Showing posts with label colocasia esculenta coffee cups. Show all posts
Showing posts with label colocasia esculenta coffee cups. Show all posts

Thursday, August 29, 2013

My favorite plant in the garden . . . this week

I feel a little silly naming this week's favorite plant. It's like admitting that you find holding chubby, adorable babies who don't cry much to be awesome. Who doesn't like those things? It's easy.


And yet my favorite plant this week in my garden is my Colocasia esculenta 'Black Coral'. It's big and beautiful and easy to grow (it just wants lots of water). The biggest leaf is almost 2' long.



The inky purple coloring is fantastic, too. The stats, per Plant Delights:

Hardy zones 7b-10
Sun or part-sun
42" max height.

I was skeptical about this one when I planted in May because it looked so sad. Luckily it got down to business once the weather warmed.

May: newly planted and cat-proofed

My Colocasia 'Coffee Cups' isn't so bad either.


My Favorite Plant in the Garden this Week is hosted by Loree at Danger Garden. Be sure to check out her pick this week: Hedychium coccineum 'Tara'.

Tuesday, April 23, 2013

How to fill a really large pot

Do you have pots of soil lying around? Every time I move a plant around (which is a lot) I end up with extra soil. I don't know how it happens. I mean, I know why it happens but it's seems like there's way too much leftover soil. So I have random pots of it stashed all over the yard.

I've wanted a second galvanized tank for the area to the right of the bamboo and to the left of the Pieris for a while now. The long term goal is to have a pathway running in front of them, so it works to keep everything narrow and contained. This area was a weedy mess, covered in popweed and uneven with holes from where we pulled the clump of bamboo out of the ground.


My friend Carrie told me that Bamboo Craftsman was getting a shipment of stock tanks in this weekend, and while they were more expensive than Burns Feed, they were five minutes away. Burns Feed is forty minutes each way. And they were borrowing Greg's truck, so they could pick one up for me and bring it to me, in the lazy princess fashion I deserve.

I got a six foot tank, which is huuuuuge. I weeded and dumped a whole bunch of gravel to level the area, then started to wonder how I was going to fill this.


I started by grabbing all the concrete chunks and broken bricks I've recently unearthed from the yard. My yard has a seemingly endless supply of rubble. This ensures that when I realize that the container is crooked or off-center, I'll be SOL because the thing weighs a million pounds.


Then I added gravel because I put gravel in, on, and over everything now.


Then I grabbed all that sod I had removed from the new bed on the back of the house and installed it grass-side down.


This means I don't have to try and sneak it into the yard debris bin, which means I can remove more sod from somewhere else in the yard and sneak that in the bin.


For now it got six inches of mulch on top, which should hopefully put the final nail in the coffin for the sod. In a few weeks I'll take all the random pots full of soil I have lying around and amend it with compost and plant up this container.


I have my heart set on a colocasia I read about in Fine Gardening last summer, Colocasia esculenta 'Coffee Cups'.

Image source

When it rains the leaves fill with water until they hit a certain point (presumably when they get all steamed up), then they tip over and pour it out. I don't even care if this plant doesn't fit in with my garden theme; it's kinetic and beautiful. Remind me of this when I complain next fall about how this tank "just doesn't go" with my yard.