Sanhedrin Nursery – Garden Blog

• Peach and plum trees are still available as bare-root trees, but only for a short while longer. Start your orchard now!

• Pansies and violas will fill your spring flower beds with their bright faces in many shades of blue, yellow, red, pink and purple.

• Deciduous Clematis vines can be cut back to about waist height, to encourage bushiness, more flowers and a nicer looking vine. Do this in late winter before the new growth starts.

• Fragrant daphne bushes perfume the air this month. Find a place for this attractive, evergreen shrub.

• Prune wisteria trees and vines by cutting out unwanted long runners and removing old seed pods. Don’t damage flower buds that are clustered at the end of short branches.

Get Ready to Garden!

After a long, wet winter, spring is in the air and it’s time to get out in the garden once again. It’s hard to beat the fresh flavor and high nutritional value of vegetables harvested directly from your own garden.

A good vegetable garden must have at least 6 hours of full sun each day. Eight to 10 hours a day is ideal. No amount of fertilizer, water, or care can replace needed sunshine. If you are limited for space or do not have a bright, sunny spot in the yard, then you can grow some vegetables in containers on a sunny patio or deck. Leaf-crops are about the only thing that will grow in limited sun.

March is the month when gardeners become eager to start planting. You can dig up and work your soil as soon as it is dry enough. When you turn your soil, add 1 to 2 inches of organic matter or compost, and mix it in as you dig the bed 8-12 inches deep.

The first things to go into the garden are perennial crops, like asparagus and strawberries. These plants are available at very reasonable prices during the “bare-root” season, when you can buy them without containers. This is very economical, and environmentally friendly as well.

Cool season plants like broccoli, cabbage, kale, lettuce, Swiss chard and spinach can be set out now from young starts. They grow best in cool weather and can take a light frost. Onions can also be planted early from young, growing plants.

When the soil warms up a bit, you can sow beet and carrot seeds directly into the soil. Spinach, however, will germinate best at 50°F soil temperature, so you can plant it any time. Peas should be sprouted inside and then planted out. They are likely to rot in the cold soil if planted directly right now.

Later this month, it will be time to plant potatoes. Seed potatoes are available now and savvy gardeners are choosing from over a dozen varieties. Be sure to pick some up while the selection is still good.

It is a good idea to keep a garden diary. Draw a map of your garden layout, since you will want to rotate plantings in next year’s garden. Record the vegetable planting dates, noting the varieties that you planted. Keep notes about weather and any problems that occur, and record harvest dates and some idea of quantities harvested. All of this information will help you improve your garden from year to year.

It’s time to get ready to garden!

• 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.

• Broccoli, cabbage, lettuce and other cool season vegetable plants can be set out now for a spring crop.

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

• Asparagus will provide you with delicious, low-priced spears for years to come if you plant them now from dormant crowns.

• Fragrant daphne is an early-blooming shrub that will delight you with its strongly scented blooms each spring. Plant it in well-drained soil.

Flowering Plum Trees

Some of the showiest flowering trees in the springtime are flowering plums. Their pink flowers, which are coming into bloom right now, are always a pleasant sign that spring is on the way.

These trees are widely planted throughout California. Their reddish purple foliage, which appears after the flowers are through, remains colored throughout the entire growing season. All varieties are deciduous, dropping their leaves in the fall.

Flowering plums are small trees, growing 20-25 feet tall. They are densely branched and should be thinned to remove crossing branches after they bloom. They should not, however, be “headed” or they will just become more thickly branched. “Thinning” cuts remove whole branches down to where they meet a larger branch; “heading” cuts remove the end of a branch, leaving a stub.

The Blireiana plum has beautiful, large, fragrant, double pink flowers that bloom over a long season. The tree grows to 25 feet tall and 20 feet wide with long, slender branches. The leaves start out reddish purple, turning to greenish bronze in summer. It is a choice ornamental tree for the lawn or patio, as it produces little or no fruit.

Krauter Vesuvius is the best known variety for its dark reddish purple leaves in the summer. It is known as the “purple leaf plum”. Its flowers are a lovely, light pink and are smaller than those of the Blireiana. It grows to about 20 feet tall and 15 feet wide with an upright branching habit. It produces a good crop of small fruits in summer which can be quite a mess around paved areas.

Crimson Pointe™ is the first and only columnar shaped, purple leafed, ornamental plum on the market. This deciduous tree has glossy bronze foliage, that turns a deep merlot-burgundy color in summer. It produces showy white flowers and dark purple fruit, and will eventually reach 20 feet tall and 5 feet wide. It is good for a side yard or other narrow area or can be planted in a single line to draw the view toward a focal point.

Flowering plums are tough trees that take hot dry weather and tolerate drought. They will grow in any type of soil, and prefer a sunny location. They are a good size for most yards, adding beauty as well as some shade to the landscape.

If you are looking for a small, ornamental, flowering tree the flowering plum may be the tree for you.

• Primroses, in their rainbow of colors, will light up your flower beds and boxes this winter and spring.

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

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

• English daisies are an early-blooming perennial with showy red, pink or white flowers just in time for Valentine’s Day! They will bloom all spring in partial shade.

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

Asparagus Time

Each year, when spring rolls around, the asparagus bed comes to life. Around April 1st, the rich green spears start poking their heads up out of the bare soil, reaching for the light. Every day a few more points appear and anxiously we await the harvest of one of our favorite crops.

Asparagus takes a lot of work initially, but it is not difficult to maintain an established bed. Plants can live for 20 years and produce many pounds of spears, so it is important to start them off right.

Soil should be rich, loose, well-drained and located in full sun. Add plenty of well-rotted manure or compost and rock phosphate dug deeply into the soil: double-digging will greatly benefit asparagus.

Start by transplanting 2-year-old roots into your garden. Dig a trench 12 inches deep and place roots 18 inches apart, spreading out the roots around a small mound.

Set roots deep enough to cover the crowns with 2 or 3 inches of soil. Initially, cover them with only one inch of soil. When shoots begin to come up, add soil around them until the trench is filled. Then add a four to six inch layer of mulch to keep the weeds down, and maintain the high soil-moisture content necessary for best production.

Asparagus need plenty of water, especially the first growing season. Keep the soil wet at least 8 inches deep.

In July, side-dress the plants with 5-10-10 fertilizer or compost, and cultivate lightly into the soil. Keep the bed well weeded as the crowns are getting established, and maintain a thick mulch through the summer.

In the fall place a 3-inch layer of manure around the plants. Or, if you’d rather, remove the mulch and apply a balanced fertilizer at about 2 pounds per 100 square feet then replace the mulch.

Leave the dried tops until spring when they can be broken off and composted. An important part of asparagus culture is allowing the ferns to mature during the first and second year. This green foliage is needed to promote strong roots. Vigorous top growth in one season is the best assurance of good yield the next.

Harvest begins when the plants are three years old. The first harvest will last only a week or two. In later years, cutting may continue for 6 to 8 weeks.

The first spears will push their way up when we are still having frosty nights here in Willits. So be sure to protect these tender shoots from frost.

There are different varieties of asparagus and you may want to try more than one. ‘Mary Washington’ is the most popular variety with heavy yields of long, straight spears with tight tips. The sweet, tender spears have gourmet flavor and a 60 day cutting season.

UC 157 is a hybrid developed at UC Davis. It has deep green, smooth cylindrical spears, and early spring production. This variety produces higher yield than older standard varieties.

‘Jersey Knight’ Asparagus is a variety that grows only male plants. The stalks are much larger , and they yield 3-4 times more top quality asparagus than any other variety.

‘Sweet Purple’ has deep-burgundy spears and a higher sugar content than green varieties. The spears are generally larger and much more tender than standard varieties.

Homegrown asparagus is really a delicacy. There is little comparison with the store-bought vegetable of the same name. So do yourself a delicious favor, and plant an asparagus bed this winter.