Sanhedrin Nursery – Garden Blog

• Gerberas Daisies with their large, bright-colored flowers are a standout in containers. Water them infrequently and give them plenty of sun for flowers all summer.

• Asparagus plants should be fed with good, rich compost when you have finished cutting spears. Keep the bed mulched and weed-free all summer, and the soil moist.

• Ivy geraniums make wonderful hanging baskets for partially shaded spots where they will bloom all summer.

• Tomatoes are the most popular summer vegetable. Choose from the many varieties available now so you can enjoy delicious home-grown flavor.

• When you plant your vegetable garden, why not grow a little extra to donate to the Willits Food Bank this summer.

The Ancient Art of Bonsai

One of the most fascinating of all the varied garden arts is Bonsai. Centuries ago, the Japanese collected and cultivated trees in miniature form, capturing the spirit of nature, and thus creating a unique art form. Bonsai is a Japanese word, meaning ‘tree in a tray.’

Nature’s forms are so exactly reproduced in these elegant trees, that you can almost feel the wind blow as you contemplate a weather-beaten, windswept mountain tree.

As with other hobbies, there are skills involved, but with practice wonderful results can be achieved. Your initial attempts, though not perfect, will bring you joy and pride as you watch them grow. A young tree has the potential to grow into a great work of art with your careful attention.

Spring is the best time to start a new bonsai while the trees are strongest and growing vigorously. When you visit the nursery to select your tree, examine the basic form of the trunk since this is what you will work with. Specimens that are lopsided or deformed often make very good bonsai subjects.

The easiest plants to start with are juniper, cotoneaster and Japanese maples. Keep in mind that you are creating a tree in miniature – small leaved species will help the beginner to create this image. Small starter plants are easiest for the beginner, while the more experienced may look for larger, overgrown nursery plants.

Choose a pot with large drain holes. This will help prevent overwatering, which is the leading cause of death with bonsai. A netting or screen can be placed in the bottom of the pot to keep the soil from falling through the holes.

The soil should be light and porous. You can buy a premixed bonsai soil, or make your own with three parts loam, two parts sand and one part peat moss.

After your tree is potted, pay close attention to its water needs. Daily watering is necessary during very warm weather, but may drown the plant in mild weather.

Bonsai plants like to be kept outdoors. They are not house plants, unless they are made with tropical plants that tolerate household conditions. Find a location where they will receive as much sunlight as possible without overheating or burning. This will vary according to the kind of plant. A high-branching tree or latticework can shelter them from excessive heat. Also protect them from strong winds and heavy rain.

To create the weather-beaten or windswept look, branches are often removed and tops are trimmed. Branches and trunks can be temporarily wired to produce twisted shapes. The goal is to create a plant that looks like a small old tree. The Chinese frequently use figurines and/or rocks in their compositions.

Bonsai is a very popular horticultural hobby that can be enjoyed by young and old alike.

• Mulch blueberry plants with aged sawdust and feed with cottonseed meal or an acid fertilizer.

• Set out zinnias, cosmos, impatiens and begonias for lots of colorful flowers all summer long.

• Earwigs are out and about and hungry. Control them with the new “Sluggo Plus”, or diatomaceous earth sprinkled around the plants, or go out after dark with a flashlight and a spray bottle of Safer’s Insecticidal Soap. One squirt will put an end to the spoiler.

• The “Wave” petunias make wonderful hanging baskets for full sun. They come in purple, bright pink, reddish-purple and pale “misty lilac.” They can also be used for a colorful summer ground cover.

• Cage or stake tomatoes while still small so that you can train them as they grow.

The Importance of Bees

Bees are extremely important to gardeners. Without them, we would not have fruit to harvest. Peppers, eggplant, tomatoes and beans are pollinated by bees. Watermelons, cantaloupe, cucumbers and squash require bee pollination to set fruit. Strawberries, apples, cherries, plums, peaches, pears, berries of all kinds and grapes need bees for pollination.

Three types of bees do most of the pollinating: honeybees, bumblebees and solitary bees. There are 1600 species of native California bees, 26 of these are bumblebees and most of the rest are solitary bees. Honeybees come from Europe.

California native bees are great for your vegetable garden, and bumblebees are great pollinators of tomatoes. You can add flowers and shrubs to your garden or landscape that will attract the bees. In so doing, you will be helping to sustain these valuable insects and, as a reward, you will enjoy bumper crops in your own orchards and vegetable gardens as well.

Since native bees are around all through the growing season, it is important to plant flowers that bloom successively over the spring, summer and fall. By grouping the flowers that attract bees together, you are more likely to draw bees to your garden. Gardens with ten or more species of attractive plants will attract the largest number of bees.

Flowers clustered into clumps of one species will attract more pollinators than will individual plants scattered through the area. Where space allows, make the clumps four feet or more in diameter.

Choose several colors of flowers. Bees have good color vision to help them find flowers and the nectar and pollen they offer. Flower colors that particularly attract bees are blue, purple, violet, white, and yellow.

Some of the best pollen sources that bloom in the spring are California poppy, calendula, larkspur and wallflower (Erysimum). A planting of mixed spring wildflowers will give you many fine bee plants. Manzanitas, flowering currant (Ribes), Oregon grape (Mahonia) and wild lilacs (Ceanothus sp.) are good shrubs for early in the season.

There are many good choices for late spring and early summer. Yarrows of all kinds attract bees, as do catmint, penstemons, lavenders, lupines, thymes and borage. Bush anemone (Carpenteria californica) attracts several kinds of bees and huckleberries are good bee plants. Rosemary is very attractive to bees and so are elderberries.

Midsummer choices include gaillardia, echinacea, coreopsis, germander, salvias, verbenas and asters. Basil, carrots and herbs left to flower, cosmos, bachelor buttons, squash and pumpkins will all attract bees to your garden. Rudbeckias, sedums and sunflowers will provide forage for the end of summer and into the fall.

Plant native plants, if possible, to readily attract our native bees. Let your garden be a little “wild” with a variety of plants to make a bee-friendly garden. What’s good for the bees is good for our fruits and vegetables and a good thing to do for the planet.

• Fuchsias in hanging baskets make beautiful patio plants. They bloom all summer and attract hummingbirds to their pendulous blossoms.

• Thin fruit trees now while fruits are still small. Thin apples to 6 inches apart and peaches to 4 inches apart. On Asian pears leave 1 fruit per spur.

• Spray roses every two weeks to keep them healthy and prevent leaf diseases. Neem oil is a safe alternative to chemicals.

• Flower seeds can be sown directly in the garden now. Cosmos, marigolds and zinnias will give you beautiful flowers all summer.

• Calibrachoa, or Million Bells, are a trailing, miniature petunia that comes in bright oranges and reds. Plant them in full sun for a profusion of 1” wide flowers from spring to frost.

Wake Up your Taste Buds with Flavorful Peppers

Pepper popularity just keeps growing and every year gardeners are trying out new varieties. The number of pepper varieties available, especially the hot types and sweet non-bells, has exploded and now numbers in the hundreds.

Peppers are grouped into three types: sweet bell peppers, sweet non-bell peppers and hot peppers ranging from “warm” to “blazing hot.” The big development in bell peppers has been a variety of colorful bells ranging from red, orange and yellow to lilac, purple and chocolate. In standard green bells, California Wonder and Bell Boy are still favorites. They turn to bright red as they ripen. However, Red Beauty, which produces sweet red peppers in only 68 days, is the most popular bell pepper today.

The sweet non-bells range from the little Italian Pepperoncini peppers which are good for pickling to the long, yellow Sweet Bananas. Corno di Toro, the heirloom “Horn of the Bull” pepper, is imported from Italy. Fruits are 8 to 10 inches long, curved much like a bull’s horn, and ripen to a gorgeous red cone. Pimientos, with their heart-shaped fruits, are ideal for salads, garnishes and canning.

Italian Long Sweet, widely used in Italian cooking, is very sweet when red-ripe. Colorful Gypsy peppers turn from yellow to orange-red and they are crunchy, firm and sweet.

Hot peppers are usually called chilies. Anaheim is a long, green chili that is mildly hot. Ancho-Poblano has heart-shaped fruits that are called Poblanos when used green and stuffed to make chili rellenos; and called Anchos when dried and ground into chili powder. Pasilla, the popular Chili negro, is mildly hot and slightly sweet and is used in many Mexican dishes, including “mole” sauce.

Hot and spicy Jalapeños and flavorful Serranos used to be considered the “hot” peppers. Along with Hungarian Wax, which has spicy, fairly hot banana shaped fruits that are perfect for pickling, and Fresno, small fruits with fiery flavor, they run in the mid-range of the heat scale.

Slightly hotter are Tabasco, bred for the famous extra-hot Tabasco sauce, with fruits that ripen from yellow-green to red, and Cayenne, which has long, slender, slightly wrinkled fruit that is excellent for chili and homemade salsa.

But for the really hot peppers there are Habaneros, “the hottest chili in the world,” and Thai Hot Dragon, “eight times hotter than Jalapeño,” Jamaica Scotch Bonnet, “smoky and fiery hot,” and Caribbean Red, said to be hotter than all the rest.

Peppers like warm weather and can be damaged more easily by cold weather than tomatoes. Use hot caps or “Walls-O-Water” to get them started early. They like soil rich in organic matter and adequate moisture through the summer. Plant peppers in full sun, about 18 inches apart. Place some bone meal in the planting hole to help prevent blossom-end rot. Mulch to keep down weeds and keep in soil moisture. Some gardeners mulch the plants with black plastic to warm the soil as much as possible, which can increase yields.

Enjoy some new taste sensations with flavorful peppers this summer.