- Author: Laura Siering
Are you getting ready to start some seeds for your spring and summer gardens? Maybe you have some seed starting mix leftover from previous years. It is important to use disease-free soil for starting your seedlings in order to give them the best and strongest beginning and to help prevent damping off.
If a gardener is unsure whether their seed starting mix was free of diseases and weeds, one option is to sanitize the soil with heat. In the past we may have sterilized soil in the oven, but according to the LSU AgCenter, a quicker way to do it is in the microwave! Here's how.
Put seed starting medium in a microwaveable container. It could be a resealable, microwaveable plastic bag, or a glass dish. Make sure your soil has about 50% moisture. It will feel damp, but it won't drip liquid. If you squeeze a handful, it will form a loose clump that is easily broken up. Place it in your microwave and cook it for about 90 seconds in a 600-watt
oven. You want it to be at about 200 degrees Fahrenheit. Use a thermometer to verify the temperature and continue heating it in 30 second intervals until it reaches the correct temperature.
After it has cooled, you may plant seeds or start cuttings in it right away, or you may store it sealed up to a year.
Obviously this won't treat a lot of soil, but you don't need much to start seeds. If you need a lot of soil, you may want to purchase a new bag or bale of commercial seed-starting mix.
For more gardening information, check out the Master Gardeners of Inyo and Mono Counties webpage at: https://ucanr.edu/sites/newinyomonomg .
- Author: Alison Collin
One of the first to flower is Phlox subulata, the needle-leaved phlox, sometimes referred to as a moss pink, which makes dense mats of green leaves through the summer, goes dormant during the cold weather and then erupts into a brilliant carpet of either pale or dark pink, or lavender blue. A hybrid, 'Candy Stripe,' is more drought tolerant than the species. It grows about 6” tall and up to 2ft wide. It is not a desert plant but seems to cope with less than average water and is happy in a lean soil. The only down side is that it becomes brown and dead looking in the winter.
The Delospermas (shown at the top of the article) are low-growing small leaved succulents which are surprisingly hardy, forming dense mats 1-2” tall and up to 2ft or more wide. The daisy-shaped flowers come in a variety of colors, magenta, purple, salmon and yellow. I grow one called 'Firespinner' which is a striking orange/yellow combination the petals of which glisten in sun. These plants like a regular, moderate supply of water through the summer, giving them just enough to keep them green and healthy looking. My plants were covered in snow for a long time last winter, but were unscathed when the melt exposed them.
For fall color Zauschneria 'Everett's Choice' ( also known as Epilobium, California fuchsia, or hummingbird flower) is hard to beat. This native plant produces a profusion of bright red flowers from late summer well into fall. It grows 2-4” tall but will spread 3-5' wide, and as its common name suggests, it is loved by hummingbirds. It does best with summer water and a little afternoon shade in the hottest areas but is also drought tolerant, hardy and usually trouble free apart from occasional infestations from sphinx moth caterpillars. Other Zauschnerias grow taller and can become rangy without some pruning, but still have the striking tubular flowers.
Teucrium, or germander, comes from the Mediterranean and is at home in poor, rocky soils. T. majoricum is low growing to about 2ft wide, with narrow gray leaves and a steady production of pinkish-purple flowers on the end of its stems. It is easy to grow as long as it is planted in a sunny spot, has free draining soil, and is not over watered
Convolvulus sabatius is a member of the Morning Glory family but is nowhere nearly as invasive as the large flowered varieties. It is a low-growing, spreading plant which is hardy to Zone 8, although my plant came through last winter in spite of being covered with snow for several weeks. It is a little slow to get going in the spring, but then produces a steady stream of flowers until the first frosts. These are violet-blue in color. Unlike some of the previously mentioned plants the stems do not root to spread, but arise from the crown of the plant which makes it easy to control.
These plants aren't the only options available for low-growing color, but they are a good place to start.
(All photos by author.)
- Author: Dustin W Blakey
Like many of you, I have been a walking sneeze these past couple weeks. There is a fair chance that I'm single-handedly keeping the antihistamine industry afloat! We're past the elms, grasses and pine pollen season so what's going on?
Although in late summer we like to blame rabbitbrush and goldenrod for our allergy woes, the most likely culprit is ragweed. With all the rain this year, the ragweed is plentiful. It thrives on disturbed ground which flooding has created more of beyond the usual roads and trails that it's usually found near. I've seen it this year in places I seldom encounter any.
Ragweeds are found across the USA, but California has its own set of species. There are several species in Inyo and Mono counties, but the one I'm seeing most right now appears to be Ambrosia anthicarpa: annual bursage.
All ragweeds are prolific pollen producers. A quick brush against them near Horton Creek covered me (and my dog) in pollen. Sneezes soon followed.
At this point, ragweed isn't really controllable. It can be managed earlier in the season with herbicides, but the plants are too far developed for that option. Even if you did manage to control yours, the immense population this year will still release enough pollen to make life difficult for another month.
My advice now is to try to avoid getting close to it and try to keep your pets out of it if they're the type that likes to snuggle up to you. If you're out hiking around and see some growing, I'd suggest moving to another spot.
- Author: Patricia Barni
- Author: Alison Collin
As winter turned into spring and the 'Bartlett' pear tree flowered and leafed out, I celebrated my great gardening success. In fact I was jubilant because it looked as though I had finally won the battle against fire blight! For the first time in four years there were none of the telltale signs of this disease - no blackened leaves or "shepherd's crook" stem tips. For a time it looked as though I would never win, but careful pruning and rigorous attention to hygiene had finally paid off.
My only problem now was how to restore the tree into something that would justify my title of Master Gardener.
The tree had put on a lot of growth last year, and in typical pear fashion, all the new growth was fastigiate, shooting skywards with nothing but weakly attached, narrow crotch angles around the trunk and vertical stems emanating further out from the old, lateral branches. It looked a complete mess, and in spite of studying this problem over several months I had no idea how to tackle it. I became paralyzed with indecision and did nothing.
This spring, the tree was covered in flowers and set a good crop, which for once were not damaged with frost rings, and there was still no sign of fire blight. However, as I thinned the fruits I noticed that some of them were distorted, and a few of the leaves were developing blisters and brown spots suggesting that the tree had a new problem: pear blister mites.
By this time of year there was no hope of getting any control by spraying, so my next chance will be after harvest, in October or November when the mites travel away from the leaves and take up residence in the developing buds for the winter where they are again protected from the effects of sprays.
There is a small window of opportunity during this migration, and I will check for mite activity by sampling buds at various intervals and looking at them under a strong magnifying lens in order to monitor mite activity, and then spray to control. In order to comply with organic growing principles the chief methods of control available are either oil sprays or sulfur sprays. Some pears such as comice or Anjou are damaged by sulphur which cuts down on options for those varieties.
I think that I would rather deal with fire blight!
Maybe next I will be luckier.
For more information:
- https://ipm.ucanr.edu/agriculture/pear/pearleaf-blister-mite/
- https://ipm.ucanr.edu/agriculture/pear/dormant-to-delayed-dormant-sampling/
