We began our High Desert vegetable garden project last month with the intentions of having it ready to plant in the spring of 2014. So far we are on target. This year we are concentrating on preparing the vegetable garden on the north side of our chicken coop. We have already installed the cattle fencing and repurposed an old decorative gated archway, although we will replace the double gates with a single gate. We will reuse them in the herb garden. We plan to enrich our desert soil, without the addition of chemical enriched fertilizers.  Therefore, we chose to go about tackling this problem by raising chickens and gardens side by side where hopefully the two will benefit from each other.

First, Hubby built a chicken coop complete with a hen house that our friend Jamie described as a "Chicken Castle". He also provided them their own yard, consisting of a safe chain link covered area that protects them from local predators such as: Hawks, Owls and Coyotes. We placed the coop in between two vegetable gardens and installed an entry gate to each garden area. That will allow us to restrict or permit the chicken’s access to the side that needs their assistance. Next we intend to implement a rather old method, which would put our chickens to work; weeding, fertilizing and debugging our garden soil. Our goal is to alternate planting between the north garden and the south garden each year. Letting the garden rest the second year while the chickens clean and fertilize the soil preparing it for the following years planting.  Once we established our planting area Hubby rototilled in clean straw to add some organic matter to the soil. Hopefully it will help in preventing the winds from carrying away our much-needed topsoil.  Each time we clean the coop the chicken manure is spread around the garden and dug under. So far, that is working out much better than anticipated. Those ladies already have 1/4 of one side of the garden fertilized. The chickens will have access to the garden for a couple of hours daily which enables them to scratch at the ground, enjoy insects, larvae as well as any seeds, they may find. Once we get the corrugated metal along the fence line they will have more time in the garden. Until then we must supervise them, as they tend to go through the cattle fence oblivious that our dogs are on the other side.

While the chickens and nature are busy working throughout the winter we have time to get our soil tested. There are many benefits to having ones soil tested. The test will inform us of our soil type. This enables us to learn the actual percentages of: clay, sand, silt, or loam as well as the soil's pH. We will be provided with a list of the available nutrients in the soil as well as its nutrient deficiencies. Knowledge such as this will enable us to meet our plant's needs and grow the healthiest and most prolific plants. Desert soil tends to be somewhat alkaline, therefore, knowing the pH results will let us know exactly what type of amendments would benefit our plants. Information such as this will save us hours of frustration while ensuring our garden to be all it can be. To locate a soil testing company in San Bernardino County ~ Google:  soil testing San Bernardino, California.

Here in the Lucerne Valley, Ca we have plenty of wind, sand, sunshine and wildlife. The sunshine being most enjoyable, however, when gardening in the "High Desert" some of the others are not necessarily desirable traits. Providing protection from the wind and sand is obtainable in a variety of ways. For our vegetable garden we plan to install corrugated metal panels that are about two foot high around the perimeter of the garden fence. The panels will provide some wind protection, as well as a bit of shade during the hot summer months while also keeping some of the native critters at bay.

BY CAROL CONSTANTINE -

My patio container garden pots are looking rather bleak and woebegone this winter day, all except for one. That one is the half barrel that my DH used for his first experiments in gardening. He became very enthusiastic about natural foods after helping harvest and eating some heirloom tomatoes earlier this year. (Yes, I have saved seeds from those Mortgage Lifters!)   His first planting was a mixture of rainbow and Parisian ball carrots.

After slow growth week after week, the barrel with his experimental home-grown carrots was full of bright green, healthy, lacy foliage. He cautiously pulled up one plant. It was a tiny, perfectly formed orange carrot about one half inch long.

“Did you thin your carrots like we talked about?”

“Oh, yes! Well...sort of. Let's see if there are any more in the barrel.”

                                                

Fortunately we did harvest just enough carrots to have that night with dinner. I cooked them with a tiny bit of butter and some cinnamon. He declared that they were the tastiest carrots ever, and he is now looking through seed catalogs to plan another, more adventurous crop. I can hardly wait to see what comes up in that barrel next!

By jannike petrovska

Stressing Out Your Roses For Blooming Fun!!

 

It is time for bare root roses in southern California, and nothing fuels my love of
gorgeous blooms more than the petal-packed English roses, especially the David
Austins. The blooms are heartbreakingly beautiful, but the thorny shrubs -- not
so terrific to my eye. So keeping the blooms coming is of great interest to me.
Here's a simple trick that has the potential to transform your rose bush into a
blooming machine: put the canes under stress. No, I'm not suggesting you shout
at your roses and call them ugly names; that's too much stress for the roses,
your neighbors, and your vocal cords. I'm talking about bending the main canes,
the ones that come up from the base or bud union. Forcing these main canes into
a curved shape encourages more bud eyes (the little red dots that are usually
right above a horizontal line or node). The  bloom bearing canes emerge from the
bud eyes, so more bud eyes means more roses. This stressing technique is
especially effective with climbers, but can also be used on shrub roses  with
young canes or long flexible ones, and of course on most David Austins with the
gangly octopus canes they tend to grow in our sunny southern California climate.
Here are some fun ways to stress your roses:

Pegging: Grab the tip of a long cane and bend it down and around into
an arc. Tie the tip to a lower part of the cane, or use the grab of the thorns
to make a connection. I like to get creative with pegging, and shape my pliable
roses into giant hearts, globes and other interesting living structures.

Pillaring: Winding rose canes around a structure puts
them under stress, and increases blooms. I've used metal obelisks, and beautiful
antique posts as structures, but I've also made rose pillars out of simple 4 x
4s. Take a ten foot tall 4 x 4 and pound two feet of it into the ground. Using a
post level, a tool that attaches to the post and costs less than $10, helps you
keep the post  (yes -- what a surprise) level while you're installing it, or you
can just do this by eye. Insert wood screws up and down the post on all four
sides, but leave them sticking out some. These serve as anchors to grab the rose
canes. A touch of clear silicone on the screw threads will keep them from
scratching the canes. Wind your main canes around the structure, barber pole
style. Wind some of the canes clockwise, and others counterclockwise. For a
crowning  touch, I use screws with hand forged fancy heads instead of plain old
wood screws, and I top the 4 x 4 with a decorative finial.

Tying to fence rails: Bending the canes horizontally and tying them
to the rails also puts them under stress and encourages the growth of blooming
stems. I recently designed a rose fence for a client. We used six foot long
branches cut from one of his trees as our posts, and pounded two feet into the
ground to create a four foot tall fence. Holes were drilled in the tree branch
posts, and decorative wrought iron was threaded through the holes to serve as
the rail. This one-of-a-kind rose structure was simple to make, cost next to
nothing, and should transform his roses from wimpy to wunderbar.

Espalier: Bending the main canes into a fan shape on a
wall also stresses them. It's important to leave some airspace between the canes
and wall.  I attached an old, discarded screen porch grill to a garden wall, and
tied the rose canes to that. You can also use eye screws and wires, or wooden
lattice.

Growing up an arch, arbor, pergola, or
gazebo: You'll want to stress some of the canes by winding them up the sides of
the structure. If you run all the canes straight up, they won't be under stress,
and you'll only get blooming roses at the top where the canes are bent into an
arc. I like to use two roses on each side: one that grows straight up and then
arches over the top of the structure, smothering it in blooms. The second rose
snakes from the ground up, creating a luxuriant flower covered wall; thus
maximum bloom potential over the entire structure, just by putting your rose
canes under stress.

Now, go have fun stressing out
your roses, and may the new year bring you many blooms!

 

Choosing This Year's Roses

-- By jannike petrovska --

No. I'm not obsessed with roses. In fact, the gardens I design for myself are composed of shaped hedges, artistic foliage, and subdued color, with an almost stark absence of blooms. But I'm imagining a new garden for Humpty Dumpty House Foundation, and I have to admit, some of the Romanticas, and many of the English roses, with their delicious fragrances, sky-high petal counts, and dreamy deep chalice shapes take my breath away. Regardless, I find designing with roses a challenge. Even when narrowed down to the Romanticas and English roses, there are oh-so-many choices. And unless you enjoy looking at thorny canes with bloomless or disease speckled foliage, "the right rose in the right place" is critical for superb performance. So for the past several years I've been collecting information about the best roses for a hot, dry southern California climate. Factors important to me were bloom power, color, disease resistance, form, and fragrance, in that order of priority.
,
Bloom Power: For sheer bloom power (with highest being a shrub smothered in roses year round), I've found Iceberg to be a rose that consistently delivers in our hot, dry area. But since I prefer quality to quantity, I hoped to find a stunningly beautiful, fragrant, disease resistant rose with enough repeat to keep at least a few blooms on the shrub most of the time, rather than an average rose with tons of nonstop blooms.

Color: The relationship between colors is one of the most important aspects of design, and  color scheme can set the mood for a garden. I wanted this garden to be contemplative yet playful, and felt I could accomplish this with a harmonious color story, but one that wasn't too sleepy. Harmonizing colors are those next to each other on the color wheel; green, blue, violet, for example, or orange, red, pink. Each color contains elements of its neighboring colors, and like good neighbors, adjacent colors often work well together in a quiet way. Finding at least three harmonious colors was my goal. A deep burgundy red representing love, devotion, and soulful introspection. A pretty pink with an oh-so-slight hint of burgundy. And a pinky-apricot for a playful splash of fun. A perfect color triad for the mood I wanted to create.

Disease Resistance: I wanted to grow vigorous, bloom-packed shrubs without the application of fungicides and pesticides, so finding disease resistant varieties was important.

Form: The deeply cupped and chalice shaped blooms found on many of the Romanticas and English roses is heartbreakingly beautiful to my eye, so I was willing to sacrifice sheer bloom power for awe-inspiring beauty.

Fragrance: I wanted the garden experience to be fully immersive, so only roses with fragrance were considered.


Armed with this list of priorities, I began my search. And after reading everything I could find, talking to rosarians and rose enthusiasts, and visiting public and private rose gardens, here are my choices for the new rose garden at Humpty Dumpty House.

1. Tradescant. I wanted a deep burgundy-red, preferably with canes long and flexible enough to wrap around an eight foot long horizontal support, or to climb an arbor. Colorwise, I knew this would be the hardest rose to find, so I searched for it first. My experience with deep red roses is that in hot weather many of them bleach out to a pink. That would topple the triad of harmony I was trying to build, and leave my color scheme flat. Chocolate Sundae and Rouge Royale are two deep red roses that hold their color well. And Chocolate Sundae, though it's not a Romantica or an English rose, does have a lovely chalice shape, albeit with a lower petal count. I've been growing several  Chocolate Sundaes in what should be ideal conditions, and I find it to be a stingy bloomer with no scent, otherwise it would have been a strong contender. Rouge Royale gets mixed reviews from rose enthusiasts, who either rave or complain about its repeat bloom and disease issues; people seem to love it or hate it. But I've been watching Rouge Royale in a garden where I work, and I've seen it with at least one or two blooms nearly nonstop, even through our brutal Sunset Climate Zone 21 summers. So Rouge Royale was second runner-up, but didn't win a spot in the new rose garden due to its short, rigid canes. Tradescant's canes are rigid as well, but they grow much longer, and Tradescant's color is even more striking than Rouge Royale's. Other roses that were considered for their good qualities include Prospero, The Prince, Dark Lady, LD Braithwaite, Falstaff, and William Shakespeare 2000. Of these, William Shakespeare 2000 gets outstanding reviews from people who grow it, but it tends to be a short rose, and the color can fade to pink in hot sun. Although not everyone who grows it reports Tradescant as a prolific bloomer, it gets good to excellent marks for bloom power, and very high marks in every other category.

Summary for burgundy-red roses in our hot, dry climate:
First place: Tradescant.
The best thing about Tradescant: People who grow it say it has a color not to be believed, and in hot sun it bleaches less than many other red roses.
The worst thing about Tradescant: Rigid canes.
Runners-Up: Rouge Royale, Chocolate Sundae, William Shakespeare 2000.

2. Alnwick. There are so many drop-dead gorgeous pink Romanticas and English roses that trying to choose one made me dizzy. Thank goodness I was looking for a specific pink. The roses that got excellent marks for heat tolerance, beauty, repeat bloom, and disease resistance were Scepter d'Isle, Sharifa Asma, Alnwick, Queen of Sweden, Yves Piaget, and Ingenious Mr Fairchild. I narrowed my choices to Alnwick, Queen of Sweden, and Scepter d'Isle because of their incredible beauty, and because the first two hedge well.  If I hadn't discovered that a rose I'd been swooning over for nearly a year was actually Alnwick, I probably would have had to flip a coin. I observed Alnwick perform through a miserably hot, dry summer. I liked that Alnwick's canes were long, thin, and flexible so they could easily be wrapped around a support. And the blooms left me speechless. As you can see from the pictures, Alnwick's pink is perfect with the deep burgundy of Tradescant.

Summary for pink roses in our hot, dry climate:
First place: Alnwick.
The best thing about Alnwick: The sheer beauty of its blooms, and its ability to form a hedge.
The worst thing about Alnwick: Some people who grow it claim it burns, but the one I observed did fine in full morning sun, and dappled afternoon sun, even in the summer.
Runners-Up: Scepter d'Isle, Queen of Sweden.

3. Carding Mill. In the category of apricot colored roses tinged with pink, Carding Mill won hands down. There were numerous raves about its heat tolerance, great performance in hot, dry climates, and lovely form. One person stated that it bloomed continuously throughout the heat of the entire summer. Of all the roses I checked into, Carding Mill was one of only a few that got no complaints other than a few mentions about its weak fragrance. Other roses with similar coloration that got excellent marks include St Cecilia, a paler apricot, and Abraham Darby, which was frequently characterized as a "blooming machine" with "incredible fragrance". Abe Darby, especially in heat, seemed tinged with a bit too much yellow for this particular garden, and for me, its form isn't quite as pleasing as that of Carding Mill, but it's definitely a rose I'll be looking to use.

Summary for apricot roses in our hot, dry climate:
First place: Carding Mill.
Best thing about Carding Mill: Lovely chalice shape, and performs exceptionally well in hot sun.
Worst thing about Carding Mill: Fragrance reported to be weak.
Runners-Up: St Cecilia, Abraham Darby

 

4. Wollerton Old Hall. While visiting a nursery, I stumbled upon Wollerton Old Hall, a soft, cream-colored rose tinged with the palest hint of apricot, and I couldn't resist using it as a counterbalance to the dark, moody burgundy of Tradescant. It's a fairly new rose, but in early reviews, some people are calling it "the most beautiful, most fragrant rose ever", and others are saying "it's washed out and boring", which brings out an important point . . .

What we love is deeply personal. Our gardens: an expression of what we love. Stunningly beautiful roses?  Ooh la la. 

 

Go out; look at lots of roses -- and take home the ones that sing to your heart.