Category Archives: fruit trees

color in the garden, fruit trees, perennials

August to-do’s

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In case you haven’t been keeping track, summer is winding down. True we will be enjoying great weather for months to come but nature uses daylight hours to mark its calendar. And even though I’m busy visiting reader’s gardens, camping, hiking and painting there are some tasks I need to in my own garden.

Around this time of year, annual and perennials in containers and hanging baskets can become leggy with flowers only at the end of long branches. At the same time, overly rambunctious growers can overwhelm neighboring plants, crowding or even suffocating them for lack of light and air.

Renew them by cutting back about half of the stems 2/3rds of the way to the base. When those stems grow back and begin to bloom in about two weeks, cut back the remaining stems the same way. While you’re at it, cut back aggressive growers as far as necessary to give surrounding plants space for healthy growth. Fertilize with a soluble plant food to keep them blooming through October.

Deadhead flowering annuals and perennials in the ground as often as you possibly can. Annuals like zinnias and cosmos will stop blooming if you allow them to go to seed. The same is true of repeat blooming perennials like dahlia, scabiosa, marguerites and lantana.

These plants know they’re on this earth to reproduce. If they get a chance to set seed, the show’s over- they’ve raised their family. Try to remove fading flowers regularly and you’ll be amply rewarded.

Fertilize shrubs lightly one last time in August or September if you haven’t already done so this month. All shrubs, especially broad-leaved evergreens such as rhododendron, pieris, camellia, hebe, need to calm down, stop growing and harden off to get ready for the winter cold. Some plants have already set next year’s buds.

Roses especially appreciate a bit of fertilizer now, encouraging them to bloom another round in September and October. To keep them 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 rose to grow much sooner than if you cut to one with only three leaves.

Here are more to-do’s for late August for this area:

Prune fruit trees that have already finished fruiting. Wait to prune others until after harvest, although many see summer pruning as a way to thin an overabundant crop.  Summer pruning opens the tree to light, producing bigger, healthier fruit. Overall summer pruning will slow the growth of a tree by removing energy wasting water sprouts, helping keep dwarf trees a manageable size.

Sow root veggies such as beets, carrots. leeks, onions and parsnips directly in the ground and start germinating cool-season veggies- broccoli, cabbage, cauliflower, chard, lettuce, and spinach -so they are ready to plant in mid-September.

Now that you’ve taken care of your chores reward yourself by adding perennials to your garden for color in late summer through fall. Good choices include aster, chrysanthemum, coreopsis, gaillardia, gaura, Japanese anemone, echinacea, rudbeckia, Russian sage, scabiosa, Mexican marigold, verbena ad yarrow.
 
Blooming shrubs  that will flower well into fall are abutilon, blue hibiscus, butterfly bus, cape fuchsia, plumbago, lavatera, princess flower and salvia.

flowering shrubs, Flowering trees, flowers, fragrant plants, fruit trees, garden design, vines

A Private Arboretum in the Santa Cruz Mountains

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Recently I had the honor to tour a remarkable garden in Scotts Valley. This horticulturalist calls himself a hillbilly gardener but he is no such thing. Some of his plants come from as far away as Oklahoma, Texas and Hawaii. What a thrill to see spring growth emerge from the new leaves of his unusual trees, flowering shrubs and perennials.

Our first stop was to admire his large collection of echium candicans or Pride of Madeira. These stately shrubs reach 5-6 ft tall and 6-10 ft wide so they make quite a show when the huge flower clusters are in full bloom. Being deer resistant and drought tolerant they are perfect for our mountain environment. The color of the spikes varied from pink to lilac, sapphire blue and purple. This gardener is resourceful. He got many of his seedlings along Hwy 17 where they had reseeded after being used as brush to stabilize the slopes after the ’89 earthquake. The bees were really happy visiting the hundreds of blossoms on the beautiful spring day that I was there.

Tucked under wild cherry trees collected in Texas, are second generation iris of dark purple and pure yellow. Originally from his grandmother’s garden in Virginia, these iris are descendants from a light blue variety and a pale yellowish-beige douglas iris.

This extraordinary gardener also has a huge wild rose from Missouri covered now with fragrant white flowers, a wild olive from Texas and a sand plum from Oklahoma.  There is a yucca about 4 ft tall that he and his brother started as cuttings when they were teenagers in Port Arthur, Texas. He is also the proud father of a couple of bald cypress complete with "knees". This tree of southern swamps and other low nutrient areas grows woody projections above the ground or water level to act as a structural support and stabilizer allowing them to resist very strong winds. Even hurricanes rarely overturn them.

A beautiful Canary Island palm, planted from a seedling in 1996 that he had nurtured in a gallon can, is now over 9 ft tall.  Akebia vines grow up oak trees, passiflora and white wisteria vines up redwoods, a yellow banksia rose rambles up into a madrone and madevillea laxa is happy growing up an oak, too. A willow-leafed hakea salicifolia, indigenous to New South Wales and Queensland, graces his entry with its tiny, white fragrant flowers.

Other trees this gardener loves include Causarina, native also to Australia, sugar pine, incense cedar, Western red cedar, deodar cedar, staghorn sumac and a maytens tree.  His mother in Pennsylvania taught him to plant his first garden at age 4 and he cherishes his Eastern white pines, pinus stroblis, and giant sequoias, three of which he grew from seed.

And I can’t forget his collection of salvias. The red flowers spike of salvia confertiflora bloom year round. The beautiful salvia mexicana will soon to be covered with rich, blue flowers. He also grows salvia chiapensis and a salvia-like plant native to Hawaii called salvia lepechinia. This deliciously scented plant will be covered soon with reddish lavender lipstick-like flowers adored by hummingbirds like all the salvias.

A new greenhouse where he has a small collection of orchids will soon house new seedlings that are sprouting in a germination station under lights. Of the many Hawaiian seeds he has collected are maile, a flowering plant that is probably the oldest and most popular material used in leis by early Hawaiians, milo- a chocolate and malt powder popular in many parts of the world, gossypium tomentosum, coral vines, hibiscus and the koa tree.

There were hundreds more cool plants I learned about and got to admire that day. I’ll be visiting this garden again and again for the next round of wonders. it’s a marvel.

 

beneficial insects, berries, fruit trees

Warm Spells during the Winter

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Everyone’s talking about the wonderful weather we’ve been enjoying the past few weeks. Spring is in the air. Or is it? Whether you like to putter in the garden or be out hiking, the warblers are calling to you. But is it unusual to have warm weather around here in January? Not at all. Just last year before the rains started we had several weeks of Caribbean-like weather. Back in 2009 during the first two weeks of January temps were in the 70’s and low 80’s. Don’t worry. Mother Nature knows how to adjust to changes in the weather- slowing down when it’s really cold and catching up when it’s mild.

Most plants will acclimate to a gradual return to more normal cooler late winter temperatures. We’re lucky here that we don’t get snow ’cause that’s when nature can really deliver a wallop to tender new growth and buds. If winter remains mild plants may bloom a little earlier. Lilacs, apples and grapes, for example,may flower a week earlier. Weeds can really become aggressive and pests and diseases that were held in check by the cold may become more of a problem. Lifestyles of beneficial insects may get out of sinc with the pests they help control.

Plants make the most of warmer weather. Lawns and other groundcovers, for instance, benefit from warm temperatures in winter. Root growth is encouraged in existing areas and young seedlings  planted last fall become established quicker. If temperatures return to winter norms, grasses will "harden off" and be fine in spring.

Fruit trees usually have no problems with a warm streak. A prolonged warm spell could cause low-chill varieties of peaches, plums and cherries to break bud and flower but these conditions are rare.

It’s a similar story for ornamental trees and shrubs. "Most woody plants have evolved to deal with a brief spell of unseasonably warm weather," says Nina Bassuk, woody plant specialist and director of the Urban Horticulture Institute. Buds won’t open during the first warm spell and then get killed by a return to cold temperatures because buds require a period of cold temperatures to break dormancy. Only some may begin to flower prematurely and risk losing those flowers but the long-term health of most plants probably won’t be affected.

Strawberries are oblivious to the weather. Blackberries and some raspberries are another story. Like some fruit trees, their chilling requirements may have already been met, their buds are swelling and they’re ready to take off. A rapid chill could freeze the buds and canes begin to die from the top down. But even if the entire cane dies, healthy new canes will emerge in spring. The early summer berry crop could be lost but fall berries will be fine.

Most bulbs and perennial flowers should come through a warm spell just fine. The buds of these plants are at or below ground level and often protected further by mulch or leaves. Even if temps return for below freezing, late winter cleanup of old stems will get rid of any winter dieback.

Enjoy this hint of spring. It won’t last for long.