Hollyhocks are so pretty. I might have to plant some if I can find any seeds. I used to have them when I lived in Missouri.

I'm just doing a garden clean-up - my SO is not a good gardener, we had some watering issues, and he wasn't up on the weed control.

If things go well, we'll be out of here real soon and I can start my NM garden. Want to leave this one tidy for the next gardener, including the compost heaps and raised beds.

Who'd a thought that my major weed problem would be Queen's Wreath and tomatoes?

October is one of the best months for gardening, and I envy your ability to grow four o'clocks from seed, grant! If you do an online search, you'll find lots of disgruntled gardeners, myself included, who have so much trouble getting the four o'clocks to sprout. I finally got one to sprout, and it accidently got thrown away! Anyway, that's what separates the Master Gardeners from the rest of us. :)

Sounds like you are moving to NM, lazygardens. Must be hard to move this time of year, when the weather is perfect! Love seeing houses where gardeners live, they are a treat to see, compared to the usual non-gardening folks.

Here is a pretty black and blue salvia, with yellow four o'clocks, (started from tubers), cuphea and a fire cracker bush blooming in the background.

I love this weather right now. Everything is looking great out in the yard.

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These bamboos finally started showing new shoots after two years in ground, but unfortunately they're the running type, (I thought they were clumping) so I had to pull them out. I didn't want them to take over, because I also have Giant timber bamboo (clumping type bamboo) planted in the same raised bed.

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Giant Timber Bamboo shooting 10ft+ high. These bamboos didn't take long to grow new shoots. I've only had them for 6-7months.

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Strawberry Guava doing so well.

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Giant umbrella plant

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Sugar Canes

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Jaboticaba sprung back with lots of leaves. I was worried that this guy was going to croak this past summer.

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My new Valentine Pummelo that I got from Costco

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Longans doing well. Might need some fertilizer here, there leaves are looking a bit light green.

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Mango needs some feeding as well.

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Bananas! what a perfect leaf! no rips or burnt edges!

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Canna 'Bird of Paradise' are over 7ft tall.

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Canna 'Gigundo'

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Canna 'Ripples'

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Canna 'Angele Martin'

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Canna 'Bengal Tiger'

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Unknown Canna

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Found this little guy yesterday hopping around the backyard. Anyone know what type of toad this guy is?

I caught the guy and released him in a nearby wash. I didn't want my dogs playing with it.

Fun updates, all, thanks for sharing what's going on with you and your gardens. Fun!

Yes, davidamy, hollyhocks are so fun aren't they? You should be able to find seeds at any large seed rack this time of year. There's plenty of time to get them started and to a decent size before "winter". Let us know what type you try. I love tall growing single flowered ones, and I never let yellow ones set seed (hollyhock yellow flowers look too much like the yellow of their fading leaves, hah, so while I let yellows do their things, they don't get to set seed in my garden, LOL). Love me some hollyhocks! You should be able to find plants at real nurseries this time of year too.

It's nice you're tidying up your garden for the next owners, Lazy. Where in general in NM will you be gardening? I LOVE NM--it's what initially made me fall in love with the southwest (and a layover between there and Seattle is what made me fall in love with Phoenix in 1999 (moved here in 2000, talk about lovestruck with Phoenix, LOL)). Lots of wonderful things in NM! If you leave this forum we'll miss you--you've been so generous with information and updates for many years here. Thanks for that.

Great pic/combo, Dusti, I love the yellow and blue purple together! Folks who know me know I love me some color, hah! I see four o'clocks in your pic, right? (M. jalapa type). Mine struggle in summer but look awesome in spring and autumn, and look decent in winter if its mild.

Love all of your updates raimeiken! You grow so many fun, leafy plants. Neat to see. Your place looks like a wonderful tropical jungle. Nice to see some of the plants you fretted about over summer bouncing back. Cute frog/toad too. NO idea on id from me, LOL. All of your stuff looks really nice. Keep the updates coming!

I do love October in the Valley. It and May are probably my two favorite gardening months here. Warm days and pleasant nights: perfection!

Here are a couple of quick pics from the last day or two.

A big old "giant swallowtail" butterfly resting on some Bauhinia galpinii foliage yesterday morning. Yup, this is the type whose caterpillars look like bird droppings, and yes, they feast on young citrus foliage. I relocate them off of young trees and onto my mature citrus. Such beautiful, big butterflies!

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Flowers on a Senecio pendulus on the covered patio. Neat vibrant composite-flowers several times a year on gray cigar looking plants, lol.

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Good ol' "autumn sage", Salvia greggii, is blooming all over the garden too. I know, they're twiggy, and can get woody, and they slow down a bit in mid summer, but I still like them and their big flushes of flowers in spring and autumn (with random blooms any time of year) always make me smile. I even like the sticky, aromatic resin on their leaves.

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My little garden got another big soak overnight last night (October 8th/9th). What a great summer/early autumn we've had.

Keep the updates coming, pics or not. Happy gardening!
Grant

Here is a link that might be useful: Pics from my garden, October 2014

First 'Bearss' limes of the season (so sweet!)--a nice kickoff to the looooong citrus season here.

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Pink crown of thorns (Euphorbia milii) really starting to bloom on the patio:

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A basket with a VERY smelly Stapelia gigantea in it hanging from a 'Meyer Improved' lemon tree:

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And a 'Pretty Much Picasso' petunia in bloom as I start swapping out vincas and sweet potatoes and swapping IN geraniums, petunias, alyssum, and lobelias.I've grown this variety for several years and have been really happy with its performance.

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Happy gardening all!
Grant

Here is a link that might be useful: Pics from my garden, October 2014

Love the Senecio pendulus, grant. The contrast is really interesting. How do you manage to attract butterflies, I hardly see them.

The tropical rainforest is amazing, raimeiken, keep those pics coming!

A sweet pea bush in bloom, with red salvia in the background.

A Musa Ornata banana, just decoration..the leaves are nice, because this one is a shade lover.

Here's a pic a snapped this morning. Really nice cloudy day today
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Here's my Ficus Auriculata (Roxburgh fig) that I planted this morning - finally got my hands on two of them. One I'm keeping in a pot just in case this guy can't handle our summer I'll have a back up.
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and here's another experiment for me. Tetrapanax papyrifer (Rice paper tree) - This one can handle freezing temps, it'll sprout back from its rhizome if it freezes, but hopefully it can handle our summer here.
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Crown of thorns, starting to bloom.

OOOooooo! I like that Banana. I was thinking of getting a few of those. I love their pink/purple flowers. Have you gotten it to bloom yet?

Hey raimeiken! Love, love that pic you took this morning! It looks so cool and tropical, no one would guess it's Phoenix.

Here is a no id morning glory, not the pretty blue ones that grant has, but the color is nice. Need to find out where to get a blue morning glory, don't say seeds, I'm awful with them, lol.

Not yet, will post a pic when it blooms. Super easy to grow.

Hey, I really like that Rice paper tree, it looks like something out of east Asia..

yeah it looks very tropical but it's very cold hardy.

There's even a giant type of it called "Steroidal giant"

massive leaves! I didn't get this type because I'm concerned about it frying up lol
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Great new pics everyone, thanks for posting them. Love that tropical panorama pic Raimeiken. Cool stuff!

Keep us posted on your rice paper tree--that was one of my favorite landscape plants back in Seattle, WA where I grew it in all three of my gardens there (moved to Phoenix in 2000, and so happy I did). Anyway, they're great plants and that's an interesting experiment. Keep us posted! Love that other fig, too--is that an ornamental type or a culinary/edible type?

Beautiful crown of thorns and morning glory, Dusti, so fun to see! Did you start your red one from seed? Looks neat!

I DO get a ton of butterflies that's for sure. I think the fact that I grow a lot of the plants their caterpillars like to eat helps. I grow a lot of datura and desert solanums for hover moths (the caterpillars are "tomato hornworms"), plus passionflowers for gulf fritillaries, citrus for swallow tails, cassias for sulphur butterflies, and so on. That means I need to tolerate some foliage damage of course. Plus I always have a ton of flowers too, yes, lantana included, hah.

Here's my Day of The Dead talavera pot filled with 'Pretty Much Picasso' petunias and some geraniums too (I tried to match the geranium color to the petunia color). These should provide an easy 8 or 9 months of bloom here. So easy and so fun:

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Here's a nice cluster of cheetos-orange-yellow Lycoris ("spider lilies") in bloom, surrounded by some self sown lantana foliage. Great bulbs that make foliage in winter, sleep in summer and then toss up flowers in early autumn.

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Happy gardening all, keep the pics and updates coming,
Grant

It's mostly ornamental but I've read they're edible but I don't think they're that good.

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Love the color of the Lycoris, Grant. Just ordered some bulbs from a place in Thatcher - I hope they turn out as awesome as yours.

Wish I could grow limes here. I miss my citrus trees in So. Cal.

Great info on those figs, thanks! Keep us posted on everyone's progress.

My variegated "amaryllis", Hippeastrum reticulatum 'Mrs. Garfield' is starting to put on a really good show. Nice white-striped evergreen foliage and flowers off and on all year, with a big flush of blooms in spring and again in autumn. So easy in afternoon shade, outside all year.

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Keep the fun pics/updates/comments coming. Happy gardening!

Grant

I love seeing your Hippeastrum. I really like its foliage. Have you ever dug it up and split the bulbs? and how long have you had it now?

Beautiful gardens everyone :-D This is my favorite time of year for gardening activities

I'll try to post a couple of photos from my instagram account

Front porch area
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Begonia & Banana
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miniature cactus and potato vine :-D
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Miniature variegated crown of thorns
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Shady north patio plants
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self explanatory :-D
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some sort of miniature agave & a fire stick in strawberry pots
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cactus stand
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Kalenchoe "pink lips" from Home Depot of all places - it performed well all summer and is easy to propagate
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tropical plant bed on the north side - the pepper tree is a double-edged sword; nice shade and beautiful form on one hand, horrible mess all year round in the beds on the other!
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overview of the area left to the potato vines and yellow dot :-D
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Thanks raimeiken, glad you like the amaryllis. I got it as a single radish-sized bulb in 2000. It's actually in a large pot although you can't see it from the pics, I just noticed. I've split it several times and love to share it out. It's slow to get established but once it settles in it just grow and blooms and grows and blooms.

Awesome new pics, Kevin--you grow a lot of really great plants. I love all of the brickwork too. Nice captions/narrative too. Thanks for taking the time to post all of the pics!

Just for fun, here's a quick pic along the east side of the house:

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And a fun six-pointed stapelia seedling from my hand pollination of stapelias (S. grandiflora x S. gigantea). It's not super unusual to get an occasional 6 pointed flower instead of the usual 5 pointed ones, but it's still fun when it happens.

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Some leaf lettuce seedlings, and ferociously-blooming "Mexican heather" (Cuphea hyssopifolia) along with some I'itoi bunching onions in my little round veggie bed.

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Happy gardening all, keep the updates coming!
Grant

Amazing pictures everyone!

Raimeiken, please keep us posted about that rice paper tree, it's fascinating to see a tropical plant like that thriving in the desert!

Love the pictures Kevin, your house says a gardener lives there. :)

Here is a picture of a red Turks Cap, it has a very nice bloom, after seeing grant's red ones, I had to have one. Grant your amaryllis are beautiful. Took your advise and have Pretty Much Picasso petunias growing out front. To answer your question, no, the morning glory was sent from Annies, they didn't have the one I wanted, so they sent the red one. I did have some petunia seedlings growing, must have given them too much water, they all disappeared. There is a knack for growing seeds for sure!

Since it's the citrus season, I've been looking for recipes for limequats and calamondins . Fooled around this evening and used both in this margarita, pretty refreshing. :)

Thank you for the compliments Grant & Dusti - we are certainly the "gardener house" on our block!

Speaking of petunias - I purchased seedlings from both Home Depot & Lowes and all of them had some sort of fungal situation and wilted! I know how to water petunias as we normally grow them every year (love the smell!) but this year something was definitely up - only the ones I placed in a brand new container didn't wilt. What a disappointment as I love the fragrance.

Figured it's from verticillium wilt and alyssum is resistant so I planted some seeds of that instead . . . hmph

It's been a good butterfly season so far. The weather forecast with highs in the 70's will probably ground most of them.