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.

• Spring vegetables and flowers can be started from seeds now on your window sill. Try broccoli, cabbage and lettuces, pansies and snapdragons.

• Strawberries can be planted any time now. Get them in early, and you’ll be picking strawberries this summer.

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

• Fruit trees can be pruned this month. If you’re not sure how, take advantage of one of the fine classes being offered this month.

Abundant Berries

Some of Nature’s most generous crops of fruit come from berry vines. Whether you like blackberries, blueberries, raspberries or gooseberries, you can harvest bountiful crops of them if you plant a row of vines or bushes in your garden. The climate in and around Willits is suitable for almost all types of berries, so don’t be caught without your own fresh berries this summer!

Blackberries are known by many names: boysenberry, nectarberry, loganberry or olallie berry to name a few. The berries range in color from jet black to red, from sweet to tart, and all have distinctive flavors.

Olallie berries are large, firm black berries 1.5 inches long. They are sweeter than others with some wild blackberry flavor. Marionberries have sweet, bright, shiny black berries with a faint wild blackberry flavor. They are excellent for fresh eating and desserts.

Loganberries are thought to be a wild cross between a blackberry and a red raspberry. Their large, light red berries do not darken when ripe. The unique, tart flavor is highly prized and loganberry wine and pies are enjoyed by many people. ‘Triple Crown’ blackberry is named for its three crowning attributes—flavor, productivity and vigor. In addition, it is thornless and produces very large berries.

Boysenberries, also called nectarberries, are extremely large, dark maroon berries up to two and a half inches long. They are soft and very juicy with a rich, tangy flavor. They come either thorny or thornless.

There are many great raspberries. ‘Meeker’ has large, rich red fruit is very sweet and flavorful. It is an excellent home garden variety for fresh eating and freezing and produces over a long season. ‘Newburgh’ has very large, sweet fruit with mild flavor. It holds its shape well so is great for canning and freezing. ‘Fall Gold’ is a golden-yellow raspberry that is extremely sweet and excellent for fresh eating, canning and preserves. It bears from June to October.

‘Amity’ raspberry has firm, dark red berries with classic raspberry flavor. It makes both a spring and a fall crop. ‘Willamette’ has large, deep red berries that have a rich, slightly tart flavor. Its tall, vigorous, disease-resistant canes bear heavy crops of top quality fruit.

‘Munger Blackcap’ is a black raspberry. Its large, plump, shiny black berries have a sweet, delicious flavor that makes fine jams and jellies. The most popular purple raspberry variety is ‘Royalty’. It produces sweet, light flavored berries through the summer that make outstanding jellies and jams.

Gooseberries and currants almost never show up in the grocery store, so if you like a tasty gooseberry pie now and then, you better plant your own. ‘Poorman’ gooseberries have the largest berries, which turn wine-red when ripe. They are very flavorful and can be eaten fresh or made into pies and jams.

‘White Imperial’ currant has loose clusters of beautiful, white, translucent fruit with a pink blush. They have the richest and sweetest flavor of all currants. ‘Crandall’ black currants have a sweet-tart flavor and five times the vitamin C of oranges.

Add to these strawberries, blueberries and huckleberries and you’ll be harvesting delicious, mouth-watering fruit from May till October. Bare root berry vines can be planted now.

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

• Start seeds of broccoli, cabbage, cauliflower and other cool season crops indoors for planting outside in March.

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

• Primroses will give you the most color during this cold weather. Choose some pretty ones now for your boxes and beds.

• Check the watering of outdoor container plants especially if they’re located under the eaves or porch where rain can’t reach them.

Mouth-watering Fruits for the Orchard

It’s a new year and a new decade! So why not add some new fruit varieties to your orchard this season. Bareroot season is the best time to find new and interesting fruit trees. While the trees are still dormant, they are shipped to nurseries all over the country to make their way into orchards large and small.

Apples are one of the best fruits for our region. Our cold winters and warm summers are good for apple-growing and there are dozens of fine varieties to choose from. Some old varieties that are worth considering are Gravenstein, an heirloom apple that is unsurpassed for making delicious applesauce. Arkansas Black, a red apple so dark it can sometimes be almost black, is making a come-back lately. It is an excellent keeper and it’s crisp, yellow flesh becomes more aromatic in storage.

Two “pink” apples are very popular. Pink Lady® is the brand name given to the ‘Cripps Pink’ variety of apple bred in Western Australia. A hot climate apple, it is very crisp with a sweet-tart, distinctive flavor and is a good keeper. The skin is reddish-pink over green when ripe, and the white flesh is sweet, tangy, and refreshing.

Pink Pearl is a California introduction from 1944. It has a dull, yellow-brown skin but on the inside, it has shockingly pink, sweet-tart flesh. Even the blooms are bright pink. It ripens in late summer and makes a beautiful and tasty pink applesauce.

Honeycrisp is a new variety from Wisconsin. These large, attractive apples grow on very productive trees. When ripe, in September and October, they are crisp and juicy and they practically snap off into your mouth. Fruit keeps for up to six months.

Pears also do very well in our area. One of the newer varieties is Harrow Delight which comes from Harrow, Canada. This is a high-quality, early, fresh market pear with excellent fire-blight resistance. It ripens early in the season with fruit that is similar to Bartlett in appearance with excellent flavor and smooth, non-gritty flesh.

Cherries are probably the best loved fruit of all. Most cherry trees require a pollenizer but Sweetheart cherry is self-fertile. It puts on large crops of bright red, crunchy fruit with mild, sweet flavor. It is the latest cherry to ripen, extending the cherry season.

Cherries tend to be large trees, but there’s a new dwarfing rootstock for cherries from Zaiger Genetics. The Zaiger Dwarf Root™ dwarfs trees to about 8 feet tall and is perfect for container growing, and also adaptable to many soil types.

There are lots of mouth-watering fruits to add to your orchard, large or small. So take advantage of this mild weather and plant some new fruit trees today.

• Living Christmas trees make a fine tradition. Slow-growing Colorado spruce trees can be used for 3 to 5 years before they need to be planted. Water them every other day while indoors.

• Check your nursery for stocking stuffers: kids’ gloves, watering cans, bonsai figurines, seeds and bulbs.

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

• Water living Christmas trees frequently while they are indoors, and put them outside after a week or ten days.

•Feed the birds this winter and enjoy the pleasure of their company. Bird feeders come in many styles and make wonderful gifts.

Living Gifts

Head to the nursery this month for plants that can be enjoyed long after the holidays. Evergreen shrubs like Daphne, Camellias and Rhododendrons are lovely gifts that will be enjoyed even more when they come into bloom in the spring.

The sweet fragrance of Daphne is one of the pleasures of springtime. The small, evergreen shrubs have handsome foliage and a profusion of pinkish-white flowers that bloom in February. One stem will scent an entire room.

The beautifully shaped flowers of Camellias cover the glossy, evergreen leaves throughout a long season. The early flowering ones begin blooming now with dainty, single flowers and those that bloom in April and May have perfectly formed double flowers. They are lovely in a partially shaded area and do well in containers on the patio or deck.

Rhododendrons also have spectacular flowers in large clusters in the spring. They are generally deer-resistant, like partial shade, and will grow for many years in a large container.

Roses are available this month at the best prices of the year. For best selection, look for bare-root roses this month. If you want roses for cutting, choose hybrid teas, like ‘Fragrant Plum’. For small spaces or containers, choose varieties that stay compact, such as ‘Sunsprite’, and to add a focal point to any landscape, choose a tree rose, like ‘Betty Boop’.

The interior landscape will welcome a fresh, new houseplant. From hanging ferns and spider plants to tall palms and dracaenas, there’s a plant for every situation. They add life and color to the area and clean the air at the same time. Or create a dish garden with a combination of small plants in an attractive container, for a unique gift.

Bonsai plants and succulents also make nice gifts, and a bag full of Daffodil bulbs will be happily received by almost any gardener.

Trees of all kinds will grow into beautiful specimens that will outlive us all. From fruit trees to dogwoods, Japanese maples, and flowering magnolias, trees become an important part of any piece of property. Beauty, shade, fruit, and a greener planet are all good reasons to plant a tree this season.

Give a gift that will continue to grow and remind them of your thoughtfulness for a long time to come.