Sanhedrin Nursery – Garden Blog

• Garlic sets can be planted now for an easy crop that you can harvest next spring. Choose from hard-neck, soft-neck or Elephant garlic varieties now available.

• Plant cover crops in the garden where summer plants have finished. Fava beans and crimson clover will grow through the winter and improve your soil for spring planting.

• Plant pansies, snapdragons, stock, calendulas and primroses now to replace summer annuals.

• Divide overgrown water lilies and irises. Repot using heavy soil with no organic matter or packaged Aquatic Planting Medium.

• Crocus and daffodils announce the arrival of spring if you plant them now. Choose from a variety of colors and bi-colors available now.

Fall Beauty from Shade Trees

Fall is a wonderful time to plant trees. It gives them a chance to sink their roots into the soil over the winter so they are ready to make the most of the spring growth spurt. The cold nights of fall bring beautiful colors to the leaves of deciduous trees. Liquidambar, maples, Chinese pistache, Raywood ash, European white birch, dogwoods and flowering pear trees brighten the landscape with their colorful leaves. Now is a good time to choose trees that have fall color.

When choosing a tree, it is important to determine just how large a tree you want. Width is easy to measure and for height, figure that a building is about 10 feet tall per story, plus attic height. So a one-story house may be 15 to 20 feet tall, and a two-story house 25 to 30 feet tall. Most trees are at least 30 feet tall and some grow to 60 feet or more, providing good shade over the roof for summer cooling.

Liquidambar and European white birch are both tall, slender trees. White birch trees grow to 45 feet tall with a spread of 30 feet. They turn bright yellow or green and yellow in the fall. Their white bark is particularly attractive in winter.

Liquidambar trees grow to 60 feet tall with a narrow pyramidal form. Their fall colors range from yellow, peach and orange to red and burgundy. They are tall, stately trees which make good street trees where overhead wires are not a problem.

Chinese pistache is a round-headed tree that turns bright red in autumn. It is the most eye-catching tree around right now. It grows to 60 feet tall and 50 feet wide.

Raywood ash trees are fast-growing with fine-textured foliage making a dense, rounded crown. They grow to 35 feet with a 25-foot spread and turn a beautiful reddish-purple color in fall.

October Glory Red Maple is a beautiful, round tree growing 40 feet tall. Its glossy, green foliage turns a brilliant deep red to reddish purple in the fall, lasting for several weeks. It takes summer heat well but needs summer watering. Autumn Fantasy Maple is a large, fast-growing shade tree that consistently shows very good fall color. They are bright rose-red now and very eye-catching.

Flowering pear trees are known for their beautiful white spring blossoms as well as their bright red fall foliage. They grow to 35 feet tall with a 25-foot spread, and turn color late in the fall season, holding their colorful leaves most of the winter.

Dogwood trees are beautiful small trees growing 20 feet tall and wide. In spring, white, pink or red blossoms cover the tree and in fall their round leaves turn beautiful shades of red. Japanese maples are another small tree with delicate green or red leaves throughout the summer which turn a bright scarlet in the fall.

Trees are such an important part of any landscape that one must give plenty of thought to finding just the right one. Fall gives you the opportunity to become acquainted with some new and interesting specimens that may prove to be that special one you’ve been looking for.

Enjoy the beauty of fall with colorful trees in your landscape.

This is a great year for summer fruit in Willits, and the peaches are delicious! Mild spring weather allowed trees to pollenate successfully and bring in bumper crops. If you missed out on the harvest, you might consider planting a peach tree in your orchard.

There are hundreds of different peach varieties, but basically there are two types, the freestones and the clingstones. In freestone types, the flesh separates readily from the pit. In the clingstone type, the flesh clings tightly to the pit. Freestone types are usually preferred for eating fresh or for freezing, while clingstone types are used primarily for canning. Fruit may be either yellow or white-fleshed.

Nothing compares to the taste of tree-ripe peaches. The main challenges to growing good peaches in our area are late spring frosts and a disease known as “peach leaf curl.” Selecting varieties that are both late-blooming and resistant to peach leaf curl will result in the best crops.

Frost, Q-1-8 and Indian Free are excellent choices. Frost is a delicious yellow freestone while Q-1-8 and Indian Free are both white peaches with rich flavor. Other peach varieties which can be grown in our area are Redhaven, an old-time favorite, Donut, a unique white peach with a sunken center (shaped like a doughnut), Snow Beauty, a sweet white taste-test winner, and Rio Oso Gem, a favorite late yellow freestone.

Most peach cultivars do not require cross pollination and a single peach tree can be expected to bear crops in the home orchard. However, two or three different trees will extend the season and provide fruit over a couple of months.

Standard trees grow 15 to 25 feet tall if unpruned, but can be kept to 10 to 12 feet with consistent pruning, especially summer pruning. The best standard rootstock for our area is Lovell, which has a vigorous root system that is tolerant of wet soil or heavy soil. St. Julian is a good dwarfing rootstock that dwarfs trees to 80% of standard, and has good anchorage and excellent vigor. Trees on St. Julian tolerate wet soil as well as drought conditions. Citation rootstock dwarfs peaches to 8-14 ft. Trees will be very tolerant of wet soil but not drought tolerant. Citation rootstock induces heavy bearing at a young age.

Peach trees require full sunlight. If possible, select a site with a raised elevation or on a slope, so that cold air can drain away from the tree on a cold night during bloom. Trees need well drained soil as roots will not tolerate soils where water remains on or near the surface for more than one hour after a heavy rain.

Peaches do not bear a crop every year in our climate, but when they do a single tree can produce 200 pounds of luscious, juicy fruit.

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 two types of blueberries: highbush and rabbiteye. Highbush are the most popular home-garden blueberries. They will do best in locations with some ocean influence in the summer. 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.

Think about adding some berry plants to your garden this winter during bare-root season.