This time of year, I always display lots of potted tropical plants around my Bedford, New York farm.
The Mexican Fan Palm is native to Mexico, but has naturalized in several states including Florida, California, Hawaii, and Texas. It's a beautiful palm tree with shiny, deep green fronds and a trunk that can reach up to 100 feet tall. I have several Mexican fan palms in my tropical plant collection. This year, I decided they would look great displayed around my pool where they can flourish in full sun.
Here are some photos, enjoy.
My pool was built to run north to south in this space, so I could enjoy all the gorgeous views of the landscape.
There were three fan palms that needed repotting into more suitable containers. Pete starts by running a hori hori knife around the inner edge of the pot to loosen the palm’s root ball.
Then slowly and carefully, Pete and Fernando remove the specimen from its vessel.
Mexican fan palms have large, three to five foot wide fronds that are palmate, meaning shaped like fans.
Here is the root ball once it is out of the pot. Fan palm trees, like other palm trees, have fibrous root systems that spread out horizontally.
Here’s another view of the root ball. Notice the base of the trunk of the palm. The Mexican fan palm, Washingtonia robusta, and California fan palm, Washingtonia filifera, come from the same family and look very similar. One main difference is the Mexican fan palms have much slimmer trunks that grow taller than its cousin.
Ryan places a broken pot shard into the pot to cover the drainage hole. It keeps dirt from falling through the hole while making sure there is still room for proper drainage.
The shard need not be large – just big enough to cover the hole. Save shards from broken pots to repurpose the pieces.
The planter is filled a third of the way with a good potting soil mix.
We use Scotts Miracle-Gro Cactus, Palm & Citrus Potting Mix, which is fast-draining and is designed for both indoor and outdoor container plants. The mix contains a blend of sand, perlite, and sphagnum peat moss, which helps prevent soil compaction, improve drainage, and retain water and nutrients.
Ryan trims and scarifies the root ball to stimulate growth and to ensure the roots can spread in the pot and absorb nutrients from the soil. Teasing roots apart before planting is a good practice for all plants.
Ryan places the fan palm in the container, making sure it is planted as deep as it was in its previous pot and about an inch under the rim of the new pot.
Here’s Ryan stopping for a quick photo as he tamps down lightly around the base of the palm to make sure there is good contact between the soil and the plant.
Pete wheels the specimen to its location on the other side of the pool.
Here’s Ryan removing another palm from its old pot. Notice he is working on a tarp. Doing this helps to contain all the plant debris and any dropping soil and saves a lot of time in cleaning up.
Again, Ryan fills about a third of the new pot with soil mix and then combines it with fertilizer.
The palm is placed into its new container and Pete adds more soil mix to just under the rim of the planter. This is also a good tip – filling to just under the rim will prevent soil from falling out when the plant is watered.
These Mexican fan palms prefer full sun to partial shade – they will do well here pool side until they are brought back into their designated hoop house in the fall.
I always arrange and display my potted plants differently eery year. This season, the fan palms join potted Agave bracteosa, or Squid Agaves, around my pool’s edge.
I also planted six Ginkgo biloba Goldspire™ Obelisk trees around the pool last month. These trees are doing excellently.
Everything is looking so lush and green.
This is one of the best spots at my farm during summer – I look forward to any time I can spend by the pool. We’re expecting another warm day here in the Northeast – stay safe, cool, and hydrated.
My large half-acre vegetable garden is so much fun to visit right now because of all the growing produce - there’s something new popping up every day.
This garden, which is now in its second growing season, is filled with so many wonderful crops - tomatoes, spinach, brassicas, beets, Swiss chard, sweet and hot peppers, onions, leeks, shallots, potatoes, artichokes, asparagus, all sorts of herbs, and more. I've already picked several vegetables, and every one has been delicious. Check out my Instagram page @marthastewart48. And, I always plant in succession, meaning I seed crops at intervals of seven to 21 days in order to maintain a consistent supply of harvestable produce throughout the summer.
Enjoy these photos.
This garden is looking so beautiful. And I planned this new garden close to my Winter House, so I can get to it quickly, see what is growing, and pick what is ready.
At the edge of all the beds, I planted herbs. Thyme is on the left. Thyme is an herb whose small leaves grow on clusters of thin stems. It is a Mediterranean herb with dietary, medicinal, and ornamental uses. It is delicious with fish or poultry and imparts a lemony flavor. On the right, tomatillos, also known as the Mexican husk tomato.
It’s easy to spot where the tomatoes are growing by all the bamboo supports. If you’ve ever grown a vining plant, you know how important it is to provide strong structures to which the vines can cling and climb. Bamboo is strong and easy to find at garden supply stores.
All 120 plants are divided among our four long tomato beds. I always grow an abundance of tomatoes to share and to make all the delicious tomato sauce I enjoy through the year. It’s a good idea to grow a range of varieties, including at least one or two disease-resistant types.
Many of this year’s tomatoes were grown from seed right in my greenhouse. I also have tomato plants that were gifted to me by a friend, and a large variety also came from Bonnie Plants, one of my favorite growers.
These are the large leaves of rhubarb. The leaves are toxic because they contain high levels of oxalic acid, but the fleshy stalks of rhubarb can be cooked and used to make a variety of delicious pies, tarts, cakes, cobblers, crisps, and pavlovas.
I planted onions, shallots, and leeks a few weeks ago and they are all developing nicely. Onions, shallots and leeks are harvested later in the summer when the underground bulbs are mature and flavorful. I always look forward to this harvest!
In this long bed, I have summer squash and zucchini.
Looking closely, one can see the squash growing.
The kale continues to be a big shower – look how beautiful this crop is. Kale or leaf cabbage is a group of vegetable cultivars within the plant species Brassica oleracea. They have purple or green leaves, in which the central leaves do not form a head. One cup of chopped kale has 134-percent of the recommended daily intake of vitamin-C – that’s more than a medium orange, which only has 113-percent of the daily C requirement.
And maybe you saw the Chinese cabbage on my Instagram page @marthastewart48. Also called Napa cabbage, these heads are oblong with green, crinkly leaves on the outside and creamy yellow in the center. I picked one not long ago and it weighed 15 pounds!
Broccoli is a hardy vegetable of the cabbage family that is high in vitamins A and D. And, according to the National Agricultural Statistics Service, USDA, the average American eats more than four-pounds of broccoli a year. I have so much broccoli ready to enjoy.
Here are the leaves of our cauliflower – so much growth in every bed. We attribute the growth to the excellent soil I have here at the farm. I use Scotts Miracle-Gro Organic Raised Bed & Garden Soil in all the beds.
My cabbages are also growing nicely. To get the best health benefits from cabbage, it’s good to include all three varieties into the diet – Savoy, red, and green. I am so pleased with all these vegetables.
Red, or purple, cabbage is often used raw for salads and coleslaw. It contains 10-times more vitamin-A and twice as much iron as green cabbage.
And here is one of my green cabbages – so perfect.
Savoy cabbage has crinkled, emerald green leaves, and a mildly nutty and sweet flavor.
Nearby is my bed of basil – both green and purple. Basil, also called great basil, is a culinary herb of the family Lamiaceae. Basil is native to tropical regions from central Africa to Southeast Asia. It is a tender plant, and is used in many cuisines. Since basil grows in tropical climates, it grows well in hot weather. We’ve had a week of temperatures in the 90s Fahrenheit and my basil is thriving.
This bed was recently planted with beans. My head gardener, Ryan McCallister, always keeps track of when to plant our crops and we always plant in succession, meaning we plant seeds every few weeks, so there is always something ready to harvest.
My green peppers are growing too. They are still quite small now, but it won’t be long before I’ll have a bounty of green, red, and yellow peppers.
And there is always spinach in my gardens. The leaves are so beautiful and so very tender and tasty. I grow spinach all year long for my morning green juice.
These are the leaves of my artichokes. Globe artichokes, Cynara scolymus, are popular in both Europe and the United States. Artichokes are actually the flower buds, which will emerge from the center of the plants.
Everyone always asks what I do with all the vegetables I grow. I share them with my family, but I also love sharing the bounties with friends, colleagues, and my hardworking crew here at the farm. I also provide fruits, vegetables, and eggs for photography and video shoots. And, of course, all my birds get vegetables too. I hope your gardens are doing well this season.
Early summer is such an exciting time at the farm because so much is growing and blooming, especially in my perennial flower garden.
It takes a lot of time to maintain a garden this large. It measures 150-feet by 90-feet. I, along with my gardeners, are constantly weeding and watering, and then weeding again. Every year, I add a number of flowering plants to this collection. And now, it is so full of color.
Enjoy these photos.
These larkspur are right next to my main greenhouse and are looking so beautiful right now. The larkspur flower is the common name for Delphinium. It is considered an herbaceous perennial and commonly bears purple, blue, white, or lavender flowers.
Growing on one side of the fence surrounding the garden are these dainty perennial sweet pea or everlasting pea flowers. The sweet pea is a herbaceous climbing vine with beautiful bright flowers that grow up to 10 feet long.
Inside the garden are these tall foxglove plants, Digitalis purpurea. These add lovely vertical interest to any garden. Foxglove flowers grow on stems which may reach up to six feet in height, depending on the variety.
Here is another foxglove in pretty creamy yellow.
These are the showy flowers of rudbeckia. Rudbeckia’s bright, summer-blooming flowers give the best effect when planted in masses in a border or wildflower meadow.
I have many roses in my flower garden. Some of them were transferred here from my former home in East Hampton. I am so happy with how well they’re doing. In the last few years, I’ve added to this collection of roses – David Austin roses and various varieties from Northland Rosarium.
Here is another rose in a delicate pastel peach.
Many of the poppies going strong. Poppies require very little care, whether they are sown from seed or planted when young – they just need full sun and well-drained soil.
Poppies are flowering plants in the subfamily Papaveroideae of the family Papaveraceae. They produce open single flowers gracefully located on long thin stems.
The flowers have four to six petals, many stamens forming a conspicuous whorl in the center of the flower and an ovary of two to many fused carpels.
Poppies are an attractive, easy to grow flower in both annual and perennial varieties, and they come in nearly every color of the rainbow and can take on different forms like this more fluffy variety.
Here is a poppy seed pod, which is what’s left on the stem once the flower blooms and the petals fall off. As the seed heads turn brown with ripeness, it’s time to cut them and harvest the seeds. One can tell when pods are ripe by shaking the stem. If the pod rattles, it’s ready.
Alcea rosea is also known as hollyhock. These plants can reach five to eight-feet tall and up to about four feet across. Hollyhocks grow with single or double flowers that bloom from the bottom up and butterflies, bees, and hummingbirds love them.
The columbine plant, Aquilegia, is an easy-to-grow perennial that blooms in a variety of colors and forms during spring and early summer. The most striking feature of columbine flowers is the collection of five backwards-projecting spurs. Each spur is a petal that has developed into what appears to be a tall, slender, hollow hat. At the very top of each spur, inside, is a gland producing sweet nectar.
Shasta daisy flowers provide perky summer blooms, offering the look of the traditional daisy along with evergreen foliage. They are low maintenance and great for filling in bare spots in the landscape.
Phlox has superb heat and mildew resistance. Phlox is a tall and upright grower that’s great for the back of the border, or even planted at the edge of the garden among the shrubs. Phlox also comes in a range of colors from pure white to lavender to even red, and grows happily in most parts of the country. If properly planted and sited, phlox is largely pest and disease free too – a perfect perennial.
Achillea millefolium, commonly known as yarrow, is a flowering plant in the family Asteraceae. It is a hardy perennial with fernlike leaves and colorful blooms. The large, flat-topped flower clusters are perfect for cutting and drying.
Lupinus, commonly known as lupin or lupine, is a genus of flowering plants in the legume family, Fabaceae. The genus includes more than 200 species. Lupines come in lovely shades of pink, purple, red, white, yellow, and even red!
There are numerous types of dianthus – this one with its fringed blooms. Dianthus flowers belong to a family of plants that includes carnations and are characterized by their spicy fragrance. Dianthus plants may be found as a hardy annual, biennial, or perennial and most often used in borders or potted displays.
Butterfly Weed is a bright orange showy native wildflower that’s easy to grow, cold hardy, and does well in poor, dry soils. Long-lasting clusters of small, flat-topped flowers are crowned with a yellow, sun-kissed “corona” and blooms from June through August. Butterfly Weed is an important nectar source for Monarch butterflies and its leaves provide essential food for developing Monarch caterpillars.
And down the center footpath of the garden is Lady’s mantle, Alchemilla vulgaris. In late spring and early summer, the plant produces lovely chartreuse colored blooms.
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