By Penny Pawl, UC Master Gardener of Napa County

Someone once asked me if it was possible to grow a camellia from seed. Yes, it is possible, but seldom will it have the same flowers as the parent.    

A neighbor of mine had a wonderful camellia with a beautiful flower. He kept taking the seeds and sprouting them. I have four bushes from these sprouts, and they are happy and healthy, but the flowers are plain. I call them “my Watsons” after my neighbor.

Many years ago, on a trip to the East Coast, I went to Charleston to see the oldest camellia plantation and the oldest camellia in the United States. Camellias arrived in Charleston in 1786. When I visited, the plant had seed pods on it and somehow one of the pods jumped into my pocket. I planted the seeds and one plant grew. It has since become a beautiful bonsai. But does it bloom? While pruning, I once saw evidence of a couple of blooms but never saw an actual flower. And I would expect any flowers to be plain.

The camellias available in nurseries are hybrids. The number of named camellias is around 20,000. The International Camellia Society published a registry of names, a project that required more than 30 years of research. I did not know that the tea plant (Camellia sinensis), which provides the leaves that people around the world brew daily, is a member of this family.

The most common species, Camellia japonica, was imported to England in the early 1700s and grown in a greenhouse. Our garden camellias belong to this species. Over time, these plants have been hybridized to produce a wide variety of blooms. Hybrids can only be reproduced by cuttings, not by seed.  

Camellia japonica bushes bloom in the late winter and early spring. If you want to choose a camellia based on its flower, that's the time to go shopping. One of the biggest camellia shows is in Sacramento each March.  

Once a camellia has finished blooming it needs pruning. You can trim quite severely and not affect next year's bloom. The buds for the following winter's bloom form as the plant produces new growth. If you prune after the buds have formed, you will not have any bloom the following winter.

Once established, camellias are fairly drought tolerant. Some of mine get watered only by rain and that does not seem to hurt the bloom. All of these camellias are over 40 years old and well established.   Newer plantings need water year-round until they are established.

When selecting a place in your garden to plant a camellia, choose a location that gets dappled sunlight or shade. Plant the camellia a bit higher than the surrounding soil so that any excess water will flow away from the trunk.  

Fallen camellia blossoms lying on the ground beneath the bush can cause a fungal disease called camellia flower blight. The disease causes the blooms to have brown petals that fall off. Pick up dead flowers under your bush to foil this disease. Most of the other diseases that plague camellias occur in damp, humid climates and are rarely a problem in Napa Valley.  

Napa Library Talks: First Thursday of each month. Register to get Zoom link. Thursday, January 7: Bare Root Basics.

Free Rose Pruning and Winter Care Workshop: Saturday, January 9. Register for the Zoom link.

Got Garden Questions? Contact our Help Desk. The team is working remotely so please submit your questions through our diagnosis form, sending any photos to mastergardeners@countyofnapa.org or leave a detailed message at 707- 253-4143. A Master Gardener will get back to you by phone or email.

For more information visit http://napamg.ucanr.edu or find us on Facebook or Instagram, UC Master Gardeners of Napa County.

By Cindy Watter, UC Master Gardener of Napa County

After the sedate revelry of our pandemic purgatory (and a happy new year to us all), it is time to get back to work in the garden. We have had a few rains, and now would be a good time to prune our roses and tidy up their areas, to help them look their best next spring and summer.

I once taught a rose pruning workshop in Yountville and made two terrible mistakes. The first, and worst, was being frivolous when someone asked what would happen if she didn't prune her roses. I joked that she could end up in a place that was uncomfortably warm. That was wrong. Actually, depending on the roses, and how long you go between prunings, the answers are: a) nothing; and b) something.

You can go for five years without pruning a Cecile Brunner (a climbing polyantha which has many clusters of small flowers), and it will put forth its fluffy pink blooms same as ever. However, if you prune it just a bit after it blooms, you will get a more abundant repeat bloom during the summer.

On the other hand, a rose that is intended for cutting for vases or bouquets will produce larger blooms with sturdier stems if you prune it. These bushes are generally hybrid teas, grandifloras or floribundas, such as Double Delight or Julia Child. Hybrid teas were developed to have stronger stems than the original tea roses from Asia. Grandifloras (large flowers) and floribundas (many flowers on one stem) need strong stems to support all those petals.

The second mistake I made, and it was mortifying, was neglecting to sharpen my clippers before the workshop. Their dull edges would not penetrate the branches of a gnarled, twenty-years-neglected-and-completely-tangled rose, at least in my arthritic fingers. A nice man in the audience helped me out. It was probably a better learning experience that way, but still, sharpen your tools.

Another reason to prune is to remove branches with leaves that have mildew, fungus or rust. First, clean up the area around your roses and remove fallen rose leaves. This will keep winter rains from driving pathogens into the soil and is one of the most important things you can do for general garden health, because it lessens the chances of having to use fungicides later. Do not put these leaves in your home compost, which does not get hot enough to kill the pathogens. Of course you should wear gardening gloves while doing this work.

There are a couple of ways to approach pruning, depending on the purpose of your rose. If you want larger roses with sturdy stems for vase display, prune more aggressively. If you planted roses for landscaping, prune for shape. There are some common guidelines to follow, however.

Remove any damaged or cracked canes. Remove any canes that are thinner than a pencil. If canes are crossing, remove one.

Make clean cuts on a slant. (You sharpened your clippers, right?) All cuts should be above a bud. These cuts will heal so you don't need to paint anything on them. Make sure the center of the plant is open for good air circulation, with no crowding canes. You want to have a shape rather like a vase or an urn.

In general, prune back two-thirds of the growth. Some gardeners take it down even farther.

Roses grow well in Napa County. Even if, to your eyes, the newly shorn rose looks naked, relax. It will grow back better than ever.

Climbing roses shouldn't be pruned the first three years or so after planting. After that, remove all broken canes, leaving about six canes that you will trellis or tie to a form. Every year leave a few new canes and you will have a healthy climbing rose.

Many people are afraid they will destroy their roses if they prune them. Indeed, it is initially a shock to chop off what appear to be perfectly viable leaves and canes. I felt like a horticultural ogre the first time I did it. However, the wonderful thing about plants is that they renew themselves. Roses require a bit more care than our native plants and perennials, but they reward us with their stunning blooms.

Napa Library Talks: First Thursday of each month. Register to get Zoom link. Thursday, January 7: Bare Root Basics.

Free Rose Pruning and Winter Care Workshop: Saturday, January 9. Register for the Zoom link.

 Find UC ANR's Healthy Roses publication here.

Garden Questions? Contact our Help Desk. The team is working remotely so please submit your questions through our diagnosis form, sending any photos to mastergardeners@countyofnapa.org or leave a detailed message at 707- 253-4143. A Master Gardener will get back to you by phone or email.

For more information visit http://napamg.ucanr.edu or find us on Facebook or Instagram, UC Master Gardeners of Napa County.

By Susanne von Rosenberg, UC Master Gardener of Napa County

One of the joys of summer is being able to harvest fresh, perfectly ripened fruit from your own garden. December and January are the best months to plant bare-root fruit trees and berries so you can enjoy the bounty in summers to come.

Unlike fruit trees, most berries provide a quick return on your efforts. Strawberries bear fruit the same year you plant them, and blackberries and raspberries produce the year after you plant them. Blueberries are more complicated to grow (they need acidic soil to thrive), but also usually start to produce some fruit in the second year.

Berry plants are less expensive than fruit trees, and if you choose the right kinds, you can expand your berry patch over time. The main drawback to berries is that they all have relatively high water needs.

Brambleberry is another name for blackberries and raspberries. Boysenberries, marionberries and ollalieberries are all varieties of blackberries. Blackberries are well suited to our Napa Valley climate. (In fact, boysenberries were developed here.) Raspberries also do well in all but our hottest areas.

While it's easy to get blackberry and raspberry seedlings from friends (many brambleberries produce suckers from their roots), it's best to start with certified disease-free nursery stock. You can always expand your berry patch by planting some of the suckers. Blackberries and black and purple raspberries also tip-root. If the tip of a cane touches moist ground, it will grow roots from that tip.

To produce well, brambleberries should be planted in full sun. In hotter areas, raspberries benefit from some afternoon shade. Care of brambleberries is fairly simple. Fertilize them once a year at the start of the growing season and keep the soil moist, not soggy, throughout the growing season. The berries also need pruning each year.

Blackberries yield fruit on canes that grew the previous year. The canes growing in the current year are called primocanes. Nurseries sell both erect and trailing varieties of blackberries; trailing varieties need a trellis. Erect varieties have sturdier canes, but the canes will still tip over when they get long, so these varieties also benefit from a trellis. Install trellises when plants are small to minimize root damage.

Most blackberry varieties have thorns, but there are thornless types. I used to be suspicious of thornless varieties, assuming that I would have to sacrifice flavor or vigor for convenience. A couple of years ago, I finally tried a thornless variety, Triple Crown. I was happily surprised by the great flavor and vigor, both of which compare favorably with the boysenberries I have been growing for a long time. To extend your harvest, choose blackberry varieties with different ripening periods.

Raspberries come in four colors: red, yellow, purple and black. The cultivation process for yellow and red raspberries is the same. Red raspberry varieties come in two types: summer bearing and fall bearing. Summer-bearing raspberries produce canes that grow one year, then primarily bear fruit the following year. Summer bearers produce some fruit on the tips of the current season's canes, but a larger crop is produced on one-year-old canes.

Fall-bearing raspberries do the opposite: they bear large crops on the top parts of the current season's canes in late summer and fall. If left to overwinter, canes bear a second crop in the spring, on the lower portions of the canes that fruited the previous year.

My new favorite red raspberry variety is Nova. It is vigorous, has great flavor and has consistently been the earliest and latest producer in my raspberry patch.

Black raspberries (you may have heard them called black caps when you were growing up) and purple raspberries grow on arched or trailing canes. Black and purple raspberries only sprout new canes from the crown (the base of existing canes) or through tip-rooting. Fruit grows on laterals coming from the main canes, so they are pruned differently from blackberries and red raspberries.

To keep your berry patch fruitful, prune out the old (non-fruiting) canes and excess canes. Remove fruiting canes of blackberries and summer-bearing raspberries after they are done fruiting. Then tie up the primocanes.

For trailing varieties, cut the new canes to 8 to 10 feet and loop them around the trellis wires. Fall-bearing raspberries can either be cut to the ground after the fall crop, or you can cut off the top portions of the canes that fruited and get a small spring crop on the lower parts of the canes.

Prune black and purple raspberries to a height of 24 to 30 inches after fruiting. In early spring, cut back any laterals that sprouted to 8 to 10 inches. During the dormant season remove all dead, damaged, weak and diseased canes from all brambleberries. Remove all but 4 to 5 of the most vigorous canes from the crowns of black and purple raspberries and 8 to 10 canes for blackberries. Aim for 4 to 5 strong canes per foot for red raspberries. With the right care through the year, your berries should provide a bountiful harvest.

Napa Library Talks: First Thursday of each month. Register to get Zoom link. Thursday, January 7: Bare Root Basics.

Free Rose Pruning and Winter Care Workshop: Saturday, January 9. Register for the Zoom link.

Got Garden Questions? Contact our Help Desk. The team is working remotely so please submit your questions through our diagnosis form, sending any photos to mastergardeners@countyofnapa.org or leave a detailed message at 707- 253-4143. A Master Gardener will get back to you by phone or email. For more information visit http://napamg.ucanr.edu or find us on Facebook or Instagram, UC Master Gardeners of Napa County.

by Penny Pawl    

You have probably seen them in your doctor's office or as shade trees as you walked down a street in some tropical town, or even as a small house plant at the florist. What are they? Ficus benjamina or weeping fig. They can grow well in a shady spot or even in the house.  

Ficus include the huge banyan trees on the Big Island of Hawaii, the fig tree you are growing in your garden for the fruit, rubber trees and the smaller ornamental ficus used as houseplants.

I have a large collection of ficus bonsai. Most of these are from trimmings taken as cuttings from my original trees.

Ficus root readily and right now I have one growing roots in my cloner, a device that washes the roots with water and stimulates them to grow. The ficus has been in the cloner less than two weeks and roots are sprouting.

The first ficus I purchased was at a nursery in Sebastopol and it was imported from China. It had been grown to be a bonsai. Then I began to find some ficus with narrow leaves or smaller leaves. These are called sports and they must be grown from cuttings for the leaves of the offspring to stay true to the parent. If grown from seed, the offspring may revert to the original leaf size.   However, I have never had seeds on any of my plants. The leaves on most of the sports are much narrower than normal ficus leaves.

One of my favorite ficus came from Hawaii many years ago. A friend brought back a tiny plant and gave it to me. It is still tiny, about eight inches tall with hefty roots.

One of the things I love about ficus for bonsai is how quickly the roots develop and get really interesting. Old-looking surface roots are important in bonsai and help give the appearance of age, which is something this art form tries to achieve: young plants that look aged.

During the winter months, because they are tropical, I put all my ficus in my greenhouse to keep the roots from freezing. When spring arrives, I start moving them out so they don't overheat and so they get more sunlight. Ficus can be grown indoors, but because the leaves are looking for sunlight, they get bigger. If you keep them outside in filtered sunlight, the leaves stay small and more in keeping with bonsai rules.

Ficus do require a lot of grooming or leaf pruning. They tend to grow long branches and every few months require a good haircut. And that is how I end up with cuttings. Sometimes I prune out a branch and into the soil mixture it goes.

Another reason I enjoy working with ficus is that I can try different planting methods with them. Last spring I took a rooted cutting and spread the roots over a stone. I covered the entire stone with soil and put it in a large training pot to let the roots grow and cling to the stone. Eventually I will remove all the soil and plant the ficus in a bonsai pot. In the year that this ficus has been growing on the stone, the plant has tripled in size. I have also uncovered a root near the trunk that has increased in size.

I do not prune this little ficus because I want the tree to have a lot of growth and vigor. Eventually I will shape it and perhaps wire it. Now I am growing what are called sacrifice branches. They will be shortened or removed when I do the shaping.

Wiring is a bonsai technique used to shape the trunk and branches. Although copper wire is the choice of most bonsai enthusiasts, a lot of us use copper-coated aluminum which is easier to bend. Copper wire holds its shape better but also gets very rigid and has to be cut off a branch or trunk in small pieces. Aluminum wire can be re-used without baking it in a fire to soften the wire.

Ficus originated in Asia and have religious significance in some regions. Banyan trees are considered holy in Islam.

Ficus are not drought tolerant and need water and nutrients to keep them growing. I repot mine about every two years as the roots quickly fill the pots. And I use a soil-less bonsai mix so that the many rootlets have room to grow.

Napa Library Talks: First Thursday of each month. Register to get Zoom link. Thursday, January 7: Bare Root Basics.

Free Rose Pruning and Winter Care Workshop: Saturday, January 9. Register for the Zoom link.

Got Garden Questions? Contact our Help Desk. The team is working remotely so please submit your questions through our diagnosis form, sending any photos to mastergardeners@countyofnapa.org or leave a detailed message at 707- 253-4143. A Master Gardener will get back to you by phone or email. For more information visit http://napamg.ucanr.edu or find us on Facebook or Instagram, UC Master Gardeners of Napa County.