Removing a big agave to make way for better things to come

The state of the backyard has been bothering me for a long time. Many of the plants are old and look tired. Some are in the wrong place. And others are permanently on the brink of death, either because of bad soil or a lack of water. Plus, four bay trees which are now over 30 ft. tall create deep shade while sucking up all the available moisture in the soil; finding plants that survive there, let alone thrive, is almost impossible.

After years of lethargy and inertia, work on making much-needed improvements has begun. I’ll have a detailed update very soon. This post is about removing a fairly big agave that was in the way. It was nice enough, but simply too large for its spot:

The agave in question is an Agave chiapensis which I bought at the UC Berkeley Botanical Garden circa 2010. To my amazement, I found the original tag tucked into the soil underneath the plant:

I originally bought it because of the stated size: 18" tall by 30" wide. But as is so often the case, reality did not match the label. While the width was reasonably close to the advertised 30", the height was more than double. Here’s me in front of Agave chiapensis during the impromptu photo shoot for my recent agave wine post:

As always, the first step in the removal process is to cut off the leaves. Once again, my trusty reciprocating saw made light work of it. Having learned my lesson from previous encounters, I made sure to wear pants, a long-sleeved hoodie, and gloves (protective goggles would have been a good idea, too). Agave sap contains concentrated calcium oxalate crystals (raphides) and can cause painful contact dermatitis.

Here’s Agave chiapensis with just a halo of leaves left:

And fully pineappled:

Agaves have shallow roots. All I had to do was make a series of cuts around the perimeter of the agave using my trusty Root Slayer (best digging tool ever!). Then I was able to simply push over the pineappled core:

And voilà, valuable real estate reclaimed:

Eventually, the plants you see center left will come out, too, but I’m waiting for Mangave ‘Silver Fox’ to start flowering so I can transfer the pollen I collected from my friend Darell’s Agave filifera in hopes of making my own mangave hybrid.

Last Friday, I had 4 cubic yards of soil mix delivered (50% pumice, 50% garden mix), and the Agave chiapensis bed is now under almost two feet of fluffy new soil.

P.S. Looking at photos of Agave chiapensis online, it appears that most of them are smaller than mine. Maybe mine was a hybrid? We’ll never know for sure.

© Gerhard Bock, 2024. All rights reserved. To receive all new posts by email, please subscribe here.