Gardening with Magazines

This post's title, "Gardening with Magazines", refers to reading gardening magazines, not mulching with them.San Miguel de Allende

I just read one of the more interesting garden blogs, Garden Rant, this morning. I love using Google Reader. Reading the new posts is almost like reading the morning paper. Which doesn't exist here in Chacala, at least in English or in Spanish.San Miguel de Allende

The topic of the new Garden Rant post was a review of Horticulture magazine, which was never ever one of my "must read" gardening magazines. But the review got me day dreaming about my favorite gardening magazines. I don't know if they even exist another more.San Miguel de Allende

Gardens Illustrated, Pacific Horticultural, Garden Design, Fine Gardening. I can't even remember the other titles. But I loved the English and French gardening magazines. Even if they were mostly irrelevant to my life and garden.San Juan de Las Lagos

My first garden was planting a peach pit in my mom's back yard. I started (vegetable and fruit) gardening in New Hamphire, and then Eastern Washington in the 60's. I relied totally on Organic Gardening and the Rodale books. Oaxaca

The only garden magazines I have found in P.V. or Guadalajara have been magazines from Spain. Which apparently has no tropical areas, because the garden plant selections look just like the typical garden in the U.S. Oaxaca

It was hard for me, a former, and still struggling magazine addict, to go cold turkey, especially from gardening magazines. Last winter Sherry Merciari, of Merciari (garden) Designs, in Oakland, CA, brought me some old Garden Design magazines. I spent the three days lost in the photos and articles. And I still re-read them regularly.Oaxaca

Learning to Garden in a Semi-Tropical Climate

As a gardener craving information about how to garden in Chacala Mexico, I was interested to read a Post on one of the gardening blogs about annoying and useless beginner gardening books. My garden in located just off the main road in Chacala,
It's the thick white line in the upper center of this photo.
It's about a block, uphill, from the beach

Well, I have had the opposite experience learning to garden in the semi-tropical area, right on the Pacific ocean. I had gardened for almost 40 years in Zone 5, which eventually was re-named a Zone 6 area, in honor of global warming, I guess.

Chacala is at Latitude 22N, and the temperature highs are generally mid-90's and the lows have not been below 62F degree since I arrived here four years ago. That's a big change from -20's and +104. Different insects, plant diseases, soils, and plants. Here the idea is to protect many plants from the sun. It's just too intense for many plants. And the three/four month rainy season means nightly rainfalls, often drenching downpours for three or four hours.

Learning about how to garden here was mostly via word of mouth. Most of the local women garden in buckets and other containers. I think that's mostly because until the past year, it was difficult to get extra water for ornamental plants. And it's easier to keep the soil in container damp.

Very few plants are deliberately grown from seed here. Almost everything can be grown from a cuttings or via self-seeding. You know you at not in Washington anymore when fence posts sprout into trees in three or four months. And some plants grow a foot or more a day.

I started looking for information about when the growing season starts, and the names of plants, and how to propagate them, almost as soon as I arrived here in Mexico. I moved to Mexico with two suitcases and a backpack, so space was at a premium. I brought my favorite trowel and small pruners, and some flower seeds. That was it. Aside from two gardening books (out of three hundred) with me. The books were "Tropical Gardening" from David Bar-Zvi at the Fairchild Tropical Garden, in Miami, and the oddly named book "Cacti and Succulents" by Hans Hecht.

After I had been here for a couple of years a non-gardener produced a book of popular plants in the Puerto Vallarta area (two hours south of here, same climate). The photos were a big help, with English and Latin names of shrubs, plants, and trees. But the author omitted the Spanish names. Which made it difficult to talk with my neighbors and nursery staff about plants.

But I did learn the names of many of the local plants, in all three languages. I spent a lot of time trying to figure out when to start planting things (like in April in zone 5, harvesting in September or earlier usually). I finally figured out most farming begins at the end of the rainy season. But not necessarily. With a year-around growing climate, there can be multiple planting of some crops. Not during the heavy rain times though: mainly August and September.
I often looked (and still look) on the internet for information about gardening here. But most of the Spanish language books and magazines here are actually from Spain. Not for Mexico or Central America. And I found a few blogger friends who are serious about gardening in tropical climates. Mainly in Southern Florida, the Caribbeans, Panama, and Honduras.

I would have loved to find a basic primer on gardening here, and haven't found one yet. I look on Amazon and gardening literature websites, but haven't found anything useful. I would love to find something like the Rodale organic gardening books. I studied them religiously in the early 60's. Those two volumes were like my bibles. Particularly the sections on building healthy soils.

I learned so much from those books. Having grown up in Los Angeles I didn't recognize many of the plants in my new Eastern Washington home. And those books, and the Organic Gardening magazine, where treasures to me. Like garden gold. The more I can speak adequate Spanish, and can understand what people tell me, the more I am learning about gardening here. I have friends at the two closest plant nurseries, who give me lots of advice. Benjamin in particular. He grows lots of tropicals from cuttings and seeds for sale to big landscaping pros. So I can hang around and watch how his workers take care of the plants, and how they water, and what plants get how much sun.

I guess I am learning a lot about gardening here, but not in the ways I am used to learning. Not from books, but from talking to other people who grow plants. And from internet forums, and other gardeners blogs. It's a slow process though. And I lose plants all the time. Most from too much sun or too much rain. Or the machete of my landlady's aberrant husband. But I would love to have a "Basics of Tropical Gardening" book, even if it had some nonsense like double-digging in it. Especially if it had details about plant propagation in this climate. Most of my old Zone 5 techniques work here. It's very humid and lots of plants will grow not matter what you do to them.

I just re-read this post. I want to clarify that I learned a lot from my gardening friends in Zone 5. Especially from neighbors, gardening club friends, and classes. But it's different learning from neighbors in a different language, and without appropriate gardening books to read.And it's hard to ask questions sometimes. Because local women here can't imagine a five or six month growing season. Or snow on the ground for months. Or where you want more sun, not less. Actually some of the local men have worked in California and Oregon. Some as garden work es or in nurseries. But most they learned to butcher-prune plants and how to spray poison chemicals on plants without gloves or masks. So those guys are usually not much help.

Mostly I have to work hard to think of how to ask the right question. And listen hard to understand the answer.

Machetes Gone Wild, in Chacala

This afternoon, after it started to cool off, I walked around town, doing some errands.I almost always have my camera with me, and today I was especially glad of that. Lot's of kids wanted to pose for me. But then I started noticing the trees. I think the lovely trees are part of what makes Chacala Chacala. They provide shade and comfort. And they are so beautiful. All kinds of things are hung from trees. Hammocks, street decorations, posters, fishing nets being mended, swings, and so on. And palms give us cocos, palm fronds, lumber. And lovely shade.Trees shade the Bibliotecha were every one can use the computers.Sometimes trees are just the backdrops for other plants. In Gracia's garden this little cluster of shade plants caught my eye.Or trees can just be something a plant can climb on, like at Inez and Isreal's place. The saddest thing I saw today was a tree butchered to make a bigger view for some tree killer. It happened this summer, in the new gated development just north of Chacala, a whole bunch a beautiful, mature trees were destroyed to order to put in new lots and road. So ugly. So sad.

And then today, as I was doing my errand, walking along the Malecon, the dirt path connecting the beach and the muelle (fishing dock), I saw this pile of brush.And looked up. I couldn't believe it.The same lame-brains with too many machetes were at work again. It looked like the same guys who chopped down two big trees last year. in order to made a bigger view were back at work this week. Another tree, butchered and sacrificed for a sake of another few feet of view. It's possible to prune a tree without destroying it's appearance. Although you would never know it, looking at these photos.
Further along the Malecon I saw a young couple meandering along, enjoying the view, the shade and each other, I hope.And then, further along the Malecon, I admired some more lovely trees. Shade is so important around here. The highs in Chacala are still in the low 90's and you can't walk without with spots of shade stand in.

Mystery Succulent in Chacala

I got some starts from a succulent from a Chacala neighbor a couple of years ago.Now I have hundreds of them By accident.I don't know what it's called, and my best sources of info on succulents, Sherry, and her son Freddie, from Merciari Designs in Oakland CA, weren't sure either. Or I wasn't listening when they told me the name. Or I forgot. Sherry, and her daughter Nicole come to Chacala alot. And Freddie came last year. The results of their gardening and rock wall projects are all over Chacala. At my place, Aurora's, and even rock work on some construction projects around town. They are wonderful people. I am so glad they are coming back this year.
Anywa, this is the most prolific, self-propagating plant I know. Not that I know alot about this kind of plant, whatever it is. Anytime a leaf touches dirt, it starts a new plants.Lots and lots of new plants.And today, all of a sudden these plants in my "garden" are going to seed.Or blossoming. I don't know how it works with this plants.
I think they will have noticiable blossoms.

I guess I will know in a few days. I can't wait. But I guess I will have to.,

Dead of the Dead, in Chacala

I don't think I had ever heard much about the"Day of the Dead" until I came to Chacala. It's not celebrated here as a tourist event or some kind of spectacle event, like in Patzcuaro and other Mexican towns. As far as I have noticed in four years, it's just the two days when families remember the children (on the 1st) and the adults in their families who have died (on the second).
Mainly they bring flowers to the cemetery where their family members are buried. Sometimes they are flowers they grew themselves, or bought in Las Varas, or from a truck.

More often the are huge bouquets of artificial flowers.
Some are in loose bunches.
Others are made especially for leaving at the cemetery. The flowers on mounted on circles made of styrofoam discs with green paper backing. Wrapped in plastic so they will stay "fresh" longer.This year I will really miss Palila, Maria, who died earlier this year. One of her many money making talents was making the circular wreathes for local people to buy for their Day of the Dead visits to the cemetery. I liked to watch her working, and to support her efforts. I saw Butcho, her husband, this morning, to make sure he has what he needs for whatever he wants to do on Friday. It's almost 9:20pm as I write this. And the giant trucks hauling lovely topsoil from a mango orchard to the gated development are still going up and down the road. Speeding and vomiting exhaust fumes and noise. Been at it for days again. Huge loads. Very annoying.
And seeing the mango orchard being destroyed so that rich people can have decorative foliage growing in the lovely topsoil. Planting plants for decorations, instead the food that dirt was used for previously. It's the ugliest sight, the orchard being dug away by huge machines. Killing lovely mango trees to get dirt to grow plants for decoration, inside of food for people to eat.

Whatever floats your boat, I guess.

Portulacas Love Chacala, and Vice-Versa

One of my favorite things about gardening in Chacala is that I can grow succulents year-round here. Some of them go semi-dormant during the rainy season. Like my favorite, Adenium Obesum. But they live thru the rain and start blossoming as soon as it stops.I have always loved Portulacas, ever since the very first time I saw one. In one of the greenhouses at Manito Park, in Spokane WA. I love to able to grow them year around here in Chacala. Or, maybe I should say, I love it that I get to admire Portulacas growing year-around in Chacala. That's because I have almost nothing to do with how well they grow here.Local ladies come by for pieces, cuttings, of the plant all the time. If they see a new color blossom, it's time for a new cutting. I love it. It's so nice to have something to share. And they just stick the pieces in a pot and ingnore them. They almost aways take.

Bouganvilleas Gone Wild, in Chacala

I planted this Bouganvillea late last March I think. It was a one-gallon plant. 1.80US.
It's now about 10 feet tall, and growing about six inches a day.
And it has it's first blossoms. I never really noticed bouganvilleas until starting living here. I know they grow in Los Angeles, where was a child. And they plant them at most resorts in Mexico. Huatulco north. So I know I have seen the vines/plants, and adminred them. But I don't thing I ralized I could actually grow them until I had lived here for awhile.

I didn't have a clue about how tough they are, and how fast growing. You can whack the plant down to a three foot stub with a machete, and a month later it's heaving for the roof again.
Lovely plants, with big sharp thorns. At least the plants around here have big thorns.