Adding Flowering Color Around The House

Greetings from the island everyone, hope all of you are doing well and enjoying some of these nice cool Fall mornings.  I know my morning beach walks have been much more pleasant with the cooler weather.   I can tell the two cats are also loving the cooler temperatures, running around and playing, hunting mice and birds and wanting to stay outside all the time. I know the two of them are making a difference in the mouse and rat population around here, as I rarely see one anymore around the chicken pen area at night.

I’m starting to clean out all my raised garden beds from this past Spring and Summer planting, so that I can till in rabbit manure and mushroom compost. I’ll let the beds then sit over the winter so they will be good and fertilized for the beginning of next Spring.

I don’t really mess with a Fall garden, but I will spread out some rye grass seed so that the chickens will have green grass during the winter. I just prefer gardening during the early Spring and into Summer, before it starts getting too hot. I start all of my seeds, primarily tomatoes and melons, in a little greenhouse before the plants are strong enough to go into the ground the beginning of April.

I’m just now developing an interest in having more flowering  plants and bushes around the house, adding a little color.  I used to feel that if you can’t grow it to eat, then why bother growing it at all?  I’ve changed my thoughts on that, wanting to branch out (literally), in order to add some vibrant colors and flowering smells.
This past Spring I planted a dwarf Magnolia tree, an Esperanza and three stalks of Plumeria, and all of them are doing very well, all three having flowered, and the Esperanza is still putting on many yellow trumpet clusters of flowers.

A very special friend recently gave me some Moon Flower seeds, which I planted and sprouted several dozen tiny plants. After thinning them, I put ten in the ground, and so far they are doing great. These vining plants produce beautiful large white flowers with a wonderful smell.  At the beginning of next Spring, I’ll add some butterfly attracting Pentas and also a few Lantana.  The added benefits of flowering plants are the bees that come around, and these bees will help pollinate my Spring vegetable and melon gardens.  As with any growing endeavor on the island, it will be a trial and error learning process, but I’ll make it work.

Well that’s it from the island for now, everyone take care and have a great day.