By T. Eric Nightingale, U.C. Master Gardener of Napa County
Gardening and a love for nature is on the rise these days. Many people I know would like to garden more but believe they can't because they live in an apartment or have only a small yard. That's not so. While they may not be able to have massive oaks or cultivate long rows of tomatoes, there are still many ways to grow plants.
The first task in any small space, be it a balcony or yard, is to understand the microclimate. Small yards are often protected from the elements by overhanging roofs and fences, while balconies may be more exposed to wind and rain. Study where sunlight hits your growing space. Spend a day at home watching the patterns of sun and shade as the day progresses.
Even if you have only a small yard, you can increase your growing capacity by using containers. Because they're mobile, you can “go vertical” and put them on shelving or place them in spots that would normally be impractical as a growing space. Think creatively
about where your containers can go.
Most plants, properly cared for, will do well in a container for a while at least, but they may require extra attention to keep them healthy. From personal experience, I recommend firm resolve and objectivity during the plant-selection phase. It can be easy to talk yourself into attempting to grow a cactus on a shady patio or a fern on a baking-hot balcony. In the end, both you and the plant will be unhappy with the situation.
When planting in containers, choose an appropriate potting mix. Soil pulled from your yard or garden will likely be too dense. Commercial potting mixes contain perlite and other porous ingredients that enhance aeration and drainage. If you fill a container with garden soil, the soil will settle over time and become compacted, eliminating pore space.
I have seen container gardens that incorporate old charcoal grills, rubber boots, teapots, pasta colanders and paint buckets. If it can hold soil and you can make a hole in the bottom, it can be a planter. For food production, look for food-safe containers. Certain plastics, metals and even woods may leach small amounts of chemicals. This may not be a problem with an ornamental plant, but it is undesirable for edibles. Otherwise, you are limited only by your imagination. Of course, no one will criticize you for just using terra cotta pots.
Compared to in-ground gardening, container gardening presents a few unique challenges, Plants in containers tend to need more frequent watering. Extreme weather conditions also take more of a toll. Plants in containers are more exposed and can't rely on the warmth and water reserves that soil-grown plants can access. In winter I move most of my potted plants against the house to a provide a little more shelter and warmth. Keeping them well watered and covered with frost cloth is also important during harsh winter nights.
One aspect of container planting that caught me by surprise is the issue of water quality. Over time, minerals in the water build up in the soil, sometimes to excess. This buildup is more likely when a plant is not getting thorough watering. To prevent the buildup, deep-water container plants occasionally, watching for water to flow from the bottom of the pot. This tactic will help flush out excess salts and minerals.
If you have a garden hose fed by an in-home filtration system, you may not experience mineral buildup. But if you are using softened water, you may have more problems than expected. Water softeners add salts, which quickly affect plants. One sign of excess salts and minerals in a container is a whitish crust on the soil surface.
I see this buildup in my houseplants, which are lightly watered and never exposed to rain. Poor plant health also signals soil problems. Excess salts can cause a pH imbalance, which can keep the plant from absorbing nutrients. Adding fertilizers, which contain salts, may only make the problem worse. In fact, fertilizer can also build up in containers and should be occasionally flushed as well.
Container gardening offers flexibility and the potential for creativity. It's a hobby anyone can enjoy.
Workshop: Napa County Master Gardeners will hold a workshop on “Culinary Herbs and Cocktail Garnishes” on Saturday, June 23, from 9:30 a.m. to 11:30 a.m., at Central Valley Hardware, 1100 Vintage Avenue, St. Helena. The workshop will be repeated on Sunday, June 24, from 1 p.m. to 3 p.m., at Yountville Community Center, 6516 Washington Street, Yountville. Plant a plethora of herbs to add color and delight to your plate and to your beverages. Cilantro, basils, thymes, mints and their flowers, nasturtiums, roses, pansies, borage and calendula are only the beginning. Learn to grow these useful plants. Demonstrations and hands-on activities add to the fun. Online registration (credit card only); Mail-in/Walk-in registration (check only or drop off cash payment). To register for the Yountville workshop, call the Parks & Recreation Department at 707-944-8712 or register online.
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.
Food Day is a nationwide celebration and a movement for healthy, affordable and sustainable food. This year the focus of Food Day in Napa County is food education, and the U.C. Master Gardeners of Napa County will once again participate.
On Saturday, October 25, from 8:00 a.m. until 12:30 p.m., we will be joining many other nonprofit organizations at the Napa Farmers' Market for a health and wellness fair. Exhibitors will showcase the importance of fresh, local and sustainable food production and consumption; offer local resources related to health and wellness; and provide information on sustainable farming.
Napa County residents are probably most familiar with Master Gardeners through our help desks, workshops, tomato sales and garden tours, but we also offer many programs that support the objectives of Food Day. Several of our workshops focus on growing your own food, from citrus to berries to vegetables. Last year, we started a School Garden Task Force to assist schools in developing and maintaining gardens that will provide healthy learning environments.
This year at Food Day the Master Gardeners will focus on edible gardening. Most people have some idea about how to grow food in the ground, but did you know you can grow many edibles in a container or a bale of straw? If you have a spot that receives at least six hours of direct sunlight each day, you can grow food in a container.
The container doesn't have to be anything special. It just needs to be large enough to accommodate the roots of whatever you want to grow. It also needs to have adequate drainage so that water does not accumulate at the bottom.
Many people in Napa Valley use old wine barrels cut in half to create a container garden. I have used old recycling bins. They make great container gardens as they are the right size and already have drainage holes. If you have an old wheel barrow you are no longer using, consider turning it into a container garden. After you drill a few holes for drainage, it will be ready to plant. The big advantage of a wheel barrow is that it can be moved to follow the sun.
Another option for people with limited space is straw bale gardening. All you need is a bale of straw, which costs less than $10. In summer, a bale will accommodate two or three tomato plants or the same number of zucchini. You can also grow beans, cucumbers and eggplant in straw bales. In the cooler months, you can grow lettuce, kale, chard or whatever leafy greens appeal to you.
Keep in mind that straw bales require three to four weeks of conditioning before planting. To condition them, keep the bales moist, add fertilizer and wait for decomposition to commence.
If I have piqued your curiosity, then come see the Master Gardeners at the Napa Farmers' Market on Saturday, October 25. We'll show you how you can grow food for your table in less space than you ever imagined. We'll also supply you with a complimentary package of carrot seeds so that you can get your edible garden off to a healthy start.
Workshop: Napa County Master Gardeners will lead a workshop titled “Be Successful with Citrus” on Saturday, October 18, from 9:30 a.m. to 11:30 a.m., at the Calistoga Community Center, 1307 Washington Street, Calistoga. This workshop will give you all the tools to be successful with your new or mature citrus trees. Learn about choosing varieties, planting, fertilization, and seasonal care including frost protection. Online registration (credit card only); Mail-in registration (cash or check only).
Master Gardeners are volunteers who help the University of California reach the gardening public with home gardening information. Napa County Master Gardeners (http://ucanr.org/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.
In areas with harsh winters, container growing allows gardeners to move frost-sensitive plants like citrus to a warm, protected place when chilly weather arrives. When the danger of frost has passed, the sight of blooming, fragrant lemon and orange trees back in their customary garden or patio space announces the arrival of spring.
Plants in containers are easily transportable, across a yard or across country. A new apartment quickly becomes a home with pots of red geraniums on a sunny windowsill. With the addition of drainage holes, old stock pots, buckets or watering cans can be planted with potted chives, basil or sweetly scented flowers to perk up a kitchen or dress up a picnic table.
You can easily move potted plants to redecorate an area, to highlight current bloomers or to protect favorite plants from threatening weather. Plants that are tired or no longer blooming can conveniently be moved out of sight. You can place large containers on casters to roll them from place to place. With the help of container plants in a variety of pots, a small yard can easily become a lush garden.
But even gardeners with plenty of space have reason to plant in containers. As I strolled through a local resort last week, I noted, in addition to the carefully tended beds, other highlights of the landscape. Beautifully shaped and flowering ‘Iceberg' roses in large glazed ceramic pots graced the grounds, while mossy vases of succulents, both upright and trailing, accented exterior walls. Clearly the landscapers resorted to containers not for lack of space, but for an extra touch of interest and elegance.
Container gardening is the epitome of custom gardening. If you know your chosen plants' requirements, you can give each plant just what it needs. Nurseries sell potting mixes designed expressly for orchids, acid-loving plants and citrus. Or you can mix your own to meet a finicky plant's needs, giving you a much greater chance of success.
Some plants actually do better in pots than in the ground. Herbs such as lemon thyme can often become a straggly mat in the garden. In a contained space, lemon thyme grows into an upright mound of attractive, strongly scented, glossy green foliage. By early summer, its lavender flowers drape beautifully over the edges of a pot.
With a properly sized container, the right planting mix, the right location, and sufficient water and nutrients, many plants will be carefree and happy for years. But if you begin to see that your pots are drying out too quickly, or that roots are protruding from drainage holes, or if it takes too long for the water you apply to percolate through the soil, it may be time to repot.
Generally the best time to repot is in the spring or autumn when plants are actively growing. But any time you notice that a plant is too top heavy or that the roots are too dense, it's time to repot.
Container-grown plants are typically fertilized more frequently than plants in beds. If you begin to see a white, crystal-like coating on the exterior of your pots or on the surface of the soil, too much salt has built up in your soil. To avoid salt buildup, always water your plants until liquid runs out the bottom.
Workshop: Have you noticed how popular (and expensive) container succulent gardens are? Do you have a special container you would like to turn into a garden piece? Napa County Master Gardeners will lead a workshop on “Container Gardening and Succulents” on Saturday, May 17, from 9:30 a.m. to 11:30 a.m., at the Senior Multi-Use Center, 2185 Elliott Drive, American Canyon. Grow gardens that are mobile. Discover the best containers, soil and locations for your plants to prosper. Gain confidence to work with unfamiliar types of plants. Online registration (credit card only); Mail in registration (cash or check only).
Master Gardeners are volunteers who help the University of California reach the gardening public with home gardening information. Napa County Master Gardeners ( http://ucanr.org/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.
Napa County Master Gardeners welcome the public to visit their demonstration garden at Connolly Ranch on Thursdays, from 10:00 a.m. until noon, except the last Thursday of the month. Connolly Ranch is at 3141 Browns Valley Road at Thompson Avenue in Napa. Enter on Thompson Avenue.
The University of California is a land-grant university. The first campus, in Berkeley, had a strong agricultural focus. In 1907, the university established a research farm that became the U. C. Davis campus, and the Citrus Experiment Station in Riverside, the foundation for the U.C. campus there.
Counties wanting to participate in C. E. had to allocate funding for it. They also had to organize farmers into Farm Bureaus .Each community would get a farm advisor to work with the Farm Bureau. In 1913, its farm advisor in place, Humboldt County became the first county to join Cooperative Extension. Seven more counties, including Napa, joined the partnership in 1914.
U.C. Cooperative Extension is part of the University of California's Division of Agriculture and Natural Resources. It encompasses 200 C.E. advisors, 130 specialists, 57 county offices and nine research and extension centers. The Master Gardener program, including the active Napa Valley branch, operates under the purview of U.C. Cooperative Extension.
Farm advisor Dean Donaldson organized the U.C.C.E. Master Gardeners of Napa County in 1995. The group will celebrate its 20thanniversary next year. It continues to expand outreach to home gardeners in Napa County.
Napa County has been agriculturally important since before it became a county in 1850. Grain was the main crop while California was still part of Mexico, with wheat grown along the Napa River. By 1880, Napa County produced wheat, barley, wool, wine and fruit and shipped these crops across the country. By the beginning of the 20th century, there were an estimated 500,000 fruit and nut trees in the valley, including apples, cherries, apricots, peaches, pears, plums, olives, almonds and walnuts. At the time, prunes and grapes were the largest crops.
The ‘Hartley' walnut and ‘Boysenberry', both developed in Napa Valley, are stars of our county's agricultural history. John Hartley emigrated from England to California in 1884, moving to Napa in 1904. He purchased land with Persian walnuts, known for producing large crops of heart-shaped walnuts with mild flavor. At the 1915 Panama-Pacific International Exposition in San Francisco, judges awarded the walnut a medal for exceptional quality and named it the ‘Hartley' walnut.
In the 1920s, Rudolf Boysen experimented with crossing various berries. In 1923 he crossed a blackberry with a loganberry and a raspberry to create the Boysenberry. In the 1930s, Boysen sold the rights to his fruit to Walter Knott in Southern California, who later would found Knott's Berry Farm. The fruit was first sold commercially in 1935.
To celebrate the centennial, you are invited to participate in a science project. On May 8, the 100th anniversary of the Smith-Lever Act, Cooperative Extension invites all Californians to become citizen scientists for a day and help collect scientific data.
To participate, simply look around your home or workplace and record your observations on any or all of these three questions: How many pollinators do you see? How do you conserve water? Where is food grown in your community? To record your observations, visit http://beascientist.ucanr.edu.
Workshop: Napa County Master Gardeners will lead a workshop on “Container Gardening and Succulents” on Saturday, May 17, from 9:30 a.m. to 11:30 a.m., at the Senior Multi-Use Center, 2185 Elliott Drive, American Canyon. Grow gardens that are mobile. Discover the best containers, soil and locations for your plants to prosper. Gain confidence to work with unfamiliar types of plants. Online registration (credit card only); Mail in registration (cash or check only).
Master Gardeners are volunteers who help the University of California reach the gardening public with home gardening information. Napa County Master Gardeners ( http://ucanr.org/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.
Napa County Master Gardeners welcome the public to visit their demonstration garden at Connolly Ranch on Thursdays, from 10:00 a.m. until noon, except the last Thursday of the month. Connolly Ranch is at 3141 Browns Valley Road at Thompson Avenue in Napa. Enter on Thompson Avenue.
- Author: Denise Seghesio Levine
No room for a garden? Not even a half wine barrel neatly planted with 16 ‘Pixie’ cabbages outside your door? You think you have no room for a garden, but imagine yourself choosing tiny pale-green heads with a blush of pink for a dinner of individual stuffed cabbages. Or walking onto the patio and choosing one little cabbage to make enough coleslaw just for you.
A wheelbarrow that has corroded past its useful life can be pierced with drainage holes, lined with moss, filled with soil and planted in leafy, lime-green ‘Tom Thumb’ lettuces. Underplanted with white and purple scallions and crunchy round ‘Planet’ carrots, these lettuces can provide the makings of salad just outside your kitchen door.
No room for a wheelbarrow or wine barrel? Even a standard 15-inch pot can host six mature heads of red romaine lettuce and a handful of radishes, or two dozen leeks, or a bouquet of ‘Bright Lights’ Swiss chard with its ruby-red, yellow and deep orange stalks and vitamin-rich greens.
‘Pixie’ cabbages, ‘Tom Thumb’ lettuces, ‘Green Fingers’ eggplants and ‘Baby Primor’ leeks are just a few of the diminutive vegetables bred for those spots that you thought were too small for a garden.
Changing demographics, aging gardeners and shrinking yards have prompted seed breeders to develop smaller versions of garden favorites with all the big flavors of their larger cousins.
Labels on vegetable seedlings often indicate whether the variety will thrive in containers, but starting vegetables from seed gives you more opportunity. Don’t hesitate to mix flowers and vegetables in container plantings. Petunias discourage pests that attack pole beans, and marigolds reputedly protect tomatoes. In containers with vegetables, they perform the same duties, while adding interest and color.
Container gardens are more dependent on the gardener than in-ground garden plots. Although a few vegetables can take deep shade, most need at least six hours of sun a day to produce abundant crops.
Pots and boxes dry out more quickly than garden plots and on warm or windy days may need to be watered twice. Please remember to run the hot water out of your hose before you begin watering. Hot water can kill plants, and too much warmth in the root zone can cause salad greens, cilantro, spinach and other cole crops and greens to bolt.
Watering a container as often as needed to keep the plant hydrated can deplete soil nutrients quickly. Nutrients leach out with the water each day. Slowed growth or yellowed leaves are signs that your plants may have used all the soil nutrients. Frequent light feeding with fish emulsion or other suitable fertilizers will keep your plants healthy, green and growing. Follow package directions. Too much fertilizer can build up salt in your soil. If you notice a light salt coating on your pots, wash the pots and cut back on fertilizing.
Size does matter. Make sure your containers are large enough to provide ample room for the plants’ mature root systems.
Putting large containers on casters allows you to wheel them around to take advantage of sunlight and to protect them from too much sun or frost. You can cluster pots or move them into the shade to slow evaporation.
With plants on wheels, you can “decorate” your patio or porch more easily. Showcase the natural beauty of blossoming or heavily-laden plants and wheel past-their-prime specimens to a less conspicuous spot.
With a small container garden on your patio or deck, you can really get to know your plants. Their proximity makes it easy to groom them daily, monitor their moisture needs and catch problems and insect attacks more quickly.
There is something wonderful about watching plants grow, but to pluck your dinner from the comfort of your deck or balcony might just be the best reward a gardener can hope for.
Container Gardening Workshop: Napa County Master Gardeners will conduct a workshop on “Container Gardening” on Saturday, May 18, from 9:30 a.m. to 11:30 a.m., at the University of California Cooperative Extension office (address below). Learn to grow mobile gardens that take advantage of the best sites in your yard or home. Discover the best containers, soils and locations for your plants to prosper. Online registration (credit card only) Mail in registration (cash or check only)
Master Gardeners are volunteers who help the University of California reach the gardening public with home gardening information. Napa County Master Gardeners (http://ucanr.org/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?