killer man!

wow

nice job!

Boca Joe

Amazing pictures!!! Beautiful garden!

Thx. Boca, I have admired your plants for some time now. I'll post another angle sometime soon. Btw, bought my first Borneo in 2007. With some luck, I hope to get close to your Jack's Giant someyear...I need to get one of those but Malayasia & Sinapore is little far for me...lol. There was a place in Florida but I'm not sure if they are taking orders anymore - Centralfloridafarms.com.
Daryl

always like looking at your garden, gives me something to shoot for!

jurassicdaryl,

Thx for taking and sharing your pics.

Your castors beat mine!

karen

I just googled where you bought your borneo.
you should see all the negative feedback the plant co. you mention got at Dave's. Yikes!
Karen

Hello, rarely pop in, but could hardly resist. Amazing castors-loved seeing the progression. I live in Bothell, WA and struggle getting my castors to 6' though the bananas, alocasia & tree ferns do well. Brugsmanias & plumerias are stored in my laundry room! I have had great success with hardy tropicals ordered from Brian's Botanicals via Ebay. He has had Borneo in the past.

Thx, I have only placed one order with Brian's (spring 06), but so far everything seems to be doing great. My Borneo appears to have successfully dried out well. I was hoping it would have grown bigger but it looks like I(it) will get that second chance in about 4 months...!I'll post some pics of it and the others EE's(drying/ed) soon. My windmill palm continues to grow indoors. I ended up chickening out and dug it up, so its now in the house in front of a glass door. It certainly has grown more than I thought it would. I have lost count of how many new fronds have grown. It will have a permanent home this spring. So I would definately order from Brian's again without hesitation. Not only was the price and selection good, he's in a similar zone, just south of me. If his palms grow in Louisville then they will grow in Cincinnati...Last spring I was going to order my borneo and windmill from Plant Delights. I'm glad I didn't. More expensive and I heard bad things about them too. They do have the coolest catalog on the planet though! Well I'm curious & surprised about the neg. comments about Brian's so I'm going to have to see if I can find them. My hunch is that it had less to do with Brian's and more to do with the purchasers...

Hi, Let me assure you, I have always had excellent success with Plant Delights. In fact, their Spring catalog was just released (ck online as well), I placed a large order yesterday. Last year, I ordered the most amazing Zantedeschia aethiopica 'White Giant', just ordered four more this year! Very good quality and excellent customer service. I had ordered the same Calla on Ebay-outbidding someone at $45 (crazy addiction), the 1/2" tuber arrived and never produced one leaf(I laughed-it served me right for getting carried away w/bidding!). I paid $16 at PD for a the same item, a huge huge plant arrived and reached 5' the first season. Windmills are hardy here, most nurseries stock them at a reasonable price. I have eight ranging from 2-4' and they are quite young. So, how did you get your castors to grow so large?

Hey garden, I got my Plant Delights catalog last week. I always enjoy thumbing through them. I may actually have to order a couple of plants this time - Jack's Giant EE and a yucca rostrata. I'm a cheapskate/tightwad and it adds up in a hurry with them. It would be one thing if they weren't so little...Oh well. I bought my first and only castor bean seeds about 7 years ago from Gurney's. Since then I have harvested my own seeds from my largest plants only. I start some indoors early and also sow some seeds directly. I put one teaspoon of Osmocote in the hole when I plant the starter plants, inital water with root stimulator then kept watered through mid June. A couple of them got 10-10-10 slow release in early June. They only got watered a few times after June plus the very occasional rain. Basically nothing special in my opinion other than good seeds and a little TLC for a little while. If it weren't for all the japanese beetles and the drought, I believe they would have gotten a few feet taller. Btw, the starter plants got up to 21' and the sowed seeds got up to 18'+

Thank You! Your method seems easy enough, we'll see how well we do here in the PNW. We simply may not have enough warm days. I have copied your reply to my other friends who love castors as well. You are quite right, those plant orders do add up quickly (my husband just shakes his head anymore). We have a ton of decent nurseries around, but only a few I would call "collector" worthy. I started ordering from Plant Delights after Heronswood moved from our area. Thanks for the directions, we will have to figure out how to upload photos to share our results in August.
Much appreciated, Andrea