Soil drainage issue?

My #1 concern now about the California Fan Palm is the soil toleration.  Here we have some of the thickest, heaviest clay soil there is, Houston Black Clay.  This soil can stay moist for days after a rain.  Sometimes it seems the moisture is a few inches beneath the surface, you can walk on the ground/lawn without getting feet wet, but it sinks in slightly as you walk.

Would that be considered poor drainage?  There's no trapped water on the top, it runs off and as I said the very top of the soil drains quickly, but below that water is trapped (forever?).  It seems to me that the water that gets into the clay isn't really going anywhere.  It can't get into the aquifer here because there is a stone layer beneath the clay.  Water simply stays a ways down and eventually dries out.

Most plants it seems prefer well drained soils.  It is said of the California Fan Palm that it prefers the lighter sandier soils but can adapt to clay but needs drainage.  So what does that mean for me

Palm exchanged for California Fan Palm

On Thursday afternoon I went to Rainbow Gardens on my way to work and exchanged the palm that was scheduled for planting on Saturday for another one.   Rainbow gardens was very nice about making the exchange, even though I couldn't find my receipt, and the new plant was much cheaper, so much cheaper I got $160 credited back to my credit card.

I took the cute little palm with me and will have someone else plant it next week.  For logistical reasons, I decided not to have rainbow gardens plant it (and it's a long trip for them anyway).

I decided to get a California Fan Palm for several reasons:

1) It grows much higher.  While the Windmill Palm often maxes out near 20 ft (only reaching 40 feet very rarely), the California Fan Palm famously grows 40-60 feet.  The Windmill Palm would top out just above Lyndhurst, which would not be good at all aesthetically or for maintenance.  The California will grow right past Lyndhurst without pause, and become a neighborhood icon eventually ("who is that guy with the palm tree").  Yes!  It's not certain that I will live long enough to see it get significantly above Lyndhurst, but the point is, I might, and it will be something to dream about and look forward to.

2) I was born in California and the California Fan Palm, not surprisingly, is native to California also.  (Note that many boulevard palm trees in California are actually Mexican Fan Palm trees.  The Mexican Fan Palms grow even faster, and even taller, and thinner, but only live to about 80 years.  The California Fan Palm can live to 150 years or more.)  The Windmill palm is native to China.  If you see a wild group of Palms in the California outback, they are likely California Fan Palms.  They were the ones at Palm Springs.

3) It is sufficiently cold tolerant for the San Antonio area (8b-9a 20-25 degrees), according to official ratings and other online sources, which say it is tolerant to 15 degrees.  It is equal, perhaps even slightly better, in cold tolerance than the native Texas Sabal (16 degrees).  It is not as cold tolerant as the Windmill (5 degrees!), but it is likely hardy enough for me.  It is tolerant in other ways also (heat, partial sun, full sun, drought, soil) better than most large palms.

4) The top leaves grow somewhat wider than the Windmill Palm, which means it would give more shade.  But it is still about half the width of the massive Canary Island Date Palm, which would probably get unwieldly wide before getting tall enough to clear Lyndhurst, becoming a big nuisance, or at least that was my worry and one reason I decided not to get the Canary despite how awesome the Canary is--after about 60 years!

5) It grows faster than the Windmill Palm.  Not as fast as the very fast Mexican Fan Palm, but moderate, which is better than slow. I fear the extra thinness of the Mexican Fan Palm, the curvature it always has, and it is not as tolerant of cold or heat..

6) The one I got is in a much smaller container, only 5 gallon, which will make it easier to plant amid the buried wires in my telecom easement.   Judging by the 811 markers, there is no good place to fit a 15 gallon tree.  But since it grows faster, it will make up the difference in a few years.

7) I like the more tropical look, with yellow-orange-brown trunk instead of pale green.  The unique threads are interesting and are part of the story about the tree I can tell to visitors.

8) It is becoming threatened in natural habitats (back in my birth state!) because many of its natural habitats are being destroyed by human encroachment.  If all that's left are human plantings, much diversity will be lost, but the more diverse the plantings the better.  (Of course, there is more to losing the Palm micro-ecosystems than just the Palms themselves.)

9) The California Fan Palm has many edible parts, and was used in many ways by native americans in the southwest.  You can eat the pea-sized fruits raw, cooked, or made into to jelly or porridge.  As with the Cabbage Palm of the American southeast, you can also harvest and eat the heart ("heart of palm") but it kills the tree when you do that; the 'heart' is active growing part of the tree.  The Windmill Palm is inedible.

One downside is that the stems have very sharp deadly looking spikes on the stems.  I've pruned a similar palm in the past, and learned you must wear something like welding gloves.  I was surprised to see that the Windmill palm actually had smooth and unthreatening stems.  But the spikes protect the California palm from predators, including dogs.  Many large palms have spiked stems, it seems, the Windmill is exceptional in not having them.

How Much Watering

If I had planned this correctly, I would have not started with the back yard transformation project until about mid-September.  Most tree planting guides suggest you plant in October, or is it November?

Anyway, things are rolling now, I've planted three 10-20 gallon trees this month, one more tree this Saturday (the palm) and then the a bunch of 2-5 gallon starter trees will be planted just before the sprinkler installation next week--because the sprinkler guy said he can only set up irrigation for plants that are already there, any future plants will require service calls.  I've already committed to that, so it's too late to turn back.  There are about a dozen explanations of how this got started, but anyway I did.  And better early than not-at-all, which had been the story since I returned to Texas in 1997.  If there are problems, and hopefully there won't be many, I can get replacements.  In some cases the nursery may replace plants free.  They would certainly like to have business year round, regardless of what the planting guides say.

After 3 weeks my Crepe Myrtles have suffered a bit from the 100 degree heat on the hottest days, but are still hanging in their with 95-99% of their leaves still green and intact.  I inspected some trees at a Home Depot store this week, and my trees looked better.

I've been very fastidious about watering, and if you do it correctly, you can indeed plant container trees in the summer, I've read.  But how do you do it correctly?

I've seen and heard about as many approaches as there are websites I've read and people I've talked to.  Here's one website which gives dire warnings about overwatering and suggests you water only once a week (!).  The guy who planted my Oak on Monday suggested every 4 days "but more if it's too hot."  Funny he seemed to be ignoring how hot it was when he said that.  Finally, I've seen a number of sources that suggest watering every day immediately after planting.

I was watering my Crepe Myrtles every day.  When I hadn't watered them the day after planting (there had been a rain storm the night of the planting) they were looking parched afterwards.  Then I got stern warnings from a lady at work about overwatering.  She suggested testing the soil by poking my finger into it.  But how wet is wet I asked?  I ended up buying a soil moisture meter last Saturday.

So this appears to be the way to do it.  Test every other day (at least) and if the meter is below 3, then water.  On Tuesday night the two Crepe Myrtles seemed to need watering so I watered them.  They had been skipped on Monday night.  I also tested the Oak, but it still had moisture, so I didn't water it.  That was 1 1/2 days after planting.

I think one of the issues is not merely how hot and/or dry it is (here it is hot, up to 100 during the day, but very humid at night).  Another issue is how well the soil drains.  Most soils have lots of silt and sand which makes them drain fairly quickly.  My soil is very high clay, and doesn't drain well at all.  If you water an area very well, it could stay muddy for days in 80 degree ambient temps, though less so in 100 degree temps.

Cable re-buried

I love my Grande internet service.  Grande is a local company that in my experience provides better cable service than Time Warner.  When you call Time Warner for a service problem, you get put through punishing phone menus that insist that you run some tests on your cable, such as removing and restoring AC power to the modem.  Well I do those tests before I even call Time Warner.  Then, after you've done those tests, and finally talk to a human (when they get around to calling back), the human then insists that you perform the exact same tests.  For the 3rd time.  For me, it's very difficult because I have to push junk out of the way and crawl under things.  Then, finally, after you've proven that the problem is their 5 year old recycled modem, you go pick up a replacement, another 5 year old recycled modem.  And that new recycled modem may have a worse problem than the old one.  So then you go through the same process to get a second replacement.  That's exactly what happened to me in 2007 and I swore I would switch to Grande.  Grande gave me a brand new modem which has never had a problem.  The only problem I've ever had with Grande is breaking their cable by pulling weeds in my back yard.  They came and fixed that in less time that it would take to pick up a replacement modem from Time Warner.  And Grande's standard internet speed is far faster and more reliable than Time Warner also.

(As far as TV is concerned, I get broadcast TV and Dish Network because only Dish has Link TV and FSTV.  Until cable companies offer those Alternative channels, I won't listen to any offers they make, IMO they're part of the great plutocratic disinformation system, and it just reinforces my conspiranoia that they don't carry the anti-plutocratic channels.  But for internet, cable is the best.)

But Grande doesn't bury their cable very deep.  (Nor does Time Warner--they say they can't because the power utility CPS won't let them, and that is probably true.)  And for the last 3 years I've had a Grande coax emerging from the ground and running more than 2 feet before going back under.  It emerges right next to my service entrance in the SW corner of my house, which has become quite complex, and if you try to do something with the breakers you end up trampling on the Grande cable.

About 2 years ago, I re-buried the cable myself.  I dug a trench, pushed it down, and covered it up.  But quite likely my mistake was that I used sand to cover up the cable.  In just a few months the cable was poking out of the ground again, and the sand had just flowed into the ground.

Now I want to have that corner covered with sod before or during the sprinker installation next week.  So on Monday when the Grande cable guy came to mark the lines for the sprinkler company, I pointed out the emerging cable to him.  He said he would tell his supervisor.

I wouldn't have been surprised if nothing happened.  I was fully expecting to have to call Grande myself.  So I was very pleasantly surprised that the Grande cable guy came out today--just 2 days later--and buried the cable.  I thought he did a good job.  The only annoying part was his repeated insistance that I let him test my cable.  Right then, I did not want a cable guy strolling through my house.   If people want to come into my house, they should let me know way in advance, like a day or two.  Finally he left after I tested it myself and insisted that was the best we could do.

That small corner of my back yard has had serious erosion and settling problems, and I've had trouble growing grass there.  It was sodded in 2008 and looked great afterwards, but the next year all the grass died and the topsoil washed away.  I think part of the reason was the neighbor's tree left it in too much shade.  The other part was that I overwatered at first and then nothing afterwards.

After fixing the No-Gutter system to prevent more erosion a few months ago, I've already dumped two bags of topsoil to fill in the area.  It could easily handle 5 bags more, though I'm going to stop at about 2-3.

Anyway, after the Grande guy left, the filled area was very clumpy, with medium size chunks of clay dirt.  I first sprinkled the area with sand to help the de-clumping process.  The sand immediately filled in the gaps between the clumps.  Then, on top of that, I spread 1 bag of Scott's topsoil.  Then I watered it down.  I had to let out about 10 gallons of very hot water out of the hose first.  I avoided spraying my new Oak tree but couldn't help spray nearby, which worried me.

Today I picked up two more bags of Scott's (they are very light feeling thanks to compost like stuff) and two bags of Texas Friendly Topsoil at Home Depot.  The Texas Friendly is very much like pure sandy loam, and flows nicely into ground cracks.

Spreading just two bags last weekend gave me a backache.  I'm going to be careful this time.  I have many depressions and cracks to fill in my yard.

Adams Patio Chase Lounge Chairs

The patio chase lounge chairs that were so hard to find I looked in stores and online for a week and finally just bought the dirty ones I first saw at Lowes.  Here are the details from the UPC sticker (which I'd like to clean off soon):

Adams
Made in USA
250 lbs maximum
made with resin, 100% recyclable
252662
LBUE-8010WHT00
Bar code: 0 37063 10447

After just one sit, my feeling is I'm glad I didn't pay more than $49.95 for each chair.  The resin is flexible enough to make you worry a bit but not flexible enough to feel really comfortable.  The back is lacking in lumbar support, as with a lot of chairs it actually curves in the wrong direction.  It's very uncomfortable if you arch your back over the hinge point, much better if you slide as far back into the chair as you can.  Then it's marginally OK, but would be better with a lumbar pad.  I have many lumbar pads in my junk pile house to choose from.

Still, the chairs are tolerable and pretty and just having them in the back yard makes it feel like you are ready to have a party.

My family had Jelly Bean type metal framed plastic chase lounge chairs around our pool for awhile when I was growing up.  They looked nice the first year, then the jelly plastic starting looking scorched, ultimately became very black and ugly.  Of course that was 40 years ago, possibly the PVC plasticizers they use are better now.  Or considering that these are the lowest cost chairs now made in China, perhaps not.  The jelly plastic never inspired confidence, and now that I weigh over 200 pounds I'd be very worried.

The most expensive chairs require thick foam pads which have to be religiously put away after each use or will go bad quickly.  I think it's nice to have cheap chairs that can be just there, whenever you want them, without requiring preparation and putting away.

(Some foam pads do say they are weatherproof.  I haven't tried outdoor foam pads since the 1960's.)

The Adams Chase Lounge is available at Ace Hardware!  It gets good reviews, though some note the seeming flimsiness.  One person says they made it better, heavier and more solid feeling, about 15 years ago, and he'd gladly pay $20 more to get one like that.  Another person notes that these chairs are becoming nearly impossible to find in stores.

Another Yard Work Weekend

The weekend of July 21-22 was almost entirely oriented to yard work.  I needed to mow the overgrown grass in front (up to 18 inches high near the sidewalk), in back where the shed is going to be installed, and I needed to do edging.

It actually started while I was still in a quandry about what kind of palm tree to buy (after I had already bought a windmill palm and was thinking it wasn't the best).  But online research suggested I had already bought the most appropriate palm, because it is the smallest full size palm variety.

So then I took a trip to Schulz nursery to get the moisture meter I had seen there a few weeks before.  I am beginning to get very concerned about correct watering.  I also took a look at other plants.  They had several kinds of palms, including some not-very-large ones that nevertheless looked similar in leave design to Canaries.  Those were the most curious because none had a marked price or variety.  They had  a kind of bamboo that looked suspiciously like the running kind.  (They also did have clumping bamboo, in fact I bought mine there.)  The most interesting thing they had, I was thinking, were the ornamental grasses.

Then I had dinner at a Thai restaurant.  Then I went to Home Depot to get a non-B&D string trimmer.  I was hoping to get a Ryobi (never had one of those) but they were battery powered and $149.  The non-battery Ryobi was not in stock or I would have bought it.  Instead, I bought the better of the two store brand models for $49, and got the extended warranty for $8.  I need to find the extended warranty card and receipt for my $99 Black & Decker which died earlier this month.  I got essential groceries at the supermarket.

That evening, I mowed the incredibly overgrown front yard.  The next day, I started yard work before 12 noon.  Normally I don't get started until about 7 PM, but I wanted to get a lot done and I knew it was going to be hot.  I mowed the back, all around Lyndhurst, and everywhere except near the pesky weeds near the patio Crepe Myrtle tree, those need to be pulled out with special tool.



I pulled down the ivy from the back fence and filled a trash can with ivy and other weeds.  I weedwacked by the back of the house and around the back patio (the sprinkler guy had asked for that specifically) where it has not been clear for years.  I spread one bag of topsoil in the depression in the front lawn where the Spray Foam truck drove over my front lawn.  I spread the soil with a scoop and then brushed it into place with my hands.  When that was done, I hosed it with a garden hose.  It seems like that one bag has done much good already, though I thought that 10 bags might be needed.  I put up the two little white mini-fences at two spots in my lawn to deter future contractor trucks from pulling over my lawn.  I've had those mini fences in Lyndhurst for 5 months but finally got around to doing that job.

While I was finally weedwacking by the north side fence, the weedwacker got stuck. I could unstick it as I have done hundreds of times before with other similar machines, but decided to stop there at take a look at the instructions first.  This $49 weedwacker has nothing like the power of my $99 Black and Decker when it had been working.

I moved the flags for the 2nd shed one foot more away from the power transformer so they are separated by 10 feet to allow more room for my palm tree.

Once I had mowed the central lawn area, I turned the plastic chase lounges over and hosed them off very thoroughly.  I hadn't wanted to buy these chairs at Lowes when I first saw them because they were very dirty.  But I couldn't find any other chairs of the same kind online or at any other Lowes or Home Depot store.  So I ended up buying two dirty chase lounges.  I had initially hosed off the top last week, and now finally hosed them off underneath so I could put them on top of the nice lawn in front of Lyndhurst.  Not knowing what kind of dirt (or lawn chemical) they were covered with, I did not want to hose them off in front of Lyndhurst.  I hosed them on top again too.  I found they were comfortable to sit on only if you sit far enough back.  The lumbar support isn't very good and a pillow might help.

I picked up a lot of rocks and put them in the trash.  A few rocks seemed like they could have come from my old Agate collection (which mother had spread around the yard not knowing better 18 years ago) so I saved them in the garage.  (I worried at that point that some of the agates I saved in the garage might have been thrown out as trash anyway.)  I dumped out one trash can full of water--and some rocks--near the power transformer.  I'll need to discard those rocks later, I had picked them up on a previous weekend.  There are still rocks from the two months that it took to build the foundation for Lyndhurst.  I noticed that one wood slab form has not been removed from the front of Lyndhurst.

After having dinner and listening to Pipe Dreams at 9pm, I went back into the yard and installed the 4 way manifold to the back faucet.  I installed the support brace after carefully drilling a hole in the back wall of the house and testing it with a nail to be sure it wouldn't go through the water pipe.  The manifold was doing fine and didn't leak at all in a full pressure test.  I attached one of the automatic controllers and programmed it to water the Lyndhurst crepe myrtle every two days.  But since I wanted to water right then, I ran it on manual (which was a pain because it only runs 30 minutes on manual, but I ran it at least 2 1/2 times).  I now could and did water the second crepe myrtle at the same time.

Thanks to being able to water both trees at the same time, I was able to take a shower and do some laundry and still get to bed by 2pm waiting for the tree installer to come at 9am on Monday Morning (see previous post for that story).

Oak Tree Planted

The Rainbow Gardens planter brought my 12 foot high Monterrey Oak and planted it on Monday July 23.   He started before 10 am and was finished by 10:30 am.

It is a beautiful young tree!  I have now planted my first 3 trees in less than a month!

After seeing his finished work, I was initially worried that he had planted the tree too low in the ground.  I didn't think I could see the flair at the bottom of the trunk, or roots coming out of the trunk.  I mentioned this to him, but he said he had done it correctly, with the top of the root ball exactly at ground level.  (It was hard to tell exactly where ground level was at that time because he had also piled an inch or two of mulch on top of the root ball.)  According to what I have read, the lowest part of the trunk, or top of the root ball, should be planted just about 1/2 to 3/4 inch above the grade.

Anyway, I let it pass, as I think it will work out anyway either (a) because I am making a mountain out of a molehill, (b) me who has never planted a single tree arguing with pro who plants several trees a day, (c) the ground isn't really flat enough to say exactly where the ground level is and there's some kind of weed mowed to 1 inch on top of it, (d) there is a guarantee from Rainbow Gardens who will give me another tree if this one dies, (e) the tree is on a slight grade so that by the time you are 2 feet away, it is down more than an inch, and for that reason water should not be trapped long at the root ball anyway, (f) there is some outward flare in the trunk visible toward the bottom--only the tree is so thin it's hard to see, (g) there is a horizontal root coming out from the trunk just about at soil level, at most 1/4 inch below.

The worst case for planting a tree too low is when it is at the bottom of a rainwater trapping basin.  That is nothing like what I have here.

The planter said I should run soaker hose like I have on my other trees for two hours, then rewater every 4 days, or more if it is especially hot.  I did run the soaker hose for  one hour and 45 minutes.  It was putting out a lot of water and I believe it must have drawn more than 30 gallons of water, and I wondered if the planter was counting on that much water from a soaker hose.  I plan to use my soil tester tomorrow night and judge then if it needs more water then.  4 days sounds like too long a wait for a newly planted tree, but the soil tested should give me a good indication.

I used popsicle sticks to keep the soaker hose itself away from the trunk (wish I had thought of that with the other trees).

The planter hauled away two large buckets of stones and clay soil he had dug out.  He offered me one bucket of the soil but I declined.  The hard clay soil from around here is very hard and sticky and hard to work with and sometimes stinks.  I like to work with freely flowing sandy-loam type topsoils and use them in my yard work (I'd like to get about 10 more bags for this weekend to fill in cracks and depressions).

A friend checked out the tree at 7pm and said it looked wonderful, and not too low as I had feared.  It has been windy with possibility of thunderstorms.

The planter had not brought the palm tree I bought on Friday (and almost changed on Saturday, see previous post) because he didn't find out about it until he was already driving to my house.  He agreed to plant the palm tree on Saturday.  He was also concerned about the cables running through the easement where I want the palm tree and would like to see all the cable markings that are now being done.

Just after the planter arrived, a guy from Grande Cable arrived to mark the underground cables.   This is proof that the sprinkler company has called 811.  I showed him where the Grande cables comes out of the ground near my house.  He said he would tell his supervisor and send someone out to fix it.  I do want to have that fixed before covering it with sod and having the sprinklers installed.