Horticulturists are by nature, nonconforming. I happen to find it difficult to conform to what makes us nonconforming. Trends are fleeting. Old technology that has worked for decades or centuries is still best. Although I am not totally against chemicals, I find that almost all are unnecessary for responsible home gardening. Pruning is underappreciated, and fixes many problems.
Camellias have been blooming for a while now. I typically get rather good pictures of them. The pictures are nothing too artistic, of course, and are intended to merely exhibit the floral color and form. A bit of the glossy foliage in the background is nice.
The picture above is not so useful for exhibiting much of the floral characteristics. Even the pink color is muted by the sloppy background and gray sky above. Zooming in would not have corrected the positioning of the flowers. I simply could not get close enough to do any better.
That eave in the lower right corner of the picture is above a two story building. That is where all the blooms of this particular camellia shrub are located. With so much of the lower growth shaded out and gone, this shrub is…
Almost all corn that grows in home gardens is sweet corn (Zea mays convar. saccharata var. rugosa). It is among the most popular of the warm season vegetable plants. Popcorn remains uncommon for home gardening. Other types of corn are mostly grains and other agricultural commodities that are rare within home gardens. Some corn becomes biofuel.
Corn stalks can grow as high as twelve feet! Most popular varieties grow only about half as high. Each stalk should produce one or perhaps two ears of corn. Each ear produces many kernels of corn in very neat formation on a central cob, all within a tight foliar husk. Male blooms protrude from the tops of stalks like antennae. Foliage is coarse but grassy. Stalks resemble giant reed, except smaller.
Of the various warm season vegetable plants, corn is one of the more consumptive sorts. It occupies significant area. It requires methodical and generous irrigation. Also, it craves rich soil, but depletes nutrients. Corn grows best from seed sown directly into the garden. Squared orientation, rather than typical rows, improves pollination and ear development.
Warm season vegetables, or summer vegetables, can occupy a garden systematically. A few lingering cool season vegetables may continue production for a while. Warm season vegetable plants can replace them as they finish. Several warm season vegetable plants should start as early as possible. Others grow in a few later phases through their season.
For example, indeterminate tomato plants are productive throughout their entire season. They can start as soon as convenient. However, determinate tomato plants produce only for two weeks or so. After their initial phase of a single plant or a few, subsequent phases can start about every two weeks. Each phase continues production after its predecessor.
Bush bean and several varieties of eggplant and pepper also produce for brief seasons. Okra and cucumber might produce for most of summer. Secondary phases may increase their production as well though. Of all warm season vegetable plants, corn benefits most from phasing. Each phase tends to mature so uniformly that it finishes within a few days.
Pole bean, squash, some cucumber and Indeterminate tomatoes need no phasing. Such warm season vegetable plants perform from spring planting until frost. Winter squash are warm season vegetable plants, but their fruit finishes for autumn. Indeterminate tomatoes are less profuse than determinate types. Cumulatively though, they are more productive.
It will soon be time to sow seed for corn, beans, root vegetables and most greens directly into garden soil. Seedlings for these warm season vegetable plants are not conducive to transplant. Besides, too many are needed. Cucumber and squash grow either from seed or small nursery seedlings. Only a few plants are needed, and they transplant efficiently.
For the same reasons, tomato, pepper and eggplant can grow from seedlings rather than seed. Moreover, since they are so vulnerable as they germinate and begin to grow, seed is less practical than seedlings. Varieties that are unavailable at nurseries can grow from seed in flats inside or in a greenhouse. Ideally, they should have started early enough for transplant into a garden during appropriate weather.
The tree that bloomed for these pictures may get removed after bloom this year. It is pretty in bloom, but is a bit redundant to its landscape. That is a problem with such healthy growth and maturation of trees.
Springtime in the Santa Clara Valley was famously spectacular decades ago, when vast orchards occupied what is now only urban sprawl. Tourists came to see it like some still go to see foliar color of autumn in New England. Most of the orchards were for stone fruits. Only a few in cooler spots were for apples and pears. Only orchards of English walnuts did not bloom colorfully.
Cherry and almond trees typically bloomed first. Prune trees bloomed immediately afterward. Apricot trees were only a few days later. Of course, the schedule of bloom was variable. Prune trees often bloomed just after apricot trees. Various cultivars of cherry started to bloom at slightly different times, even though those that needed to pollinate each other managed to do so.
After the main bloom of all the stone fruits, and after the tourists were gone, the few…
These primrose look as good as they did last year.
Among cattle, a cow is a female who has calved. Prior to that, she was a heifer. A bull is an adult male. A bullock is a juvenile male or castrated bull. Most cattle are males who were castrated while young, and are known as steers. Yet, cattle are commonly known collectively as ‘cows’.
Similarly, bedding plants are commonly known collectively as ‘annuals’. Many really are annuals. However, some are biennials; an even more are, to some degree, perennials.
Replacing annuals annually make sense. They grow, bloom and die within one year. Some sow seed to regenerate if and when they get the chance. In the prominent spots of our gardens, not many are likely to get such a chance before they are replaced by other annuals for more immediate gratification within the next season.
Aspen are not native here like they are around Aspen in Colorado. Common cottonwood is. While bare, it almost resembles aspen, and really seems to be a species from a climate with colder winters. Actually, all of my Six this week seem to be from colder climates. All but #1 and #2 are native however.
1. Forsythia X intermedia, forsythia looks like it belongs in a colder climate where it can bloom as the snow melts. Only a few inhabit our landscapes, and they are blooming late.
2. Leucojum aestivum, summer snowflake blooms whenever it wants to here. I had been wanting some for here when a few mysteriously appeared near a ditch of the main road.
3. Corylus californica, beaked hazelnut is native, but also looks like it should bloom like this as the snow melts in a colder climate. The nuts are rare and tiny, but richly flavored.
4. Populus deltoides, cottonwood grew as a small colony from roots of a tree that got cut down. This colony got thinned. This stump is under water that reflects a remaining tree.
5. This is that reflected tree, which is the only one of seven remaining trees that is out in the water. Its colony grew before the formerly drained pond filled more than a year ago. Platanus racemosa, California sycamore is reflected to the lower left and the upper right and, I believe, Salix lasiandra, red willow or shining willow is reflected to the upper left.
6. These are the other six cottonwood trees. The seventh is beyond the right edge of this picture, where more twigs of California sycamore are visible. Myrica californica, Pacific wax myrtle is in most of the background to the left, with a lodge building farther behind. Such elegantly straight trunks of common cottonwood seem to resemble those of aspen.
Mexican orange does not actually produce any fruit.
Remember when gardening took advantage of the great climate and soil of the Santa Clara Valley? Single story suburban homes with low suburban fences had generous sunny garden space. Now, multiple-storied homes on smaller parcels surrounded by big fences leave only minimal space for shady gardening. Rhododendrons, azaleas, hydrangeas and all sorts of ferns are more popular than the many fruit trees that were so much more common only a few decades ago.
‘Washington’, ‘Robertson’, ‘Valencia’ and ‘Sanguinelli’ oranges that have quite a history in local home gardens are now not much more common than the previously rare Mexican orange, Choisya ternata, which, although related, provides only mildly fragrant flowers without edible fruit. The modest white flowers are only about an inch to an inch and a half wide on loosely arranged trusses, but show up nicely against the rich glossy green foliage. They can bloom anytime, and happen to be blooming now because of the pleasant weather. Otherwise, they prefer to wait until late spring and early summer.
The trifoliate leaves (which are palmately compound with three smaller leaflets in a palmate arrangement) are about two or three inches long and wide. The individual leaflets are about one and a half to three inches long and nearly an inch wide. Foliage can get sparse on big old plants, as they eventually reach lower floor eaves. Occasional pruning of lanky stems can improve foliar density and keep plants as low as three feet. Mexican orange does not actually resemble real orange trees much, but provides nice glossy foliage that is occasionally enhanced by simple softly fragrant flowers.
Surplus fruits and vegetables can be canned for later.
It seems to me that the reason that so many of the kids I grew up with do not like apricots is that they were so common when we were younger. Because there were still several abandoned orchards, and most of us had at least one apricot tree in our backyards, we ate apricots in every form imaginable; fresh, dried, in pies, in cobblers, as jams, as apricot nectar (juice) and of course, canned. By the time we grew up and moved on, we were done with apricots.
Apricots happen to be one of the many ‘high-acid’ fruits that are remarkably easy to preserve by canning, which is how and why they are available as jams and canned apricots at any time of the year. In fact, almost all of the fruits that were so commonly grown in the vast orchards of the Santa Clara Valley, like prunes, plums, cherries, nectarines, peaches, apples and pears, are also high-acid fruits that are relatively easy to can in various forms. ‘Low-acid’ vegetables, like broccoli, corn, pumpkin (squash), spinach and beets, as well as meat and poultry, were not so commonly canned only because they take considerably more work to can with the use of a pressure cooker (in order to achieve higher temperatures).
Because home canning can potentially be dangerous if done improperly, it is best to learn something about it first. This is why the Guadalupe River Park Conservancy has arranged for UC Master Preserver Susan Algert to conduct the workshop ‘Safe Methods for Food Preservation and Canning’. Participants will learn the importance of canning to kill toxic pathogens, and why high-acid produce gets canned in a hot water bath while low-acid foods need to be canned in a pressure cooker. Canning is an alternative to freezing for preserving overly abundant produce from the garden.
(Outdated information regarding classes has been omitted from this recycled article.)
The landscape maintenance industry attracts apathetic idiots. There is no nice way of saying it. Those who have flunked out of everything else and simply do not care can push a mower. I can not imagine how infuriating this must be for gardeners who take their work seriously. It must be more difficult for them to observe than it is for me.
More to the point, the jacaranda tree in the median pictured above fell down and stayed that way long enough for the canopy to try to grow into a normal tree. It likely got run over by a car. No one bothered to try to stand it up and stake it, or more simply remove it, and maybe replace it. It just stayed there, for YEARS. So-called maintenance ‘gardeners’ just mow around it, and weed whack the grass that they can not mow below the horizontal trunk. Arborists might eventually groom the canopy. Apparently, they all find this to be acceptable horticultural procedure.
The Brazilian pepper tree pictured below is almost as weird. It is slightly more tolerable only because it has not been in this position as long. Perhaps SOMEONE or ANYONE will realize how inappropriate its horizontal orientation is for the parking lot that it inhabits, and remove it. It had been falling over slowly, which is why the exposed roots are already weathered. No one bothered to prune it for weight reduction or to improve the clearance on the side that it was falling toward. Otherwise, it might have been able to support itself, even with a bit an irregular but tolerable lean. Now that it is on the ground, some so-called ‘gardener’ pruned it around the parking spaces that it fell between. Seriously! The bumper of the pickup is against a now hedged portion of the canopy of the fallen tree. The branches to the left in the picture were pruned between adjacent parking spaces so that they can actually accommodate parked cars as they were intended to. Seriously, rather than simply cut the tree ‘down’ and remove it, someone devoted that much effort into something as crazily dysfunctional as this. IT WOULD HAVE BEEN MUCH EASIER TO DO THIS PROPERLY!
Like several annual warm season bedding plants, oxeye daisy, Leucanthemum vulgare, is actually perennial. Also, some of the less extensively bred sorts disperse enough seed to naturalize and potentially become invasive. Increasingly popular modern varieties that are prudent with seed might not be true to type. Some might revert to more prolific forms.
Modern varieties should not get much higher than a foot and a half. They should also be more dense than the simple species, which gets a few feet tall. Foliage and form is quite variable among varieties. Stems are solitary or branched. They may be leafy or sparsely foliated above basal rosettes. Leaves might be lobed or serrate, with or without petioles.
The solitary, paired or tripled composite blooms of oxeye daisy are not so variable. They are classic daisies, with a dozen to three dozen clear white ray florets surrounding bright yellow disc florets. Without deadheading, fresh new bloom overwhelms deteriorating old bloom. Oxeye daisy is splendid as a cut flower. Spring bloom continues through summer, and can actually continue sporadically for as long as the weather is warm.
Camellias are pretty this time of year, but . . . 
Feral plum naturalized from understock cultivars. 
These primrose look as good as they did last year. 
Tony Tomeo 