt sorry for my cacti and succulents. I have been reading a lot of garden blogs of people living in the south of the US and in Australia, I so envy them !

    May we have a soft and short Winter !

    rita

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  4. Rita. Thanks for the warning about leaf blowers. I know what you mean about being jealous of all the US and Australia blogs. Sadly I am don't think we are going to have a soft winter, at least in the Uk.

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