New Member Intro - Tucson Grower

[chrysanthemum]

Welcome, Tucson Grower.

I’ve been reading your posts this month but have not been posting myself as I got knocked flat by a stomach virus for about ten days or so. The infection is passed, but now I’m playing catch up while still not up to full strength quite yet. You seem to have quite a range of gardening and growing experience. You’ve found a good group of dedicated folks here. I’ve been blessed to have joined in the past year, and it’s nice to see others finding the site.

[Tucson Grower]

Chrysanthemum, thank you, I'm glad to be here. I found this forum entirely due to Ron's Heavy Hitter okra. I had noticed it when I stumbled upon Baker Creek Seeds. It sounded interesting, so I googled it, then started reading - this forum was one such search result. I started by reading the, then 93 pages of the Heavy Hitter Okra thread. Soon after, I signed up.

Sorry to hear of your illness, glad you beat it. It's nice to meet some kindred plant loving spirits.

[Tucson Grower]

I've recently had one night drop down to 34F, then a few nights later it dropped to 33F. I've been waiting for my yellow squash to ripen their fruits so I can harvest seed, but I'm afraid it may be too late. The squash vines and leaves look fine, but the fruit are now soft and mushy, they look like they've been boiled at least 10 minutes. I may have to grow them again from last seasons seed, if it is still viable. The blue flowered milkweed vine (Tweedia caerulea) from Brazil has several nearly ripe seed pods, and many pretty blue flowers. I've grown them here before, they seem able to tolerate our infrequent, mild frosts.

The three plants I managed to grow from Butterfly bush (Buddleia davidii) seed, I obtained via eBay have turned out to be eucalyptus trees, obviously the seed were misidentified. I wonder which eucalyptus they are. I've planted them out, so we will see.

[heavyhitterokra]

Tucson, That is so cool to think that you might have an actual eucalyptus tree. I've never seen one in my life. Do they grow where you live?

Chrysanthemum, it's so nice to hear that you are feeling much better now!  Your December blooming okra sounds very intriguing as well.  I love reading these new posts; it seems there's a surprize at every turn of the page!  Always refreshing and enlightening as well!  Thanks, for the unique things you guys bring to the conversations!  They make surviving Winter here much less mundane! 

[Tucson Grower]

heavyhitterokra; Oh, yes, there are many eucalyptus trees in our neighborhood, some are quite old and large.

Which reminds me of one of my earliest experiences with them. It was in Los Alamos, CA; where we lived in a mobile home park, which had originally been a walnut and fruit orchard, and many of the trees were still there. We neighborhood children, who frequently played together, after school, would often play, down by the creek which ran in a ravine back behind the mobile home park. Down at the creek was where many willows and a little farther away from the creek were eucalyptus trees (probably Eucalyptus globulus or blue gum) in many small copses throughout the area. Anyway, while climbing in one of the older and larger eucalyptus trees, my friend and I were assembling a make-shift fort in this trees first crotch, about 20-25 feet up its trunk, (we were about 6-7 years old ). I discovered my first chrysalis, there. Later, I discovered it was a monarch chrysalis. It was attached high in the crotch of this eucalyptus tree, fastened to its bark. It was visible, but not in our way, so I just checked it every day when we were there. One day, only its husk remained. At the time I expected that whatever larva had made the chrysalis, was eating the eucalyptus leaves. Not too much later, I would discover the truth about monarch butterflies and milkweed.

[chrysanthemum]

Dec 16, 2021 17:41:31 GMT -6 Tucson Grower said:

I've recently had one night drop down to 34F, then a few nights later it dropped to 33F. I've been waiting for my yellow squash to ripen their fruits so I can harvest seed, but I'm afraid it may be too late. The squash vines and leaves look fine, but the fruit are now soft and mushy, they look like they've been boiled at least 10 minutes. I may have to grow them again from last seasons seed, if it is still viable. The blue flowered milkweed vine (Tweedia caerulea) from Brazil has several nearly ripe seed pods, and many pretty blue flowers. I've grown them here before, they seem able to tolerate our infrequent, mild frosts.

The three plants I managed to grow from Butterfly bush (Buddleia davidii) seed, I obtained via eBay have turned out to be eucalyptus trees, obviously the seed were misidentified. I wonder which eucalyptus they are. I've planted them out, so we will see.

That sounds very much like the weather we’ve been having, Tucson Grower.  For us, it’s unusually warm, but I’m not sure about for you.  Is it unusual that you haven’t frozen yet, or is that more par for the course in Tucson?

I had two Seminole Pumpkins on my vines that I harvested last weekend because we were forecast for a freeze.  We dropped only to 33 degrees and then bounced right back up.  The pumpkins were on their way to maturing but still had green mixed in with the orange, and so I’ve put them in a shallow plastic bin near a south facing window in my bedroom of all places.  I’ve read that pumpkins need sunshine to turn orange, so I’m trying to help them out.  It’s been really warm here this week but with much humidity and cloud cover, but I think they have changed a bit this week.

What kind of yellow squash were you growing?  I wonder why the fruit would have rotted when the vines were okay.  I usually think of fruit as being more hardy than foliage.  I did have a pumpkin rot in the summer, though, but I think it was a borer.  Those things are ferocious down here, which is why I’m trying Seminole pumpkin because they’re supposed to me a bit more resistant than other species.

I used to see a lot of Buddleia (that’s always what my family called it) in Virginia.  There was a huge stand of it outside my bedroom window growing up, and it was lovely to watch the visitors there.  I haven’t seen any down here in Texas.  People grow Vitex instead.  I assume Buddleia isn’t common in your area other, hence your attempt to germinate it from eBay seeds.  Too bad the seller made a mistake or simply wasn’t honest.

[Tucson Grower]

Perhaps I should have held my tongue "post". Last night it was forecast to get no lower than 41F, yet this morning at 8:00 am, it was 29F and the entire outside was coated in white frost. Once it warms up I'll know the damages.

chrysanthemum, This is fairly typical for us, being quit warm, most of the time, yet suddenly dropping down to uncomfortable temps at night. We've even had some snow flurries, about every tenth year. It can sometimes warm in the daytime to the 70'sF or 80'sF after even the coldest nights. Yet this is supposed to be zone 9a, where I am, and we've had the occasional year where the lows are about 19F, for several hours. This always seems to do some damage to plants that are marginal in our climate.

I have other Buddleia seed, I'm more confident of, so I'll just sow some of it, soon.  I even had Buddleia volunteers in my Albuquerque, NM flower garden. That was when I first discovered its existence.


I did want to grow some Eucalyptus, here too. So getting a start on them, this way isn't so bad. Before I purchased seed of the only known purple flowered variety, but never had this much success, getting them to grow. I'm certainly game to try more of the purple species, too. Once established, the Eucalyptus seem to flourish even without supplemental water. Many are doing well, even on vacant properties.

My yellow squash were a type of zucchini. I was surprised that the fruit seemed more fragile than the foliage, too. But, this morning, all their leaves and vines were black. Now I regret not harvesting those fruit, when they were still young. But I had to try getting more, fresh seed.

I mostly grow Vitex negundo-incisa, which I purchased seed of from Frank Pellet, of Pellet gardens in Iowa, sometime in the late 1960's, and kept saving it and regrowing it, as I travelled around the country, while in the U.S. Navy, before and after. There are other species of Vitex grown here and there around Tucson. I've recently been gleaning seed of them, to possibly add to my garden.

[chrysanthemum]

I’m sorry about your unexpected freeze the other night. I hope it didn’t damage anything especially valuable. I think your cold front must have moved on to us as we didn’t get out of the forties yesterday during the day. The nights still haven’t dropped to freezing, but that’s unusual for us. I hope this warm December isn’t going to cause problems later on. I just noticed that a couple of my potted blueberries have some flowers. That can’t be good.