- Author: Michele Martinez
San Bernardino County Master Gardeners and Fruit Preservers brought their Fruit Trees, Drought Efficient Trees and Shrubs Seminar to the Crestline Library, on Saturday, February 24. The well-attended workshop provided information tailored to the gardening needs of mountain residents.
Yucaipa Master Gardeners Jillian Kowalczuk and Adam Wagner began the day with fruit trees. Why do some trees love the mountains more than others? Looking around our neighborhoods, we see many healthy apple and cherry
Tree Selection & Care
Among cool weather-loving trees, we have many choices. The local nursery staff can help identify trees best suited to the specific area. Today new varieties are developed for flavor, tree size, and hardiness. They range from tasty hybrids, to dwarf trees that give fruit that can be harvested from the ground, without using a ladder. Once you have settled on the right tree, Jillian and Adam offered best-practices for preparing soil, planting, and caring for the tree. Nursery-bought trees don't always arrive in top condition, especially container trees which may have crowded or damaged roots. Bare-root trees are often less expensive, and can be easier to establish. Jillian and Adam concluded with tips on setting up drip watering for fruit trees, and pruning methods that promote both healthy trees and bountiful harvests.
Fruit Preserving & Canning
San Bernardino County Master Food Preservers is a sister program to Master Gardeners. Once we establish our
Finding the Right Plants for Mountain Locales
Local Master Gardeners Shelly Eagan of Big Bear, and Ken Witte of Lake Arrowhead, led the afternoon session with a focus on sustainable practices for mountain gardens. Shelly is a garden and landscape designer with a wealth of experience helping mountain residents select and care for trees and shrubs. Among her tips was to have your correct USDA and Sunset zone information in hand when choosing plants. In communities from Big Bear to Running Springs, Lake Arrowhead to Crestline, Shelly pointed out, there are a variety of zones, and several micro-climates can exist side-by side in our own yards. In observing such factors as wind direction, slope versus flat land, filtered or reflected sunlight, and so on, we can map our yards for hydro-zones, where plants are grouped according to water needs. Shelly gave examples of tried-and-true trees and shrubs, reminding participants that though a tree or shrub may be labeled “drought resistant,” new plantings need to be watered in the first two years, so their roots can take hold. Trial and error is part of the game for mountain gardeners, and attendees shared stories of hard-to-grow plants. Ken Witte concluded the day, sharing his work with the Heap's Peak Arboretum in Sky Forest. The Rim of the World Interpretive Association has collaborated with local scout troops to place educational signage along the trails at the Arboretum. Ken showed a series of Internet-based resources that feature mountain ecology, with information on native plants and their animal communities. For those of us hoping to establish native gardens at home, the Arboretum demonstration garden is a tremendous resource. While walking the trails, we can observe plants, birds, and insects in their ideal habitats, and figure out what species might suit our micro-climates. The Heaps Peak Arboretum offers a bi-yearly native plant sale, and is open year-round to visitors. Ken's information on mountain species is available at the Heap's Peak Arboretum web site: http://www.heapspeakarboretum.com/.
By Penny Proteau, U. C. Master Gardener of Napa County
It's time to get into the garden. Whether you are planning a new garden, renewing an old garden, adding color and interest for summer or hoping to grow award-winning produce, now is the time to get started.
How to start? Make a plan. Whether you sketch out a simple vision or commission a full set of drawings, your plan will be useful for all your future gardening decisions.
When drawing up your plan, evaluate your space. Where is the sun throughout the year? How do you want to use your yard? For recreation? Growing vegetables? Entertaining? Or perhaps as a play area for children? Do you have pets? Do you want chickens? Do you view your garden as a private retreat or a public space?
Canvas your neighborhood for yards that you admire. Make a note of what you like about the landscaping. You may think you'll remember, but notes help. For inspiration relevant to our location, take a look at http://www.napa.watersavingplants.com, an online resource for water-wise gardening in the Napa Valley
After you have committed your plan to paper, think about irrigation. Thoughtful irrigation and wise planting choices will save you a lot of fuss and heartache in drought years. California native plants offer a diverse palette. Also look at Mediterranean plants to increase your options. Both are suitable for our wet winter/dry summer climate.
Wise water planning also means hydrozoning, or putting plants with similar water needs on the same irrigation station. Consider using pots for specialty plants that may need different care and maintenance than in-ground plants.
For inspiration, don't miss the U.C. Master Gardeners of Napa County's garden tour on Sunday, May 21. Purchase tickets for the “Discover Garden Magic” tour online at
http://ucanr.edu/survey/survey.cfm?surveynumber=20204
Master Gardeners are volunteers who help the University of California reach the gardening public with home gardening information. U. C. Master Gardeners of Napa County ( http://ucanr.edu/ucmgnapa/) are available to answer gardening questions in person or by phone, Monday, Wednesday and Friday, 9 a.m. to Noon, at the U. C. Cooperative Extension office, 1710 Soscol Avenue, Suite 4, Napa, 707-253-4143, or from outside City of Napa toll-free at 877-279-3065. Or e-mail your garden questions by following the guidelines on our web site. Click on Napa, then on Have Garden Questions? Find us on Facebook under UC Master Gardeners of Napa County.
- Author: Jan Rhoades
“You can't grow Canna Lilies here. They are tropical plants, not meant for our zone.” This was a recent statement made by a “dyed in the wool” British gardening friend. If you are an adventuresome gardener, like me, you recognize a challenge when you hear it.
When you go plant shopping at a nursery or garden center, most plants will have a tag that shows the United States Department of Agriculture (USDA) Hardiness Zone. Hardiness Zones were created in order to guide growers and provide gardeners with an easy way to determine which plants are most likely to thrive in any given location. The Zones are defined by the average annual minimum winter temperature. They are then subdivided into sections A and B, based on 5-degree F increments. If you visit the Agriculture Research Service (ARS) (http://planthardiness.ars.usda.gov/PHZMWeb/) web page, it is simple to enter your zip code and find your Zone.
Charlie Mazza, Senior Horticulture Extension Associate at Cornell University, put it best when he said, “In the real world, we garden in microclimates, not hardiness zones.”
A microclimate is the climate of a small area that is different from the area around it. It may be warmer or colder, wetter or drier, or more or less prone to frosts. These areas may be quite small – a protected courtyard next to a building, perhaps, – or it may be quite extensive, an area extending several miles inland from a large body of water, for example. In general, large bodies of water tend to moderate air temperatures of adjacent inland areas - low temperatures in winter are not as extreme, and these areas are less prone to late spring and early fall frosts. Smaller bodies of water, like a pond in your yard, have the same effect, just to a lesser extent.
Another example is urban areas which tend to have less extreme low temperatures that the surrounding countryside because buildings and paved surfaces absorb heat during the day, then radiate it back into the air at night. These buildings also offer protection from the wind.
Topography also has an effect on micro climates. Cold air flows downhill and collects in low spots so hilltops may not suffer as much from frost or cold temperatures. For example, here in Bishop, it is generally colder down at the airport by the Owens River that it is up at Apple Hill Ranch in Wilkerson. Of course, north facing slopes are slow to warm up because they receive less direct sun compared with south facing slopes.
Large scale micro climates dictate how our area is USDA Zoned. There is not much one can do about these effects except to be aware of them and let them guide plant selection and garden timing. However, you can look for smaller scale micro-climate effects at work in your yard and take advantage of them. Just like urban areas, your house absorbs heat during the day and radiates it back at night. It also offers shelter from prevailing winds and presents areas of shade and warmth. Fences, walls and large rocks can provide shelter and radiated heat. Raised beds, terraces and balconies can, like hillsides, offer a warmer, well drained space for growing. Paved surfaces, trees and soil types also offer opportunities and challenges, depending on what you might like to plant.
In addition to the USDA Hardiness Zone, other things that must be taken into consideration when choosing plants include its needs for light, moisture and care throughout the growth cycle. There are also environmental factors such as wind, pollution and localized microclimates.
Be aware of driveways, sidewalks, patios, and paved paths that can absorb heat during the day and re-radiate it at night, moderating night-time temperatures. If impervious, these areas can't absorb water, and may create wet spots if the water that flows off of them goes into one, concentrated area. The same can be applied where water flows out of downspouts and gutters or off of roofs.
Focus, also, on height, spread, and orientation of trees and current plantings. Tall trees can create excellent micro climates on your property by shading and protecting plantings, but they can also prevent rain from reaching the ground and provide too much sun protection in the summer, too little in the winter, especially if deciduous. Another consideration about trees: competition for water and nutrients created by the roots may make it problematic to grow less-competitive plants around the base.
Remember, no hardiness zone map can take the place of what you know and have observed in your own garden and yard. For instance, I made the mistake – some years ago – of planting a sapling cherry tree in what I thought was a fine place – and now I realize that it is in the shade of my large, old apricot tree, so it doesn't get much sun. By the same token, I have learned to plant my lettuce in the shade of other, taller vegetables so that I can have lettuce all summer, right along with my tomatoes!
While we cannot easily arrange and rearrange structures, hard surfaces, and trees on our property, we can incorporate a number of so-called season extenders to add productive days to the normal frost-free growth cycle for your Zone and create microclimates to our advantage:
- Raised beds and containers promote early growth, since they warm up sooner in the spring than the rest of the ground, especially if one edge of the bed or pot faces south. They can also provide optimal soil conditions.
- Use row covers. Woven polyester row covers have the advantage over clear plastic covers because they allow air circulation around the plants. Structures that surround plants...help store heat during the day and release it at night to protect plants from frost.
- Incorporate mulches to create desired micro climates by warming the soil (black plastic), cooling the soil (alfalfa and/or wheat straw), controlling weeds, and conserving moisture.
Let's say you want to have lettuce for your sandwiches and spinach for your salads outside of the “normal” growing season for these vegetables. You can tap into the benefits of creating microclimates in your vegetable garden to accomplish this goal. By utilizing south-facing raised beds in full sun you can get your seeds planted a week or two earlier in the late winter. By planting in containers you can move to a shaded area in the summer, you can extend the productive period for these cool season crops. And, by using winter-weight row covers in the fall, you can protect these tender plants from the falling temperatures...often extending well past the first frost.
Or, maybe you want to grow a canna lily in Zone 7b. Creating a micro-climate by planting in a pot and moving it to favorable locations according to the season is one solution. I chose to put mine in a sunny south facing corner by my house. The corner is protected from the wind and a warm toasty place in any season. I used mulch to keep the roots moist and covered the rhizomes with more mulch to make it through the winter. A raised bed might also be helpful in the future.
Gardening by using the concept of micro climates is, of course, a risk. We shall see what happens if the El Niño winter that is predicted comes to pass. All gardening, in the end, involves risk. And, the more I observe my garden, throughout the day and throughout the seasons, I can see where the microclimates exist, so that at least the risk is calculated!
- Author: Gerry L Hernandez
What exactly is sustainable landscaping?
In a nutshell, it involves selecting plants that are adapted to your climate and microclimate and implementing maintenance practices that reduce water waste, protect water quality, nurture soil, recycle organic matter, incorporate integrated pest management, (IPM), protect and encourage desirable wildlife, and conserve energy.
- Choose plants recommended for your climate and microclimate.
- What is your climate zone? Sunset magazine develop the Sunset climate zones many, many years ago. It takes into consideration more factors than the USDA plant hardiness zones. What is your Sunset zone?
- So, what is a microclimate? My house sits in Sunset climate zone 8 but the front and back of the house are very different. For example, the front of my house has a very large tree and it is shady, dark and cool in the summer. I would never be able to grow sun loving plants like marigolds but my ferns thrive there. Another example would be my backyard. In my backyard there is NO shade! In the summer, it's hotter than a firecracker back there. In this case I would never be able to grow ferns but the marigolds would do well and be very happy. What are your microclimates?
- Avoid invasive plants! Many times these plants are great drought tolerant plants but they survive and spread on their own without human assistance. Some invasive plants (that can be found in stores) are Mexican Feathergrass (Nassella or Stipa tenuissima), Green Fountain grass (Pennisetum setaceum), Highway iceplant (Carpobrotus edulis), Pampas grass (Cortaderia selloana), Capeweed (Arctotheca calendula) and Big Leaf Periwinkle (Vinca major), Scotch Broom (Cytisus scoparius). For more information contact www.plantright.org/regions
- Author: Kathy Thomas-Rico
The other day an energetic knock at our door roused me from reading. It was my neighbor, a retired dentist and exuberant gardener, with a bouquet for me.
“I just pick the colors I like,” he said after I told him he could have a second career as a florist. Indeed, he could. But he’s too busy traveling and working in his huge hillside garden. “Just one Toter a day, is all I ask,” he joked as he jogged back to his property, to get back to work. “It’s a lot of work, and I don’t even have a lawn!”
The bouquet he brought me is a fine example of the colorful bounty lighting up his yard now. Who needs turf when you can look out on an eclectic mix of salvias, ferns, gaura, lantana, even ginger lilies (Hedychium gardnerianum) and bougainvillea? His yard has trees, too; mixed hither and yon are fruit trees (citrus, cherry, peach, olives), horse chestnuts, dogwoods and redbuds. A huge sycamore shades a great swath of his yard.
My neighbor gardens smart. Once or twice a year, you’ll find him out there throwing fertilizer when the weather report includes a high probability of rain. He uses the fallen leaves on his property for mulch. He manages to keep tropicals growing year-round by placing them in microclimates they like. His bougainvillea, for instance, grows on a south-facing, light-colored wall. His ginger lilies thrive in morning sun along another, shorter wall.
There’s nothing formal or staid about this garden. Yet it’s a pleasing eyeful, layer upon layer of flowers and foliage. And not a blade of grass to be seen. How refreshing!