up all night

Hey Folk's

This is my blog on Native and exotic plants of Florida. Here I am sitting up all night. Let me tell you about my late fathers Carambola (Averrahoa carambola) Tree. My dad planted the tree right in the front yard near the driveway and it has flourished since. It bares fruit, called star fruit because of the shape, a couple times a year. They are messy at first but they break down in my fire pit fairly quickly. If you ever get a star fruit rest assured there are only two flavors. Sweet and sour. We have the sweet variety so they are pretty good. They are a very good source of vitamin C. You can bake them in bread with some raisins and nuts and that is pretty tasty. As an exotic plant of Florida they grow fairly tall. Right now mine is about 15' tall and still growing. It takes up a lot of space as it spreads, also it's not a good idea to plant it too close to the house. When the fruit is falling it attracts ants and fruit flies so it should be cleaned up regularly as the fruit drops and disposed of in your mulch bin or if you have a fire pit or burn area in your yard because it breaks down easily. I use the fire pit because I have a lot of debris due to having a large Oak and a Sable Palm as well that needs to be cleaned out once or twice a year. Well it's almost 5:00 am so I am calling it quits and I am ending this blog on Native and exotic plants. Leave a comment or a question and I will post your answer in the comment section whenever I can and thanks for reading my blogs. By the way that is my cat in the Carambola tree pictured at the bottom and my late father pictured at the top.

behind blue eyes by the who

Welcome back to Native and exotic plants of Florida. From time to time I will be posting a video of me playing the guitar even though it has nothing to do with Native or exotic plants. This is "Behind blue eyes" by "the who" one of my favorite bands. I first heard them in the 60's when I was 7 or 8. The song was "substitute" and I think the flip side was "whisky man" but I'm not positive. Thanks for reading my blog on Native and Exotic plants of Florida.Enjoy

Palmetto for border plants

Hi Folks, and welcome to another post on Native and Exotic plants of Florida. The Saw Palmetto ( Seneroa repens) is an excellent plant to use as a border for your property because it can fill out your entire property line or just sections. You could use fellow native Florida speicies like slash pine trees and other ground cover taking up the rest of the sections to fill the space. Saw palmetto is very low maintenance and once it is established in very rarely needs watering. If you want variety and color, try the Silver Saw Palmetto with its bluish tint it will add a beautiful element to your yard or garden. These plants don't get very tall only about 4' high but they are a nice addition to any garden.Thanks again for reading my posts on Native and exotic plants of Florida

This is my first blog

Hey folks,
My name is Dwain and I am going to blog about native and exotic plants in the great state of Florida. I am a landscaper and a landscape designer in southwest Florida and I hope to help people with there decisions on what type of plants and shrubs to put in the yards. I was raised in the Southwest Florida area so I know about the climate which as someone once said "Florida has only two seasons, wet and dry". I also know about the native plants that we use a lot of to save on water and maintenance. Right now as I post we are in our rainy season and as a matter of fact we just had a tropical storm pass over yesterday that dumped a bunch of rain which we needed because it has been dry for the past couple of weeks. My experience in exotic plants comes from my 22 years working as a groundskeeper and manager at the Thomas Edison and Henry Ford Winter Estates in Fort Myers Florida. Mr. Edison had a wide variety of exotic trees, plants, and shrubs throughout the estates that I personally took care of for all those years. I also worked as a landscape designer with a landscape architech here in Fort Myers for about 4 years and now I am trying to start a lawn and landscape business with my brother. This blog is intended to be an introduction to me and my experience in this field and in future blogs I will talk about choosing plants for certain spaces and how to plant and maintain the plants and different types of problems occur with the plant such as damage from insects, fungus, over watering, and under watering. I will also talk about fertilizer and what type to use with which variety of plant.

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If you have any questions or concerns please contact Dwain Willis at Dwainw@comcast.net