Sanhedrin Nursery – Garden Blog

• Lettuce can be planted from starts for a quick fall crop.

• Tree collards are delicious winter vegetables. Set out plants now.

• Apples, pears and other fruit trees can be planted in the fall from containers to get a head start on next spring.

• It’s time to divide overgrown perennials that bloomed in the spring or early summer. It’s also a good time to choose and plant some new varieties.

• Cover crops should be planted in the garden as soon as you pull out summer crops. They will feed the soil and prevent erosion over the winter.

Color for Cooler Days

As the petunias and marigolds wind down, and chilly nights come on, it’s time to clean up the flower beds and plant some new flowers for the cooler months. Snapdragons, calendulas, stock, pansies, violas, primroses and chrysanthemums are the best choices to keep your garden and containers colorful.

Snapdragons come in a variety of sizes and colors. They range from 8-inch tall “Floral Carpets” to 36-inch tall “Rockets.” The color range spans all the pinks, reds and lavenders as well as yellow and white. Although they are sold as annuals, in our climate they will winter over and rebloom profusely in early spring.

For mass plantings, plant medium and dwarf varieties 6 to 8 inches apart and tall types a foot apart. Give them a sunny location with good garden soil that is well-drained. Snaps look very nice when interplanted with delphiniums, irises and daylilies.

Calendulas are very easy to grow. They are sometimes called winter marigold, though they are not marigolds at all. They grow in the sun and come in all shades of yellow, gold and orange. They like cool weather and will provide lots of color between now and next summer.

Stock is well-known for its wonderful fragrance. Flowers come in lovely rich colors of pink, purple, rose and white. Most flowers are double, and set against their gray-green foliage, they are beautiful. They make wonderful cut flowers, mixing nicely with snaps to have a riot of color as well as fragrance.

Pansies and violas are low-growing flowers that are nice for borders and look very pretty in containers of all kinds. Their heart-shaped, shiny green leaves cover the ground and the flowers rise above them on six-inch stems. Pansy flowers can be up to three inches across and come in a wide variety of colors; some have “faces” and others are solid colors. Both pansies and violas have many new varieties with two or three colors in each flower making a very colorful statement.

English primroses are the best bedding plants for shady areas in the winter. Their flowers sit in a cluster directly in the center of the plant, some on central flower stalks and some with lower flowers on individual stems. The color range is incredible, covering red, blue, yellow and all shades in between.

If primroses are started early enough they will bloom in the fall. All plants will bloom from February through April, putting on a terrific show of color. If planted in a spot that receives shade in the summer, they will become well-established and be bigger and more beautiful next winter.

Chrysanthemums make some of the best cut flowers around. They last up to two weeks in the vase, and give fresh color to the garden when nearly all other perennials have finished their show for the year. In your garden, they will grow 2 to 4 feet tall, and have long stems for cutting.

Fall-blooming mums come in a dazzling array of colors. The “fall colors” of yellow, gold, rust and magenta are very appealing. But they also come in pink, white, purple and lavender. Choose colors that will compliment your indoor decor or the color of your house.

Perk up your garden with cheerful fall bloomers.

• Bulbs, bulbs, bulbs! It’s time to plant tulips, daffodils, hyacinths, crocus and many other flower bulbs for beautiful blooms next spring.

• Plant snapdragons, pansies and violas for color this fall, winter and next spring.

• Plant cover crops in areas of the garden that have finished producing for the summer. Crimson clover and fava beans will grow over the winter and enrich the soil for next year.

• Fall is for planting! Make the most of the nice fall weather and plant trees, shrubs, ground covers and bulbs now during the fall planting season.

Plant a Little Privacy

Whether we live in the city or the country, we all need a certain amount of privacy, and sometimes plants can create a living fence or screen to serve that purpose.  

There are many reasons for screens. Maybe you want to put a screen between you and the neighbors, or to give you privacy from the road.
 
A tall hedge can be used to keep down unwanted noise, hide undesirable views, keep out dust and other pollutants, and provide wind protection. It can also be used to frame desirable views and provide the feeling of enclosure. Screens can be used within the landscape to create outdoor “rooms” and separate utility areas from pleasure areas.

Evergreen shrubs and trees that have foliage from the ground up are the most desirable, and so are “fast-growing” plants. When you decide where you want a screen, determine the height and width needed, as well as the amount of sun or shade the planting will receive. Then choose plants which will meet the exposure requirements without excessive pruning.

For a 6 to 8 foot hedge some good shrubs include Oregon grape, Texas privet and heavenly bamboo. They are upright-growing and make tall, narrow screens with a little pruning.

For an 8 to 12 foot tall screen Photinia, with its bright red new growth, and Cotoneaster, with its red berries, are good choices. They make large, wide bushes but can be kept narrower and denser with pruning. 

If you have a fence there already, you can use Photinia trees. These are the same plant as bush Photinia, but they are already 8 feet tall with a 5-foot trunk, so they will give you privacy above the fence right away. If it is a wire fence, consider ivy which will make a dense, evergreen covering in a few years.

Pyracantha is a bit unruly, but can also be shaped with pruning. The white flowers and red berries are attractive and it is very fast-growing. Grecian laurel, English laurel and oleander make attractive natural hedges, screens or background plantings.

Even taller screens can be achieved with evergreen trees and conifers. Italian buckthorn and redwood trees have been used along the freeways in Sonoma County to provide both visual and sound screening.  

Leyland cypress is one of the fastest-growing evergreens. It is widely used as a quick-growing and effective hedge or screen. It will reach 15-20 feet in 5 years and makes a dense hedge when planted 8 feet apart.

Emerald Green arborvitae is a bright green columnar tree that makes a thick, permanent hedge when planted 4-5 feet apart. Its thick foliage quickly fills in to create a solid living wall with a beautiful green color.

Our native incense cedar and bay trees can also be used for large screens, where you have plenty of room for them to spread.

Whether you want a living fence or a tall screen, fall is an excellent time to plant evergreen shrubs for privacy and beauty.

• Take care of your roses: feed, water, weed, mulch and remove faded blooms regularly. Spray if necessary at first sign of insect or disease problems.

• After the June crop of raspberries is finished, remove canes that produced fruit leaving new green canes, which can then be trained on trellises.

• Keep flowers and vegetables in peak condition by giving them a midsummer feeding with a fertilizer that is higher in phosphorus than in nitrogen.

• Budworms eat the petals of geraniums and petunias, leaving you with no flowers. Spray plants weekly with BT for complete control.

• Birdbaths will attract our feathered friends to your backyard so you can enjoy them close-up. Place them a few feet from a bushy shrub to give the birds protection.

Summer Fruit Tree Care

Summer is the time when fruit trees grace us with their abundance of sweet, juicy fruit. It is also the time when fruit trees need your care and attention. They must be kept healthy and strong so they will produce well for you for many years to come.

Young fruit trees need particular attention. The most important cultural practice during the first year is watering. No other single element of plant care causes more problems or failures than over or under-watering. Water supply must be consistent. Drought followed by flooding can cause trees to stop growing due to the shock of these extremes conditions.

Check the soil weekly. A new tree needs approximately 10 gallons a week during the hot summer months. A tree two years old may need 20 gallons a week. A mature fruit tree can use 50 gallons a week or more. Fruit trees need water to size up their fruit properly. It’s best to water deeply and infrequently rather than shallowly and frequently. Water trees on clay soils every 2 to 3 weeks as clay holds moisture for a long time. For young trees, make a moat around the base of the tree so the water stays in the root zone. On older trees, water at the drip line of the tree.

Keep the base of your fruit trees weed free. Spread a 2- to 3-inch thick layer of organic mulch, such as pine straw or bark mulch, over the root zone but keep it a few inches away from the trunk. Organic mulch also breaks down gradually, providing organic matter to the soil.

Pick up fallen fruit as soon as possible after it drops, and destroy it. Fruit that drops to the ground can contain insect larvae, which burrow into the soil where they overwinter, to reemerge in the spring. A clean orchard is a healthy orchard.

Inspect your fruit tree bark, branches, leaves, and developing fruits often. Look for signs of insects and diseases and apply the appropriate organic controls. It’s usually easier to control pests if you act before or just as they are getting established, than to control them after they have caused lots of damage.

Paint trunks of young trees with white latex paint or Tree Trunk White to prevent sunburn which causes the bark to crack. This leaves openings for boring insects to enter. They can cause serious damage and even death in young trees.

While most pruning of fruit trees is done in the late winter, some can be done in the summer as well. Summer pruning can eliminate any dead, diseased, or broken branches. Prune off any new branches that are growing from the base of the tree (suckers) or straight up from horizontal branches (water sprouts).

Summer pruning uses thinning cuts (where the branch is cut off at its point of attachment, instead of part way along the branch) to train young fruit trees to the desired tree limb structure. If you want to keep your mature fruit trees at an easy-to-harvest height, summer pruning is essential.

Keep your fruit trees healthy and they will give you many years of abundant harvests.