Tips and tricks it took to have our most successful harvest of the best tasting red grape we grow. For years animals were steeling the homegrown grapes before we picked them. We finally outsmarted all the orchard pests.
Buying Bareroot About five years ago, I purchased two fruit trees, a Weeping Santa Rosa Plum and an Ultra Dwarf Blenheim Apricot tree at OSH on clearance at the end of bare root season. Discounted plants are rarely worth the trouble and I probably should not have wasted any money on it, but I am really glad I did. In a weird way, I kind of enjoy taking the risk. And a few of my favorite plants have been clearance…
Native and Mediterranean climate bulbs are a perennial garden staple in this Southern California garden. Many popular as well as less traditional bulbs naturalize and return each year. Hanbury House blog shares a list of favorites to consider for Zone 10 gardeners.
I get more questions about Verbascum creticum than almost any other plant in the Spring garden. It is not common around SoCal, but I think it should be because it is so lovely and is a great low water plant for the flower garden. Unfortunately for gardeners, biennials are not something garden centers offer for sale very often. Most of its life, Verbascum creticum plants are just plain looking little flat rosettes of green leaves. However, when the plant is…
I want to start a new vegetable bed adjacent to our driveway, one of the few areas left in our yard with half day sun. The full sun areas were all taken up by my obsession with fruit trees long ago. The area I plan to use has been sitting pretty much empty ever since I let our Baba raspberry bed die out, back during Southern California’s last major drought. I know I have mentioned it before, but I really…
A little over two years ago, my daughter, B, started an after dinner gardening project of trying to grow a pineapple. She plopped a discarded cut-off pineapple crown with leaves into a pot. She treated it like many of her succulent plants: no prep, no rooting hormone, just potting soil and occasionally a bit of leftover water from her school lunch. It still lives in a pot on the front porch, getting about half-day sun. Last winter she did remember…
Most of my flowers and perennials these days are generally low water users, at least once they became established, however the same is not true of all my edible plants. When the state officials announced the need for even deeper cuts to our water use early this year, I decided what my most prized or hard to replace plants were, mainly the fruit trees and camellias, and then I diverted the limited grey water from our front load washer machine…
I look forward to this time of year all winter long, the Spring Garden Tour season and annual plant sales sponsored by some of the local non profit horticulture groups. For many years now, my favorite plant sale has been the Long Beach City College Horticulture Department’s annual spring plant sale and fundraiser. This is their 42nd year and the sale falls on April 16th -18th, 2014, the week before LBCC has their Spring Break. If you are a local…
When the weather is too cold to do much work outside, I get a little over zealous and try propagating all sorts of plants, just to see if I can. Since I got a couple of new heat mats for Christmas, I am in the process of propagating a variety of plants including ‘Parfianka’ Pomegranate, ‘Sweet’ Pomegranate, ‘Strawberry Verte’ Fig, ‘Bababerry’ plants, Thornless Raspberry plants, and tomato seeds. Because I spend so much time doting on the cuttings, my hubby…
Normally in the winter months, the rainy season in SoCal, I have the gray water diverer on the washer machine in the off position so it will empty to the sewer, not the garden. Southern California usually gets plenty of rain to take care of the landscape until late March or April. This year is the earliest we have had to switch back to using grey water, since first using it back in 2007. We have had next to nothing…