Thanksgiving Blessings

Electric orange trees decorate our gardens and forest paths this time of year. During the summer when trees are quietly green we almost forget they are among us but then seemingly overnight they turn on the lights and glow with flamboyant fall colors. Thanksgiving is that time of year when we are reminded of all that we have to be grateful for. The world is so beautiful and we’re lucky to live in such an amazing place. Here are some things for which I’m thankful.

1. Food
It’s the most important thing we share. We eat to celebrate when we’re happy. When we’re sad, we eat to comfort ourselves. We eat for fun and the greatest thing you can do for someone else is cook a meal for them. Simple delicious food is a gift. I could never do without sharing a meal with friends or family.

2. Nature
Our sense of sight allows us to see the colors of life- an orange sunset to end the day, a rainbow after a storm, new green leaves emerging in the spring, clouds and blue skies.  Smell the air after it rains or the fragrance of a flower. Touch the softness of a velvety leaf or feel the breeze of the wind. Hear the rainfall dripping from the redwoods or the winter wrens calling to each other under the canopy. Taste wild huckleberry or thimbleberries along a forest path. I’m grateful for the beauty of nature that visits my garden.

3. Gardens
Big or small, in a pot or an orchard, growing something is a way to say you believe in tomorrow. Being able to pick a Sungold tomato off your own vine or a bouquet of flowers for your dinner table is a reward well earned. A cool spring, a heat wave in July, raccoons digging up your new seedlings, nothing can deter a gardener. Hope springs eternal each year as we plan for next years garden now evan before winter has started.

4. Lovable pets
Whether you have one or get to enjoy someone else’s you know the joy and love you receive from being around these amazing creatures. There’s nothing like that greeting from a pet when you come home. It can make your day or erase a bad one. They bring us so much happiness and ask for very little in return. Just petting their soft fur can help us cope when we’re sad.

5. State Parks, National Parks and Monuments, County Parks
This year I was able to visit The Pinnacles National Monument, Lassen Volcanic National park, Ano Nuevo, Candlestick Point, Bean Hollow, Pogonip, Wilder, Natural Bridges, Moss Landing, Marina and Pt. Lobos as well as our local Big Basin, Fall Creek and Henry Cowell state parks. Being a native Californian I’ve been to the far corners of our state over the years. I remember as a kid camping with my parents and thinking that every state had as many cool places as ours. Located on mountaintops, on the pristine shores of sparking lakes, alongside rivers, take advantage of these special places preserved because they are unique.

6. Blessings
Count your blessings. Be grateful for friends who understand. Appreciate what you have. See the beauty around you. Live in the moment. On Thanksgiving we have a chance to gather and appreciate the friends, family and the blessings around us. Imagine if everyday you took a moment to be th

Soil Testing & Monterey Bay Master Gardener’s

Master Gardeners rock. I was inspired by the fabulous gardens that I saw on their 2010 Masters Garden Tour and even wrote a column about some of them. Attending the Smart Gardening Fair when it was sponsored by the Monterey Bay Master Gardeners at Skypark in Scotts Valley was always an educational experience. I also read the informative newsletters available on their website. So it was with the same enthusiasm that I attended  the quarterly Monterey Bay Master Gardener meeting earlier this month.

Held at the University of California Cooperative Extension office in Watsonville and open to the public, the meeting lived up the the Master Gardener slogan to "Cultivate Knowledge... by extending research-based horticultural information". The speaker was Cliff Low, owner of Perry Laboratory in Watsonville. If you have ever wondered why your hedge is languishing despite your exquisite care you may need his services.

The lab provides horticultural advising and testing of soil, irrigation water and plant tissue. Cliff works with grape growers in the wine industry, strawberry and cut flower growers and organic farmers as well as home owners and landscape professionals. He can provide fertilizer recommendation for conventional or organic amendments based on soil tests for basic fertility, micronutrients, salinity and alkalinity.

Cliff combines his formal education with real-life solutions and shared some interesting tidbits of his horticultural  knowledge. Grapes, for instance, are prone to zinc and boron deficiencies and may need foliar feeding of these micronutrients. Excess sodium usually only occurs in clay soils. Mediterranean plants thrive in low phosphorus and slightly acidic soils.

I also learned that rose growers for the cut flower industry in this area now use coconut coir as a growing medium. Coir, which is the hair of the coconut shell, is also being used by gardeners as a substitute for peat moss. Although peat moss has natural anti-microbial properties, it is harvested from rapidly depleting peat lands and is not sustainable. Coir has similar properties to peat as a soil amendment and the high potassium chloride in coconuts may guard against garden pests as it does in coconut trees. The down side is the cost of shipping as most coir comes from Sri Lanka, Mexico and the Philippines. Also weed seeds are being imported in with the coir. Still it is the medium of choice for organic farmers.

If you have a well you already know this but it was interesting to me to learn that a well high in iron actually helps plants by providing this element that they need anyway. Slime bacteria that is associated with iron wells, however, is a dangerous health risk and the use of chlorine from household bleach to treat it counters this beneficial affect.

Much can be learned from a soil test provided by Perry Laboratory but If you choose to test your own soil for nitrogen, phosphorus and potassium, be sure your reagent powder is fresh, advised Cliff. Last seasons left over capsules are not reliable. Meters to measure pH are not very accurate either unless the soil sample is uniformly dry. You can contact Perry Lab at (831) 722-7606 or http://perrylaboratory.com

My thanks to Monterey Bay Master Gardeners who offer so much for the home gardener. You can call their hotline (831) 763-8007 for horticultural advice. Their next Master Gardener Training class starts in January 2012. Check out their fall newsletter for articles ranging from integrated plant management techniques for Light Brown apple moth control to the successes and failures this year in members own gardens to how bunny rabbits may be the cause of your plant losses.

 

Fall Color for the Santa Cruz Mountains

The end of daylight savings time signals to me that autumn is really here in our mild California surroundings. We may not have as many fall color foliage trees and shrubs as other states but we love ours just as much.  Besides we don’t get snow two days before Halloween. Can you imagine? Enjoy these crisp mornings and warm days and to make your garden more compelling, try mixing in trees and shrubs with bold leaves and a wide range of autumn color.

Bright trees and shrubs add color flashes to fall gardens. Sasanqua camellias have already started blooming and will continue to flower throughout the winter. In addition to asters and rudbeckia, Japanese anemones are the stars of the border at this time of year. The electric blue flowers of dwarf plumbago contrast with reddish leaves as night temperatures dip. Summer Snowflake viburnum, Encore azalea, Endless Summer hydrangea and loropetalum are blooming now, too.

But what about vivid foliage in the garden? Which plants put on the best show in our area? Here are some of my favorites.

We are all familiar with the brilliant fall color of Japanese maples. Bloodgood is probably the single most popular upright purple-leaved variety seen in gardens. Beautiful in color and form, it’s easy to grow and fits nicely in the smaller garden.

A great tree for the gardener interested in edibles is the Fuyu persimmon. This beautiful small tree is ornamental with glossy green leaves and also offers a dramatic fall display in shades of yellow, orange and red. Bright orange fruit begins to develop in late October and clings to bare branches usually through December. The tree looks more like it’s covered with holiday ornaments than fruit. And have you priced persimmons in the store lately?

Blueberries are a must for the edible gardener. They can used to make a beautiful hedge that provides showy red or yellow fall color.  Because of our colder winters here in the mountains, we can grow both northern highbush which are self-fertile and southern highbush which produce better with another type to pollinize them. They can be great foundation plants around the home as well as in the garden.

A vine that lights up with the onset of autumn is Rogers Red California grape. If you have an arbor, wall or fence that need covering quickly, this is your plant. The green and gray leaves are transformed in autumn into great draperies of rich, scarlet red leaves with clusters of summer fruit turning all shades of purple.

Japanese barberries are deer resistant, low water-use small shrubs that make them superb hedge plants, background plants against fences and foundations or accent plants. Red or lime colored summer foliage changes to orange, red or amber in the fall. I love the graceful growing habit of many of the varieties but there are pillar forms and also dwarf types.

Bright foliage on trees like red maples, liquidamber, Chinese pistache, ginkgo, ornamental pear, cherry or crabapple, dogwood, goldenrain, locust, katsura, oak, redbud, sumac and witchhazel all add to the fall drama of the landscape.

Light up your garden as the light fades and the days shorten. I know my garden needs a greater variety of fall color than just the Japanese maples in pots on the deck and the barberries. Maybe I’ll add a purple smoke bush with leaves than turn luminous scarlet to add color flashes to my fall garden.
 

Lindencroft Farm- a CSA part 2

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.
 

A Community Supported Agriculture Farm in Ben Lomond

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.
 

Fall Gardening Tips

The recent rains will allow weed seeds to sprout which is just what you want if you’re planning a wildflower meadow.  The most common mistake when planting wildflower seeds is not getting rid of the existing weed and grass seeds that are in the soil and will germinate along with the wildflowers. These fast-growing weeds smother the slower growing wildflowers. Take time to eliminate the competition. Get rid of existing weeds when they sprout by cultivating the soil to a depth of not more than 1 inch. Deeper cultivation exposes more weed seeds that will germinate along with the wildflower seeds.

Don’t prune now, you’ll be happy to hear.   Fall is not a good time to prune.  Wounds heal slowly, leaving them more susceptible to disease.  As a general rule, don’t prune when leaves are falling or forming.  Wait to prune most trees until late in the dormant season or in late spring after leaves and needles form.  To avoid sap flow on birches and maples, prune after leaves mature. 

Other to-do’s for early fall-
Rake leaves- compost or put in your green can. If large leaves are left in place they will mat down and set up fungal problems come spring.
If you have a lawn give it a feeding low in nitrogen but higher in phosphorus and potassium ( the last two numbers on the box or bag ).
Clean up spent plant material. The early rain may have caused powdery mildew to take hold on your squash or late blight on the tomatoes. Do not compost these in your own compost pile.
Set out native plants. They’ll love the the winter rains to become established.
Bring in houseplants from outside around Halloween. Check for bugs first.
Cultivate around beds, trees, shrubs so rains can penetrate.  Add chicken manure around fruit trees so they are ready to go next spring. 
 

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