Rediscovering Eco-cultural Gardening

Posted on May 12, 2016 by tomkarwin

Gardening is a very old activity. The word “garden” has its roots in an Old English term meaning “fence” or “enclosure,” and the earliest enclosed outdoor space discovered was created about 12,000 years ago.

We are still learning about gardening.

More accurately, we are rediscovering ideas that earlier gardeners understood thousands of years ago.

One of the earliest ideas, evidently, was that a fence keeps some hungry animals from the vegetables and (later) from the flowers.

The most basic principle for successful gardening is compatibility with Nature. We are advised occasionally that humans developed instinctive behaviors, e.g., Fight or Flight, at an early stage of our history, and evolved to thrive with a diet that consisted of a combination of foods that grew naturally in our local environment.

By the same token, plants and animals evolved over long periods to thrive in specific regions, together with each other. As a result of this co-evolution, we have interdependence between plants and animals that grow naturally within a specific environment. We even have interdependence between those plants and animals and certain aspects of the environment itself.

Ancient civilizations that understood these relationships intuitively gardened—and lived—in harmony with Nature. “Eco-culture” is today’s buzzword for the connection between ecological and cultural practices.

Some aspects of the environment appear not to interact with the plants and animals: the weather, elevation, and sunlight operate under their own rules, but the soil microbiota has close relationships with the flora and fauna.

Gardening is easiest and most successful when we recognize and respect these natural relationships. Good practices include gardening organically and growing plants that are native to the local environment.

The more recent history of gardening, however, has included many attempts to rewrite Nature’s rulebook. For example, as people traveled the globe, they added plants from exotic environments to their gardens and developed adaptive practices, including irrigation systems, greenhouses, and indoor gardening.

Also, as gardeners desired plants that would grow faster or larger, taste better, or look better, they developed hybridizing methods, fertilizers, and pesticides.

Such departures from Nature’s ways are often successful in achieving certain objectives, but they often have negative consequences, as well.

The clearest downside of attempts to “fool Mother Nature” is that gardening requires more time, energy and expense. If you find gardening to be burdensome, try converting to plants that are native to your environment.

When large-scale, commercial gardening (“agriculture”) adopts new technologies, the disruptions of Nature’s processes also grow larger in scale. Widespread applications of synthetic agricultural chemicals are damaging the soil biota, are poisoning the soil, killing birds, bees and butterflies, contributing to climate change and threatening our health.

Historically, ecological traumas began with the Industrial Revolution and accelerated in the 1940’s (with at the start of World War II), particularly in uses of synthetic chemicals.

Today, a growing number of non-profit organizations are sounding alarms about these practices and advocating alignment with Nature’s ways. Consumers increasingly demand organic foods, and intuitively resist genetically engineering foods. These groups and individual gardeners are rediscovering eco-cultural gardening.

Our roots are showing!

More to come: links to consumer-oriented non-profit groups related to eco-cultural gardening.

Here’s a related article (with an inappropriate title), “The dirty little secrets of a Native American garden,” from the San Francisco Examiner.

Twelve Ways to “Plant-Mass”

Posted on December 25, 2015 by tomkarwin

An important guideline for amassing plants in your garden is to plant when seasonal rains will water the plants as the establish roots and prepare for blooming in the spring. So, a good time to add plants to your garden (or to find a late gift) is right now.

Here are twelve ways to succeed in that enterprise.

Plan to fill an existing space in the garden. Impulsively buying plants that catch your eye in the garden center can result in specimens that are too large or too small for spaces that need filling, or won’t complement plants next to those spaces.
Focus on plants that will add to your landscape style or theme. There are many alternatives to randomness in garden design. An explicit theme or style in your garden provides direction in the hunt for new plants, and adds coherence to the look of the garden.
Choose plants that will thrive in your garden’s environment. Most important is your U.S. Dept. of Agriculture climate zone, but also consider elevation, sun exposure and soil type.
Jade Plant (Crassula argenta) in a one-gallon nursery can
Select plants of an appropriate size for the spot where they will grow. A common error is to install a plant that will outgrow its location.
Look for plants that are pest resistant. With fuchsias, for example, a good choice would be a variety been bred to resist the Fuchsia Gall Mite (Aculops fuchsiae), a pest that’s difficult to control.
The logical corollary is to examine plants that you might buy to check for any evidence of “livestock.” The symptoms (e.g., chewed leaves, creepy-crawlers or their eggs on the underside of leaves) are usually unmistakable, but if you have any uncertainty, choose a plant that’s symptom-free.
Similarly, look for plants that are disease resistant. Several varieties of roses are both beautiful and resistant to powdery mildew and black spot. Why would you want to struggle with those diseases?
Again, before buying a plant, check for any sign of disease, or anything other than good health. Garden centers screen their plants diligently, to protect customers and their own reputations, but problems can be missed. This is most possible with amateur plant sales.
More and more, gardeners prefer plants that are free of toxic synthetic chemicals. Growers are beginning to label plants that have been grown without the use of neonicotinoids (“neonics”), for example, which appear to be harmful to bees. If the label doesn’t give assurance, ask!
To minimize your plant-buying expense, favor the garden center’s smaller plants. They should be well rooted, rather than freshly transplanted. In your garden, they will grow quickly to reach the size of more expensive plants.
On the other hand, to achieve an immediate effect, favor the larger plants. You will be paying the nursery for caring for the plant for months or even years, but the results may be worth the cost. An added benefit is seeing a well-grown plant’s structure.
Before buying a plant, especially one that fills its container more than others, check for healthy roots. Gently pull the plant from its container to examine roots for healthy color (usually white) and ample space in the container. Plants left too long in a container become root-bound, which can hamper their growth. On the other hand, such plants often could be divided into two or more for the price of one.

Positive Actions, Large and Small

Posted on October 23, 2015 by tomkarwin

I’ve written recently about ways in which gardeners could work toward reducing the impacts of climate change. For example, they could avoid uses of synthetic chemicals, cover the surface of soil with garden plants, mulch or cover crops, minimize tilling, and, most recently, avoid uses of gas-powered leaf blowers and other garden tools.

These practices, which generally align with organic gardening methods, could have beneficial, if small, effects on sequestering atmospheric carbon, cleaning up the atmosphere, improving soil health, retaining moisture, and other factors.

Such initiatives are important in slowing and eventually reversing the current disruption of nature’s carbon cycle: industrial-age agricultural methods have been causing about 40% of the climate change phenomenon, according to some reports.

We need those in commercial agriculture to pursue the large-scale work in these areas.

It is gratifying to know that California is providing leadership in this connection. A recent example, is the legislation to direct the Environmental Farming Science Advisory Panel to “provide incentives, including loans, grants, research, technical assistance, or educational materials and outreach, to farmers whose practices promote the well-being of ecosystems, air quality, and wildlife and their habitat, and reduce on-farm greenhouse gas emissions or increase carbon storage in agricultural soils and woody biomass, or both.”

The legislation (Senate Bill 357) also would fund these new incentives by drawing from a $2 billion fund already received from existing sources of greenhouse gasses (GHGs), as part of a “cap and-trade” strategy to reduce greenhouse gas emissions. This fund also supports other programs.

California Senate’s Agriculture and Environmental Quality Committees have approved this bill, and it seems poised for adoption by the full legislature, which returns in January from the current legislative recess.

Numerous agricultural and environmental organizations and land trusts are supporting this bill and similar actions. Supporting groups include the Community Alliance with Family Farmers (CAFF) and California Climate and Agriculture Network (CALCAN; http://calclimateag.org/.)

An important turning point for California’s leadership in this area was the Global Warming Solutions Act of 2006, which the state has since updated and complemented with a legislative actions and executive orders.

California’s encouraging work in the climate change arena continues in the midst of other significant and urgent challenges: drought, wild fires, water supplies, transportation systems and others.

Returning to our primary focus on gardens and gardeners, we note that these statewide programs provide research, inspiration and practical demonstrations that we can as individual actors, draw upon in adopting ecologically sound practices. We enjoy our gardens more when we know we are managing them responsibly.

Evolution of the Community Garden

Posted on October 17, 2015 by tomkarwin

I never expected to be impressed by a housing development in the San Jose area, but late in September of 2015, the City of Santa Clara launched an extraordinary project that City Council member Lisa Gilmor said is“…the first of its kind for Santa Clara. I don’t think we’ve done anything like this in the past.”

The Council selected a developer, The Core Companies, to lead master planning and development of a six-acre site on Winchester Boulevard, near the Valley Fair and Santana Row shopping centers.

Core/CNGF Project – Conceptual

The project concept combines housing with several familiar elements: a small organic farm, community gardens, a children’s garden, California native plant edible landscaping, roof gardens, solar energy production, a farmer’s market, a rainwater garden, an outdoor kitchen, and much more.

Overall, the project qualifies as an “agrihood,” a newer idea that focuses residential housing on a working farm, rather than a pool, tennis court or golf course. An agrihood also engages the residents in creating a sustainable food system for the entire community.

This concept could be appealing to people of all ages, but the United States has only a short list of existing agrihoods (for examples: http://tinyurl.com/ox4to7h). The Santa Clara project appears to be the only agrihood in an intensely urban environment, and an exceptional showcase of several ideas in sustainable gardening.

The City of Santa Clara selected this project among eight competing proposals because of its creativity, vigorous community support and the history of the site, which had been part of an agricultural research station operated by the University of California, beginning in the last 1950s.

A visionary neighbor, Kirk Vartan, galvanized community support for this project. He found a creative and knowledgeable ally in Alrie Middlebrook, a landscape designer and leader of the California Native Garden Foundation, a non-profit group that demonstrates innovative gardening ideas and supports the development of school gardens. Middlebrook’s ideas are evident in the rich array of gardens in this agrihood, which has been called the Core/CNGF project.

The California Native Garden Foundation will be involved in managing the project’s urban agriculture open space. (Full disclosure: as a long-time member of the CNGF’s board of directors, I have had both opportunities to monitor this project’s development during the past several months, and a very limited role in its creation. The CNGF board’s primary role is to review schools’ applications for the planning and development of learning gardens.)

Agrihoods could become the evolutionary next step beyond community gardens and community-supported agriculture. Through this project in nearby Santa Clara, we can see the leading edge of innovative strategies for relating research-based gardening and community relationships.

Leaf Blowers

Posted on October 11, 2015 by tomkarwin

In recent columns, I have addressed soil health as an emerging issue in global climate change, and described ways in which residential gardeners could participate in solutions to this high-level priority. The most important strategies for home gardeners in this connection include using mulches and cover crops to protect the soil from the elements; avoiding uses of synthetic chemicals, which attack the soil microbiome, and favoring regionally appropriate plants, including (for the Monterey Bay area) plants that are native to California and other dry-summer climate regions.

Today’s column focuses on uses of gasoline-powered garden equipment: leaf blowers, lawnmowers, lawn edgers and chain saws.

This equipment contributes to climate change and air pollution. The typical device uses a two-stroke engine, which, by design, does not burn the fuel efficiently, and instead emits large quantities of carbon monoxide, nitrous oxides and hydrocarbons. These emissions contribute to smog formation, climate change and acid rain, and hydrocarbons in particular can be carcinogenic.

Small trucks and passenger cars also produce worrisome emissions, but gasoline-powered garden equipment emit them at much greater rates. For example, leaf blowers produce 100 to 300 times as many hydrocarbons as does a small truck or passenger vehicle. Garden equipment with four-stroke engines perform significantly better, but still far worse than car engines.

In terms of environmental pollution, these are very dirty devices.

The California Air Resources Board has stated, “Potential health effects from exhaust emissions, fugitive dust, and noise range from mild to serious.”

Fugitive dust includes organic debris and “particulate matter,” which can include a variety of potentially nasty organic and chemical stuff that people should not breathe.

Noise pollution effects include annoyance, hearing loss (particularly by equipment operators), and a range of psychological impacts.

For more information, visit the website of Zero Air Pollution (www.zapla.org). This southern California organization details the range of health hazards associated with this garden equipment, wherever it is used.

Leaf blowers sometimes are used to clear organic materials, and leave bare soil. Making nature “tidy” in this way exposes the soil to the damaging effects of the sun and wind. The regeneration of healthy soil requires maintaining cover of vegetation or mulch materials.

Here are recommendations for ecologically appropriate uses of garden equipment.

Minimize or eliminate the use of gasoline-powered devices in favor of manual equipment. Use rakes and brooms to clear leaves, a push lawnmower to cut grass, a long-handled edger to trim lawns, and a handsaw to prune limbs. These tools are consistent with a contemplative approach to gardening, and provide desirable exercise.
When the task requires too much time and effort for manual equipment, use electrical devices. Battery technology is advancing to enable longer operation of small garden equipment; corded devices, although cumbersome, work quite well. (My corded leaf blower moves leaves nicely.)
Negotiate with your “mow, blow & go” garden maintenance contractor to use manual equipment whenever possible. This might require a small rate increase, but everyone will be better for the effort.

Continue reading →

Historic Issues in the Garden

Posted on September 16, 2015 by tomkarwin

The growing community of organic gardeners—which hopefully includes you—represents the “good guys” in several current struggles between public and private interests in gardening and commercial agriculture. Gardeners and farmers are quite different in many respects, but both are engaged in growing plants.

Mother Nature also grows plants, and has been doing so successfully since the dawn of time.

For about 10,000 years, gardeners and farmers have cooperated with Mother Nature to grow and harvest plants to eat, treat illnesses, dye fabrics, and enjoy their beauty and fragrance. They gradually developed ways to increase yields, reduce the work of growing and improve the qualities of their plants. For the most part, these changes have been compatible with natural processes.

Eventually, people adopted various technologies to improve gardening and especially farming. Beginning 4,500 years ago, various inorganic materials and organic substances derived from natural sources were used as pesticides. Major agricultural technologies include the mechanical reaper (1831) by Cyrus McCormick, and the tractor (1868), both of which brought new efficiencies.

In the 1940s, agribusiness began using synthetic chemical pesticides and great quantities of synthetic nitrogen fertilizer. In both cases, there was little or no knowledge of the impacts of these chemicals on human health or the environment.

Rachel Carson’s book, Silent Spring (1962) raised awareness of the conflict between public and private interests related to agrichemicals.

In the 1970’s, research began to development Integrated Pest Management (IPM) strategies, which rely upon natural processes and do not use synthetic chemicals. IPM became widely used beginning in the late 1970s.

During more recent decades, continuing research and development produced more selective products, including glyphosate, which soon became most widely used herbicide, worldwide.

The ancient methods of organic gardening continued throughout this history, but the seeming cost-effectiveness of uses of agrichemicals dominated commercial agriculture.

Today, we are discovering the consequences of attempts to fool Mother Nature. Insects are developing resistance to synthetic insecticides, weeds are developing resistance to synthetic herbicides, and we are discovering that at least some of these materials threaten our health.

The State of California already has listed 800 chemicals known to cause cancer or birth defects or other reproductive harm, and early this month issued a notice of intent to classify glyphosate as a carcinogen.This classification is based on the findings of the World Health Organization. See: CSG Prop 65 Heirloom EXPO FLYER Glyphosate 9-7-15.

In addition, speakers at recent conferences have called for uses of regenerative agriculture, which is a form of organic farming designed to build soil health or regenerate unhealthy soils. This practice could counteract “conventional” agriculture’s destructive practices, which include uses of synthetic chemicals. Many of those chemicals weaken or kill the soil microbiota, and thereby disrupt the natural carbon cycle and contribute substantially to global warming.

By any measure, we are now in a historic period of change, to reject shortsighted agricultural technology and return to more natural processes. Our health and the health of the environment depend on the success of this transition.

Carbon Farming

Posted on September 6, 2015 by tomkarwin

Climate change has been described as the consequence of the Industrial Revolution, which introduced extensive burning of fossil fuels. This practice disrupts the natural balance of carbon in the soil, the atmosphere and the ocean. Plans to slow or reduce the process of climate often emphasize reducing uses of fossil fuels.

Recently, and all too briefly, we explored the relationship between gardening and climate change. We have learned that common agricultural practices generate about one-third of the surplus CO₂ in the atmosphere, making commercial farming a substantial part of the climate change problem.

Prior to the development of modern agriculture, we had organic farming, which is generally compatible with natural processes. The practices we now call “conventional” farming include driving a tractor, tilling the soil, over-grazing, and using fossil fuel-based fertilizers, pesticides and herbicides.

Similarly, farm animals once were raised in pastures, where they grazed on grasses and other plants. Today, cows, pigs and chickens are raised in tight quarters, provided grains and other feed that they work hard to digest, and must be dosed with antibiotics to maintain basic health.

These contemporary, presumably efficient methods are depleting the carbon stores in the soil, and reducing the soil’s natural ability to support plant growth and store moisture.

Soil scientists and environmentalists have been discovering land management strategies that can reduce the rate of loss of soil carbon, and even improve the rate at which agriculture can convert atmospheric CO2 into plant material and soil organic matter. When thoughtfully applied, carbon methods can add significantly to the rate of soil carbon sequestration, and actually reverse the climate change process.

Dozens of specific practices are included in carbon farming; all look like historical organic farming and common sense. The principal methods are composting, grazing by hoofed animals (ungulates), maintaining high percentages of organic matter in the soil (to feed the microbiota), supporting biodiversity, rotating crops and discontinuing uses of synthetic chemicals. The most effective practices orchestrate multiple methods in plans designed for specific circumstances.

Carbon farming, also called regenerative agriculture, should be part of the global response to the threat of climate change, but reduced burning of fossil fuels will still be important.

These promising methods for the management of agricultural lands can have substantial impacts when applied on a large scale, but they also have value when applied in residential gardens. In this column, we have advocated organic methods as beneficial to our flora and fauna. We find now that these methods also have long-term benefits to the health of the soil and the natural balance of carbon in our environment.

For more about this important topic, read Kristin Ohlson’s book, The Soil Will Save Us (2014), (which a reader recommended to me), and search the web for “carbon farming” and “regenerative agriculture.”

If you are growing plants and raising animals on hundreds of acres, try carbon farming. If not, by all means, garden organically!

Gardening to Reverse Climate Change

Posted on July 3, 2015 by tomkarwin

The threat of climate change has become a concern among scientists, environmentalists and gardeners (who might wear all three of these hats, of course). In the search for solution to this problem, these three interested parties have common ground, as we explore in this column.

As background, our climate is changing as a result of a disruption of the Carbon Cycle.

On Plant Earth, a fixed amount of carbon cycles through different forms: liquid, solid, or gas.

Carbon enters the atmosphere from several sources, including respiration of animals and plants, decay of animals and plants, eruptions of volcanoes, and releases of dissolved carbon dioxide (CO₂) from the oceans.

Plants absorb carbon dioxide (CO₂) from the atmosphere, and use photosynthesis to release oxygen back into the atmosphere and convert carbon into sugars that support the plant’s above-ground growth. At the same time, up to 40% of the CO₂goes to the plant’s roots, to feed soil microbes. The microbes assist the plant to acquire nutrients through its roots, and lock (“sequester”) carbon into the soil for very long periods.

The Carbon Cycle supports Earth’s climate and enables the growth of plants and literally all other living things.

Credit: NASA/Globe Project

In the diagram above, notations in blue indicate pools of carbon and notations in red indicate fluxes of carbon, both quantities are measured in petagrams.

This complex natural process balances the amount of carbon in liquid, solid and gas forms. Vast amounts of carbon are stored in the soil and fossil fuels, and much smaller amounts are stored in the atmosphere, the oceans, and plants.

During the Industrial Revolution (1760 to c. 1830), humans began burning fossil fuels, cutting down forests, draining wetlands, converting grasslands to large-scale crops, paving paradise, and applying synthetic chemical fertilizers and pesticides. These activities have been disrupting the Carbon Cycle and altering this important balance.

The consequences include degraded soil with reduced ability to capture carbon, an excess of carbon in the atmosphere, the acidification of the oceans, and other effects, none of which are beneficial to living things (including us).

The broad term, climate change, encompasses all these negative effects.

Restoring the natural Carbon Cycle could reverse climate change.

Restoration requires feeding the soil with organic matter and planting cover crops to protect the soil from temperature extremes and erosion. In short, the solution is based upon regenerative, organic agriculture.

This strategy must be employed on a global scale, but we all should understand the Carbon Cycle and support this process of soil restoration in our own gardens and in our individual contributions to relevant public policy. Substantial private interests are invested in fossil fuels, “conventional” monoculture agriculture that depends upon synthetic chemicals, and other industrial methods that are changing our climate. They can be expected to resist this strategy of working with nature, so eventual success requires our vision and long-term commitment.

Each gardener could participate first in his or her own garden. That would be a fine way to celebrate our independence from, in this context, commercial interests.

Continue reading →

The New Normal for Gardens—Lose the Lawn

Posted on April 12, 2015 by tomkarwin

Earlier this month, Governor Jerry Brown issued an executive order mandating water use restrictions. This order requires California’s 400 water supply agencies to restrict water uses to achieve an overall 25% reduction, and monitor compliance with those restrictions..

The restrictions will have many impacts. Here, we consider only the impacts on small-scale gardening at residences and businesses. At another time, we’ll get to commercial agriculture’s water usage, which equals 80% of California’s developed water.

Studies have shown that 30-50% of residential water use occurs outdoors. Uses include washing cars and filling pools and fountains, but most outdoor water usage is intended to maintain the growth of plants, particularly lawn grasses.

If the current four-year drought continues for ten years or longer, as weather scientists have projected, gardeners should plan for the “new normal” for their gardens.

This is not the time to install artificial turf, learn to love the parched look, or pave your yard. There are better options.

The first step would be to remove the water hogs in your garden. These might include plants from tropical climes. For example, I have a long fascination with the Chilean Rhubard (Gunnera tinctoria), a riparian plant with enormous leaves. My garden once had one of these plants, but it dried out.

Here is a fine example of a clump of Chilean Rhubarb near a pond in a large garden in Santa Cruz.

Click to Enlarge

The next step would be to lose the lawn. A well-kept lawn consumes a lot of water, fertilizers and pesticides, plus the lawn owner’s time and money. Two-cycle lawnmowers also generate noise and air pollution.

In return, most lawns provide a green vista—or at least a resting spot for the eye—but receive very little actual use. Lawns used to symbolize status, but that was when only the wealthy could afford groundskeepers wielding scythes. The 1830 invention of the lawnmower transformed the lawn from status symbol to an easy option for many homeowners and an obsession for a few.

Now, our governor has said, “The idea of your nice little green lawn getting watered every day, those days are past.”

The plan for losing the lawn will vary with the size of your greensward. A small patch could be converted to a new reality in one go. A larger area might better be reduced incrementally, to spread the effort and the design issues over two or three years.

The first step should be to plan for replacing the lawn grass with another ground cover that would require much less water. It is all about the strategic selection of plants. This individual design decision could focus on meadow grasses, wildflowers, or drought-tolerant plants, e.g., California natives or Mediterranean climate plants. Some people have opted for cacti and succulents, which can be very interesting, but that’s a challenging move, design-wise.

There are many very attractive possibilities for a drought-tolerant landscape. Visit ongardening.com for resources to help with this planning.

Then, remove the grass. This can be done with solarization: over several weeks, a plastic cover uses the summer sun to heat the grass to extinction.

The operation of a sod cutter, probably rented, is much faster, but this method could remove enough soil to require importing topsoil.

In any event, avoid killing the grass with chemicals, which are not good for gardens. Also, avoid rototilling the soil, because that will bring buried weed seeds to the surface. A rake would be the preferred tool to smooth the soil.

Once the grass is gone, install the landscape you have designed. After a couple years of planting, watering and inevitable weeding, you will have a landscape that will survive during the coming drought years with minimal care, and look great.

Once you have made the decision to replace a traditional lawn with a drought-tolerant alternative, you can consider several options. Here are resources to explore:

Full disclosure, the Lose the Lawn website was created by a friend, Alrie Middlebrook, owner of Middlebrook Gardens. It has been available for quite a while, and is more relevant than ever today.

Sunset Magazine web resources includes 24 Inspiring Lawn-free Yards.

An excellent book on this subject is The American Meadow Garden: Creating a Natural Alternative to the Traditional Lawn, by John Greenlee and Saxon Holt (2009).

An eloquent call for California native plants is found in Reimagining the California Lawn: Water-conserving Plants, Practices and Designs, by Carol Bornstein and David Fross (2011).

A best selling book, Lawn Gone!: Low-Maintenance, Sustainable, Attractive Alternatives for Your Yard, by Pam Penick (2013), provides a new look in book title punctuation.

A search of Amazon.com for “lawn alternatives” or “drought-tolerant landscaping” will yield several additional titles for books that you might find in a local library or bookstore. There’s no shortage of ideas!

Finally, you might have heard that southern California residents so far this year have a poor record for reducing their water usage, compared to people on the central California coast. Here’s an image that provides a clue for that failure to cut back on landscape irrigation. This shows a part of Rancho Mirage, which is between Palm Springs and Palm Desert.

The grey areas are sand! If you believe the drought is a hoax, you might be interested in living on this human-created oasis. Contact Magnesia Falls Real Estate, which has this photo on its website. (An even more dramatic aerial photo of this community is in the current issue of Time magazine.

Rain at Last

Posted on December 14, 2014 by tomkarwin

As an impressionistic meteorologist, I’m very pleased with our recent rains and even more so with the promise of more rain in the near future. Some areas of northern and central California could actually reach normal levels of annual precipitation. The Santa Cruz area is during fairly well, but this happy future might not extend throughout the area: portions of Monterey County are receiving lighter precipitation.

: Storm runoff, San Carlos /Beach Parkphoto by Vern Fisher, Monterey Herald

What have we learned?

My first reaction to the overdue rain is that we can now anticipate fresh new stems and leaves and a great floral display in the spring. Our plants are responding to the moisture by extending their roots and drawing in nutrients, preparing for a new season of growth.

Then, I flashed on the idea that the drought is over for good, and we’re back to the Monterey Bay area’s historical weather pattern, with a dry summer and the onset of the rainy season around mid-October. This thought didn’t last long. Realistically, our climate is changing in ways that will change our gardening—and our lives—in significant ways.

This change is happening at a fast rate, not with the very slow arrival of the Ice Age (approximately 110,000 to 12,000 years ago or the Little Ice Age (1550 to 1850), which developed relatively more quickly, over a period of about 200 years.

Politicians are debating a range of responses to today’s emerging problem. Clearly this is a global issue that requires global action, but as individuals, we can respond in small ways. The most constructive action for individuals is to elect those who accept the reality of climate change and support long-term solutions.

As gardeners, we can pursue three basic strategies:

First, retire plants that require summer irrigation and that suffer under drought conditions. The single most widespread plant in this category is lawn grass, which achieves it aesthetic potential only with frequent irrigation, applications of nitrogen fertilizers and broadleaf herbicides, and regular cultivation, including mowing, aeration and pest control.

In a future column, I will describe alternatives to traditional turf grasses.

Tropical-climate plants compirse another category to avoid for drought-tolerant gardens. Examples include the hibiscus (H. syriacus is the most popular ornamental species) and the banana (Musa acuminata, M. balbisiana and others). In general, avoid plants with large glossy dark leaves, which tend to absorb more heat, require a lot of water and transpire a lot of water.

For the water needs of specific plants, Sunset’s Western Garden Book provides useful guidelines, with briefly descriptive terms from “ample water” to “little to moderate water.”

The second basic strategy is to favor plants that will survive in your garden under drought conditions. Generally, as often mentioned in the column, these are plants that are native to coastal California and other Mediterranean (or “summer-dry”) climates. These plants will do better with a little moisture during a prolonged drought, but they have evolved to withstand dry periods, using such methods as growing small leaves, that minimize water loss.

Succulents are another category of drought-tolerant plants, which have developed structures for storing water in their leaves, stems or roots.

The third strategy for drought-tolerant gardening is to use water wisely, through drip irrigation and regular mulching. These water-conservation methods complement the two preceding strategies for plant selection, and help the gardener to cope with water restrictions.

Use the next clear days to assess your garden for drought-tolerance. However much we enjoy the current rains, preparing for future droughts requires long-term planning..