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English Walnut

English walnuts are popular among squirrels.

It has been in cultivation for several thousands of years. Throughout that time, it escaped cultivation to naturalize in many regions between the Balkans and the Himalayas. It most likely originated from a much smaller natural range within Persia. An interesting certainty of its dubious original range is that English walnut, Juglans regia, is not actually English.

English walnut likely arrived at Spanish Missions of California prior to 1800. It became a major agricultural commodity of both the Sacramento Valley and the San Joaquin Valley. A few old trees survive within urban areas that were formerly orchards of the Santa Clara Valley. Newer trees are unfortunately rare within home gardens because they get messy.

English walnut trees rarely grow more than forty feet high and wide here. Their abundant foliar, floral and fruit debris is toxic to young plants though, and stains hardscapes. Each type of debris sheds during a different season. Squirrels might claim most or all nuts, but drop shredded hulls. The deciduous and pinnately compound leaves can be a foot long.

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Bare-Root Stock Arrives For Winter

Bare roots might fail to impress.

Spring is overrated. It is obviously the best season for planting warm season vegetables and bedding plants. It is the most colorful season with more flowers in bloom. There is so much more to gardening though. Most plants prefer autumn planting. Some prefer winter planting. That is why this present bare-root season will be so relevant all through winter.

Dormancy is an advantage to stressful procedures such as planting. Spring bulbs prefer autumn or early winter planting while they are most dormant. For the same reason and to avoid late frost, summer bulbs prefer later winter planting. It should be no surprise that so many deciduous woody plants likewise prefer dormant planting during bare-root season.

Bare-root season is simply when bare-root stock becomes available for planting through winter. Unlike more familiar canned (potted) stock, bare-root stock lacks the medium that it grew in. Their roots are literally bare. Most bare-root stock awaits purchase at nurseries with its roots resting within damp sand. Roots of some are bagged within damp sawdust.

Bare-root stock is innately more practical than typical canned stock. It is significantly less expensive. It is much less cumbersome, and therefore easier to transport from nurseries. Planting is easier within much smaller planting holes. Formerly bare roots disperse new roots into their garden soils more efficiently than crowded formerly canned root systems.

Deciduous fruit trees and roses are the most popular of bare-root stock. Most of such fruit trees are stone fruits and pomme fruits. Stone fruits include almond, apricot, cherry, plum, prune, peach and nectarine, as well as their unusual hybrids. All stone fruits are species of the genus, Prunus. Pomme fruits include apple, pear, Asian pear and perhaps quince.

Fig, pomegranate and persimmon trees should also be available. So should grapevines, currants, gooseberries, blueberries and various cane berries. Strawberries, rhubarb and asparagus are perennials that are available bare-root. Except for almond, most nut trees, including English walnut, pecan, filbert or chestnut, may be available only by mail order. Most mail order catalogs are online now.

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Rain Shadow

Hey, it is coincidentally raining as I schedule this to reblog.

tonytomeo's avatarTony Tomeo

P91222Hollywood is famous as the Cinema Capital of the World. Niles was its predecessor. Both are within regions of remarkably diverse scenery that is so important to cinema. Mountains, deserts, chaparrals, forests, lakes and big cities are conveniently nearby. There are not many places in the World with such a thorough mix of geography and climate. California really does have it all.

It is a challenge for gardening though. The stone fruits that grow so naturally in the Santa Clara Valley are not quite as productive just a few miles to the South in the Santa Cruz Mountains. The pears and apples that do so well in the Santa Cruz Mountains are not quite as happy in the Santa Clara Valley. Species that want a good chill in winter do not want to be in Los Angeles.

On the coastal side of the Santa Cruz Mountains, just outside of Felton…

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Growing Problem

It is even more of a problem three years later.

tonytomeo's avatarTony Tomeo

P91221KRecycling plant material is practical and gratifying. We do quite a bit of it here. Back in September, I briefly wrote about recycling laurustinus that was removed from an area that was about to be landscaped, and relocated to other sites where it can grow into functional informal hedges. We were able to use something that was a problem in one location as an asset somewhere else.

We will be doing more of this sort of recycling now that the rainy season has started. Right now, the plants that need to be removed are as dormant as they get, so do not mind getting dug as much as they would have while they were still active. Rain helps settle them in at their new locations. A few get canned and stocked into the nursery, to be planted into new landscapes later.

Some of what gets recycled was intentionally installed in…

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Six on Saturday: Sale

We do not spend much on plant material here. Actually, I purchase nothing. Removal of excessive vegetation is more of a priority than adding more. We purchased quite a bit of plant material this last week only because it was so very inexpensive from a supplier that is closing for business. All of it is new to our landscape. New Zealand tea tree is common locally, but was somehow never installed here. We got a single #15 specimen, although I did not add a picture of it here. We would prefer to install all of the new material early in the rainy season. By local standards, the weather is too cool to do so comfortably.

1. Frost happens here also. Fortunately, it is not too severe. This is the coolest spot in the region. Rhody should not mix randomly capitalized letters like this. ‘E’ should match ‘e’.

2. Canna ‘Red King Humbert’ melts when the weather gets this cool, even without frost. It is already trying to replace this foliage, so might melt again, but will be fine by spring.

3. Dicksonia antarctica, Tasmanian tree fern could perform better than the rather pekid Australian tree ferns in a cool and riparian landscape. We got only a single #5 specimen.

4. Physocarpus opulifolius, ninebark is the first that I have ever met! It is bronzed, but I do not remember its cultivar. It is too cool to go look now. We got twelve #15 specimens.

5. Pinus mugo, mugo pine looks like a smaller and greener version of mature specimens of dwarf white pine of last week. They eventually get bigger. We got thirty #5 specimens.

6. Picea abies ‘Nidiformis’, bird’s nest spruce will not be combined with mugo pine here. I was warned about their redundancy of form last week. We got forty-two #5 specimens!

This is the link for Six on Saturday, for anyone else who would like to participate: https://thepropagatorblog.wordpress.com/2017/09/18/six-on-saturday-a-participant-guide/

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Mondo Grass

This simple green (unvariegated) mondo grass has been doing well.

The thick clumps of evergreen grass-like foliage of mondo grass, Ophiopogon japonicas, make a nice lumpy ground cover for small spaces. Because it is rather tolerant of shade, and actually prefers partial shade to full sun, it works nicely under Japanese maples or highly branched overgrown rhododendrons. It gets only about half a foot deep. Narrow stems with small pale purplish blue flowers that bloom in summer are not too abundant, and are generally obscured below the foliage, but can actually get taller. ‘Silver Mist’ is variegated with white.

New plants are easily produced by division of large clumps. Overgrown or tired looking clumps can be shorn down at the end of winter, before new growth begins. Slugs and snails can be problematic.

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Arborists Are Physicians Of Trees

This specimen would be a challenge for an arborist.

(This article is recycled from a decade ago.)

Pasadena sustained the worst of the damage caused by the strongest Santa Ana Winds in three decades. Huge piles of debris from broken trees are much more than can be removed any time soon. Falling debris and trees damaged many roofs, cars and anything else that happened to get in the way.

Other towns and neighborhoods throughout the area, particularly those at the base of mountains, also sustained major damage. At the same time, severe winds ravaged the San Francisco and Monterey Bay Areas as well, particularly in the Santa Cruz Mountains and the hills of the East Bay.

Some of the damage caused by wind in urban areas might have been less disastrous if trees had gotten the respect and attention that they deserve. Some trees develop structural deficiencies that need to be corrected by pruning, either to eliminate the problems, or at least to decrease the strain exerted onto the structurally deficient parts. A few trees that become unstable as they mature may likewise need to be pruned or even removed.

It is not always possible to prune trees to remove all structural deficiencies without damaging the affected trees more, or causing more structural problems to develop. For example, major pruning to remove all parts that may get blown down by wind, such as pollarding or ‘topping’, may seem to be effective for the short term, but actually stimulates the development of vigorous secondary growth or watersprouts that are disproportionately heavy and even more likely to tear off from the older limbs.

Structural pruning more often involves thorough reduction of weight and wind resistance. Weight of foliage and stems directly applies leverage against unions where smaller stems are attached to the larger stems from which they originate. Wind resistance adds more leverage as foliage gets blown about by wind. Thinning obviously removes significant weight, and also decreases wind resistance to allow wind to blow though the affected canopies.

Besides helping to compensate for structural deficiency, structural pruning is also beneficial to potentially unstable trees for the same reasons. However, unstable trees typically need even more reduction of weight and wind resistance. Some of the most unstable trees and those that are deteriorating need to be removed because their instability cannot be accommodated.

During winter, while deciduous trees are bare, evergreen trees are more susceptible to wind damage, obviously because they retain their weight and wind resistance through winter while the weather is the most severe. Unstable trees become even more destabilized as rain softens the soil. Regardless of the potential for susceptibility to wind damage, this would be a good time of year to get any needed tree maintenance done, prior to any more windy and rainy winter weather.

Arborists certified by the International Society of Arboriculture are the most qualified to identify potential structural problems or instability, and to prescribe corrective procedures. A list of certified arborists can be found at the website of the International Society of Arboriculture at http://www.isaarbor.com.

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Horridculture – That Blows!

Well, of all the infuriating ‘Horridculture’ posts, this is one of the silliest.

tonytomeo's avatarTony Tomeo

P91218-1Blowers put the ‘blow’ in ‘mow, blow and go’. They really blow! The only power tool used by so-called ‘gardeners’ that is more detestable to the rest of us is the power hedge shears, and that claim is contestable. Some consider blowers to be worse because they are so obnoxiously noisy, and generate so much dust. Some municipalities have outlawed the use of the noisiest sorts.

The mess on the hood and windshield in the picture above was not actually caused by blowers. The picture below shows the bridge that was power washed above. Oops. I should have been suspicious that no one wanted that parking space. Anyway, this picture was just too funny to not share; . . . and I happen to lack pictures of the sorts of dusty messes that blowers can stir up.

Where I lived in town, the so-called ‘gardeners’ who ‘maintained’ the apartment buildings…

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Weeping Blue Atlas Cedar

Gray foliage and fluidly pendulous form.

In the wild, Atlas cedar can get almost a hundred feet tall. Bluish gray or rarely yellowish cultivars which are popular for home gardens are generally more compact. Perhaps they could get as grand as wild trees after a few centuries. Weeping blue Atlas cedar, Cedrus atlantica ‘Glauca Pendula’ is an strange one. It can barely stand fifteen feet tall and wide.

The trunks and limbs of weeping blue Atlas cedar are initially so pliant that they sag onto the ground without support. New stems try to grow upward, and may do so for a few feet, or may hang downward after achieving only a few inches of height. Trunks need binding for either straight or serpentine form. They lignify slowly as they mature and gain caliper.

Weeping blue Atlas cedar requires commitment. Indiscriminate pruning or shearing ruins the naturally sculptural form. Such pendulous growth necessitates meticulous grooming, although it may not be necessary very often within spacious situations. Expanding trunks eventually absorb the curves of serpentine form. Low stems can sprawl over the ground.

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Rain Initiates The Rainy Season

Weather generally conforms to the seasons.

Seasons here may seem to be less extreme than they are within other climates. Summer warmth is rarely too hot, and when it is, it does not continue for too long. Winter chill may be insufficient for some plants that rely on it to sustain their winter dormancy. Autumn and spring are as notable for the first and last seasonal rain as for colorful foliage and bloom.

This is actually very relevant within local chaparral climates. Rain and lack of rain define seasons here as much as extremes of temperature. Where the traditional four seasons of winter, spring, summer and autumn merge so softly, the rainy season and the dry season generally do not. Rain begins abruptly in autumn, and ends almost as abruptly in spring.

Consequently, home gardens can get inhospitably dry without adequate irrigation during more than half of the year. Then, they may require no irrigation for almost half of the year. Warm weather that coincides with the dry season enhances aridness. Cool weather that coincides with the rainy season enhances dampness. Mild climates can get extreme too.

Recent rain ended both the dry season and the fire season, and began the rainy season. For many plants, irrigation will be unnecessary until the dry season resumes next spring. Plants that continue to require irrigation will require much less, and only as their soil gets dry during prolonged lapses of rain. Therefore, automated irrigation requires adjustment.

Potted plants, bedding plants and young plants with minimal root dispersion will be more likely to want watering during warm lapses of rain. Substantial foundation plants beneath eaves generally extend roots beyond sheltered soil, but some do not. Also, potted plants under eaves of porches are unable to reach rain moistened soil with their confined roots.

While diminishing the need for irrigation, rain can be messy. It is, of course, wet. It makes soil muddy. Runoff can cause erosion. Stormy weather, which typically involves both rain and wind, dislodges copious foliar debris. Such debris accumulates while no one wants to go outside during stormy weather to rake it. Inconvenient timing seems to be a pattern. Yet, rain is undeniably gratifying.