Sanhedrin Nursery – Garden Blog

• Plant seeds of broccoli, cabbage, lettuce and other spring vegetables now.

• Bare root fruit trees, grape and berry vines, and ornamental trees and shrubs are still available.

• Roses should be pruned if you haven’t done so already. Remove all old leaves on and around the bushes and spray with a combination of lime-sulfur and dormant oil to prevent early pest and disease problems.

• 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.

• Blueberries make delicious fruit on attractive plants that you can use in the orchard or the landscape. Choose varieties now.

Grapes for the Home Vineyard

An age-old fruit, grapes have been cultivated for over 6000 years and continue to grow in popularity today. Grown for fresh eating, juice, jelly or wine, grapes are widely recognized for their health benefits as well as for the production of fine wines.

Wine grape varieties represent only a small portion of the more than 600 kinds of grapes, and only about 60 varieties are suited to produce fine quality wine. The rest are considered table grapes, which are seeing a surge in popularity with today’s home gardeners.

Seedless table grapes are the most popular and Thompson Seedless and Flame Seedless make up the majority of table grapes sold in California. But both of these varieties require a considerable amount of heat to reach their finest quality. The Willits area just doesn’t get the amount of heat that the Central Valley does where these varieties grow to perfection. But there are many delicious grapes that are well suited to our climate.

There are two basic types of grapes, American and European. Our familiar table grapes and most wine grapes are derived from a single European species, Vitis vinifera. They have relatively thin skins that adhere closely to their flesh, and seeds that can be slipped out of the pulp quite easily.

American varieties, Vitis labrusca, are sometimes called slip-skin grapes, as their skins separate readily from the flesh; their seeds are tightly embedded in the pulp. The most familiar American variety is the Concord grape. Our area is suited to American grapes and to selected European varieties with lower heat requirements.

For delicious green grapes, try Interlaken Seedless, one of the finest American grapes. Its pale green berries are sweet and crisp and it is one of the first to ripen here. The clusters are medium sized and compact. The berries are good for eating fresh and excellent for raisins.

Himrod Seedless has golden yellow fruit that is sweet, juicy and delicious. It makes excellent raisins. Of the European grapes, Perlette is the first to ripen. Its pale green berries are very tender and juicy with a sweet to slightly tart flavor. Golden Muscat grapes produce huge clusters of golden delicious fruit. The oval berries are a beautiful golden color and are sweet, juicy, and flavorful. They ripen in the fall.

Suffolk Red is a seedless grape with round, firm, pink to red berries and a pleasing, spicy-sweet flavor. It makes a really delicious table grape.

The best known blue grapes are Concord and Concord Seedless, with blue-black grapes of a distinctive “foxy” flavor. They are used widely for grape juice and jelly. Black Monukka grapes have a deep, purplish-black skin and are very sweet with a rich flavor. They are crisp and delicious for fresh use and raisins, and do not need the high heat that Thompson does to get sweet.

Autumn Royal is crisp and sweet and makes a delicious snack for fall. With a purple-black skin and translucent yellow-green flesh, it has a pleasant, distinctive flavor. Give it a very hot location and the fruit will ripen toward the end of the season.

Grapes are so abundant and easy to grow, that no family orchard should be without them. Plant several varieties to enjoy their distinct flavors and a long harvest.

• Plant strawberries now for delicious strawberry shortcake this summer.

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

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

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

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

Early Spring Garden Chores

Bulbs sprouting, buds swelling and the first colors of flowers let us know that spring is just around the corner. Now is a good time to tidy up the garden to get ready for the early show.

Most roses need to be pruned now. Consult a good rose book for how to trim your type of rose since timing and methods vary with individual cultivars. Floribunda, hybrid tea, climbers, shrub and miniature roses are all a little different. Roses that bloom early, like Climbing Cecile Brunner, should not be pruned now. Wait until all of its rose blossoms have started to fade before pruning this rose.

Fruit trees, evergreens, many deciduous trees, raspberry canes and grapevines can all be pruned before new growth begins. Check with your local nursery for specifics or invest in a good pruning book.

It’s time to clean up the perennial beds. Start cutting back the plants that you left standing for winter interest. By now the first green swirls of new growth are appearing on ‘Autumn Joy’ sedum, so you can cut off the spent flowers. The birds have picked clean the seeds from the purple coneflowers, so those attractive seed heads can be snipped off, too. As soon as the first new leaves appear on your butterfly bush, you can prune them back hard to keep the plants compact.

Wait to prune lilacs and wisteria and other spring-blooming shrubs. If you prune them now, you’ll be pruning off the blossoms.

Now is when you should cut back your ornamental grasses. Hand pruners do a good job on smaller clumps, but hedge trimmers are handy for larger clumps. Hold or tie the old growth with twine and cut the grass 4-6 inches from the ground. Compost the old growth and look for new, green shoots to appear in a few weeks.

It’s time to start seeds of spring vegetables. Broccoli, cabbage, cauliflower, lettuce, chard and spinach can all be started now. Many interesting varieties are available on local seed racks. Start the seeds indoors with bottom heat and bright light then transplant them into 6-packs where they can grow for a month before it’s time to set them out in the garden.

Set out bare-root plants of strawberries, asparagus and onions. The strawberries and onions will produce this year, but it takes two years before you can harvest asparagus. After that, they will produce every spring for the next twenty years.

Add some colorful pansies and primroses to garden paths and containers. These beauties will bloom through April, when it will be time to plant summer flowers. You can also plant larkspur and snapdragons now for early color.

Enjoy the nice days of February by tackling some of these garden chores.

• Bare root season is here. Choose and plant your favorite fruit trees and roses now.

• Spring flowers and vegetables can be started from seeds now on your window sill. Try pansies and snapdragons, broccoli, cabbage and lettuces.

• Lilacs and wisteria have beautiful spring flowers. They come in a variety of colors and can be planted now from bare-root plants.

• Delicious raspberries, blackberries, loganberries, boysenberries and blueberries are all available now for early planting.

Highly Esteemed Antique Apples
Add some taste variety to your apple orchard

        Apples. Red, round, crisp and cool. The list of adjectives doesn’t have to stop there. An apple can be much more flavorful than the few you’ve tasted from the market.

        The orchards of North America have produced well over a thousand named apple varieties, each one with its characteristic color, aura and flavor. These antique apples are worth exploring to rediscover the remarkable variety of flavors hidden inside the modest apple.

        Ashmead’s Kernel is an apple that has been around for over 200 years since its discovery in England. This is widely regarded as one of the all-time best-flavored apples. It is one of the best cider apples and a good one to store for winter eating since it becomes sweet, juicy and aromatic as it ripens a few weeks after harvest.

Cox Orange Pippin is the classic English apple, often regarded as the finest of all dessert apples. Dating back to 1830 in England, it remains unsurpassed for its richness and complexity of flavor. Firm, juicy, and sweet, it is at its best when picked fully ripe straight from the tree.

Originally from Russia, Red Astrachan is a beautiful summer apple with firm, coarse flesh that is very tart. It makes flavorful dried apples, and some old-timers rate this the best for pie.

Spitzenburg was Thomas Jefferson’s favorite apple. Unexcelled in flavor or quality, the fruit is great off the tree, but flavor radically improves in storage. A perfect balance between sharp and sweet, it is recommended for applesauce, apple butter and baking.

White Winter Pearmain is a very old apple, perhaps dating back to 1200 A.D. This high quality, all-purpose apple has a rich, almost sweet flavor. It is a vigorous, healthy tree and the fruit keeps well.

        The dark, waxy skin of Arkansas Black encloses a golden flesh that is juicy, and crisp with a nice aroma.  It is a late apple that keeps for many months, and is excellent for cooking and making desserts.

Hudson’s Golden Gem is perhaps the finest eating russeted apple with crisp, breaking, sugary flesh and a distinct nutty flavor that resembles the Bosc pear. Fruit is conical, elongated, yellow and russeted, and it is quite disease resistant.

“Heritage” apples, also called heirloom or antique apples, are the old varieties that have stood the test of time, generally for over 50 years. Some well-known heirlooms are Yellow Newton Pippin, a snappy, tart apple famous for cooking and excellent dried; Rome Beauty, prized for its baking qualities; Golden Delicious with mild, sweet, distinctive flavor.

Braeburn, a late season apple that is very popular now; Mutsu, a bright green, all-purpose apple; Pink Pearl, a pink-fleshed, highly aromatic fruit; Gravenstein, famous for sauce and baking; and York, an excellent keeper with fine quality for dessert use.

Tantalize your taste buds with one of these old-time favorites.