January, February, and March

Just four chores per month, one per week, to consider this wintery season.  Hopefully, there are enough pleasant winter days to get them accomplished.

January Ideas

ONE – Plant a bare root rose or fruit tree if there is room in the landscape. If not, pick up a few summer blooming bulbs (such as dahlias, gladiolus, lilies and begonias) and plant them in the ground where they will add color to the landscape or in a pot that can be moved at will.

TWO – Sharpen pruning tools, then dry them and rub them lightly with oil to prevent rust. Don't put them away wet and dirty, which can encourage the formation of rust.

THREE – Prune your roses with those sharp pruners. Vines, fruit and shade trees or grapes will benefit from a good pruning if there are no roses needing a pruning.

FOUR - Rake and discard fallen leaves (a compost pile will enjoy the addition) to prevent or reduce over-wintering pests.

In February:

ONE – Cut back woody stems on butterfly bush, fuchsia, and Mexican bush sage to within a few inches of the ground to stimulate new growth and prevent a leggy, scraggly look.

TWO – Spread some love. Give a small native California plant to a friend, a neighbor, a family member, or yourself. The plant will flourish in our climate and need far less water than other specimens once it reaches maturity

THREE – Start some seeds indoors. Pre-germinate pea seeds on moist paper towels in a warm room for a few days before sowing. See Lee Miller's Winter 2012 or Trish Tremayne's Winter 2015 articles on starting seeds for more information.

FOUR – Feed citrus trees with a nitrogen-rich fertilizer that contains additional nutrients such as Magnesium, Boron, Copper, and Zinc.

March Notes:

ONE – Plant some potatoes. Potatoes can carry soil-borne diseases which are harmless to humans but devastating for a potato plant. Buy seed potatoes from a nursery or a mail-order company that certifies the seed potatoes are disease free. Whole potatoes can be divided to give you a bigger crop by cutting the potatoes into chunks that each contain one or two eyes (the small depression where sprouts will form). To prevent rotting, store the freshly cut pieces at room temperature for three days before planting to allow the cut surfaces to dry and form a callus. Potatoes are heavy feeders, so planting with a good amount of compost will help the plant and your harvest. Potatoes can be heavy producers and harvesting them feels like a “treasure hunt.” This is a fun vegetable for children to plant and harvest.

TWO - Prune suckers (the branches that sprout directly from the root stock beneath the soil) from trees and shrubs. 

THREE – Check drip irrigation for leaks in the lines and make repairs as needed. Flush out sediment from filters, check screens for algae and clean with a small brush if necessary. Make sure all emitters are dripping water. If some are clogged, replace them (if you can't remove one, install a new emitter next to it). Add emitters to lines if plants have grown significantly since the system was installed. Put new batteries in your electronic drip controllers and check the settings. Checking, repairing, adding/changing emitters and all the other things involved in readying drip irrigation for the coming season often takes longer than anticipated. Feel free to make this chore last two weeks.

FOUR – March right into a local nursery to see (and maybe purchase) annuals, vegetables, and perennials that are available now to fill in those bare spots in the landscape.

Information gathered from:

www.ipm.ucdavis.edu

www.sunset.com/garden

www.farmerfred.com

For Janet Setser being the Garden Coordinator for the University of the Pacific's Robb Garden isn't just a job, it is a way of life. She has a vast knowledge of gardens and healthy eating from her travels around the world, especially Central Asia, she intends to share with her students and the larger Stockton community.

Her recent appointment as the Garden Coordinator for the Robb Garden will allow Janice to not only spend more time with her aging mom, but also support and share her passion for gardening on a grand scale. She is excited at the opportunity to teach students and the community how to grow healthy fruits and veggies and expand the community's knowledge about plants from around the world. She also looks forward to sharing information about the medicinal uses of plants from around the world.

In 2008, Pacific students Fiona Kelly and Vinny Johl initiated the campus food garden. Former Pacific Regent Walter Robb, who at the time was CEO of Whole Foods Market, provided financial support to create the garden. Janice plans expand the diversity and develop the garden to include year-round veggies, fruits, flowers, herbs and plants grown locally and from other countries.

Janice and her small cadre of students and community gardeners are developing a hands-on approach to learning not only how to grow produce, but also to gain a better understanding about the importance of creating healthy soil, growing more diverse plants, and being a more sustainable gardening operation.

She is also striving to bring more students as well as community members, young and old, with or without gardening experience, to the garden. She hopes her outreach into the community will bring interested volunteers to the garden to learn as well as share their knowledge of gardening with familiar as well as the unfamiliar fruits, vegetables, herbs and weeds from other parts of the world.

To help Janice in the garden and gain hands-on experience are four hired staff members and interns that work 6-8 hours each week, along with a host of volunteers to learn all they can about the garden and sustainable living. Produce grown in the garden is available to students to purchase and what ever is left over does not go to waste but is made available in the student food pantry.

As the result of her travels around the world, she intends to create opportunities to introduce students and volunteers to unfamiliar plants and weeds she has encountered not only for food, but for medicinal purposes as well.

High on her to-do list is to go beyond growing a year-round garden to help students and community members learn to live more sustainable lives by using less and not just tossing everything in the trash. She is teaching each of her students how to “grow” a compost pile made up of daily waste such as dead leaves, branches, twigs, food scraps, coffee grounds, paper, and other organic matter. Not only does compost reduce the amount of waste that goes into the landfill, it also provides the garden a valuable fertilizer to enrich soil and plants naturally. Composting is such an important component of the garden that Janice requires each student to work a compost pile as part of his/her garden duties.

Her immediate plans for the future are to provide her students with more hands-on volunteer opportunities in the garden and develop a “curriculum that is adequately simple” to allow students to replicate.

You've probably heard the alarming statistics on the decline of songbird populations. A study reported in Science magazine in 2019 gave the sobering news that nearly 3 billion birds (or 30% of the population) have been lost in the United States over the past 50 years.

A number of factors are behind this loss—cat predation, window crashes, diseases, climate change, and habitat loss. Cats kill approximately 2.4 billion birds in the U.S. each year. Keeping cats indoors or allowing them outside in a “catio” can reduce deaths from predation. Birds fly into windows because the reflection they see looks like a continuation of the outside environment. Patterns applied to glass, decals, and other specialized products are available to make windows appear more solid to birds. And it's important that bird feeders are cleaned regularly.

One of the important things gardeners can do is to create much-needed habitat for local and migrating birds. It's not difficult, and the resulting garden will benefit not only birds, but pollinators, insects, other wildlife, and people!

Following are ways to create a garden in which birds will thrive.

Choosing native plants is an important strategy. Natives support moths and butterflies which will increase the number of caterpillars available. This is critical because 96% of land birds rely on insects to feed their chicks—and caterpillars are full of the nutrients they need. 

Usually, birds find the larvae when they are small, so the increase in caterpillars shouldn't decimate your landscape. It may require a shift in thinking about the purpose of your garden, remembering that we can't have butterflies—or food for birds--without caterpillars. I have seen social media posts of gardeners proudly displaying their California pipevine (Aristolochia californica) laden with larvae that will become pipevine swallowtail butterflies (Battus philenor hirsuta).

Planting shrubs and trees that provide blossoms, berries, or seeds at different times of the year is another way to provide food for birds. Examples of plants that will attract hummingbirds in our area include:

• Silver bush lupine(Lupinus albifrons), with blue to violet flowers from April to July.
• California fuchsia (Epilobium canum), which produces bright scarlet flowers in the summer until fall, when many other flowers have already faded.
• Woolly blue curls (Trichostema lanatum), whichproduce lavender blooms in fall, winter, and spring.
• Bush monkeyflower (Diplacus aurantiacus) which blooms winter, spring, and summer

 

Including a variety of layers:

• Large canopy trees, which provide roosting and nesting spots. Local examples include:
• Oaks (Quescus species) which provide acorns in the fall and habitat for numerous insects.
• White alder (Alnus rhombifolia), which produces catkins in the fall.
• Shrubs and small trees for fruits and seeds, such as:
• Coffeeberry (Frangula californica), with white flowers in the summer followed by dark red berries.
• Wedge-leaf buckbrush (Ceanothus cuneatus) which produces white, light blue, or lavender flowers in the winter and spring followed by seeds.
• Herbaceous plants for seeds. These are more bird-friendly if they are clustered in masses of 5 or more:
• Red-flowered buckwheat (Eriogonum grande var. rubescens), which is a native of the Channel Islands, but does well inland with a little afternoon shade and extra water. It blooms in the spring, summer, and fall and produces abundant seeds.
• California aster (Corethrogyne filaginifolia), which blooms later in the year—summer, fall, and winter—and also provides seeds.
• Decaying leaves and wood—to provide habitat for the insects birds rely on for food.

Providing water in a man-made birdbath or simply a hollow stone is also helpful to birds. Ideall, it will be near a tree or shrub for perching, with running water that attracts birds and discourages mosquitos. Birdbaths should be cleaned with a solution of 1 part vinegar to 9 parts water and refilled at least every other day.

Avoiding pesticides. Bird-friendly gardens are also habitat for insect predators such as frogs, toads, bats, dragonflies, praying mantises and lady beetles which will keep the bug population in check. If you determine pesticides are necessary, use low impact strategies described here.

Creating a brush pile to provide shelter for birds or maintaining a slightly messy yard—with fallen leaves, woody debris, and seedheads that are left on the plants (rather than immediately deadheaded)—are  bird-friendly practices that have the added benefits of enriching soil and reducing work for the gardener. Again, these practices may require a shift in thinking about the purpose of your garden.

Doug Tallamy, a professor in the Department of Entomology and Wildlife Ecology at the University of Delaware and the author of Bringing Nature Home says it well, “In the past, we have asked one thing of our gardens: that they be pretty. Now they have to support life, sequester carbon, feed pollinators and manage water.”

Make your garden more valuable by thinking of it from a bird's point of view. It can be a wonderful home for local species and a welcome rest stop for migrating birds.

For more information:

https://www.calscape.org/

https://www.audubon.org/news/how-make-your-yard-bird-friendly-0

https://www.audubon.org/content/how-create-hummingbird-friendly-yard

https://www.growingagreenerworld.com/creating-a-bird-friendly-garden-margaret-roach/

No matter how many times I prune roses, I return to articles about pruning to sharpen my skills and memory, and this year is no exception. This is especially true as I experienced some problems during the growing season that I hope to correct with better pruning: spider mites, leaf loss, and less vigorous bloom.

Proper winter care is one key to healthy, beautiful roses. Not only do roses need to be pruned for health and good future bloom, but proper pruning is important to minimize diseases and insects during the growing season.

The goal of pruning is to remove dead, diseased, weak, and ill-placed canes and select strong healthy canes that will support the new year's growth. The rose needs an open center that allows for air circulation and sunshine in the middle of the plant.

 In our mild climate area, pruning should be done in mid-January when the buds are still dormant. You'll need sharp hand clippers, loppers, a curved pruning saw and sturdy gloves for the project. Using Lysol spray on your tools between roses will help reduce the possibility of disease transmission.

Your aim is to have an attractive, vase-shaped bush with 5-7 healthy, well-spaced canes. While there's debate among experts as to how much to prune off, pruning back 1/3 to ½ of the growth is a good guideline in mild climates.

Most gardeners are too timid when pruning roses. Roses are remarkably sturdy and forgiving of mistakes. As Liz Druitt says in The Organic Rose Garden, “Pruning a rose bush is not unlike giving a home haircut to a small child; you do the best you can, secure in the knowledge that if it turns out odd-looking, new growth will quickly hide your mistakes.” Here are some tips for successful pruning.

Tip 1: When in doubt, cut it out.

Make a preliminary plan for what main canes to keep. You want to identify 5-7 new, green, sturdy canes to keep, ideally in a vase pattern. They should be larger than a pencil. If a cane is small, the stem coming off it will be even smaller. Cut any dead or diseased canes down to the bud union (the enlarged area just above the roots from which the main canes arise). Cut out any old craggy, gray canes that have no productive growth.

Cut out any cane crossing directly over the center of the plant, either where it comes off another cane, or at the bud union. You want to increase airflow and sunlight in the center of the plant. Cut out any cane that is seriously crowding another. If it's in the way, cut it away.

Remove any rootstock suckers that come from below the bud union by tearing them off in a downward direction to destroy potential buds, if possible.

The pruning diagram in this article shows the thinning cuts that remove weak, dead, and crossing branches in blue, while the heading cuts discussed in the next tip are shown in red.

Tip 2: Find the right dormant bud

Reduce the height of the canes by 1/3 to 1/2. Find an outward-facing dormant bud and cut about 1/4 inch above it at a 45 degree angle down and away from the bud (see diagram). Use the sharp end of the pruner towards the cane to assure a clean cut. The pith should be creamy white, not brown or gray. If a chosen cane is not healthy, cut further down until you reach healthy pith, or choose another cane.

If the main cane is horizontally spreading, an interior bud may be a better choice as it will grow more upright. If the roses have already flushed growth, prune back to a dormant bud. A bud that has already begun to grow will continue to grow vigorously and bloom very little, while a dormant non-growing bud will initiate growth after pruning and produce an abundance of blooms.

Cut off spindly, weak, deformed growth from the canes, and cut out canes that cross. Ideally remaining canes should be larger than a pencil. This is less important on floribundas, which generally branch more than hybrid tea roses. Avoid the temptation to leave small branches and stems.

Some agricultural extension articles recommend brushing away any old scaly wood on the bud union with a wire brush or knife to encourage future basal breaks (new shoots coming from the bud union). New shoots become the rejuvenating canes of the future.

Tip No. 3: Leave no leaves, and clean up well

Strip the bush of all leaves, as last year's leaves could harbor insects or diseases. Clean up all dead leaves, twigs, and dried petals, as they can harbor eggs, insects, and last year's fungus as well. Rose canes do not decompose well and spores and eggs can survive the compost pile, so it's best to put them in the green waste bin and not to home compost them.

Weed, tidy up, and lay down 2-4” of mulch, keeping it a few inches away from the plant. Step back and admire your handiwork!

While these instructions are for hybrid tea, grandiflora and floribunda roses, there are other types of roses—shrub, miniature, climbing, old roses, roses that bloom only once a season, newly planted roses—that have somewhat different requirements. The following resources are useful for all types of roses:

Roses: Cultural Practices and Weed Control: Pest Notes, Publication 7465

Ten Principles of Rose Pruning: Martin, Robert B., Consulting Rosarian 

Pruning Roses: Evans, Mary, Tuolumne County Master Gardener 

Horticulture Update: Solving the Mystery of Pruning Roses: Welsh, Dr. Doug, Landscape Horticulturist