- Author: Alison Collin
Here they come! Gardening catalogs are appearing in our mailboxes fast, so rather than immediately tossing them into the recycling, why not take the time to open them and learn from them by studying the wealth of information that many of them contain?
Reading the information carefully may well prevent wasting time, money, and effort in attempting to grow plants that are destined to failure because an inappropriate choice has been made. There is little point in planting 200 Walla Walla onions because you have seen them in the local supermarket and it is a name that you recognize, when in fact they often do not bulb well at our latitude (37.36° in Bishop), nor do they store well.
Falling in love with the description of a tomato variety that has been specially bred for cool climates may give you a very poor yield in the desert. If your tomatoes have been afflicted by blights, viruses or any other identifiable diseases you may be able to find varieties that are resistant to these clearly labeled. Likewise, if root knot nematodes have got a hold in your soil, there are various vegetables that are resistant to that problem.
Good seed and plant catalogs contain an almost encyclopedic amount of knowledge regarding their offerings, while other, less than helpful ones with glowing descriptions of enormous vegetables or spectacular flowers contain scant amounts of horticultural information about even the basic growing requirements.
Of course there is a long tradition of seed catalogs describing plants' characteristics with particularly optimistic language; however, most reputable seed companies want you to succeed with their plants, so they give as much detail as space allows on how to provide the best possible conditions for each plant.
The best catalogs will also mention any problems with a variety, such as being susceptible to rotting or not being reliably hardy, or even that they have low yields. Most catalogs use abbreviations and the key to these will be explained somewhere in the text, but a useful overview can be found at: https://s3.wp.wsu.edu/uploads/sites/2086/2014/05/howtoreadseedcatalog1.pdf
Perusing the “Onion” section of one of my current catalogs, I learn the following about Allium cepa:
- Type and pH of the soil, sun exposure needs, whether to direct seed or start indoors, what time of year to transplant, how far apart to space them and how deeply to plant.
- Water requirements both during growing and bulbing.
- Days to maturity for both direct sown and transplanted specimens.
- Diseases associated with them.
- How to store and how long they will store in ideal conditions
- The importance of daylight length in growing different types of onions.
- Then there is a key to various abbreviations used for disease susceptibility eg HR= highly resistant and then the diseases (BO for Botrytis), (DM for Downy Mildew) etc.
- There is a graph showing how long germination will take at different soil temperatures.
- There is then a photograph of all the onions on offer side by side for comparison
- The onions are categorized by daylight length – Long day (not suitable for southern gardens), short day or, Intermediate day, and then further broken down into color – white, red, or yellow.
- Each variety is then described separately as to the latitude at which they will grow, days to maturity, size, yield, flavor and pungency, storage capability and disease resistance, etc.
All other vegetables are treated similarly - from beans to watermelons, as well as herbs, cover crops and cut flowers!
Some of us enjoy the challenge of experimenting - pushing the boundaries of growing, or trying plants new to the area and with the information provided we can go into these projects with our eyes open, knowing what problems are likely to occur.
Of course we will still get carried away by the photograph of some magnificent specimen in a catalog and find that we cannot resist trying it - surely curiosity is one of the most important qualities of a gardener!
- Author: Dustin Blakey
I was driving down south last week when I noticed some seriously butchered crape myrtles along 395 in a prominent location along the highway. I don't want to embarrass anyone so I've included pictures from outside the area of this common offense to plant physiology.
There are a couple problems with this practice often given the grim moniker of crape murder. It's not as common in the Owens Valley as other places, but there is no reason why we need to catch up with the rest of the world in this case.
Second, crape myrtles are marginally hardy in Owens Valley. At least the above ground parts. When the limbs are topped, I've noticed dieback from freezing from the early new growth that emerges in spring. That leaves a stub with some weird branches that grow about 12” from the big cut.
Early spring, not winter, seems to be our most damaging season to crape myrtles. I don't have any real data on this, but my experience here and in Arkansas is that fall pruned crape myrtles are more likely to have winter damage in extreme years or late winters. Probably makes no difference in mild climates.
For the most part crape myrtles need no pruning. They are actually an easy plant. Easy is good! If you'd like a neater looking bush, you can clip the spent flower parts off and thin out some small branches to improve the shape. If you do need to make a major cut, in this area it's best to wait until the new growth begins in spring. They are usually slow to start here so be patient.
If one of the big limbs starts to look terrible or dies over winter, go ahead and remove the whole thing. It will be replaced with a new shoot in late spring.
Finally, it's OK to prune plants, but try to have a real reason. I can't think of any reason to top crape myrtles. It's not needed at all. They are naturally a graceful plant.
- Author: Alison Collin
While harvesting my Agata potato tubers on July 17, I came across a few good-sized ones that had been growing too close to the surface and as a consequence had turned green and had some pretty healthy looking sprouts developing.
My grandfather in the UK always prided himself on being able to provide new potatoes for Christmas dinner although how he achieved this has never been divulged, but since I cannot resist a challenge I went ahead and replanted four of them in my Bishop garden.
They were in my best soil and irrigated regularly. The air temperatures were over 100 F daily, and the soil was warm. I was expecting them to emerge almost immediately but they finally came through once the temperatures cooled in early September and then grew quite fast.
By October 10 we had had our first frost, but luckily I had covered the potatoes. As the daytime temperatures were still warm, the plants continued to grow. However, the frost of November 25 was just too much for them even under the protection so I decided to see what they had produced, and was amazed to find a few very acceptable potatoes as shown above. There were many marble-sized ones too, but they were obviously never going to develop.
I am tempted again next year using more substantial frost protection to see if these results can be replicated or even improved upon.
- Author: Alison Collin
Each fall my Gravenstein apple gets a small patch of fluffy exudate on the bark at the base of the tree. These are caused by woolly apple aphids, Eriosoma lanigerum. I hose them off with a jet of water which is usually the end of the problem. However, this year the tree is much more severely affected which has encouraged me to look into this pest more deeply.
This aphid infects apple trees not only above ground but also underground where they can cause distortion of the roots which become small fibrous masses with the formation of galls and knots. The underground damage which is caused by overwintering nymphs is often more severe than the damage caused to twigs and branches. On the exposed parts of the tree it is often suckers, watersprouts, pruning cuts or wounds that get attacked first. This year, on my tree most of the individual leaf nodes are affected.
Alternate hosts for this aphid are elm trees, and unfortunately these are ubiquitous in many parts of the Owens Valley. Eggs are laid in cracks in the bark in the fall, and these hatch in spring. After a couple of generations living on these trees, in the summer a generation develops wings and migrate to apple trees (or other members of that family – hawthorn, pear or mountain ash) where several more generations are produced. In areas where elms no longer grow the aphid will live on apple trees year round.
Although natural enemies such as syrphid flies and parasitic wasps feed on the above-ground woolly apple aphid these appear to be scarce to nonexistent in November in the Owens Valley, and the aphids are proliferating at an alarming rate. While one does not want to use pesticides which will potentially harm beneficial insects I am considering trying neem oil to achieve some sort of control. There appear to be no methods of controlling the underground nymphs.
Several rootstocks used in the grafting of apple trees are resistant to woolly apple aphid. One of these is M.111 and the Merton series of Malling rootstocks. Interestingly, in my own garden, while the Gravenstein apple is severely affected the Golden Delicious tree right next to it has no evidence of this pest. Although rootstock varieties have been lost in the mists of time I can only assume that this is what has caused the difference. There are differences in susceptibility of different cultivars, so perhaps Golden Delicious is more resistant.
With our climate becoming hotter, our trees, already under considerable stress, will be facing greater challenges so perhaps it is time to pay more attention to such factors as the rootstock used when buying fruit trees for the home garden.
For more detailed information on woolly apple aphids, see one of the links below.
- Author: Harold McDonald
Desert globemallow or apricot mallow (Sphaeralcea ambigua) is a local favorite, brightening the roadsides and hillsides of the Eastern Sierra region dependably every year. People love the delicate globes, and thanks to our local Bristlecone Chapter of the California Native Plant Society and their annual native plant sale, hundreds of people now get to enjoy the show in their own yards.
The common names pretty much say it all—they do well with little water, and they are covered in spring with 1-inch, 5-petaled, bowl-shaped apricot blossoms. But let's dig a little deeper, into the scientific name. The Greek words σφα?ρα (sphaira) and αλκεα (alkea) translate to “sphere” and “mallow.” Sphere obviously describes the shape of the flowers, and mallow tells us that this plant is in the family Malvaceae—the same family that includes cotton, okra and hollyhock. If you check the leaves of each of these plants, you'll immediately notice one of the family characteristics—palmately lobed leaves (like fingers on a hand).
It's not the genus, but the specific epithet* that I want to focus on here—ambigua—the color of this species is ambiguous. Calflora lists eight other species of Sphaeralcea in California, nearly all of them orange nearly all the time. Sphaeralcea ambigua is apparently the exception. This species comes in three different botanical varieties: ambigua (our local variety), rugosa and rosaceae. It is especially among the rosaceae populations that colors can vary. I learned of this some years back, when I bought a plant in Tucson. In that area, this species comes in a range of pastels, from white to mauve, peach, pink, lavender, and occasionally deep wine reds.
That original plant has given me three new plants, two pinkish and one apricot. As a bonus, that plant and its descendants seem to have a more vigorous revival in the fall than the plants I have purchased locally. Because Tucson gets a summer monsoon season, many plants bloom in both the spring and the fall, so I'm assuming my plants share that characteristic more than the plants from summer-dry California.
Helpful links
‘Childerly' is a hybrid developed in England
You can see some other colors here
A search of “mallow” at High Country Gardens gives you some closely related plants that will also do well in our area
Seeds from the Tucson area may be more likely to give you shades other than apricot
*By the way, Wikipedia has lists of the most common plant species epithets (A-H and I-Z)!