- Author: Kathy Low
After my failed attempt at citrus grafting last year, I find myself once again browsing the Citrus Clonal Protection Program (CCPP) website. If you're unfamiliar with the CCPP, they are a wonderful source of citrus budwood. A cooperative program between UC Riverside, the California Department of Food and Agriculture, the US Department of Agriculture and California citrus growers, the program provides a safe means for introducing disease free citrus from other regions of the nation and other countries into the state. Located at the University of California Riverside's Lindcove Research and Extension Center in the San Joaquin Valley, the CCPP makes available over 250 varieties of disease free citrus budwood from across the country and across the word.
For gardeners, the CCPP provides an inexpensive means of obtaining citrus budwood (75 cents per bud plus shipping). You have an enormous variety of citrus to select from, including eighty four varieties of mandarins, thirteen varieties of blood orange, thirty five varieties of navel orange, sixteen varieties of Valencia orange, fourteen varieties of sweet orange, five varieties of sour orange, twenty four varieties of grapefruit and pummelo, twenty varieties of tangelo and tangor, six varieties of Eureka lemon, nine varieties of Lisbon lemon, fourteen other varieties of lemon like a seedless lemon and a Laphitiotiki lemon, nine varieties of lime, limetta and limequat, seventeen specialty citrus varieties including Buddha's Hand, kumquat, orangequat, mandarinquat, citron, calamondin, and Yuzu.
Go to their website at www.ccpp.ucr.edu and follow the directions for obtaining a username and password. Once you obtain those, you can order budwood online. Budwood is shipped only a few times a year. A calendar of cutting and shipping dates can be found on their website. The March deadline for placing your order is April 2, 2017.
- Author: Betty Victor
The new seed catalogs have arrived-just in time. It's almost outside planting time. If you have started your seeds indoors you are way ahead of me.
As I go page by page looking at all the vegetables and flowers, some which are old favorites, but I have also seen so new ones got me wondering how they all look so perfect. (I know they choose the best one and in some cases they use trick photography) so I have been told.)
Doesn't it make you hope that what you plant will look like the ones in the picture, no blemishes, perfect shapes and colors?
We follow the instructions on the packages on planting and caring for what we plant, but some resemble the catalog picture, but others-not so much.
If a problem pops up and I can't get it under control, that's when I go to the UC Master Gardener website for help. (mgsolano.ucanr.edu)
But I have to say last summer we may not have had picture perfect vegetables that we planted, but we did have enough tomatoes to make tomato sauce in several bags to freeze to use during this past winter.
So I will continue to look at these catalogs with the perfect vegetables and flowers. Then when it's time to plant our outside crops, we will care for them and enjoy them perfect or not.
One final thing, the Master Gardeners of Solano county soon will be starting up at the Vacaville Farmers Market, in May on Saturdays' Vallejo's Farmers Market is going on now, also on Saturday's in Fairfield they can be found at Home Depot Garden Shop every other weekend starting in April.
So if you have any gardening questions, please stop by at one of these information tables.
- Author: Diana Bryggman
Unless you move into a brand new house with a complete blank palate of a landscape for you to design and install, you are bound to inherit some plants that are unfamiliar to you. Four and a half years ago, we bought a 1958 ranch house that was partly landscaped. It was a mystery that the backyard was nothing but a field. Didn't everybody plant trees and a lawn in the 1950's?
Even stranger was the front yard. One side of the house had mature foundation plantings that were in reasonably good shape. The other side had almost no plants at all, even though beds had been laid out and the old irrigation system was in place. I was familiar with the Acer palmatum, the azaleas, the rhododendrons, and the ferns planted in the front yard. To the side was a small tree that I eventually identified as some variety of Cornus. However, behind the Cornus, which I suspect to be Cornus nuttallii, right up against the west side of the house was a leggy, leafy green, evergreen arching shrub that I could not identify, and neither could anybody who saw it. I finally cut a branch and took it to the Master Gardener office to consult with Jennifer Baumbach, who knew that some part of the word "laurifolium" or a derivative of that was part of the name. After a thorough internet search, EUREKA! Cocculus laurifolius appeared and the mystery was solved. My interest in the plant grew as I researched it once it had been identified.
Sunset describes this plant as suitable for Zones 8, 9, 12 - 24 and able to live in either in sun or shade. Further, Sunset adds that Cocculus laurifolius is one of the few large shrubs that can thrive in full shade and is easily trained to a trellis to form a screen. I had just the place for it, where it would not take away from the dogwood and could fill in a dull shady wall.
Now it was time to transplant. That required the talent of my laborer, AKA husband. And it involved not just shovels and picks but the dreaded digging bar, as the huge root seemed to be growing into the foundation of the house. We dug and we pulled and we dug and we pulled. Eventually we got a few separate plants out of the ground and planted them in a couple of different spots. What started as about a 7-foot shrub has now been cut down to transplantable size, about 24 inches high and attached to a huge root structure. The transplant is in shade, but will receive some morning sun in summer. I have kept it covered with deer mesh to discourage browsing, as this new location is more easily accessed by the antlered neighbors. The leaves are green and the plant seems to be adapting, but only time will tell if the former mystery plant has truly made itself at home. I hope it does, as the fast growth I read about would certainly create a nice backdrop for the dry creek I have in mind for the adjoining space.
- Author: Jennifer Baumbach
Join the UC Master Gardeners this weekend, March 11 at 10am to learn about Vegetable Gardening. When to start, what do to and how to do it.
Location: Dunnell Nature Park & Education Center, 3155 Hillridge Drive, Fairfield.
This is a FREE presentation! for more information contact Jennifer Baumbach at 707-389-0645 (texts ok) or jmbaumbach@ucanr.edu
- Author: Betsy Buxton
Well, it was supposed to rain today, so I didn't plan on being in the yard working. Alas, it was only gray, windy, and cold –little rain! The roses next to the house and in the large side yard are pruned (all rosarians stay away!), the root rose which keeps coming up next to the deck as been clipped back and sprayed with a product called “Sucker Stop” –it really works, and the last rose in that area is the Rugosa at the corner which grows helter-skelter.
When we prune our roses yearly, we are told to follow the growth pattern of the plant and make our heading and thinning cuts so that the plant is balanced and open. This works for many roses, but Rugosas seem to toss out new growth with no consideration for neatness nor shape. This little guy, it never has grown taller than 2 ½ feet but goes several feet in circumference, is the poster plant for cartoons about roses. There are many thin, extremely thorny branches which delight in snagging clothes and skin, although the deep pink blossoms more than make for the momentary pain from the scratches I endure (the plaintive requests to “give me back my shirt”)! Next up are the OGR (Old Garden Roses that stand guard at the edge of the patio; they have the most beautiful bi-colored roses with wonderful fragrance but mighty wicked thorns. After that I will be the pruning of the ramblers on the pergola which keep the hydrangeas in shade. Still later will be the rose way in the back and the far side yard; these have to wait until the “mud flats” have dried out enough to walk on without “ice skating” on the mud.
We have had 2 large decks at the back of the house for 20+ years, and this might be their last year. Both are in need of decking boards and tweaking to the under pinning and are home to numerous skunks (or some it seems by the smell), and other critters looking for shelter and a warm place to sleep. Also, the steps are getting a little too scary in the evenings and frosty mornings for people of a certain age. Removing the original steps to the back door which are now hidden by the main deck and enlarging them to descend to a paver patio sounds like a lot of work, BUT cheaper and safer in the long run, especially with a handrail or two. I just wonder the critters will go when “home sweet home” disappears.
I'll let you know what the decision is! Don't forget us at the Vallejo Farmers' Market on Saturdays.