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Welcome to Emerald Gardens Newsletter
Texas Star Hibiscus
Super bright
glossy red blooms start in late June and
continue until fall with the most show during
the hottest parts of summer, some measure
up to 6" across. Heat loving perennial hibiscus like deep soil and regular water during the summer to look their best . Specimen plants will be over 6' tall and bloom dozens of flowers each day. Texas Star is very well suited to pond and wet soil areas so use it in poor drainage areas and close to AC condensate.
Group several types of mallow hibiscus for a huge summer show.
Bright red blooms are a good contrast and Texas Star looks good with Plumbago and Mexican Bush Sage. This very hardy plant needs little care to get bigger each year.
Aquatic plant profile
The worlds smallest vascular plant is an aquatic plant in the duckweed family called Water Meal or Wolffia arrhiza. Most are so small different species require at least a magnification of 10x to be identified by experts. Measuring about 1mm and weighing less than 70 micrograms (about 1/150,000 of an ounce), they are smaller than a grain of salt.
Wolffia are as nutritious as soybeans with about 40% protien and 40% starch and many important minerals and vitamins. They are used as a vegetable in Burma, Laos, and Thailand and as livestock food. Wolffia is very prolific growing in a mat that can be harvested every few days. Wolffia strips water of excess nutrients and is used in water treatment plants and aquaculture. It is loved by most fish and consumed quickly.
Still water is important for its growth and an area protected from fish. You can easily grow Water Meal in a tub garden or smaller pond and move handfuls of it to the large fish pond for a natural and cheap food. If grown in a bog area it can greatly help with water purity.
Tropical Papayas
Fun and easy to grow papayas grow to be very large for what is really a short lived herb that in our gardens will fruit only once. It takes at least a full year of growth to get a papaya plant that is 10' tall and has a 10" trunk. In Austin you want to buy your papayas in the summer and plant them in large pots to grow until the next spring when then plants will be 7-10 months old and 6' tall. Grow over winter in a protected area and move indoors when temps will be below 40 deg. They grow fast and will be ready to plant outside in full sun after the last cold night (about mid April). Keep fertilized for growth with any organic or balanced water soluble plant food. Early summer will bring the first small papayas which will be clustered around the trunk up by the leaves, many times the plant will overbear and some fruit will need to be removed to grow the biggest papaya possible.
I recommend the fruit be thinned when it gets to be about 2"-3" long and leave only about 6 to 10 fruit. Many times the plant will have to be staked to support all the weight as they can uproot themselves by falling over with swelling papayas.
When the fruit begins to turn color about 80% they should be picked and allowed to fully ripen to eat. Generally the fruit will ripen in batches and if the plant was stressed the fruit will be small when it ripens but very good. In the tropics new plants are planted each year to keep up with the old plants being removed from lack of vigor or large size. If you plant seed from your papaya they may be male or female and there is no way to know until they flower the next year. Our Papayas are in 5 gallon pots for just $12.99 and are in 2 varieties; Sunrise and Waimanalo. 
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