Renovating the Garden – More Planning

Posted on April 25, 2014 by tomkarwin

Gardening and landscaping involves planning before getting your hands in the soil.

Last week’s column, which was about renovating a garden, recommended four preparatory actions:

Draw a Diagram of the Property
Decide on Basic Design Concepts
Establish Objectives for the Finished Landscape
Set Priorities for Development

Once the gardener has completed those actions, he or she still has to additional tasks to complete. Those tasks are the focus of this week’s column.

Remove Unwanted Plants

A neglected garden probably motivated the landscape renovation project. Neglect often includes trees and woody shrubs that have outgrown their space, lack a role in the new design, or are unhealthy. In some cases, this task will require contracting with an arborist or laborers. Check local ordinances before removing trees.

All herbaceous plants that are unwanted are defined as weeds. These include garden plants and grasses as well as common weeds. Pull or dig larger plants, then remove grasses and weeds efficiently with chemical-free solarization. This method covers the target area with clear plastic so that the sun raises the temperature of the soil, killing weeds, pathogens, nematodes, and insects. For details, see the University of California’s free online publication “Soil Solarization for Gardens & Landscapes.”

Removing weed plants with a do-it-yourself approach could be time-consuming and frustrating. Consider contracted services to get the job done quickly and thoroughly.

Remove Unwanted Hardscape

If your garden includes paving, e.g., sidewalk, patio, walls or outbuildings that are not included in the new design, remove them to free your progress. Again, consider contracted services to speed the work. This would be a good time to invite a disinterested friend to comment on your garden accessory collection, and to remove items that are no longer assets.

Analyze Soil Structure

The gardener should know the structure of the garden’s soil. An ideal soil would have 45% minerals (sand, clay, silt), 5% organic material (plant and animal), 25% air and 25% water.

Click to Enlarge

The Soil Texture Triangle illustrates various combinations of sand, clay and silt that might be found in a garden. The mineral content of ideal garden soil, called loam, should be about 40% sand, 40% silt and 20% clay. A simple method to analyze your garden’s soil texture, involves placing a sample of your soil in a jar with water, shaking and then letting it settle into density layers. Here are Organic Gardening’s brief instructions for a soil texture test. Also, check out this helpful article by the Marin Master Gardeners.

Notice that these preparations do not include buying plants! For many gardeners, the primary strategy for improving the landscape is to buy plants. That approach, without an overall plan, weakens the landscape design and wastes time and money.

Enjoy your preparation! The fun stuff (selecting and installing plants) comes next.

Preparing to Landscape

Posted on April 18, 2014 by tomkarwin

Gardeners might look at their gardens with a mix of disappointment, desire for a delightful display and despair.

The gardener might have recently acquired the garden from someone who neglected it, or neglected it his/her self. (Life can dissuade even the most ambitious gardener.)

Renovating a garden can be a formidable challenge, leaving the gardener baffled and frustrated.

Such situations call for a plan. Here are suggestions for the early stages of a process to take control, build confidence and produce evidence of progress. These initial steps create a foundation for actual landscaping; hands-on work happens a little later.

Draw a Diagram of the Property

A scale drawing of the entire property supports the design and installation phases of the renovation. Show the improvements: house, garage (can also think about an upgrade with Toronto Garage Doors service), driveway, walkway, pond, walls, outbuildings, etc. Show large trees and other significant plants that definitely will remain in place, but omit all candidates for removal.

Indicate which direction is north, to aid in planning for sun exposure.

Indicate major changes in elevation with contour lines that trace equal elevations, or with a separate drawing of a side view of a slice through the property. Visit ongardening.com for an example of a garden elevation change diagram.

This diagram (or “base map”) might be drawn on graph paper to ease measurements, and should be rendered in black ink to enable clear photocopies. Make several photocopies for sketching design ideas.

Decide on Basic Design Concepts

Write down your intentions to, for example, commit to organic gardening, establish a drought-tolerant landscape, adopt one or more thematic approaches to plant selection, or establish a wildlife-friendly environment. This exercise helps to provide direction to planning the renovation, but it can be revised during the project.

Establish Objectives for the Finished Landscape

Envision how you will use the landscape: outdoors living, with parties, barbeques, etc.; recreation for children or adults; growing fruits and vegetables; or simply enjoying horticultural displays. Write it down.

Set Priorities for Development

Break the renovation project into steps that are manageable in terms of time and money. Begin by visualizing the overall design of the landscape, emphasizing the hardscape elements: pathways; planting bed borders; stairways or walls (if there are important elevation changes); outbuildings, etc.

Subsequent priorities could focus on either specific zones within the landscape, or desired features.

These early actions will contribute greatly to the larger goals to take control, build confidence and demonstrate progress. Selecting and installing plants happens after investing in these preparations.

Here is good example of a base map for a residential landscaping project. This image comes from Washington State’s Department of Fish and Wildlife, which has a web page on Landscape Design for WIldlife. That’s an interesting topic, too, but the base map has value an an example for a wide range of landscaping projects, including renovations.

Behind Schedule in the Garden

Posted on April 13, 2014 by tomkarwin

The garden does not wait for the gardener, but goes about growing, reproducing, aging and eventually dying whether or not the gardener meets the schedule of seasonal tasks.

My garden has proceeded this year on its natural cycle. As the weather has warmed, even the plants for which I should have cut back last year’s growth are producing abundant new growth

Salvias exemplify this failing. Best practice with salvias is to cut them to the ground in the late winter or very early spring, when new growth first appears. This practice rejuvenates the plant, and gives it a youthful look. When the pruning is done too late, it is very difficult to avoid cutting off the new growth and setting back the seasonal growth.

I cut back a few of the salvias in my garden, but left many more with their tired branches from last year.

Fortunately, perennial plants really do not depend on punctual gardeners. Salvias perform better when treated well, of course, but they will survive nicely even when neglected.

I was able to prune my roses at the right time. It is possible to let rose shrubs grow without annual pruning during the dormant season, but they will have a more compact form and produce more blossoms when cut back about one-third each year.

Fruit trees are another matter. Happily, I pruned my apple trees in a timely way: I cut back last year’s growth just before blossoms appeared on the trees. There are just four dwarf apple trees in my garden, but skipping this annual task would allow sprawling growth and reduce the yield.

I did not, however, spray my trees as recommended to discourage codling moths. I did read about the life cycle of those pests, and made life a little harder for the over-wintering larvae by raking the mulch away from the base of the trees.

Weeds also are responding well to our limited rain and the warming weather. They are growing very nicely! I haven’t identified all the several weeds that make my garden their home, but I can always spot the bright yellow flowers of sourgrass, which expands its territory in my garden each year.

Wikipedia (always helpful) has this comment about sourgrass: “Indigenous to South Africa, Oxalis pes-caprae, the ‘Bermuda buttercup,’ is an invasive species and noxious weed in many other parts of the world, including the United States (particularly coastal California)…”

Ideally, gardeners should pull this weed when it first appears, before it produces countless tiny bulbs. Sadly, I am behind schedule again this year.

This experience yields clear lessons for gardeners:

Strive to keep pace with Nature’s rhythm
Appreciate the ability of plants to thrive despite neglect, and
Take satisfaction in the seasonal tasks you do complete.

Enjoy your garden!

Several books on year-round gardening are available through your public library, your bookstore or online. For example, a search of the Amazon.co website for “gardening year-round” yields 45 pages of books to consider. Many of the books listed focus on edible gardening; several also include ornamental gardening.

Before investing your time or money in a gardening book, make sure that it has information for your gardening environment. The most useful gardening information for gardeners in the Monterey Bay area will be specific to USDA Plant Hardiness Zone 9. Information in books oriented to “northern California” or “Pacific Northwest” will need interpretation for gardeners in Zone 9. Books intended for other parts of the United States or the world could still be helpful, but should be treated like exotic materials.

Still, given that awareness, some classic books on year-round gardening written by English authors can be very much worth reading. Examples, include books by Vita Sackville-West, Beth Chatto and Christopher Lloyd.

Whether written by American or English gardening experts, the date of publication is not important: Nature’s seasonal patterns have not changed significantly.

Here are suggestions:

The Four-Season Landscape: Easy-Care Plants and Plans for Year-Round Color (A Rodale Garden Book) (1994), by Susan A. Roth (Author)

Golden Gate Gardening, 3rd Edition: The Complete Guide to Year-Round Food Gardening in the San Francisco Bay Area & Coastal California (2010), by Pamela Peirce (Author)

Gardener to Gardener: Almanac & Pest-Control Primer (2000), by Vicki Mattern and Fern Marshal Bradley (Eds)

A Yardscapes Year: Ideas and Plants for Bay Area Gardeners (1999), by Mia Amato

The Western Gardener’s Journal: A Three-Year Almanac (1998), by Margaret Moulton

A New Food Labeling Faceoff

Posted on April 5, 2014 by tomkarwin

The California Senate Health Committee recently approved Senate Bill 1381, which would require the labeling of genetically engineered (GE) foods. This action is triggering new flows of facts and opinions by interest groups.

This bill renews the long-running debate between consumer groups and pesticide corporations and large-scale food producers. Californians for GE Food Labeling, representing many consumer groups, claims that grocery shoppers need to know what they are buying. The Grocery Manufacturers Association, representing the food industry, claims that labeling GE foods would be expensive and misleading.

This debate dates from 1992, when the U.S. Food and Drug Administration (FDA) ruled that GE foods were “substantially equivalent” to conventionally grown foods and therefore do not require labeling.

Ten years later, Congress created the National Organic Program (NOP) under the U.S. Department of Agriculture. The NOP ruled that GE foods do not meet NOP standards and could not be labeled as “organic.”

According to SB 1381, more than 90% of members of the public want labeling of GE foods. Maine and Connecticut have passed limited laws requiring GE food labeling, and 20 other states are considering similar laws. Voters in California and Washington have considered GE food labeling measures, but the food industry waged massive campaigns opposing the measures and both failed by very small margins.

Sixty-four countries already have laws mandating labeling of GE foods.

Two other Senate committees—Agriculture and Judiciary—will debate SB 1381before the full Senate votes on it. While the bill moves through the California Senate, the California Assembly could consider a similar bill. Both bodies would have to agree on some version of this legislation before it could become law in California. This process could be lengthy, with vigorous arguments for and against.

At the federal level, a year ago, Senator Barbara Boxer and many co-signers introduced The Genetically Engineered Food Right-to-Know Act, but it hasn’t advanced at all.

The FDA has proposed regulatory guidelines for voluntary labeling of GE foods. Consumer groups have dismissed this approach as not helpful.

The Grocery Manufacturers Association recently recommended federal legislation that would allow voluntary labeling of GE foods, allow describing them as “natural,” and preempt state laws that have different requirements.

Meanwhile, grocery shoppers could either buy only certified organic foods, or simply ignore the issue. Home gardeners could buy seeds from “Safe Seed Pledge” companies (listed by The Council for Responsible Genetics) and grow their own non-GE foods.

Food policies have become complicated!

More to come.

April’s Garden Events

Posted on April 5, 2014 by tomkarwin

April 2^nd, UC Santa Cruz Arboretum: The Ray Collett Rare & Extraordinary Plants Lecture Series, 7:00 p.m. Fee. UCSC Arboretum, High Street/Empire Grade, Santa Cruz.

Plantsman Rodger Elliott will recount the development of the extraordinary gardens of Australia’s Royal Botanic Gardens Chadbourne. A strong advocate of Australian native plants, Elliot assisted the Arboretum greatly during its early years.

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April 5^th, Monterey Bay Dahlia Society: 2014 Annual Dahlia Tuber & Plant Sale, 9:00–11:00. Upper Level, Deer Park Shopping Center, Aptos.

Amateur, advanced amateur and professional growers will offer easy-to-grow dahlias in countless delightful colors and forms. MDBS members will offer advice and cultivation tips.

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April 5, Monterey Bay Master Gardeners, Smart Gardening Fair, 9:00–3:00. Highway 1 at Rio Road, Carmel.

A marketplace of “all things gardening,” the fair focuses on sustainable practices. Local businesses and community groups offer gardening goods, services, knowledge and passions.

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April 12^th, UC Santa Cruz Arboretum: Plant Sale, Members, 10:00–12:00, Everyone, 12:00–4:00. Arboretum’s Eucalyptus Grove, High Street/Empire Grove, Santa Cruz.

Bring home some of the Arboretum’s dazzling colors and most drought-tolerant plants from California, Australia and South Africa. Come to the sale for ideas and advice to replace plants lost during our earlier freeze or replace a lawn with low-maintenance landscaping.

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April 12^th, California Native Plant Society, Santa Cruz County Chapter: Plant Sale. Members, 10:00–12:00, Everyone, 12:00–4:00. Location: Arboretum’s Eucalyptus Grove, High Street/Empire Grove, Santa Cruz. (Yes, the CNPS and Arboretum sales collaborate.)

This event is the year’s best opportunity to find California native plants for your garden. CNPS volunteers have propagated these plants lovingly to encourage gardeners to cultivate plants that thrive in this specific environment.

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April 12^th–April 20^th, California Native Plant Society: Celebration of Fourth Annual California Native Plant Week, 2014. For a statewide activity list, visit the CNPS website.

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April 18^th–20^th, California Native Plant Society, Monterey Bay Chapter: Wildflower Show. Fee. Pacific Grove Museum, 165 Forest Avenue, Pacific Grove.

This annual display of hundreds of the Monterey Bay area’s native wildflowers broadens our appreciation for Nature’s bounty of beautiful and highly varied plant life.

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April 19^th–20^th,,Monterey Bay Area Cactus and Succulent Society: Spring Show & Sale, 9:00–5:00. Community Hall, 10 San Jose Street, San Juan Batista.

An opportunity to see exceptional specimens and purchase fascinating plants for your garden.

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Enjoy your garden!