Rita’s Monthly Gardening Tips

Rita's Monthly Gardening Tips, January 5, 2016

January is the time to reflect on your garden’s past challenges and successes. Look at your garden space on paper noting what went well and what didn’t during the previous growing season. Make a plan for this upcoming growing season. Some common items on the new garden plan may be:

Rotate vegetable crops

Try growing a new vegetable

Remove perennial plants that don’t suit your needs

Grow more drought tolerant, pollinator-friendly plants

The biggest trick to successful gardening is growing plants that have the same requirements for sun, water, soil, space, and temperature that match what your garden can provide.

Another important factor is timing. Most vegetables have a relatively short window of time that they can be planted in order to grow well. Cool season seedlings are planted in February/March and again in August/September. If you are planting transplants from seeds, plant the seeds about six weeks before the best time to plant them out as transplants. Warm season crops are planted in April/May. Make a calendar for the year for when to plant seeds and/or transplant the vegetables that you would like to have. Since there is an overlap of time for when cool season and warm season vegetables will occupy space in your garden, have dedicated cool season and warm season space in your garden. For more information read Golden Gate Gardening: The Complete Guide to Year-Round Food Gardening in the San Francisco Bay Area & Coastal California by Pamela Peirce

Also, consider the design of your garden such as where to plant what. Know how tall plants get so you can either avoid casting shade on other plants or incorporate the shade to benefit other plants as it best fits your garden plan.

In decades gone by companion planting was encouraged as a way to partner plants that “liked” each other. A lack of scientific evidence has made this procedure to be debatable. http://puyallup.wsu.edu/wp-content/uploads/sites/403/2015/03/companion-plantings.pdf

A method of companion planting, or more correctly referred to as plant associations, that is more scientifically proven to be beneficial to your garden, is to include plants in your garden that provide nectar and pollen to pollinators and other beneficial insects. Here is a link that provides more information on beneficial insects: http://www.ipm.ucdavis.edu/QT/beneficialinsectscard.html. The following is a link to help you select good pollinator plants for your garden http://pollinator.org/guides.htm. Also, check out http://www.xerces.org for more great information on supporting beneficial insects in your garden.

Happy Gardening!

Rita's Monthly Gardening Tips, December 6, 2015

December is the perfect time to think about trees. In fact, the United Kingdom has the first week of December as National Tree Week to celebrate the beginning of the best time to plant trees. This is a much better time for folks living in California then the Arbor Day time of late April. The ground is just wet enough to make it easy to dig and the winter rains will help to establish the roots. While we’re thinking about trees let’s consider how trees impact the wildlife in our urban setting. Trees play a huge role in providing habitat for bees, birds, and butterflies. The Pollinator Partnership is an international organization whose mission is to promote the health of pollinators, critical to food and ecosystems, through conservation, education, and research. In 2016, their annual poster used for outreach and education shall focus on the many benefits that trees provide to pollinators, such as:

The canopy of the tree provides protection for all wildlife (evergreen canopies do so year round)
The branches provide a home for birds to perch and nest in
The leaves can offer food for some of our most beautiful butterflies such as the western tiger swallowtail.
The flowers of trees can give crucial nectar and/or pollen to a host of bees, hummingbirds, and butterflies
The fruit is a major part of the diet of many songbirds

Examples of trees that are locally adapted and create excellent habitat for wildlife are listed below. Select trees that are an appropriate size for your yard and meet the water, sun, and soil conditions that you have and they will give you and wildlife many years of beauty and enjoyment.

Trees as host plants for butterflies (a host plant is one that a butterfly can lay its eggs on because it is the only or one of the only plants its caterpillars can eat to complete its life cycle):

Salix spp. Willow

Aesculus californica California Buckeye

Platanus racemosa California Sycamore

Populus Cottonwoods, Poplars

Betula Birch

Prunus ilicifolia Cherry

Arctostaphylos manzanita ‘Dr. Hurd’

Trees as a source of nectar/pollen for butterflies:

Aesculus californica California Buckeye

Trees as a source of nectar for hummingbirds:

Arctostaphylos manzanita ‘Dr. Hurd’

Chilopsis linearis Desert Willow