Susan M, who gardens in Santa Margarita, emailed as follows: “Is there something we can spray on the leaves of our young sunflower plants to deter the birds munching on the leaves? We’ve grown sunflowers before with no problem. This year, a pair of birds decimated our plants, eating the leaf tissue down to the spine. We’ve got a new crop up, but the birds are circling.”
The same 2.5 millimeter fine mesh bird netting that is placed over trees of ripening soft fruits and berries is efficacious in protecting young sunflower plants from avian predation. In the case of sunflowers, place a hoop or a wooden frame over your plants to support the mesh. Once the sunflowers have exceeded two feet in height, birds generally stop pecking at their leaves, and the netting can be removed.
If you have fruit trees, a side benefit of growing sunflowers is their seeds, which are more attractive to birds — as well as to squirrels — than soft fruit. Another way of keeping birds away from soft fruit such as peaches, cherries, and berries is to station a birdbath or two on the edges of your orchard. Birds may peck at soft fruit more for their watery juice than for the flesh itself. Where fruit trees are concerned, place the 2.5 millimeter netting over the trees once pollination ends and fruit growth begins since such fine mesh will not allow pollinating insects access to flowers. Tree fruits generally not damaged by birds include pomegranate, persimmon, apple, avocado, citrus, olive, and jujube (Chinese date).
Kathryn Huss gardens in Long Beach and has a Meyer lemon whose peels are being eaten while leaving the edible portion intact. As explained in a previous column, this phenomenon is typically the result of rats’ preference for citrus peels over citrus pulp. “I put some net bags over the lemons,” Huss wrote, “and sprinkled hot pepper flakes around the tree and on our fence. This has seemed to help.” The bags that Huss employs are Shintop Fruit Protection Bags. I found them on the Internet, where 100 bags are priced at $9.99 for the 4×6 inch size and $13.99 for the 6×9 inch size.
Betty Ancewicz, who gardens in Granada Hills, wrote as follows: “After reading your column about night-blooming cereus (Epiphyllum hookeri), I thought you might be interested in my personal history with this plant. I grew up in Van Nuys in the 1940’s and ‘50s. Our extended family all lived within a few blocks of each other. My grandmother had a night-blooming cereus on a shelf outside her kitchen window, facing southeast. When Mildred, my oldest cousin, was a newlywed in the 1940’s, she took a clipping from this plant. After I was married and moved to Granada Hills in 1971, cousin Mildred gave me several clippings from her plant. They quickly grew roots, and I still have two plants (outside facing east) that are now more than 50 years old. Over the years, I have shared their red stems/cladodes with my children and friends. Their flowers are beautiful even though they wilt as soon as the sun starts to shine on them. How happy I was to read about this cherished plant in your column.”
In the manner of night-blooming cereus, night-blooming jasmine’s nighttime fragrance attracts giant lepidopterous pollinators known as sphinx moths. The long proboscis of this moth extends all the way down narrow tubular blooms until it reaches nectaries at their base. These night-blooming jasmine flowers are pale white and exemplify the maxim of “perfume not petals” since the flowers of powerfully scented plants are invariably white. Nature is economical, and a plant that spends so much of its energy emitting fragrance will not have anything left over for colorful floral pigmentation.
A reader sent me a photo of a night-blooming jasmine (Cestrum nocturnum) that was ravaged by spider mites. The infestation was so bad that some of the leaves had turned white, a sign that the chlorophyll in those leaves had been completely sucked out by the mites. Other leaves had curled to a crisp. To make a definitive diagnosis, leaves are turned over and their bottom sides examined for the movement of tiny red dots, which is how spider mites appear to the naked eye. To remedy this condition, cut out all of the damaged foliage and make weekly applications of insecticidal soap or fine horticultural oil until healthy new growth appears.
Night-blooming jasmine is not a true jasmine but belongs to the nightshade family, which includes potato, tomato, eggplant, bell and chili peppers. Certain nightshade fruits are toxic, and the small white berries of night-blooming jasmine are extremely poisonous and may cause death if ingested. This plant has two of the most brilliant flowering cousins and no gardener aspiring to pyrotechnic color displays should be without them. Orange cestrum (Cestrum aurantiacum) is a bold pillar of a plant that can reach up to ten feet tall and is covered with tangerine-colored blooms at summer’s end. Red cestrum (Cestrum elegans) has wine-red flowers that can bloom at almost any time. Red cestrum inflorescences, each of which consists of more than 20 upward-facing tubes, explode on shoot terminals like a Fourth of July fireworks extravaganza.
Finally, Betty Hart, who gardens in Huntington Beach, sent a photo of a fruiting Swiss cheese plant (Monstera deliciosa). “I got several Monstera deliciosa plants from a Huntington Beach Trader Joe’s several years ago,” she explained. “They love my north-facing front planter and produced these lovely fruits. The roots took over the area, and I had to remove them.” This plant is unique among the vast number of aroid species, which include most trailing and vining indoor plants, in having edible fruit. When unripe, they resemble long pine cones or ears of corn with green scales instead of yellow kernels. Upon ripening, a creamy white tropical-flavored treat is revealed when the scales fall off. I believe Hart’s success owes to her plant being situated against a wall, which radiates accumulated daytime heat at night, providing a measure of extra warmth that allows flower and fruit development. The reason many tropical plants do not flower in our area is that nighttime temperatures are insufficiently warm. As for removal of roots, Hart is probably referring to this plant’s aerial roots that allow it to climb trees to a height of 65 feet in its habitat. Many philodendron species as well as the ever-popular pothos (Epipremnum spp.) can do the same. In any case, aerial roots are unattractive and may stunt growth if allowed to grow down into the soil and proliferate there.
Do you have a gardening experience with a special plant that you would like to share? Do you take care of a plant that has been passed down from one generation to the next? If so, please send your story to joshua@perfectplants.com. Your questions and comments, as well as gardening successes and conundrums, are always welcome.
California native of the week: Slender poreleaf or odora (Porophyllum gracile) is hardly a beautiful plant, with leaves resembling colorless wires of a fan-shaped electrical grid. This two-foot-high and wide short-lived perennial wafts an intense cilantro fragrance through the air, and its nectar-rich flower clusters, wonderful to behold up close, are present in all four seasons. The chemical compounds in its leaves repel insect pests, but its flowers attract butterflies and moths. It does not have culinary value but is utilized for medicinal purposes by the indigenous peoples where it grows wild.