Posted on by tonytomeo

Too Much Grapefruit

Wow, this recycled article reminds me of how much I crave grapefruit now that I am not working with them.

tonytomeo's avatarTony Tomeo

P80303KThere really is such a thing as too much grapefruit. I know; I have witnessed it more than once.

The most recent occasion was two years ago. We were pruning a few fruit trees for a client in San Jose. One of the trees was an old fashioned ‘Marsh’ grapefruit, which happens to be my all time favorite grapefruit.

As we were pruning, the client was dragging brush away to curbside recycling. Most of our clients prefer to do the ‘cleanup’ to save money. The client asked me if I would like some of the fruit. Of course, surplus fruit is one of the many benefits of our work; and of course, I told the client that I would be pleased to take some of the excellent grapefruit. I then went back to work on a nearby persimmon tree.

While busy with the persimmon tree, I was unaware of what…

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Six on Saturday: Hellebores!

This is certainly not my favorite topic. It is a long story, but to be brief, hellebores do not do so well in the chaparral climate of the Santa Clara Valley. They are happier here, just a few miles away, in the Santa Cruz Mountains. By our regional standards, they performed remarkably well this year.

1. Is this Corsican hellebore? There are only a few. They are all the same. Their neat spacing suggests that they were planted intentionally. I find this pale greenish white to be rather boring.

2. Most of the feral hellebores look like this. It is like a spotty pink, with a bit more white around the edges. The individual plants are more numerous than I remember them being last year.

3. This one is more purplish pink or perhaps pinkish purple, with those same spots. I did not notice the herd of aphid to the left. Otherwise, I would have found a more exemplary specimen.

4. Color does not seem to be represented well by this picture. I really thought that this one was more reddish purple than it seems to be, perhaps like burgundy red. I am no good with color.

5. White is, of course, my favorite, even with the reddish purple spots. This one seemed to stand upright better than most of the others. I remember it from last year, but it was not so pretty.

6. If this one did not live right on the edge of a walkway, I would guess that it is one of the cultivars that was originally planted intentionally, and produced some of the seedlings for all these feral hellebores. It is doubtful than it would have been planted there though. It is the most profuse in bloom, although that blushed white color is rather bland. It is very popular with aphid. (This is the same hellebore that was the first of my Six on Saturday for last Saturday.)

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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Western Redbud

Western redbud is a domesticated native.

The thin stems of Western redbud, Cercis occidentalis, that had been bare through winter are now outfitted with an abundance of tiny but almost offensively bright magenta flowers. Rounded or nearly heart shaped leaves will become more prominent as bloom fades. As foliage yellows and falls later in autumn, coffee colored pods that are about two inches long remain until they get dislodged by winter weather. Pods can be very abundant on older or distressed plants, or scarce on young or vigorous plants.

Western redbud is typically grown as a large shrub or a small tree with multiple trunks. Mature trees may stay less than ten feet tall, and do not often get taller than fifteen feet, although they can get more than twice as tall where they need to compete with other trees. Once established, western redbud does not need to be watered, but seems to be happiest if occasionally watered through summer. Seedlings that appear around mature plants should be moved or potted while dormant through winter, and while young, since they will not want to be disturbed once they have dispersed roots.

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Natives Are Right At Home

Some native plants should stay wild.

Long before people came here and imported exotic (non-native) plants from all over the world, native plants had been perfectly happy without any pruning, watering or fertilizing. They had always been perfectly happy with local soils, local climates and even occasional wildfires. Many are still happier in the wild than in seemingly more comfortable refined gardens and landscapes.

It really makes sense though. Most exotic plants need to be watered because they are from climates that naturally get more rain. Some want to be fertilized because they are from regions with different soil types. Some plants prefer cooler winters. Others want more humidity. They crave what they would get in their respective native homelands.

However, plants that are native to California are not necessarily native to here. California is a big place with all sorts of climates and soils. For example, the desert fan palm that is native to warm and dry Palm Springs would not be happy in cool and foggy San Francisco. Big leaf maple that likes the cool winters of the Siskiyous does not like the mild winters near the coast of Los Angeles. The best natives are those that are native to a particular region, or similar region.

Also, there are a few native plants that are not so easy to accommodate in every home garden. Both the giant sequoia, which is the biggest tree in the world, and the coastal redwood, which is the tallest trees in the world, are native to California. Even if the local climate is a good fit, the space available may not be.

One of the most difficult problems for so many natives though, is that they are sensitive to the regular watering that most exotic plants require. The regular watering that lawn needs just to survive is enough to rot the roots of plants that do not expect any water between spring and autumn.

Santa Barbara daisy, penstemon and various salvias are some of the favorite native perennials. Wax myrtle and the various ceanothus and manzanitas are interesting shrubbery. Western redbud and toyon can be big shrubs or small trees. California sycamore and various oaks are big trees for big spaces.

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the Good, the Bad, and they’re both UGLY!

Extreme Horridculture warning! This recycled article most definitely conforms to the meme. It is amazing that such hack jobs are tolerated and actually payed for. Believe it or not, these are not the worst examples.
There is at least one arborist in the region who performs exemplary pollarding, and maintains the sycamore that provided the illustration for the articles that I wrote about the topic earlier. It must be incredibly frustrating for such qualified professionals to see such mutilated trees!

tonytomeo's avatarTony Tomeo

P80307Pollarding and coppicing are bad words to most American arborists. These extreme pruning techniques are considered to be synonymous with topping. Yet, both have been around for centuries, and have actually kept some trees alive and productive significantly longer than they would naturally live.

Rather than redundantly explaining what pollarding and coppicing are, and why they are useful arboricultural techniques, I will provide this link to an article I wrote about them earlier: https://tonytomeo.wordpress.com/2018/02/12/pollarding-and-coppicing-pruning-techniques/

I am one of the rare American arborists who not only condone pollarding and coppicing, but I also use these techniques when necessary. I will be coppicing red twig dogwood soon so that it produces more vigorous red twigs next year, and also because we can not allow it to grow wild as a thicket. Some of my fig trees will get pollarded to make vigorous shoots for cuttings, and also to keep them contained in…

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Lettuce

Lettuce grows through cool spring weather.

On the coast between Los Angeles and San Francisco, lettuce, Lactuca sativa, seems to grow throughout the year. None of it actually grows in every season. Some varieties merely produce late enough for varieties that produce earliest to replace them. Slightly farther inland, lettuce is really only a cool season vegetable of early spring and autumn. The last new plants should finish by May.

There are many varieties of lettuce. Some are more tolerant of warmth than others. They perform well both late in their early season, and early in their late season. Others are more tolerant of cool weather. They can start early in their early season, and continue late in their late season. No variety produces through the coldest part of winter. Warmth initiates bolting (bloom), which ruins flavor.

The three types of lettuce that are most popular here are leaf, head and romaine. Leaf lettuce is the most variable. It can be blotched, bronzed or reddish, with variably ruffly texture. Some types of leaf lettuce mature in about a month. Some of the more substantial varieties of head and romaine lettuce start early, and can take nearly four months to mature. They can get to a foot wide and tall.

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Vegetables From Winter To Summer

Bell peppers wait for warmer weather.

Cool season (or winter) vegetables are now finishing their season. Some continue to produce later than others. Eventually though, they all succumb to warming spring weather. As they do so, they relinquish their space to warm season (or summer) vegetables. Many warm season vegetables want to start growing as soon as possible. Later phases must wait for space to become available.

Later phases are no problem. They actually prolong the season for plants that are productive for only a brief season. For example, if sown at the same time, corn seed germinates and grows into stalks that produce all their corn at the same time. If sown in small groups every two weeks or so, corn seed grows into groups of stalks that produce corn every two weeks or so. That is ‘phasing’.

Phasing is more common with the cool season vegetable plants. Most of them are true vegetables, rather than fruits that are classified as vegetables. Individual plants produce only once, and can not produce again after harvest. Conversely, most warm season vegetables are actually fruits. (They contain seed.) Many of the plants that produce them continue to produce after harvest begins.

For example, squash, pole bean and indeterminate tomato plants that start growing in spring can continue to produce until frost. (Determinate tomatoes and bush beans have shorter seasons, so can benefit from phasing.) Cucumber vines can produce until frost, but might get shabby enough (from aridity) for replacement halfway through their season. Pepper and eggplant thrive in warmth.

The various greens and the various root vegetables, which are truly vegetative rather than fruiting vegetables, should grow in phases.

Seed for corn, bean, root vegetables and most greens should go directly into the garden. Seedlings do not transplant well, and are expensive in sufficient quantity. Romaine and head lettuces are exceptions that produce well from seedlings. Tomato, pepper, eggplant, cucumber and squash seedlings transplant easily. If only a few are required, they are not much more expensive than seed.

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Foliar Tapestries

These were actually featured in the Sunset – Western Garden Book back when they were new. This article is three years old.

tonytomeo's avatarTony Tomeo

P80224Succulent foliage is remarkably variable, even without bloom. There are so many unusual colors, textures and patterns to choose from. Many are complimentary to others. Many contrast exquisitely. What better way to display some of the favorites than to assemble them into a succulent foliar tapestry!?

This is actually old technology that started to become a fad again only somewhat recently, after these foiar tapestries were installed on a retaining wall in North Hollywood a few years ago by GreenArt Landscape Design. Small cuttings of succulent plants were plugged into rigid mesh panels that hold growing medium vertically against another flat panel of the same size. The whole contraption was suspended against the concrete wall, with a bit of space in between to limit staining and bleeding onto the wall.

With the fountain, potted plants and other features, the limited space was insufficient for a hedge to obscure the retaining…

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RAIN!?

Although not a sequel to the old article that was recycled an hour ago, this old article seems to naturally follow it. (It mentions that it posted a day later, which it did when it originally posted, but it is just an hour later now. It also mentions one of the old recycled articles from the gardening column that posted earlier that morning, which was three years ago. Hey, it made sense at the time.)

tonytomeo's avatarTony Tomeo

10914This is not sequel to ‘SNOW!?’ from yesterday.

Nor is it a sequel to any of the other brief article about rain in the past.

I just recycled the picture because I still find it to be amusing.

If you are a native of California like I am, and are wondering what ‘rain’ is; I have already explained it sufficiently in previous articles. Basically, it is those unfamiliar droplets of water that fall mysteriously from the sky and get everything wet. Look it up if you must.

The article that I posted earlier this morning was recycled from this time last year, long before I started posting articles here. Our rain has actually been very deficient. It has rained only a few times this season.

We tend to talk about rain often here because it is so important to us. So much of California gets such a limited supply. Although…

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SNOW!?

Perhaps this recycled article from 2017 will partly compensate for the lack of a picture of Rhody this morning; although this little terrier is Bill (Willow), not Rhody.

tonytomeo's avatarTony Tomeo

P80110If you do not know what it is, ‘snow’ is like frozen rain.

If you do not know what rain is, I wrote about it earlier for those of us who are native to the drier parts of California. If you notice strange drops of water falling from the sky tonight, that would be rain. There is no need to be alarmed. It is expected to happen here tonight, and a few times for the next few days. Contrary to former experience, it is normal for this time of year.

Anyway, getting back to snow. Unlike rain, which sometimes happens here, snow does not happen here.

Well, perhaps that is not entirely true. It might have happened as recently as 11,700 years ago, as the Ice Age ended, and again in more recent history, in February of 1976, when an epically humongous snowstorm deposited as much as half an inch…

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