- Author: Rebecca Suzanne
Recently, a friend forwarded me a New York Times article about the nationwide use of California water through the consumption of food produced in the Golden State. The article, based on data from the University of California at Davis and the Pacific Institute, states that the average U.S. resident uses 300 gallons of California water this way, every week.
In the face of the worst drought in California recorded history, my inclination has been to stop growing water-thirsty annuals of any kind, including fruits and vegetables. Yet the Times article gave me pause; I feel confident that I can grow an asparagus tip using less than their stated .22 gallons of water and I most assuredly can grow an onion slice using less than .7 gallons!
Gardeners far wiser than I figured this out a long time ago. The phenomenal Rosalind Creasy - long a proponent of sustainable gardening - wrote a 2014 post on just this topic: “When in Drought – Plant Vegetables”. In her post, Rosalind states that growing the average pound of lettuce commercially uses 15 gallons of water, a pound of tomatoes 22 gallons, and a pound of potatoes 30 gallons. Bio-intensive gardener John Jeavons, Director of Ecology Action and author of the best-selling How to Grow More Vegetables, has demonstrated through years of hands-on research, that organic home gardening uses up to 87% less water to grow vegetables as compared to commercial farming. Contra Costa Master Gardener and journalist Joan Morris offers these additional tips for growing vegetables in a drought:
- Don't spare the compost. Add 3 to 4 inches of compost to your garden beds and work it lightly into the soil. Healthy soil produces healthy plants, which need less water.
- Mulch. Add 3 to 5 inches of mulch on top of beds to help reduce water evaporation. Mulch can be almost anything including dried leaves, aged horse manure, extra compost or straw, not hay. Mulch also will repress weed growth.
- Install a drip irrigation system. Drip systems use much less water than any other form of irrigation, and the plants like it better, too.
- Be selective. Plant only what you like and only as much as you'll consume.
- Consider planting early maturing and short-season crops, which will use less water.
- Plant seedlings close together on an offset pattern, rather than in a row. This configuration uses less water and as the plants grow, they will shade the soil and reduce evaporation.
- Grow high-yield vegetables, such as beans, squash, egg plant, peppers and tomatoes. You'll get more for your water buck with these plants.
- Keep your beds weeded. Weeds not only are annoying, they compete with your plants for water and nutrients, and they are much better at grabbing them.
- When given a choice, plant determinate varieties. Determinate plants grow to a certain size and produce for a specific amount of time. Indeterminate varieties will continue to grow and produce until frost. The determinate types, with their shorter growing season, will use less water.
- Instead of planting seeds and watering the entire bed, start seeds in a tray and then transplant the seedlings into your garden.
- We typically do this with certain plants, such as tomatoes, in order to get a head start on the growing season, but consider doing it with the big seed plants such as pumpkins, corn and squash.
- Use shade cloth to help prevent soil evaporation and prevent sunburn.
- Try dry farming. Many plants, including tomatoes, can be dry farmed. Our Garden will have two demonstration beds this year, growing a number of different tomato varieties.
- For successful dry farming, you want to create a spongy growing medium that will hold water. The best way, Miller says, is to grow a cover crop over the winter and then cut the plants down and work them into the soil.
- If you didn't have a cover crop, then prepare the bed with lots of compost.
- Plant your tomatoes and water them as usual for the first few days to get them established, then water only once a week. Once the tomatoes flower and set fruit, cut off all water. The plants may not look great, but they will produce and some say the fruit will taste better.
So step aside, all you salvias and succulents – my vegetable garden is coming through! My rudimentary rainwater and graywater systems will do their best to keep those veggies hydrated, lots of nutrient-rich compost and a deep layer of mulch will keep them cool and moist, and long, deep sips from a drip irrigation system will fill in as needed.
Happy Gardening!
For additional information on dry farming tomatoes, see http://ccmg.ucanr.edu/files/140321.pdf
/span>Client's Request to MGCC's Help Desk: Hopefully the Water District will soon approve my plans to replace the back yard lawn with a Zen rock garden utilizing black and white gravel. I have two small dogs so I don't want to use chemicals to kill the grass. Do you have suggestions to kill the grass that are pet friendly? I went to the rock supply business and they advised me to put some black material over the dirt to prevent weeds/grass from sprouting up. Should I dig up the grass or is there another way?
Advice From the MGCC's Help Desk: The current drought situation has motivated people such as yourself to replace their lawns with alternatives that use less water. Your idea of a Zen rock garden sounds like a wonderful option. There are several ways to remove lawn grass. The one you choose will depend on how large your lawn is, how much manual labor you want to invest, how much you want to spend, and how big of a hurry you are in.
Herbicide
Although you said that you have two small dogs and don't want to use chemicals to kill the grass, after considering the available options, you may want to reconsider ... of course following all required instructions and precautions. There are a number of herbicides that will kill lawn grass, but most are not substances that Master Gardeners would endorse using as your primary solution as they often leave residuals that carry too much risk of eventually ending up in runoff and/or problems with adjacent plants. Some herbicides, such as glyphosate (the active ingredient in widely available Roundup™), leave much less residual, but overspray can also damage adjacent vegetation. According to the manufacturer's label, Roundup is safe for pets and children to walk on after it has dried completely. However, you may not want your pets eating plants treated with glyphosate. According to the National Pesticide Information Center, pets that come in contact with wet glyphosate products may drool, have stomach upset, lose their appetite, or become sleepy. If you were to decide to use glyphosate, you should follow the manufacturer's instructions carefully.
Physical Removal
Removing sod doesn't work if you have a persistent perennial lawn grass like Bermuda grass – however it will work with Blue, Rye, and Fescue grasses. Simply removing the sod on Bermuda guarantees that it will be back, since the roots go down for several feet, and it only takes an inch of root to grow it all back. In this case, the only way to get rid of the lawn is through solarization or herbicides — plus several months of waiting to be sure it's really gone.
Solarization
Weed Block Fabric
Because you mentioned that you had applied to the Water District for a rebate, you will need to use a biodegradable weed block fabric because your Water District considers “non-biodegradable weed-block material” as a non-qualifying rebateable material. Your hardware or home center should be able to provide you with the specifications of their weed block material so that you can confirm that it is biodegradable.
For even more information on lawn removal see the U.C. website http://www.ipm.ucdavis.edu/TOOLS/TURF/RENOVATE/comremtrf.html.
Please feel free to contact us if you need more information.
Good luck on your lawn removal and Zen garden project.
Master Gardeners of Contra Costa Help Desk
Note: The Master Gardeners of Contra Costa's Help Desk is available year-round to answer your gardening questions. Except for a few holidays, we're open every week, Monday through Thursday for walk-ins from 9:00 am to Noon at 75 Santa Barbara Road, 2d Floor, Pleasant Hill, CA 94523. We can also be reached via telephone: (925) 646-6586, email: ccmg@ucanr.edu, or on the web at http://ccmg.ucanr.edu/Ask_Us/
Help for the Home Gardener from the Contra Costa Master Gardeners' Help Desk
Reply from the CCMG Help Desk: The insect you brought to share with us is indeed a garden problem. It is a Western Spotted Cucumber Beetle (Diabrotica undecimpunctata). The adults of this beetle feed on the leaves of melons, squash and other cucurbits, as well as corn, potatoes, tomatoes, eggplant, beans, peas, beets, asparagus, cabbage, lettuce, and other vegetables...almost all the popular vegetables. They also feed on ripening peaches and apricots and other soft fruit. Management of this pest can be difficult if not caught early on. Small seedlings can be destroyed quickly; however, established plants are more likely to survive an attack.
The least toxic method of extermination is hand picking and dropping into a bucket of soapy water to drown them. Since the beetles are now attacking your Calendulas, you may want to remove or cut the plants down and bag the remains for disposal in your garbage in order to get rid of any potential eggs or larvae that may be on them. This should help reduce the population of the beetle in your garden.
Young seedlings and other small plants can be protected from damage by coverings such as screens, protective cloth, or individual cups or cones until they are large enough to tolerate damage.
Here is a link to some more information on this pest, along with pictures to help you with identification: ttp://www.ipm.ucdavis.edu/PMG/GARDEN/VEGES/PESTS/cucumberbeet.html
Good luck managing these destructive insects! Fortunately you covered your vegetables before the beetles moved in to your garden! Keep your protection in place. You probably should keep the covers until plants are at leasatlarge enough to withstand damage from the beetles.
Contra Costa Master Gardeners Help Desk
Note: The Contra Costa Master Gardener Help Desk is available year-round to answer your gardening questions. Except for a few holidays, we're open every week, Monday through Thursday for walk-ins from 9:00 am to Noon at 75 Santa Barbara Road, 2d Floor, Pleasant Hill, CA 94523. We can also be reached via telephone: (925) 646-6586, email: ccmg@ucanr.edu, or on the web at http://ccmg.ucanr.edu/Ask_Us/
- Author: noel millar
I just planted a Yoshino Flowering Cherry tree last January, so I can't complain when it doesn't produce fruit. Instead, it will produce beautiful, five-petal flowers in early spring - at least I hope so. I chose the The Yoshino Flowering Cherry Tree for its abundance of soft, white aromatic flowers in spring. It's a wonderful tree to use for bordering driveways, or to accent small areas in the lawn.
Cherry trees are among the earliest bloomers in Contra Costa County. So, if you like cherry blossoms, then planting an ornamental cherry, such as the Yoshiko, is a great option.
As beautiful as my ornamental cherry is, growing cherries from my own fruit tree sounds even more appealing to me. I mean, given the choice, I could polish off a whole bowl of sweet, delicious cherries in place of any other afternoon snack.
But, I found there is the challenge of growing a successfully productive sweet cherry tree, and the very the real challenges it has to overcome here in the Bay Area. They need a certain number of winter chilling hours (and its been hot until now), they are very sensitive to both over/under watering (can you say drought?!), and, often need a nearby pollinator tree (unless grafted to include one).
Without meeting the chilling hours required for each variety, the tree will not break its winter dormancy and fruit production will be affected. You could see anything from decrease fruit production to delayed bloom or foliation, or maybe the tree will continue to bloom for much longer than it should be, so chilling is a necessary requirement.
As of this writing (May 26), there have been 878 hours of chill with temperatures below 45 degrees fahrenheit, but above 32 in Concord. Apparently, chill hours are also affected by being too cold. To put this in perspective, popular Bing Cherry trees need somewhere between 700-900 chill hours, so some of these, as well as other cherries, could be affected this year.
Well, that all spooks me a bit. But, hey, that is the fate of the home gardener...we will not always be successful. For now, I will grow my Yoshino Flowering Cherry, but I plan to try my luck with a fruiting cherry next year.
For more information on sweet cherries, see: http://homeorchard.ucanr.edu/Fruits_&_Nuts/Cherries/
For more information on chill hours and tree selection, check out: http://homeorchard.ucanr.edu/The_Big_Picture/Tree_Selection/
Client's Request: A visiting friend of mine has given me as a present a large 5 gallon Peony (Paeonia lactiflora 'Festiva Maxima'). These friends grow these back East, but I'm not familiar with Peonies or growing them here in Contra Costa County. Would you please provide me with some guidance on planting and caring for this Peony in my garden?
CCMG Response: Thank you for contacting Master Gardeners with your question regarding planting your new peony. How lucky you are to receive a five gallon Peony from a friend! Often a showy spring flower in colder Eastern gardens, they can also be grown in temperate Contra Costa County when situated properly in the garden.
A permanent, morning sun only or partly shady site is ideal for your peony. Protection from afternoon sun and from harsh winds will help to prolong its life. Peonies will perform best in well-drained, evenly moist, rich soil with a pH near neutral. They are drought-tolerant once established. Hardiness Zone: up to 8 means that the cooler spring/summer exposure the better and that cold exposure in winter isn't a problem. This most likely will lead to planting it with a north-easterly exposure in the garden trying to be “cool” in the summer at the same time trying to get adequate morning sun.
- Good drainage! Reasonably good soil!
- Usually needs a sunny location for blooms - will do well in light shade but best blooms usually on those in full sun. In central and east county you will want a spot with morning sun and partial or afternoon shade (ideally 4-6 hours of morning sun).
- Keep away from large trees or heavy shrubs to avoid root competition.
Soil Preparation - important factor in growing peonies! Prepare well before planting!
- Planting hole – Dig twice as wide as actual root size. Dig or till in a 2 - to 4 - inch layer of organic matter into heavy clay soil. Mix double handful of bone meal with soil for each plant. Sunset Western Garden Book also recommends letting the soil settle for a couple of days before planting.
- Planting - Ideal time is early fall. Once planted, peonies can be left to grow undisturbed indefinitely. They may take 3 - 4 years to reach mature size; may not bloom first year and only a little the second
Watering – All peonies need regular water and should not be allowed to dry out. Apply 2 – 3 inches of organic mulch to retain moisture.
Here is a link to additional information about pests of peony in the landscape:
http://www.ipm.ucdavis.edu/PMG/GARDEN/FLOWERS/peony.html
Please let us know if you have any additional questions regarding growing peonies in your area!
Contra Costa Master Gardener Help Desk
Note: The Contra Costa Master Gardener Help Desk is available year-round to answer your gardening questions. Except for a few holidays, we're open every week, Monday through Thursday for walk-ins from 9:00 am to Noon at 75 Santa Barbara Road, 2d Floor, Pleasant Hill, CA 94523. We can also be reached via telephone: (925) 646-6586, email: ccmg@ucanr.edu, or on the web at http://ccmg.ucanr.edu/Ask_Us/
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