Sanhedrin Nursery – Garden Blog

• Flowering dogwoods and tulip magnolias can be planted now during the dormant season from balled & burlapped specimens.

• Last chance to spray peach and nectarine trees for peach leaf curl before the buds break open. Use copper sulfate wettable powder for the best results.

• Spring vegetables can be planted now. Start your garden with broccoli, cabbage, lettuce spinach and chard. It pays to grow your own!

• Primroses, in their rainbow of colors, will light up your flower beds and boxes this winter and spring.

• Bare root fruit trees, grape and berry vines are still available. The best selection is available now.

Camellias: A Gift from Asia

A gift from the Orient to temperate gardens of the world, camellias have long held a position of esteem in their native lands. In China, Japan and Korea the camellia motif is a familiar decoration on everything from architecture to textiles.

It is known that one species, Camellia sinensis, has been grown for at least 3,000 years — not for its flowers but for its leaves, which are used to make tea. The first camellia arrived in Europe in the 1500s, but not until the 19th century were they imported for public use. Soon after, European nurseries started raising new varieties from seed, offering hundreds of named varieties by the end of the century. There are now over 3,000 named varieties.

The most commonly grown Camellias in California are varieties of Camellia japonica. Their perfectly shaped blooms stand out against their dark, glossy green leaves. Thousands of double camellia hybrids offer a large palette of colors from snowy white and bicolors to the deepest scarlet-red. They bloom over a long spring season.

Camellia sasanqua is an earlier blooming species with smaller, less double flowers. But they are just as showy, producing more flowers than the japonicas. They begin blooming in the fall and continue through the winter. Plants grow in a variety of shapes and sizes and they will tolerate full sun once established.

Camellias grow naturally in forest settings, where the forest floor is a thick, soft carpet of decaying leaves and twigs and the soil is loose and crumbly. Since California is much drier than eastern Asia, we need to modify our natural conditions to grow camellias well.

Fortunately, camellias are quite adaptable. Given a rich, humusy soil to live in, their care consists mainly of watering and fertilizing. They need protection from hot sun and strong winds, and do best with morning sun and afternoon shade. The roots should stay moist, but not soggy, at all times. A natural mulch kept around the plants will keep moisture in and improve the soil. Use bark, wood chips or oak leaves.

The first year, plants need only be watered and mulched. After that, you can fertilize with a commercial fertilizer formulated for camellias, or with cottonseed meal. Be sure the soil is moist when you apply any fertilizer. When in doubt use less, as camellias can be damaged or killed by too much fertilizer.

Unlike other flowering shrubs, camellias need no annual pruning to stay healthy and attractive. You can maintain their shape by taking two or three leaves with the bloom when cutting flowers. If a plant is not as bushy as you would like it to be, cut out last year’s growth in late spring and several branches will start below the cut.

Clean-up is important for healthy camellias. Remove faded flowers before they fall, especially any that have brown petals, an indication of petal blight.

Treat your camellias well and they will give you beautiful blooms each spring, and grow to be beautiful, large landscape plants.

• Pansies, with their bright faces, are impervious to cold weather. They even bloom under the snow. So plant some now for spring color.

• Clematis that bloomed last summer can be pruned now. Wait on spring-blooming varieties until after they bloom.

• English daisies are an early-blooming perennial with showy red, pink or white flowers. They will bloom all spring in partial shade.

• Spray fruit trees with a dormant oil spray. Spray from the bottom up, including the undersides of limbs and the ground around the tree, to prevent early spring insect infestations.

• It’s bare root season, which means you can save money on fruit trees, grapevines and berry vines by planting them now. A wide selection is still available.

Small Fruits for the Garden

Wonderful fruits come from the home berry patch. In addition to fresh eating and luscious pies, cobblers and strawberry shortcakes, berries are easy to freeze and can be made into delicious jams and colorful juices.

Small fruits come in a wide assortment of colors, flavors, shapes and sizes. Strawberries, raspberries, blueberries, currants, gooseberries, blackberries and grapes give us an enormous variety to choose from. Not only are they colorful and tasty, but most small fruits are easy to grow. They are very productive and most kinds bear a year or two after planting.

Grapes are one of the oldest fruits in cultivation. With just a few vines you can harvest enough fruit for delicious, fresh grapes, grape juice, grape jelly or raisins. Plant early, mid-season and late varieties for an extended harvest. Grapes must be pruned to get top production from your vines, and now is a good time to begin that job.

Raspberries and blackberries and their many cousins, are usually referred to as the brambles. They are frequently treated as gourmet fruit, not because they are hard to grow, but because they don’t ship well. But they are easy to grow in our climate, so choose some of your favorite cultivars now and start your own bramble patch.

The bush fruits include blueberry, currant, gooseberry, huckleberry and lingonberry. What you don’t eat fresh can be made into delicious sauces, conserves, pies and other desserts, or frozen for later use.

There are three types of blueberries: Northern highbush, Southern highbush and Rabbiteye. Northern highbush are the most popular home-garden blueberries. They will do best in locations with some ocean influence in the summer. Southern highbush and Rabbiteyes are ideal for warmer climates.

Currants produce generous quantities of tasty fruit with very little maintenance. Gooseberries are wonderful for preserves and refreshing summer wines. They will grow in full sun or partial shade. Huckleberry is native to our redwood forests and makes tasty little fruits that are delicious in pancakes!

The favorite home-grown berry is, of course, the strawberry. Picked ripe from the garden, they are rich and flavorful. Fresh strawberry shortcake, strawberry ice cream and strawberry pie are just some of the ways to use them. The plants are inexpensive and bear a full crop within a year of planting.

Berries of all kinds are available for planting now.

• Pluots are a cross between plums and apricots. Their meaty fruit has a wonderful flavor. Bare root trees can be planted now.

• Spray for peach leaf curl with copper sulfate. Peach and nectarine trees may suffer from this fungus disease without a protective spray.

• Start an asparagus bed so you can enjoy their young, tender shoots straight from the garden.

• Plant strawberry plants now for delicious strawberry shortcake this summer.

• Cabbage, broccoli, lettuce and other cool season vegetables can be started now from seed. There are many wonderful varieties available on seed racks.

Chill Out!

When fruit trees drop their leaves in the fall they go into a winter dormancy. This is important for the tree for several reasons. Shutting down for the winter protects the trees from getting damaged by cold or freezing weather. It also gives them the rest period required before the trees will bloom.

When you read descriptions of fruit trees, there is often a number of hours listed at the end of the description. This is the chilling requirement of that particular variety.

Deciduous fruit trees first need some cool weather and then some warm temperatures to start growing. Different tree species need different amounts of chilling and/or warm temperatures to begin bloom.

In general, the lower the chill requirement, the earlier a tree will bloom. Once the tree has accumulated the required number of chill hours, it will bloom during the next warm period. This can be very difficult in areas like ours where we may have an early warm spell followed by more freezing weather. A variety with a low chill requirement will flower too early and the blossoms or immature fruits will often be damaged by cold weather, especially late spring frosts. Selecting a high chill variety in warm areas will result in little or no fruit production.

Apples have the highest chilling requirements of all fruit trees, followed by apricots and, lastly, peaches. If a tree does not get a sufficient amount of winter chill, it can result in a loss of up to 50% of expected harvest.

There are several models for determining the amount of chill that your orchard receives. The “45 and under model” is the simplest and is still in use. It holds that every hour below 45°F equals one chill hour received.

The “32-45 model” says any hour of cold between 32°F and 45°F contributes one hour to satisfying a tree’s chilling requirement. According to the “32-45 model,” temperatures below 32°F don’t contribute to accumulated chill.

Other models are even more complex, but they still don’t make good predictions all the time. It is very difficult to figure out just what Mother Nature’s formula is.

Determining the exact amount of chill you receive is very difficult. Terrain can affect the chill hours too. Open slopes may receive more chilling hours than sheltered areas next to warm buildings. Locations at about 1000 feet above the valley floor may receive substantially less winter chill than the valley below.

In the Willits Valley, we receive over 1000 hours of chilling each winter. The nearest recording station is the Hopland Field Station, which receives an average of 1024 hours below 45°F and 987 hours between 32°F and 45°F.

When choosing a fruit tree for this area, varieties with at least 700 hours will do best. This is particularly important for peach trees as they tend to bloom early. But if a peach is rated for 800-1000 hours, it will usually remain dormant until the beginning of March. It will have to take its chances after that.

You will have the most success with your home orchard if you choose trees that have the proper chilling requirement for your area.