Category Archives: berries

berries, birds, El Nino, fall garden, grasses

Twas the Week after Thanksgiving

If working in the garden Thanksgiving weekend is not high on your list then you?re in luck. Here are some reasons why along with other information you need to know.

In the category of news you can use. A reader shared with me that a plant I mentioned a couple weeks ago in my column about hedges- Italian buckthorn or rhamnus alaternus – has evolved and is now considered invasive by the California Invasive Plant Council. Seems that over the past 3 to 4 years Italian buckthorn ?John Edwards? has overcome the reproduction invasion barrier of being entirely dioecious (having male and female plants separate). The shrub has become a serious problem in riparian and other wildland areas. Birds love the berries which are apparently all female. Thank you to my faithful reader for sharing this information with me. Don?t plant this shrub.

Being that November has was so dry up until the day before Thanksgiving I looked up the current El Nino rain prediction for this winter season. Interesting enough I found lots of info on the surfline website in addition to NOAA. Sounds like we?re still on track for California?s midsection to have an equal chance of more precipitation than other years and warmer than usual from December to February. Can?t come soon enough for me.

For me the growing season is pretty much over except to enjoy what?s left of fall color and the ornamental grasses waving their seed heads in the wind. A lot of perennials are dying back but I?m not in a hurry to neaten things up. The seed heads left in the garden supply food for birds and other creatures while the foliage provides shelter for the plant in the cold and frost. Remove anything when it turns slimy or just plain unattractive but leave berries and seed heads for the birds and winter interest.

Lesser Goldfinch

At this time of year my garden is visited mostly by chickadees, nuthatches, goldfinches, purple finches and warblers. They will spend the winter here and I?m doing them a big favor by not cutting back brown foliage containing nutrient-rich seed heads. Some of the reliable seed producers that I won?t have to clean up this weekend include artemisia, aster, coreopsis, penstemon, sedum, lupine, salvia, black-eye Susan, coneflower, phlomis, monarda, agapanthus and grasses.

Chickadees gather hundreds of seeds in fall and early winter and store them in hiding places to ensure themselves a food supply later in the season. They are a remarkable bird that we take for granted being so common. I read in Audubon magazine a couple years ago that a chickadee weighs about as much as a dozen paperclips but their body is large for their weight. This means they have to ramp up the number of hours they devote to feeding. At night chickadees cram themselves into tiny cavities and shiver, burning the day’s fuel to keep from freezing.

Hummingbirds still need a nectar source at this time of year. Anna’s hummingbirds live in this area all year long. So In addition to the plants in my garden that supply nectar I keep my feeders up year-round and keep them clean. They need your nectar even more in the winter when very little is in bloom. In addition to nectar rich natives like mahonia my abutilons are a winter favorite for them.

And I don?t need to prune trees and shrubs at this time of year. Other than clipping a few well placed branches to use in a holiday wreath, I?m off the hook for this task right now. Deciduous trees are still in the process of losing their leaves and are not fully dormant. Evergreens shrubs and conifers can be trimmed lightly but most shaping is done when they start growing in late winter or very early spring.

berries, blue, blueberries, hydrangeas

All Things Blue in the Garden

While harvesting blueberries at a friends? garden I started thinking of the color blue and why it appeals to all of us gardeners. I was taking care of this fabulous garden while the owners were out of town so I had a lot of time to enjoy all of the plants including the blue flowering ones.

Blueberries-fresh off the bush- delicious

The color blue, especially in the summer, soothes our senses. Soft blues will calm the mind and aid concentration. Strong blues can stimulate clear thoughts. I?m not sure if the different blueberries fall into this category but I sure enjoyed tasting each of them.

Of the 4 different types of blueberries I harvested I think I liked O?Neal, a variety of Southern high bush, the best.
The large light blue early South Moon were also delicious as were the Blueray and Bluecrop. Although many blueberry species are considered self-fertile, all blueberry bushes benefit from cross-pollination and produce larger and more full flavored crops with another bush nearby. To ensure bees carry pollen from one bush to another, space them within 6 feet of each other.

The author’s hydrangea garden

When the weather gets hot I head to the part of my garden where the blue hydrangeas are blooming. I have several mophead types that vary in color from sky blue to deep blue. One is almost blue-violet this year although I didn?t add anything to the soil this winter to make it more acidic. I don?t have any lacecap varieties so I took a cutting of a spectacular Mariesii variegated one at the garden I was tending. It?s the white in both the foliage and the flower that makes the rest of the blue blossoms really standout.

True blue flowers are rare. We use words like cerulean, azure, cobalt, sapphire, turquoise, electric blue or steel blue when describing blue flowers. Hybridizers have tried for years to produce a true blue rose or blue daylily. Blue plant pigment is hard to manipulate. It occurs in the daylily as a sap-soluble pigment and is difficult to segregate. Lilacs, purples, orchids and mauves we have and working with them hybridizers may eventually get near blue, but pure blue probably never.

Rose hybridizers striving for true blue have come close by crossbreeding lavender hybrid teas in order to produce offspring having optimum amount of cyanidin, The results have been more of a silvery lilac or mauve. A blue rose is still in the future although labs in Australia and Japan are genetically modifying the pigments from petunias to produce a blue rose. Their results are not yet perfected and these roses are more of a lilac in color and can not survive conditions outside the lab. It is apparently very difficult to isolate the pigment cyanadin. Delphiniums have a monopoly on it.

There are many blue perennials as handsome as they are durable that we can enjoy in our gardens today.
Besides the old fashioned hydrangea, there are violas and campanulas. I?m also growing a blue impatien called ?Blue Diamond? that attracts the hummingbirds. All are valuable in the shade garden along with omphaloides and brunnera. The blue spikes of a long blooming peach-leaf campanula just go together with the white and green variegated foliage of Jack Frost Siberian bugloss.

In early spring we are dazzled by our native ceanothus which bloom with deep blue, sky blue or electric blue flowers. Emerald Blue phlox subulata carpets the ground in spring with clear blue flowers. Penstemon heterophyllus, a California native hybrid, carries dense spikes of bright blue, bell-shaped blossoms.

Make sure your garden has a blue section to cool you on a hot day.

berries, cool season vegetables, fall garden, fertilizing, perennials, pests, roses

The Early Fall Garden To-Do List

The autumnal equinox happened September 22nd. It’s the official start of fall when the sun crosses the celestial equator and moves southward. The earth’s axis of rotation is perpendicular to the line connecting the centers of the earth and the sun on this day. Many people believe that the earth experiences 12 hours each of day and night on the equinox. However, this is not exactly the case.

During the equinox, the length is nearly equal but not entirely because the day is slightly longer in places that are further away from the equator- like where we live. Also the sun takes longer to rise and set in these locations as it does not set straight down but in a horizontal direction.

Variegated alstroemeria

It was a hot summer and I?m ready for fall. This is the perfect time for transplanting or adding new plants to your garden. Why? Cooler air is kinder to plant foliage while soil temperatures are still warm creating an excellent environment for new root growth. In the fall many plants and trees, even broadleaf evergreens, are entering a period of dormancy. With no need to allocate resources into foliage, plants are transferring all their energy into roots and storing nutrients for the cool months ahead. By spring, the new root systems should be well established.

Now through October, divide summer blooming perennials like alstroemeria, agapanthus, coreopsis, iris, daylily, yarrow, rudbeckia, calla lily, aster and penstemon that are overgrown and not flowering well. You can also divide spring blooming perennials like candytuft, columbine, astilbe, bergenia and bleeding heart although they don’t always bloom the first spring afterwards due to the energy they use re-establishing themselves. Start perennial flowers seeds now so that they will be mature enough to bloom next year.

bergenia cordifolia

Fertilize shrubs lightly one last time with an all-purpose organic fertilizer or layer of compost. Use compost only on California natives.

Fertilizing roses now will encourage them to bloom again this fall. To keep roses blooming make a habit of pinching and pruning off old flowers. Always cut back to an outward facing branchlet with five leaves. There are hormones there that will cause a new flower bud to grow much sooner than if you cut to one with only three leaves.

Plant cool season veggie starts like broccoli, cabbage, cauliflower, chard, lettuce, spinach, brussels sprouts, onions and leeks in soil enriched with 4-6″ of compost as summer vegetable crops will have used up much of your soil’s nutrients.You can sow seeds of beets, carrots, radishes, spinach, arugula, mustard and peas directly in the ground.

Cut back berry vines that have produced fruit. Canes of the current season should be trained in their place.

hemerocallis

Spider mites are especially prolific during the summer. If some of the leaves on your plants are pale with stippling, spray the undersides of infected leaves with organics like insecticidal soap switching off with neem oil as they build up a resistance to one of the pesticides. Plan to spray with a horticultural oil in the winter to kill overwintering eggs.

The weather these days is perfect for being outside. Enjoy it and this place we call home.