State of the agave

State of the agave: Spring 2014

I'll still never forget several years ago when I bought my first agave. The nursery worker felt the need to give me the disclaimer: "You know you can't grow that here, right?" It was probably the worst words you could say to a zonal denial gardener. In fact, if my wallet could have allowed I would have asked her to ring through another one. But over the years of agave growing the collection has grown. At times there have been some losses, but my agave obsession continues. This winter was relatively kind on the agave I must say. All but one of the in ground agave came through just fine.

I thought I'd start with my agave ovatifolia 'frosty blue.' In the picture you can see how I have planted several agave around my beloved butia capitata. On a sunny day I love going outside and setting up a lawn share right next to this part of the garden. Things went well this winter for these agave. You can see some spotting on the lower arms of the most exposed of the two agave ovatifolia.

 This is a new to me agave awaiting the final decision on where it should live in the garden. It didn't have a tag but it very much resembles my agave parryi JC Raulston and I do believe that is what it is.

 Moving back into the garden agave bracteosa 'calamar' went through winter like a champ. It did get some spots on the lower arms. Considering the late winter snow and ice events that this thing endured I'd say that it has done great!

Onto the agave parryi... all of my agave parryi did great this winter. The worst (not shown here) was agave parryi 'truncata.' I had to remove a few arms along the bottom but otherwise it looks great. Lower right is my agave parryi 'JC Raulston, this one never receives any love and always looks great. Again if you look close there are the odd spots along the lowest arms but nothing significant. And the agave parryi huachucensis in the lower left hand corner seems to handle winter with ease. I removed several arms from this guy and it already looks to have outgrown that awkward freshly cleaned up agave look.

 Finally agave parryi var. parryi has done exceedingly well this winter. It is planted on the steepest angle of all my agave and it seems to be happy to have all water drain away from it.  In fact, the only agave surgery I ever perform with this guy is the lowest arms along the bottom of the slope. Our soil is really sandy and most plants suffer in this spot over the years. But the agaves seem to flourish.

As an aside: I have a small agave farm starting. Not a real agave farm. But a funny backyard pup separating, agave starting, 4 inch container farm of baby agaves. Last count there were 18. That didn't take into account the other long term potted agaves kicking around. It's becoming a problem... a good problem!