I go out into my garden and look around daily. I pick basil for tonight's bruschetta, parsley for the potatoes and a few Sungold cherry tomatoes that don't make it into the kitchen but are eaten on the spot. I count 10 hummingbirds around my 3 feeders, the Ruby-crowned kinglets are scouring the trees for spiders and other bugs and the Wilson's warblers have found the thistle sock.

But what's this? Some of the fuchsia leaves and buds are curled, there are notches in the impatien balfourii and I see white furry things on the trunk of the crabapple.  The weather is hot one day and foggy the next. Better adjust my watering schedule, too. Whether you're seeing some of these same problems in your garden or have different issues that you don't know how to handle, here are some tips to help you decide what you can live with and what you can't.

Integrated pest management or IPM is a fancy name for common sense. By planting the right plant in the right place you can prevent most pest infestation. Pick your battles.Take action against insects only when they pose a significant threat to your plant.

Plants can usually survive with a little bug damage. Insects that are natural predators often will eventually arrive and handle your bug problem.  Picking them off by hand or spraying them off with water often works, too. Some vegetable plants may need to be protected with insect barriers or row covers. Simple traps for earwigs, slugs and snails are effective, too. Vacuuming is another method of controlling pests. Tilling the soil often disrupts the breeding cycle of insects like the rose slug. Encourage beneficial insects to visit your garden by planting a variety of plants. Use natural biological insecticides like Bt and nematodes that have minimal environmental impact.

If you feel you must spray for soft bodied insects like mites, choose insecticidal soap. This may sound strange but by not killing all the pests there will be some left in the gene pool that are not resistant to the organic or chemical sprays. Those left will dilute any resistant genes that appear.

Regular monitoring is the cornerstone of IPM. This is where that daily walk in your garden with a beverage comes in. You can see if a problem is getting out of control or not.

The fuchsia gall mite is one problem that I keep tabs on or the hummingbirds aren't happy. If your fuchsias aren't blooming and the leaf tips look curled up and deformed, your plants are infested with fuchsia gall mite.  First discovered on the West Coast in 1980 it is often mistaken for a disease because of the way it distorts and twists fuchsia leaves and flower buds.  The damage caused can be debilitating.  The leaves curl and distort so much that normal photosynthesis is disrupted and weakened plants fail to bloom  Infested plants usually recover if further mite damage is controlled.

Prune off all distorted foliage and buds.  This may be the best method of control as petroleum oil or insecticidal sprays need to be made every 4-7 days to disrupt the mite life cycle and will result in the mites becoming resistant. Neem oil is not recommended for use on fuchsia flowers.

There are several gall mite-resistant fuchsias, both hanging and upright, that are every bit as showy as the traditional fuchsia varieties.  if you have been plagued by fuchsia mites, try growing one of these instead. A list from Crescent City Fuchsia growers is available at http://www.ccfuchsia.net/ccfuchsia5.htm.

If you have a problem in your garden and don't know what to do, feel free to email me. I'm always happy to help a fellow gardener.

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Enter the Hidden Gardens of Bonny Doon with me as I preview several gardens that will be featured on the tour this coming weekend.  While some of our gardens have a few areas with a "wow factor" , the gardens I was privileged to visit have this element at every turn. I was amazed, impressed and truly honored to spend time in each of them.

First stop was a garden that took my breath away. Looking past the lush lawn, the view takes in all of Monterey Bay. It wasn't always this way, the owner explained. When she moved to the property in 1981, she didn't even know there was an ocean view. It was only after some judicious pruning that this stunning view was revealed.

We  ambled through the many paths that took us up close and personal with perennial beds overflowing with blooming iris, spirea, weigela, succulents, hardy geraniums, coprosma and coleonema to name just a few.

Rabbits are an ongoing problem in this garden. Seems they love her Angelina sedum, coprosma, and Rose Campion as much as she does. Little 12" tall fences surround several of the beds which looks comical but apparently works as the rabbits don't like to jump over them.

Stained urbanite has been stacked by the owner to make short retaining walls and the look is quite classy blending in the flagstone and gravel paths. She explained how easy it was to stain the broken concrete from the old driveway by slapping on some concrete stain. "Piece of cake", she told me.

Other flower beds she edged with Sonoma fieldstone, stacking them herself. At every turn you can see the personal touches that make a garden unique. An old rusty mailbox was tucked into one of the beds overflowing with blooming pansies and million bells calibrachoa.  I loved this garden.

Next stop was another garden 30 years in the making. You won't believe the "before" pictures when you see this garden now. I could barely see the potential in the old pictures but the owner could and started to build up the rock hard soil bed by bed. After many years she has created  an organic garden full of flowering rhododendron, roses, viburnum, herbs, vegetables, citrus, apples and a 5 year old  Staghorn fern that measures 4 ft across.

The owner explained that deer are not a problem because they won't jump the irregular picket fence. Seems the wide pickets confuse their eyesight. Unfortunately, the gophers have decided recently that after 14 years, her camellias are now on the menu and she has lost almost all of the original 40 in the past year. Instead of lamenting her loss, she sees it as an opportunity to add new plants. She has the optimism that all gardeners possess.

Chickadees nested in a box attached to the porch. Garter snakes and alligator lizards patrol the flower beds. A bathtub, sunk into the earth serves as "the poor man's hot tub". Old metal chairs are planted with flowers and ferns and other found garden art is sprinkled generously though out the garden. This is the garden of an artist whose studio is nestled back among the trees. At every turn you feel the peacefulness of this wonderful place. This is a garden to experience not just view.

The last garden I was lucky enough to preview, was an asphalt driveway just 6 short years ago. There are occasional unplanted spots that still show asphalt. What a transformation. With the help of lots of top soil and an auger this gardener has created a spectacular space.  "Everything grows like crazy here", she explained.

The front garden is open to deer and is planted with echium, leucospermum, arctotis, barberry, thyme, rosemary and New Zealand flax. One of her favorite plants is a huge variegated holly that buzzed so loudly with bees I thought the electrical line coming into the house was making all the racket.

In the back, a small orchard edged the fence. Blooming lilacs by the deck heavily scented the air. Succulents intermingle with peony, erysimum and gaura. This gardener explained she " she is one of those people who buys whatever she likes and then finds a place for it". Having had previous experience growing grapes and olives in Sonoma, she is a hands-on gardener who does it all herself. She's a self-described  "drip queen".

A ceramic artist, her sculptures are focal points though out the garden. There is a lot of other garden art in this garden, too.

Where do these gardeners find the garden art, water features and other items that give their gardens that personal touch? One explained, she is always on the lookout for estate sales as she drives around or sees advertised in the paper. "That's were you can really find the treasures", she explained. "Little old ladies have some great plants and other wonderful finds in the back of the garden".

The Hidden Gardens of Bonny Doon Tour takes place Saturday and Sunday, May 19th and 20th. Don't miss it.
 

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Lindencroft Farm is a great example of a local family doing what they love and making a living, too. You can see it in the new crop of Necores carrots just sprouting and being watched over by the family farm cat that was sitting on the edge of the retaining wall. Linda explained this is one of her favorite carrots because she doesn’t have trouble with it forking and it isn’t bothered by summer heat. Every  crop that is grown on the farm is researched for best flavor and vigor.

Linda Butler  starts all her vegetables from seed, and grows year-round. Some are started directly in the beds while others are started in flats and transplanted later. Cole crops, such as broccoli, cauliflower and cabbage, would get eaten by bugs and birds would eat them as fast as they germinated so these are started in flats.

Walking around, I saw many Italian names as she specializes in Italian peppers. She gets seed from organic seed companies in this country, Italy and France.  Some of her favorite vegetables are Rosa Bianca eggplant as it is almost never bitter. She also likes Red Russian and Lacinato or dinosaur kale.

Tat soy and bok choy are favorites in the CSA boxes. She grows beans of all types- french filet, romano, shelling. Golden beets ( my personal favorite ), all kinds of potatoes- fingerlings, Russian banana, red thumb, German butter, red lasoda and other heirlooms. The beds overflow with life.

I tasted the last of the cherry tomatoes. Rosalita, a red grape type, was good but the white cherry tomato was the best. Herbs grow in several boxes and the farm can’t seem to grow enough asparagus to satisfy the demand.

Insect control is easy,  Linda said. If fungal diseases persist she plants a crop of beans and that seems to solve it. Occasionally aphids or spider mites get the upper had, but rather than spray even with organic soap she finds she has better results by monitoring the plants often and spraying with a hard blast of water or cutting or pulling out infested plants. For fava beans that seem to always attract big black aphids, she harvest the beans and flowers while very young before aphids get a hold.

The farm is entirely powered by 78 solar panels. Recaptured rainwater is stored in a rainwater basin that holds a half a million gallons and is filtered twice before using. They collect this from just 2-3 good winter storms. Water from their own deep well is used in the beginning of the year with the rainwater used in the hot summer months.

I asked Linda if the cool spring this year impacted her plants and she said yes, ‘"Everything is three weeks late."  Our early October rains caused her tomatoes to get fungal diseased so they had to harvest them all, while some of the squash now has powdery mildew and has to be pulled up early. As we were talking she told some workers harvesting squash in another part of the farm to cut out the growing tips so the remaining squash would receive all the energy of the plant to ripen before the weather turns cold. The sunflowers being visited by a flock of chickadees was looking a bit bedraggled, too.

We watched some workers putting up frames for plastic hoop houses that will protect peppers crops from the rains and extend the harvest this year. Even potatoes benefit from this cover as overly wet soil contributes to fungal diseases. Lettuces, chard, kale and other leafy greens would get tattered by the rains if not covered.

Walking and talking, Linda would reach down and pick a sprig of bronze fennel or hyssop for me to enjoy. it’s clear that she is gentle on the earth and a good steward of the land. The entire farm is surrounded by redwood forest and oak meadowland, teaming with wildlife. Her philosophy of farming is to gently coax the best produce by creating as natural an environment as she can. Each year, the farm is healthier, most robust and more beautiful than the last.
 

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My friend, Janie, shares some of the vegetables she gets in her weekly Community Supported Agriculture box with me. I like leafy greens while she devours the peppers, lettuces, potatoes, beans – whatever is in season and harvested fresh and delicious that week.

I’d heard about a fabulous place in the Ben Lomond hills, so called Linda Butler, the owner of Lindencroft Farm, to arrange a visit. I learned so much from Linda who took time out from running the farm to show me around.

Linda and her husband, Steven, started the farm in 2007. Their 90 acres is zoned mixed agriculture but since some of it encompasses rare Ben Lomond sandhills habitat, they farm just a couple of acres. They have even installed a wide deer corridor separating the growing areas to allow the deer access to their feeding and watering places.Tall fences protect the beds from other critters but they encourage the birds and bees by planting flowers that seed, attract beneficial insects and produce pollen.

Linda has recently installed a couple of bee hives. She became interested in bees when native bees swarmed for 3 years in a row. She put up boxes one year hoping they would set up housekeeping on the farm, but they failed to come again. Undaunted she bought some bees and the hives are doing well. She doesn’t plan to harvest the honey, she just likes bees.

The Ben Lomond sandhills are an amazing ecosystem and the native plants have adapted to the pure white, fine sand. Vegetables, however, like rich soil to thrive. The Butlers solved this by building special raised beds. First they excavated 3 feet of the sandy soil, lined each bed with steel hardware cloth for gopher control and refilled them with a mix of organic compost, aged and composted horse manure and native soil.

Then they surrounded the beds with a redwood frame. From that point on, the beds are never tilled, compacted or otherwise disturbed by machines or feet. They are refreshed between crops with organic compost.

Asked why the beds are all so deep, Linda explained that she rotates crops regularly and wants to be able to plant deep rooted vegetables, like tomatoes, anywhere she wants. There are now 200 beds in production.

For the first couple of crops in a new bed, she grows leafy greens to establish beneficial microbes in the soil. Larger veggies come later and as she doesn’t till the soil, the microbes aren’t disturbed in any way. Liquid kelp and compost tea are also used for foliar feeding and soil drench. Fish bone meal, not fish meal, which is too high i nitrogen, is also applied to crops.

Starting with just a few play group moms, the farm now grows for two restaurants and harvests enough for a limited number of CSA boxes. A chef from one of the restaurants uses chicory, a bitter green   braised and used under rich meats.  Another chef makes sausages from grass fed beef and sweetens them with bronze fennel tops and young, fresh seed for flavoring. Those who subscribe to a weekly CSA box enjoy a different mix -lettuces, chard, cole crops, peppers, tomatoes herbs – to name just a few.

Next week in Part 2, I’ll talk about how Linda grows all this wonderful produce and which varieties are her favorites.
 

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