Sanhedrin Nursery – Garden Blog

• Apples and pears are the easiest fruits to grow in our area. Choose early, mid-season and late varieties for a continuous harvest from late summer into winter.

• Fill your winter garden with color from primroses and pansies.

• Stop peach leaf curl by spraying now with copper spray to help prevent this disfiguring disease from attacking your trees this spring.

• 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.

TLC for Roses during Drought

Roses are a valuable asset to your permanent landscaping. They should be given high priority when planning water allotments for the drought season. But roses will adjust to prolonged water shortage better than many flowering plants.

Because roses are so resilient, caring for them during drought is not difficult. There will be less growth, fewer and smaller blooms, and fewer and shorter blooming periods. But despite these disappointments, your roses will survive. Follow these tips keep your roses healthy during this challenging time.

To decrease the stress on your roses you must help them make the most of the available water. Infrequent, deep watering is the key. Deep watering ensures that moisture will penetrate down into the root zone where mycorrhizal fungi and root hairs maximize the surface area of the roots and provide the most efficient use of the water.

Drip irrigation, soaker hoses or other slow delivery systems conserve more water than sprinkling. Build some sort of edging around the rose bed to keep the water in the root area and prevent runoff.

When you water your roses, mark it on your calendar. Then wait and watch. When the roses start to droop, note the date, count back the number of days to when you last watered, subtract one day and that is how often you need to water. Repeat this occasionally and you will likely see you will need to water less and less as the roots push deeper into the earth. In other words let your roses tell you when they’re thirsty.

To retain the moisture and moderate soil temperatures, mulch heavily with 3 to 4 inches of shredded mulch. This will stretch the time between waterings and reduce the number of weeds competing for available water.

If summer temperatures are high, cover the plants with shade cloth to further reduce transpiration.

Prune lightly to avoid stimulating vigorous new growth. Remove only dead, diseased or damaged wood and shape lightly, but leave as much material as possible. The root system and the top stay in balance with each other. You want to maintain a robust root system that can reach out to find water in the soil.

Do not cut blooms from the rose bush as they start to fade. Allow them to form seed heads which will help postpone the new growth that normally follows each blooming period. But once the seed heads have formed, remove them because they will use water to mature.

Do very little fertilizing. Use a mild fertilizer in the spring, giving them just enough to keep them healthy without stimulating growth.

New roses need to be kept moist during their first summer to encourage a strong root system. Two gallons of water per week should be sufficient. Feed them lightly and mulch.

With a little extra TLC, your roses will survive the drought to enhance your garden for years to come.

• 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.

• Onion plants can be set out now for early summer harvest.

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

• Many fine varieties of flowering dogwoods, tulip magnolias, Japanese maples and other specimen plants are now available at nurseries for winter planting.

In a Word: Mulch!

We’re all starting to get a little bit worried about the lack of water coming from the skies. Many questions are arising: is it good to prune my trees? my rosebushes? will my plants survive the drought? what can be done to help them?

In the coming weeks I will try to address these and other questions to help you keep your trees and shrubs, fruit trees and vegetable plants alive and healthy. Let’s start with mulch.

The best way to protect ornamental plants during periods of drought is by applying mulch. Spreading mulch around your plants is, in most situations, simply good gardening. But with the need for water conservation, mulching is a necessity.

Mulches have three primary benefits:
• They reduce evaporation of water from the soil.
• They reduce weeds, which compete with your plants for water, by shading out weed seedlings and inhibiting weed seed germination.
• They insulate soil from extreme temperature changes, keeping the soil cooler during the day and warmer at night.

A good mulch can even encourage worms, which aerate and enrich the soil. You can begin now to mulch around your plants while there is still moisture in the soil.

There are several different choices in mulching materials. Organic mulches are any of the many commonly available materials derived from decaying plant material. They decompose in time and enrich and improve the soil. They include aged sawdust, peat moss, bark, wood chips, composted sludge products, pine needles, leaves and straw. Organic mulches will require periodic additions as the mulch decays.

Studies have shown that two inches of bark covering the soil will reduce moisture loss in summer by 20% and reduce soil temperature in summer, in the upper four inches of soil, by 10°F.

Inorganic mulching materials include black plastic, landscape fabrics and gravel. Landscape fabrics, also known as geo-textiles or weed barriers, comprise a variety of products. They can be used in combination with organic mulch material to maximize the retention of moisture in the soil.

Apply mulch around trees and shrubs 3-4 inches deep to maintain soil moisture. Keep mulch 4-5 inches away from the trunks of trees. Let fallen leaves and pine needles remain under trees to act as a natural mulch.

Also apply mulch around annuals, perennials, vegetable plants, and even in containers. Mulching your pathways helps control weeds and conserves moisture in the soil. Black plastic may be used, or you can utilize grass clippings, straw, wood chips, or garden debris.

Another way of reducing evaporation is by covering plants with shade cloth. Sensitive plants like rhododendrons and azaleas can be covered with 50% shade cloth while more heat tolerant plants may benefit from 30% shade cloth. Position it to block sunlight while not reducing air circulation. In the vegetable garden, cover salad greens with 50% shade cloth and crops like squash and beans with 30% shade.

Mulch trees and shrubs now while the soil is still moist to preserve soil moisture for the plants to use when they begin their spring growth.

• Asparagus, whose delectable spears are even sweeter when home-grown, are available now for planting. Prepare a fertile bed for these long-lived vegetables.

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

• Roses should be pruned in February near the end of the dormant season. You can clean them up now, however, by removing all the old leaves on and around the plants.

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

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

Simply Scrumptious Strawberries

One thing that you just can’t buy at the store is a juicy, mouthwatering strawberry. Yes, they are big and beautiful but there is no comparison, when it comes to flavor, with fresh-picked, homegrown strawberries.

Strawberries are not hard to grow. Plants produce well for three to five years, then it’s best to compost the old plants, dig a new bed and plant fresh, disease-free roots from the nursery. New plants set out in early spring will give you berries this summer.

Strawberries do best in full sun with loose soil and good drainage. Dig in plenty of compost to make a loose, humus-rich soil. Because they multiply by runners, strawberries can be planted up to 18 inches apart and runners will fill in the gaps. They can also be planted on 8-inch centers to harvest more berries sooner.

When planting, dig a hold deep enough so the roots will not be bent, and make a cone-shaped pile of soil in the bottom. Arrange the roots over the soil cone and gently fill the hole with loose soil. It is most important to set the plants at the right height so that the roots are covered but the crown, where the leaves come out, is above the soil line.

Strawberries are divided into three types: Junebearers, everbearers, and day-neutrals. Junebearers produce a single large crop over 3-4 weeks in early summer. If you want to freeze lots of fruit at one time, plant Junebearers.

‘Sequoia’ is the earliest variety and the sweetest, with exceptional taste, productivity and pest resistance. ‘Chandler’ strawberry plants are very popular with commercial growers because of their high yield, brilliant fruit color, and excellent flavor.

Everbearers produce throughout the summer and give you berries for fresh eating all season. They produce fewer runners than Junebearers and so are easier to control.

‘Quinault’ is a great tasting, heavy bearing everbearer that gives high yields of large, deep red, sweet fruit from spring through fall. They are delicious for desserts, preserves and fresh eating. Plants are also very disease-resistant.

Day-neutrals are unaffected by day length and so they bear fruit from June through frost. Unfortunately they require pampering. They are sensitive to drought and weed competition. If you give them the care they need, they will reward you with a generous supply of berries throughout the season from relatively few plants.

‘Tristar’ bears a constant supply of delicious medium sized berries, that are sweet and juicy, throughout the season. ‘Tristar’ has been known to set fruit from June until frost. They flower profusely but make few runners, so they stay compact. ‘Seascape’ is a heavy bearer of high quality, very sweet round berries. Contrary to their name, they grow and fruit well in hot dry climates.

Whether it’s strawberry shortcake, strawberry pie or just red ripe strawberries that you love, there are none better than the home-grown kind.