Starting on the garage plants

Sorry about missing a post yesterday, but I used the time to work in the garden rather than write about it. One of the things I did was pull out most of the plants that had overwintered in the garage. It was a disappointing year in that regard, at least at first glance.

I'll ease into it though, rather than shock you with photos of failures right off the bat. My sago palm -- getting so big and therefore difficult to find a good overwintering spot for -- worried me a bit as it looked like it started dying later in the winter.

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It turns out that it was just the lower two courses of leaves that were being shed, so I got to turn a sad plant...

...into a happier one:

The new growth is ready to emerge, which will help fill the plant out a bit:

I love tasks that take literally a minute but make things so much better, don't you?

The only problem here was that the leaf tips on this plant are so sharp you can't help but getting poked.

Speaking of getting poked, the next pruning task was much more dangerous, and decidedly more ugly:

That's my organ pipe cactus, more than half dead. I decided to remove the rotting portions now to see if the plant rebounds in some way:

I've often wondered how these plants can get so tall and not topple over -- how can a fleshy plant reach 20' tall or more (like this species can)? Well, there is a woody core in there under the fleshy parts, and it was really difficult to cut through -- especially when trying not to get stabbed.

Unfortunately, this isn't the last of the ugly photos of plants from the garage, but I'll spare you for a while. Maybe I'll even use my good camera for the next batch.

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