May 2015 To-Do In The Garden

Once again, courtesy of those wonderful folks at Sloat Nursery in Danville, here is your to-do- list for the month.  Sign up for their e-newsletter and all this - and more - will come to your email.  Check out their Garden Guru column for answers to questions you didn't know you had.  And Happy Gardening!

May

• Plant annuals like petunias, marigolds, begonias, lobelia, salvia and zinnia.
• Re-seed radishes, carrots and beets.
• Plant late summer edibles like pumpkins, squash, sunflowers, peppers, basil and melons.
• Select garden-ready dahlias, perennials, hydrangeas, and hanging baskets.
• Fertilize rhododendrons, azaleas and camellias with E.B. Stone Organics Azalea, Camellia & Gardenia Food.
• Give vegetables a boost with E.B. Stone Organics Tomato and Vegetable Food.
• Feed containers and hanging baskets with Maxsea All Purpose fertilizer.
• Plant new containers with E.B. Stone Formula 420 to provide the best moisture holding capacity.
• Prune spring-flowering shrubs after bloom is past. Prune spring flowering Clematis to control size and shape.
• Mulch vegetable and flower beds with Sloat Forest Mulch Plus to control weeds and conserve moisture.
• Freshen up containers and replace spent annuals with colorful 4-inch perennials such as verbena, calibrachoa, coleus, bacopa and ipomoea.
• Don’t forget mom on Mother’s Day! We have blooming flowers, gift cards, and hanging baskets.
• Check out our selection of specialty hand tools, gloves and sun protective hats.
• Release ladybugs and other beneficial insects to help control aphids, mites, whiteflies, and other garden pests.
• The spittle bugs have returned!  Learn more. >
• Stake tall perennials such as Dahlias.
• Use beneficial nematodes to manage grubs in your lawn
• Deadhead spring bulbs but leave the foliage until it turns yellow.
• Pinch back late summer and fall perennials to promote better flowering, especially mums and asters.
• Check your hose fittings for spent washers and leaks. Ensure your hose has a shut off valve or other water conserving feature. Consider a soaker hose to conserve water in your vegetable garden.

November In The Garden

Okay, once again thanks to Dustin and all the smart folks at Sloat Nursery in Danville (and other places), here is your to-do list for November.  Have fun, and don't forget to shop at Sloat!  

November: What to do in your garden this month

• Look to plant cyclamen in early November. It’s also a great time to plant ground covers and sweet peas.
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• Think fall & winter color: Violas and pansies are perfect for creating mass color in containers or flowerbeds. Available in a variety of hues, they are a terrific ground cover to plant over bulbs in pots or in the ground.
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• For a hardy alternative, consider planting ornamental cabbage and kale.
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• Prepare planting beds for winter. Clear weeds and rocks. Till soil and add soil amendments.
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• Fall is for planting! Get shrubs, perennials and trees into the ground this month. Winter rains will help develop a strong root system.
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• Select bulbs for spring bloom and winter forcing such as hyacinth, paperwhite & tulips.  Refrigerate hyacinth, crocus and tulips 4 to 6 weeks prior to planting.
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• Apply a lawn fertilizer and pre–emergent to control and prohibit annual bluegrass, crabgrass, and other weeds in your lawn and flower beds. Also, aerate and fertilize the lawn with E.B. Stone Nature’s Green.
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• De-thatch lawn if necessary
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• Top-dress perennial beds, azaleas, camellias, and rhododendrons with Sloat Forest Mulch Plus and feed with 0-10-10 fertilizer monthly until bloom (E.B. Stone Organics).
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• Divide the roots and rhizomes of perennials such as agapanthus, yarrow and iris.
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• Store away and clean any unused pots and containers that can be used as hiding places by overwintering insects, slugs and spiders.
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• Lightly prune Japanese maples while still in leaf. Select and plant maples for fall color.
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• It’s time to fill your bird feeders for winter. You can also try a suet feeder!
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• Clean up dead leaves, deadhead flowering plants- diseased leaves should go in the garbage, the rest can go in the compost pile
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• Mulch with compost or Forest Mulch to amend the soil and keep down weeds
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• Pull weeds before they have a chance to drop seeds.  Apply a pre-emergent after fall rains to stop germinating weeds.  Concern Weed Prevention Plus is a safe product derived from corn gluten.
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• Move perennials and shrubs between now and January-prune back lightly first
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• Continue to bait for snails with Sluggo
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• Strip roses Dec-Jan, prune in Jan-Feb
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• Fertilize cymbidiums with 6-25-25 food
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• Fertilize blue hydrangeas with E.B. Stone True Blue now for bluer blooms
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• Fertilize winter color with a blooming plant food (primrose, cyclamen) such as Maxsea 3-20-20.
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• Continue to fertilize citrus with E.B. Stone Organics Citrus Food or Greenall Citrus and Avocado food.
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• Clean and store tools- rub down with alcohol after each use. Grease with white lithium grease to prevent rust. Store shovels and saws in a bucket of sand with a little oil (5 parts sand-1 part oil)
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• If frost is imminent, be sure to water your garden (if it hasn’t rained recently).
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• Use Bonide All Seasons Oil when roses and fruit trees have lost their leaves

PLANT IT NOW! October & November are truly the most advantageous months of the year to get perennials, trees, vines, shrubs and cool season vegetables into the ground. 

Planting now will allow roots to become well established for much stronger, more vigorous plants come springtime. Fall and winter rains mean nature does the weekly watering for you, plus most gardeners see fewer pest and disease problems in the fall.

Happy Gardening!

Plant It Now

I just gave a talk on planting - where I live, in the SF Bay Area, this is prime planting time.  And on planting responsibly, because we are having a drought.  

People say we're in the middle of a drought, but how would they know?  I'm hoping we're at the end of the drought, and for a while the weather prognosticators were predicting a very wet winter, but we haven't heard much from them since they said "Um, maybe not..." a few months ago.  I realize it's a tough job, but seriously?  if you can't do it, don't sign up.  And if you're not sure, say so.  Although a career based on "Really, we're just guessing," or "This is what the dartboard/ouija board said" is perhaps a career with a tenuous future.  Or not...what does the dartboard say?

But back to the garden:
Plant things that need less water, please.  Get them established now, while the soil is warm (better root growth!) and the days are shorter (not so drying! less watering needed!)  And really, you know that even things that are drought tolerant need water to get established, right?   Daily water if it's hot, more often if it's stinkin' hot, less if it's cool.  The best watering guide is your finger: stick it in the soil up to the first knuckle.  If it's dry, water.  If it's wet, don't.  And if this grosses you out, you should get another hobby.  Or obsession.  Maybe needlepoint, because if this grosses you out, you are so not a gardener.

Another recommendation: don't plant a bunch of water-sucking annuals.  Of course if you believe in Murphy's Law, and you find your drought-tolerant cyclamen rotting in a puddle of water in January, you can be upset with me, and rue the unplanted pansies.  Or you can consider the cyclamen an offering to the rain Gods and be thankful the drought is over - for now.  

My friend whose roof will be off all winter says she's fine either way - either it doesn't rain until the new roof is on, and things stay snug and dry, or it does rain, and she is willing to sacrifice her hardwood floors and plaster walls for her garden.  For all of our gardens.  

So back to planting annuals: think about where you'll actually see them  - like just outside your kitchen window.  Or right next to the door you come in when you come home.  (Note: this would be a problem for me - I would have to plant flowers on the refrigerator in the garage.)  And don't plant annuals along the driveway if you don't walk down the driveway, or you can't see it from inside the house.  Just sweeping past with the headlights  once a day does not justify all that water.  

Remember that the color you can see at night - the only color - is white.  But yellow is so cheery on a gloomy winter day I always put some yellow pansies or primrose outside the kitchen window.  And for those of you who are snarking that white is not really a color, off to the needlepoint store with you.

Plant a pot or two of annuals by the front door - if you use the front door.  Or of you're planning a party.  You can ignore the water rules in a few pots.  Plant the annuals with something perennial and spiky, and something that will spill out of the pot.  Because you know when you're planting a pot, you're thinking "Thriller, Filler, Spiller", right?  After contemplation, if this does not make sense to you, see the note above about taking up needlepoint.

This is also the best time to plant perennials that are fragrant directly into the (well amended) soil in the garden.  Sweet Box (sarcococca ruscifolia or s. humilis) in the shade next to a door, or under a bedroom window, will waft soft clouds of honeysuckle fragrance all winter, and it is brilliant in a flower arrangement.  It lasts forever and smells heavenly, and no one expects that divine fragrance to be coming from such a mild-mannered plant.  I try to have a few sprigs in a vase by my bed.  I love waking up to the smell of the garden.

Daphnes are great - the variegated forms are my favorites, because they light up the shadiest corner.   Try Sweet Olive (osmanthus fragrans) in a sunnier spot - it smells like the most divine freesia, starting now and blooming off and on thru the year.  I have one osmanthus by the pool that blooms mostly in summer, and one by the gate that blooms mostly in fall and winter.  No idea why.  But never thump a free melon.

And if, like me, you've let some of the thirstier plants die this summer, now is the time to replace them with less thirsty cousins.  My hydrangeas had a really tough time, they spent most of the summer with leaves drooping limply.  I'm giving them to a friend who has springs on her property, and I'm putting in sweet box, and camellias (surprisingly tough) and some topiary boxwood just for fun. 

Sloat Garden Center in Danville is a great resource for less thirsty plants.  So is Orchard Nursery in Lafayette.  Passionate knowledgeable staff, beautiful displays - where are my keys?  I'm off to look for inspiration.