California 2 Puerto Rico

This week we moved a lot of dirt. One of our neighbors up the street did some excavating down by the quebrada and dumped about 70 meters of topsoil at the top of our property. Instead of hiring an earth mover to come in and move the dirt, we decided to move it by hand (shovel it into the back of the bronco) and bring it on down to the planters. There, we emptied it onto a piece of plywood and mixed with high grade topsoil and pete moss. Then we shoveled it into the planters….a great place for happy plants to live.

It took us all day, and when all was said and done, it probably would have been more economical to hire a back-hoe, but our lesson was learned and now we finally have some green on our property.

The back of the truck is filled with free topsoil…then we mix it with the goods

Mixing dirt with our plants set up for planting

Closeup of the Palm Trees we scored for the Landscaping

The finished product. Grow, grow, grow!

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Stefan and I really want to get our yard/landscaping going since greenary makes SUCH a difference for a property (plus it takes years to grow into the lush tropical jungle we imagine our property being, so the sooner the better).

In California, I always thought “a palm tree is a palm tree”, but now that we’re actually looking closer into plants/landscaping, there are hundreds (thousands?) of different types of palm trees to choose from. And everyone seems to call the same palm tree by different names, here in Puerto Rico, which makes it difficult when you’re trying to tell someone what kind of palms you want. Stefan and I love the royal palms. And we’ve been told that they are queen palms, king palms, christmas palms and royal palms (the palms we like are ROYAL PALMS). So I did a little research on palms on the internet and put together the pictures here.

Coconut Palms - Coconut palm trees are VERY common here in Puerto Rico, because they grow like weeds. Any where we go there are coconuts chillin’, with roots and leaves growing out of them. Hills, valleys, beaches, etc, you will find coconut palms. They’re so common that here in Puerto Rico, people rip them out of their lawns and toss them over their fences (or tell us to come get them…haha). I call them the “messy palms” because they are kind of scraggly and not as neat looking as many of the other palms, but hey, I’ll take what I can get when my yard looks like this

King Palms - I’m still confused on what exactly makes a King Palm, a King Palm. They look very similar to what I’ve been told are Christmas Palms and Royal Palms…hmmmmm.

Queen Palms - Queen Palms look similar to the coconot palm (to me at least) but are a little cleaner looking, but still kinda scraggly. They grow fast though (2 - 3 ft a year), which is great for our barren property.

Royal Palms - Royal Palms are one of my favorites. They are very clean, symmetrical and neat looking palms. You see them all over the place in Puerto Rico, since they are very aesthetically pleasing.

Areca Palms - Areca Palms are also one of my favorite types of palm trees. To me, they look like a cross between a royal palm tree and bamboo, since they grow in patches. You can get 2′ Areca Palms at Home Depot for $14 and they have a decent growth rate, so we are stocking up.

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One of the reasons we built the rock planters was to help divert water away from the foundation of the house. Now that we have the planters done, we needed to consider drainage from them as well. If you don’t provide sufficient drainage from your planters they will slowly fill with water and never drain, rotting all of the roots to the plants you have in there…the soil on top will look perfect, but everything a couple inches down is drowning.

Jerry and I drilled holes before we made the rock wall and placed 1” PVC pipe in them to help evacuate any standing water that may build up in there. The next step, before we add topsoil was to add about a foot of rocks to help the water drain to the bottom and out the sides.

I ordered two yards of rock ($80) and had it delivered to the house yesterday. I had to run downtown really quick, by the time I got back the truck was in our front yard (no where near the walls) with the back of the truck up ready to dump all the rock….I honked my horn, he stopped and we dropped the rock half and half in front of both of the walls.

The temperature outside while we were shoveling these rocks was 90 degrees with a heat index of 105 degrees. Boy…it will be nice when Summer and I sitting on the front porch with Ice Tea next Summer…

At the end of the day, we had a pretty nice sunset with the moon showing off our back yard. It isn’t anything spectacular, but it’s pretty nice.

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I don’t know if you have ever landscaped your yard or worked with a crew that landscaped a yard, but tree’s are expensive! Don’t get me wrong, saplings and small plants aren’t too expensive, but if you want anything with girth you are going to have to shovel out some cash. Summer and I are really trying to keep the spending reigns tight until we finish all of the expensive finishing work and then go to town on all of the little things that would be ‘cool’ but not necessary (paved driveway, landscaping, second car).

When envisioning living in the tropics, I always pictured a property covered in tropical plants, palm trees, hibiscus, snake plants, bamboo etc. Well, landscaping is about the only thing that wasn’t apart of the deal when we bought this house. There are a few really big mango tree’s in the back yard and a few giant royal palms bordering our yard, but aside from that combined with all the excavating we have had to do in the front yard we don’t have much green in our front yard at all. Not even grass. All the rock that we exposed excavating prevents grass from sprouting and will also require us to lay down topsoil before we plant any seed,

Our front yard is dirt, unless it’s raining…then it’s mud.

Mark helped us get the ball rolling on inexpensively landscaping our yard a few days ago. I went over to one of the houses he was landscaping and scored all of the trimmings and throwaway plants that would have otherwise turned into mulch. Summer and I spent the entire afternoon pruning and planting our new plants in the pouring rain. Now we have some green.

Tropical Landscaping from Scratch

Our truck filled with Tropical Plant trimmings and Palm Saplings

All of the plants laid out and organized, ready for planting

Summer checking out her hard work
We couldn’t fit the front yard into one shot on the camera so I used photoshop to
combine two pictures of our tropical landscaping from scratch

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One thing I learned while driving in Puerto Rico, is that I’ve been spelling quebrada wrong this whole time (it’s not spelled cabrada).

Any how, it rained like crazy today and I seized the opportunity of moist soil (easy to dig) and dug out muchas plantas en la quebrada. I brought them back up to the house, potted them and stuck them in the new greenhouse. And by “new greenhouse” I mean the old outside shower at the back of our house.

The front of our house may be barren, but the backside is LUSH and there are all kinds of plants that we will be able to replant in the front when we are ready to do the landscaping. So I figure I’ll get as many plants as I can potted and ready for planting.

Here is a picture of the “gifts of the creek” (regalos del quebrada) that I harvested today.

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I just read Summers post and read about something I already knew (that Kuta makes her smile). It is funny that she talked about how great Kuta dog is because he was running the show again today. I was so proud of him, he was showing Monkey how to manage the excavator.

Monkey Running the Show

Unfortunately, this is when we ran into some problems. Once the excavator was finished with all of his work today, Jerry and I noticed that the Water Meter was still running…even though we didn’t have any water on anywhere on the property. This could only mean one thing, a broken pipe, but where. Our water main runs 278ft from our front property line to the front of the house. The line is 4ft deep and if you watched this excavation video you know that our land is all rock and rock hard packed dirt. Impossible to dig with a shovel, we need to use a pick for everything. This is when Kuta stepped in and helped Monkey get out of the bind she got us into.

Monkey looks worried, Kuta’s composure projects confidence

We spoke with the excavator and talked him into blowing off his next job (for a fee $) until tomorrow so he could help us dig up the property in search of a leaky pipe. I grabbed some PVC glue and plugged off the line about 3/4 the way to the house (where we installed a spicket), turned on the water and the meter came to a stop after filling up the line. By process of elimination, that left us the 70ft to the house to inspect. Instead of painstakingly digging up the old pipe, the excavator dug another trench while I ran to the Fronteria (two of them, the first place was out) and grabbed 1” PVC pipe, a couple of couplings, elbows and some more Primer/Glue.

The Second Water Main Trench to our House

That pretty much solved the problem, but it took an extra 4 hours with the CAT excavator and put us a day behind on framing the foundation for our blue stone plant boxes that are going to run the length of the porch (minus stone steps through the planter). Jerry’s goal is to have the entire foundation layed, block built, steps built and just getting started on the blue rock facade that we are going to buy from the local quarry before Summer gets to the house on Wednesday night.

Monkeys saving grace today was instructing the Excavator to dig two four foot wide and four foot deep trenches at the top of where we cut into the earth for our flat front yard and one at the bottom. She then had the Excavator drop all of the rock and brown stone from those holes in the woods and replace the rock with fertile topsoil from down by the cabrata (stream). This will allow us some easier digging, planting and growing when we start planting the hell out of some lush vegetation afterwhich we will start watering it with our non-leaky water main which has spicket about every 100 feet down our property to the house (run on sentences are legal in Puerto Rico).

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We are leveling off a decent part of the slope that is in front of our house.

This is going to help with drainage issues. The property slope causes water to flow right into the side of the house, which can be bad since the 1st floor is partially underground. So, this new excavation will allow us to plant a lush front yard and grass and the water flow will be directed away from the house. Two birds with one stone, baby…

Kuta running the show

And finally some video (it is very exciting to watch)

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My mom gifted me with a $300 Home Depot gift certificate for my birthday and this is what is turned into:

I bought a ceiling fan for the guest bedroom, 6 bags of potting soil, 30 pots, 3 bags of grass seed, a spreader, gardening tool, gloves, 4 large citronella candles and some bug spray! The two plants in the picture are actually plants that Stefan pulled out of the cabrada (the little stream on our property) that we potted. I want to start growing some plants so we can landscape the hell out of our property. I want it to be lush, lush, lush! Thanks Robin! Woohoo!

Here is palm that I dug out of the cabrada and transplanted next to the front porch:

Although, I’ve received word that the poor palm is not doing so hot, so don’t get too attached to it…

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