Tim,
absolutely lovely!
I could easily give up trying to grow yuccas and be happy just looking at your photos.

Very nice blooms on the y.arkansana...remind me of those Italian pasta thingies. 😆 😆 😆

Your araucaria has put on some good growth this season.
Barb

Great pic of that yucca in a shopping cart 😆 😆

My yucca filamentosa are finally blooming (a week later than in 2010).
Third pic: winter damage still evident.

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The next pic shows the Red Flag Cordyline that I'm trying this year.
Definitely not treating these as annuals!

<a href=" http://www.flickr.com/photos/southslope/5966957629/" title="DSC04851 by edible_plum, on Flickr"><img src=" " width="500" height="375" alt="DSC04851"></a> 😀

Tim- Your yuccas are magnificent! I have spent plenty of time looking through your "yuccas are blooming" thread drooling over the diversity and sizes. Do you grow any palms too? I could swear those are palm leaves in the foreground of the first picture you posted...

I bought the thompsoniana from Victor Lin in Las Vegas. He had/has a site called coldcacti.com but it appears to be down right now. At one point he had several different trunking species at very reasonable prices. I should have bought more back then! He even had joshua trees for sale, though I would never try one here.

Whenever I have live plants being shipped to me I always have them shipped to work so I can open them immediately, rather than having them sit on the front steps at home all day. I used to own that large liquor store but we sold it this past spring. Owning two completely different businesses was getting to be a bit much to juggle. I figured we could do better if I could focus all my time and energy on the more solid and profitable of the two businesses. I do miss the free beer though! It's nice to be working 20-30 hours per week now rather than 50-60+ hours though.

I'm toying with the idea of developing a larger yucca bed in the area my pictured filamentosa is. I could clear that out pretty well and it has good southern exposure and is pretty well protected from the north and west winter weather. Problem is, we can't seem to decide what we are going to do with the house. We have wanted to upgrade, and now is the perfect time from a financial standpoint, but then we take the hit on what we are selling and have to move all the plants. Plus I don't think real estate is near the bottom point yet. Then what? More than likely we will be moving to Florida within 7 or 8 years (a little south of Naples) to live about 6 months out of the year. We would keep the lake cabin up north and sell the house in Burnsville and be snowbirds. The palms and yuccas would surely come with to Florida though. I know z10b (just south of the "never, ever freezes line") might be a little uncomfortable for some of the plants but I'd move them anyway. Zone 3 northern Minnesota would not be an option for the plants so Florida it would be.

Those look awesome Barb! My filamentosas don't seem to want to flower this year. Maybe it was the wierd spring? Winter was not that severe here from a temp standpoint, though we had tons of snow. It was near-record snowfall. Somewhere in the top 10 of all time.

You should try to get seed from those yuccas. You are welcome to some of the thompsoniana pollen I collected, that is if they allow it to be mailed up there with customs and all.

Thanks!

Maybe it was the wierd spring?

Agree with you; winter wasn't particularly cold but it was long. April was cold and miserable, and we've just had 2+ weeks of cool cloudy stormy weather.
I recall seeing pics of the huge snowfalls in many US cities late winter.

Thanks for the generous offer of pollen.
With daughter getting married here in 49 days (shudder....stress..... 😕 😆 😆 ), I'll have to pass for this year.
Too busy, am ignoring most of my plants this year, and they're showing it unfortunately.

Barb

Hi Barb,

nice to see your filamentosas blooming. I like the great landscape in the background too! I can't send Yuccas to you but I can send seed. If you want any seed, let me know. I made a hybrid between Yucca gloriosa and arkansana. This should be a weird one since one is trunk forming and the other isn't and one has a racemose bloom (no branches) while the other is paniculate type (branches). Loads of other seeds too.

Hi Kory,

Yucca brevifolia is very hardy. I wonder if it could survive your winters if kept bone dry and planted in a microclimate.

Yes I have a seed grown Trachycarpus takil from Rare Palm Seeds (2001 seed). Now it's called 'Nani tal'. I construct a mini greenhouse over it during winter and heat it with xmas lights. It's been working so far but the palm is getting some size now so protection will be more work.

I hope coldcacti.com will reopen....getting specimen Yuccas is difficult.

Sending a box-o-yucca to your work is no problem. Some of the stuff I grow just isn't hardy in your area (ie. Yucca gloriosa/recurvifolia).

A new Yucca bed sounds great. I got into trunking Yuccas since palms don't work here.....Yuccas need no protection.....love it.

My Trachy is in the background:
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Trunk:
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Those flower towers are awesome. 8)

that Yucca flower is what I call Yucca recurvifolia 'Tennessee' form. Rob from Tennessee sent me a sucker back in 2003 as a recurvifolia. This Yucca has the largest blooms in my garden. The bloom is like 5 to 6 feet tall (bottom of white flower to top of white flower). It's massive. I think it's closer related to Y. flaccida than recurvifolia.

Beautiful flowers....

Now how did that palm picture get in there? 😉

Kory,

how are those Yucca thompsoniana seed pods coming along?

Tim-

I responded to your PM also. Sorry for the delay... I will post updated pictures here asap for all to see.

Seed pods are still green (as is the flower spike). They don't seem to be growing any larger though, at least not for what seems like a couple months now. They are 1.5 to 2" long and range from the diameter of a nickel to slightly wider. Out of about 6 of them that originally took, a few didn't fully develop and fell off early. I thought they were supposed to get about as big as an average grocery store egg though?

Kory

I think you would enjoy doing a Cactus bed.

They are waaaay easier than palms IMO

Kory,

Got your PM........please post some updated photos!

Ok, here are some pictures. Sorry for the delay in posting! I needed to download them out of my cell phone. All the pictures except the first one (taken 8/28 ) were taken in mid September just before we closed and covered the pool.

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Had to throw in some bananas too...
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Jim-

I might just try a cactus bed, just not here in MN as I don't have any more suitable full-sun spots. Certain cactus, agave, yucca, etc do well in Florida 10b's sandy soil in spite of all the rain. I'm thinking that will be one of my landscaping projects down there when we finally get a property we can actually close on. It seems that these short sales can be difficult to get done though. We are now trying on our 4th property. I think this one might work out though. It has some decent base landscaping. Two 20' coconut palms in the front yard along with a nice 30+' robusta, several 10' Christmas palms in triples, and a big travelers palm. In back by the dock near the water there is a 25' royal, and a grapefruit tree on the side of the house. Plenty of room to add more stuff!