u/SpaceCoastGal32907

My husband is building me an arbor. It’s still under construction but the left side, with the horizontal slats, is finished. Now he’s going to put the same horizontal slats on the right side as well.

My plan is to plant a coral honeysuckle at each end with hopes of it vining up the sides and across the top. I know I’ll have to help it vine by fastening the branches to the slats. The man at the native plant nursery suggested also putting chicken wire over the slats on each end to help the plant vine.

What do you think? Would adding chicken wire make a difference in the growth of the coral honeysuckles?

This is sort of a follow up to a post I made a couple of months ago when I asked my husband to build me a trellis so I could plant a coral honeysuckle and I was wondering how big it should be. Well, as you can see he got a little carried away and it’s now an arbor or miniature pergola. It’s still under construction but the picture shows you the basic structure. He’s now in the process of adding horizontal slats along the 2 short edges. We haven’t decided if he should put horizontal slats across the back too. I kind of want them but it’s so friggin hot and he’s 78 and I’d hate for him to keel over so I can certainly live with slats just on the 2 short sides (in addition to the ones on top of course).

Now I’m wondering if 1 plant is enough or if I should put 2. It measures about 5 feet wide, 3 feet deep, and 6.5 feet high. Maybe just 1 if we don’t add slats on the back and 2 if we do? What do y’all think?

Edit to add a silly question. Should I plant them on the inside of the arbor or the outside? Or does it not matter?

I’m really overthinking this aren’t I? 😉

I was just given this plant and was told it was an ornamental pineapple. Does that sound right to you guys? If so, what care does it need? Full sun? Shade? Well draining soil like succulents or more moist soil like for flowers? How big does it get? Annual or perennial? I’ve been gardening in Florida all my life but have never even heard of these things.

This has always been the saddest looking desert rose. She’s had a tough life but she does have a gorgeous flower.

So when she’s done blooming should I prune her in hopes of getting her to branch out? If so, where should I prune? Along the one skinny branch or on the main trunk below the branch?

Crawling on my Christmas cactus

Thus morning I finally found a couple of leaves on my mango tree so as I was celebrating I noticed there are also about a dozen of these larva-looking things hanging on it. Does anybody know what they are? My fear is something has invaded my tree and now will kill it after it survived the Little Ice Age we had.

A few days ago we finally trimmed off the canopy of dead leaves on our mango tree due to total lack of life signs. We left the stump while we decided what to do in that space. This morning we found 2 itty bitty leaves well above the graft line!

We’re not particularly fond of mangoes but the tree was a gift and it had a gorgeous shade canopy so I’m hoping we’ll have a nice canopy again in a few years.

It took until May 1 to see any life so don’t give up!

Edited to add depressing info. After looking more closely it seems the tree is infested with ambrosia beetles that took advantage of its weakened state. From what I can tell there’s no cure and we’ll have to cut it down. I’ll try to attach a picture of the evidence of the beetles but I might have to put that in a reply.

TLDR; I’m looking for a company that can grind down the top couple of inches on my driveway and then resurface it. Two others on my street will need to be done also.

The full story: My driveway was stained and ruined back in November by my lawn maintenance company leaving fertilizer granules all over it. The other 2 houses on my street that use the same company had the same issue at the same time. The company has finally admitted it’s their fault after a couple of months of denying their product could possibly do that. Anyway we (both me personally and the company) have tried EVERYTHING to get the stains out but they’re soaked in and (I guess) bonded with the concrete. The local manager finally said he doesn’t know of anything else to try and if I could find someone who can fix the driveways then they’ll pay for it.

So as far as I can tell the options are to paint the driveways (HATE that idea), break up the driveways and repour them (seems a bit drastic), or grind down an inch or two and resurface it (if that’s even possible).

I’ve called a couple of concrete companies and they don’t even want to discuss driveways so I’m turning to the Reddit gurus for help.

I’ve attached a couple of pictures which don’t really do it justice. My entire driveway looks like it has the plague.