Sick Of Winter Yet? #7

If you're reading these in numerical order, you might be waiting for the story behind why we stopped one blue agave from blooming. This is it.

Agaves, as already noted, have a well-earned reputation for keeping you at a distance, even worse than cacti, except for cholla. If there is one exception, it is the octopus agave. The leaves are smooth, and aside from the very tip of each leaf, don't stab you. They're even easier to deal with if, like me, you take an ordinary garden clippers and trim off the last half inch of each leaf spike. It won't grow back, and even if you bump into it after that, you'll barely get the meerest scratch, and then only if you work hard at it. 

I decided I had to plant one, and placed it at the front corner of the house, close to the wall. It thrived there, since even under the eave, there was no gutter to defer the rare rain, so whatever fell watered it well. It was a beauty.  In a short time it started its own flowering stalk.

 

 

An unfortunate effect of its location was the stalk grew up into the eaves, trying to shoot through them.

This started a week's tug of war with the top of the stalk: pull, check for movement, check for progress, check for house damage. Repeat. Repeat again. Still again. But don't! break! the stalk !

Once freed from under the roof, it thrived, kept growing, and started loading up in tiny flowers.

 In turn, the flowers attracted the local bees, who loaded up on pollen.

Lots and lots of bees,  for several days. That corner of the house was humming!

We had been expecting seed pods. Once the flower petals dropped, baby plants replaced them instead.

The plants grew, filled in, and suddenly we realized we had some work ahead of us! We had plants needing homes! LOTS OF HOMES! My son Rich put an ad for us in a neighborhood online location where one can sell, trade, even give away whatever. We used it previously to divest of a bunch of X-mas tree stuff we no longer wanted, free to a good home, or an organization who'd find it all good homes. In this case, we invited people to pluck off their own plants as wanted, free. We also invited anybody with ambition (and probably a business) to come over and cut the entire stalk and remove all of them. We had several phone calls for more info, some asking for care tips, easily given.

I had already plucked a couple dozen babies off the stalk, setting them on a wide window ledge in plastic 3 ounce cups of water. They quickly grew roots, went into potting soil in peat pots, in turn got  set into thin aluminum baking pans converted for the purpose, where they could go back outside in sun and be evenly watered from the bottom. Some of those I shared with friends for their yards, depending on their own green or brown thumbs. Some I planted in our yard after they were well rooted.

 One day I stepped out front and noticed somebody had come by quietly and taken us at our word that they were welcome to the stalk and contents. I wished them the best of luck in growing them. We'd had fun.

Being busy with the new "octo-babies", the remains of the old plant were ignored for a few weeks. As predicted, stalk and leaves died . We finally made plans to dig the remainder out, asking Rich for the favor of doing the work. Instead he called me out, having news. There was new growth in the bottom! A few fresh green leaves were poking out beneath the dead leaves.  We still had a nice octopus agave, or would very soon, once the dead was removed. Instructions changed, and the new growth thrived, The babies which were planted got ignored during our snowbirding northern vacation, despite promises before we left for regular watering. By the time we sold the house, we had "only" four new healthy ones in the back yard, still a good result for a favorite plant after a minimum of work.

Note the fat plant behind the octopus agave along the house is one of our large blue agaves I showed in the last episode. After photos of where this octopus ended up and knowing what was required to do in order to avoid damage to the house, but the next time with a real stabber of a plant, I hope you'll understand better why we cut that flowering stalk. Besides, I was informed it produced seeds, not plants, and those really are a lot of work!