Sanhedrin Nursery – Garden Blog

• Fall vegetables can be planted now for a fall harvest of broccoli, Brussels sprouts, cabbage, chard and lettuce. Onions can also be planted now.

• Wisteria trees need to be trimmed throughout the summer. Keep long tendrils trimmed back to maintain the shape of the tree.

• Plant beets now for fall harvest. They will have a deeper red color than beets planted for spring harvest, and tend to have higher sugar levels too.

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

• Trim grapevines to allow more sun to reach the fruit and sweeten the grapes, if they are being shaded heavily by the foliage.

Mouthwatering Peaches for your Orchard

This is a great year for summer stone 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), Elberta, the most popular of all peaches, Reliance, a cold-hardy peach that is a favorite for canning, and Gold Dust, an early peach with golden juicy sweetness.

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.

• Replace codling moth pheromones now to make your apples as worm-free as possible. Replace the sticky papers at the same time.

• Set out starts of broccoli, Brussels sprouts, cabbage and lettuce for a fall harvest. Spray weekly with BT to keep the cabbage worms at bay.

• Japanese maples may be pruned now in order to shape them.

• First-year fruit trees need to be well-watered through the dry weather. If they are neglected the first year, they may never be strong, productive trees.

• Dig and divide crowded spring-flowering bulbs and tubers including daffodils, scillas, muscari, and bearded iris.

Keep ‘em Blooming!

As the hot days of summer wear on, some of the garden favorites seem to lose their punch and produce fewer flowers on leggy plants. This doesn’t have to be the case. With some grooming and fertilizing, you can keep most of them blooming all summer.

When petunias start to stretch out with that end-of-the-season look, cut them back halfway with pruning shears to encourage fresh growth. Remove any dead flowers and seed pods. Fertilize the plants with Miracle Gro, and in about two weeks, you will be rewarded with bushy green plants full of flowers and buds.

If your petunias seem to have just quit blooming, they may have been attacked by the geranium budworm, which feeds on the buds and petals of the flowers. If you look carefully, you will see green caterpillars on the plant that are doing the damage. They attack geraniums the same way. Spray plants with BT to stop these hungry critters.

Fuchsias need to have their seed pods removed to keep them blooming. The seed develops on the flower stem after the flower falls off. If left to grow, they make large purple fruits. When the plant finds itself producing seeds, it stops making flowers. So, remove the seed pods and fertilize and get ready for more beautiful blooms. Fuchsias sometimes get spider mites in the summertime. These tiny creatures cause the leaves to turn yellow and drop off. Control them with a superfine oil spray.

To keep zinnias branching and blooming all summer, cut the flowers often. Water them deeply and feed every two or three weeks.

Annual dianthus or pinks need to have faded blooms removed frequently to keep plants blooming. A good shearing, if you haven’t kept up with removing faded blooms, will give them a chance to put forth more flowers.

Hardy geraniums and catmint also respond well to shearing. Cut all of the foliage and flowering stalks right down to the ground after the plant blooms. Mulch around the plants and water well and they will quickly produce compact mounds of lush new foliage and possibly more flowers in a few weeks.

Some perennials will rebloom if you snip off the individual spent flowers. Use this method on yarrow, baby’s breath, feverfew, Shasta daisy, garden phlox, and tall Verbena bonariensis.

Roses require special care to keep them healthy and blooming through the summer. Fertilize plants every 6 weeks and spray every 10 days with Neem oil if you are still having trouble with black spot. If thrips attack the flowers causing them to have brown edges on the petals and look deformed, spray with Spinosad, a bacterium that is classified as organic.

Roses require at least an inch of water a week (about 5 gallons per plant) for continuous blooming. Mulch will help to conserve water and cool the soil. Prune off faded blooms down to just above a 5-leaflet leaf, or a vigorous new shoot.

Give your flowers a little attention now and they will repay you with plenty of blossoms right on through the summer.

• Thin fruit trees after “June drop” when the trees partially thin themselves. Thin apples to 6 inches apart and peaches to 4 inches apart. Pears don’t need thinning.

• Garlic should be harvested when the leafy tops turn yellow and fall over; air-dry bulbs, remove tops and store bulbs in a cool place.

• Roses need water and fertilizer to keep blooming through the summer. Watch for pests and diseases and treat as soon as you see trouble.

• 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.

• Prune rhododendrons, camellias and azaleas to shape them now. If you wait much longer, you will be cutting off next year’s flowers.

The Hardiest of Houseplants

There are houseplants that even brown thumbed gardeners can enjoy. They require minimal care and are able to put up with irregular watering, low-light conditions and occasional feeding.

Some of the best and easiest houseplants are in the Dracaena family. Dracaena fragrans “Massangeana” (corn plant) and D. deremensis ‘Janet Craig’ adapt well to low light conditions yet remain attractive. Both have wide strap-like leaves. The first with a yellow stripe down the center and the latter, a dark lush green.

Dracaena Warneckii is a handsome plant with distinctive white stripes down the center of each wide leaf. There is also a “Lemon Lime” variety that has dramatic green and yellow stripes on its foliage.

Dracaena marginatas have thin, dark leaves. They make elegant, tall plants for a corner or to add a vertical dimension to a wall or entryway.

Pachira, or Money Tree, is hardy plant and extremely tolerant of low light and dryness. With braided trunks and large, 5-leaflet leaves, these plants can reach 7 feet in height, so give room to grow.

Aglaonema, or Chinese Evergreen, is valued for its lush green leaves that often have silver or cream variegations on them. It is one of the best for low light situations and will tolerate light watering but thrives with lots of water.

Spathiphyllum is one of the few plants that will flower well indoors. It has large dark
green leaves on slender stems and its flower resembles a calla lily. It is known as Peace Lily or White Flag.

Sansevieria or Snake Plant is almost indestructible. It will tolerate low light levels and little watering; during winter it only needs watering every couple of months. It will rot easily if overwatered.

Chamaedorea elegans (Neanthe Bella Palm or Parlor Palm) is a small palm tree, growing slowly to 3 feet tall with slender, cane-like stems. It is often grown as a houseplant, and was particularly popular in the Victorian era. It can be grown in low light, but it grows faster with bright, indirect light.

For hanging plants it’s hard to beat trailing philodendrons or pothos. Philodendron cordatum is a tough, long-lived, trailing plant. They can live for 10 years or more in the same 6-inch pot. It requires very little care.

Pothos is similar in appearance to the trailing philodendron. Its leaves have bright yellow streaks on top of an apple green background. A white and green variety is called ‘Marble Queen.’ Both will take low light conditions and will grow to 20 feet or more, if you let them. Just keep the soil evenly moist.

There’s a houseplant for almost every condition. Houseplants beautify and freshen the air in our indoor environments.