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Pumpkins Wait For No One

71004thumbThings might have gone better for Cinderella if she had taken a Buick to the ball instead of that detrimentally punctual pumpkin coach. It was on such a tight schedule! It might have seemed like a good idea on the way too the ball. It certainly was a unique ride. The problem was that it made no accommodation for Cinderella’s tardiness at midnight. It adhered firmly to its own strict schedule.

Pumpkins and other vegetables are just as punctual in our own gardens. Pumpkin leaves eventually succumb to mildew late in summer. This year, they might be a bit more worn out than they typically are by this time, because of the surprisingly warm weather a while back. They are just finishing up anyway. They only need to sustain fat pumpkin fruit as it ripens for the next month or so.

Some of the oldest leaves might get cut away if they get so dry and crispy that they are obviously no longer viable. The best and most functional leaves will be farthest from the roots. Unfortunately, that is also where the ripening pumpkins are. They need the leaves to sustain them, but they also need sunlight to color well. Leaves that shade fruit should be bent away, or cut away if necessary.

For even ripening, pumpkins should be grown on their sides, and turned or rolled a quarter turn every few days or so. There is no precise formula, but they should not be turned in the same direction too much. Otherwise, they get twisted off their stems. They can be grown standing on their flower ends if they sometimes get turned on their sides to expose their flower end undersides.

Regular turning also promotes symmetry, and should prevent the fruit from sitting in the same position long enough to rot. Just to be safe, in well watered gardens, or where the soil is constantly moist, it might be a good idea to put small boards under pumpkins. Unfortunately, there is no remedy for damage caused by the heat. Damaged pumpkins will just make uglier jack-o’-lanterns.

Big bright orange pumpkins with thin shells work best for jack-o’-lanterns. Smaller brownish orange pumpkins with thick shells are grown for baking and pies. Their external appearance is not as important, although well ripened pumpkins have better flavor. White, pink, green, yellow, red and even blue gray pumpkins are just weird. They look great for Halloween, but do not taste like much.

Posted on by tonytomeo · 4 Comments

ROCKS!

blog12This has very little to do with gardening; but like I said in the description of this blog, anything goes when it comes to the ‘Elaborations’ category. Anyway and furthermore, I do not like to write about garden sculpture, garden art, or any of those knick-knack fads that involve putting more than plants and the necessary infrastructure to sustain them into the garden. I do happen to like certain tasteful garden statuary, like Saint Francis, or Saint Fiacre (the rarely seen ‘real’ patron saint of gardening) or any of the saints; but only if I have a suitable space for them. This is nothing like that; but is just excellent enough that I wanted to mention it.

Painted rock are appearing everywhere! They are cute. They are weird. They just might cheer you up if you happen to find one. If you like, you can take them home to put in your garden for a while (if they seem to be intended for that. Please do not steal rocks from someone’s garden.). You might want to just put them somewhere else to make someone else a bit happier, or just make them . . . wonder who has time for this sort of thing. Heck, you might just want to leave them where they are.

Many rocks have directions to follow them online. You can post selfies with any rock you find. You might provide clues about where you put it for someone else to find. You might be able to see where particular rocks came from, or where they go to. Some end up far from home. If you like, you can paint your own rocks and add them to the mix. You just might see it online somewhere. You may only know that it brightened someone’s day, but never hear from it again.

There are very few common sense rules. Basic guidelines can be found at Facebook pages about art rocks in all sorts of communities. Two that I found are Santa Cruz County Rocks at https://www.facebook.com/groups/1354197601364064/?ref=bookmarks or Trona, Ca ROCKS! at https://www.facebook.com/search/top/?q=trona%2C%20ca%20rocks! (These are not actual links. You need to be logged into Facebook for them to work.)

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Where Has All the Mistletoe Gone?

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Locust and alder trees in my region are commonly infested with mistletoe. Some were severely infested. A few of the locust trees downtown were actually unsightly because they are so stressed and sparse from mistletoe infestation, and also because they were so full of big shaggy mistletoe bushes that obviously do not belong there. Now, viable mistletoe can not be found. Even the carcases of the big dead mistletoe bushes are hard to find. They seem to have died and deteriorated before anyone noticed. The formerly infested trees are noticeably healthier, and producing more healthy foliage than they normally do, partly hiding any remnants of dead mistletoe.

No one here seems to know what happened. Is this part of their natural life cycle? Is there something that sets them off to die all in the same season like some specie of bamboo do? Is there a disease or insect that we should know about? Is this isolated to our region, or is it happening elsewhere as well?

I know I should be pleased that the mistletoe is gone, even if it is only temporary. It is such a destructive parasitic weed! The concern is that we just do not know what happened.

Years ago, Phytophthora ramorum started killing tan oaks. At first, not many of us minded. After all, tan oaks are considered to be trashy trees that clutter otherwise pure redwood stands, or compete with more desirable oaks. Dead tan oaks were better than live ones, and only needed to be cut and split to be sold as seasoned firewood.

The following year, the same disease started to kill coast live oaks. Then we had a problem. Coast live oak is one of the two most majestic oaks in our region (and the most majestic in the Santa Cruz Mountains where the valley oak is uncommon). It took a long time to identify the disease because the ambrosia beetle, which is a secondary pathogen, was initially blamed for the widespread death, which became known as Sudden Oak Death Syndrome, or SODS. It took a few years for the worst of the SODS epidemic to subside, and it continues to kill oaks sporadically.

That is why it is hard to ignore what is happening with the mistletoe, even though we really should be pleased to see it go.

Posted on by tonytomeo · 10 Comments

Felony Garden

blog11Brent and I met in college, when we were assigned to the same dorm room in Fremont Hall at Cal Poly in San Luis Obispo. Our similarities were remarkable. He came two hundred miles north from west of Los Angeles. I came two hundred miles south from west of San Jose. We were both the middle of three children, although I had just acquired an extra younger sister the year before. While the other boys we grew up with were playing with Hot Wheels, Brent and I were busy planting miniature trees around the miniature roadways. His childhood dog was Speckles. Mine was Freckles. We were weirdly similar prior to September of 1986, but have been perfecting our differences since then.

Brent is now a famous landscape designer in West Hollywood. He has landscaped some of the most prominent homes in the region, including the Osbourne Residence of formerly popular realty show, ‘the Osbournes’. Many of the streets of Los Angeles are now outfitted with street trees that Brent installed. He regularly installs mature plants and large boxed trees, without giving much thought about where they came from.

I just grow things. Back in the early 1990s, I grew citrus trees. By 1995, I was involved with the production of mostly rhododendrons, as well as azaleas, camellias, pieris, and a few other minor crops of similar cultural requirements. I provide the plant material for landscapers like Brent, but do not give much thought about what they do with it.

While we were in school, Brent and I would often see plants around town that we wanted to grow in our own gardens. Sometimes they were old fashioned plants that we could not find in nurseries. Sometimes they were plants from other regions that we did not have access too. Usually though, they were just plants that we wanted but could not afford as starving students.

Being the grower that I am, it was up to me to procure pieces or seeds of these desired plants to propagate. Sometimes, we got entire plants. I did all the work; but usually by the time the copies were produced, Brent would take them back to Los Angeles, where many died because he did not care for them properly. However, in the Miracle Mile neighborhood, there is still a coastal redwood that Brent and I procured on one of our adventures. It does not like the climate much there, but it is surviving.

Our techniques were not as bad as stealing the un-pink bearded iris. (see The Colors Of Karma, https://tonytomeo.wordpress.com/2017/09/12/the-colors-of-karma/.) We merely took pieces that no one would miss. We got several types of succulents and geraniums. (I had actually acquired my favorite geranium years before I ever met Brent, so I knew how easy they were.) We sometimes took plants from compost piles and trash bins, and plants that were to be discarded from a nursery where Brent worked. You can imagine my delight when San Jose started curbside greenwaste recycling! I got piles of bearded iris; and I did not care what color they were. I got yuccas, New Zealand flax, African iris, banana trees, cannas, calas, bergenias and really too many cool plants to list.

Well, as tradition dictates, Brent had to come up with something derogatory to say about my gardening style. After all, even though he benefited more from out techniques of acquiring plants, more of mine survived. His garden was lavishly landscaped with plants that he purchased from nurseries, while most of what he got from me got shaded out. My garden was meagerly landscaped almost exclusively with plants I had propagated and grown. Well, making the observation that very few plants in my garden were acquired ‘legally’, he named the main part off my garden the Felony Garden. Yes, and to the south of that was the White Supremacy Garden. (See White Supremacy, https://tonytomeo.wordpress.com/2017/09/21/white-supremacy/.) Out back, we kept the Fruits and Nuts. Oh, the joy of gardening!

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The Physics Of Fruit

datsun_b210_1_76Sir Isaac Newton had something to say about an apple that was a victim of gravity. My high school physics professor was even better. He taught us all about velocity, force, inertia, vectors and much of what he had to teach us about physics with the help of a very ripe persimmon . . . and an insipid green 1976 Datsun B210.

I was reminded about these lessons a few years ago while Brent and I were in his old neighborhood in Los Angles. He pointed out an old burnt-orange Caprice that was in remarkably good condition. It had less than the typical wear and tear for a car that was nearly as old as we were. Brent pointed out a nearly imperceptible but specific dent in the driver side tail flank, and explained that it was made by a hard under-ripe peach. I did not need to ask how a green peach had attained sufficient force to cause such damage. I grew up in the Santa Clara Valley, where we all know the joy of attacking cars with fruit.

Most of our ammunition was apricots in various stages of ripeness. While in season, the orchard provided an unlimited supply. While they were out of season, we took what we could get from other fruit trees. Winter was meager; but just before 1977 became 1978, we discovered the gloriously humongous and squishy fruit of the ‘Hachiya’ persimmon tree in a neighbor’s front yard. Each fruit had the destructive force of a large ‘Marsh’ grapefruit, but with a squish factor of tapioca pudding! We had never seen anything like it!

Our first victims probably did not know what hit them. They probably heard the mild thuds on their cars, and drove home believing that they had been hit with the typical and mess-less lemons or oranges that are available in winter. Only after parking their shiny cars and getting out did they witness the horror or ‘Hachiya’ persimmon! Perhaps that is how ‘Hachiya’ got its name. It sounds Japanese for something someone would say in response to such a hideous mess. “Hachiya! What happened to my Mitsubishi?!” I do not know if Mitsubishi was around back then. Most of our targets were big American cars.

Then one day, we got a more challenging and more appropriately Japanese victim; a bland green Datsun B210. It was a smaller and speedier target than what we were accustomed to. Our small herd of neighborhood boys ran out to greet it; but then something unexpected happened. The car stopped. The red-headed leprechaun driving it saw us coming and just stopped there before the first persimmon took flight.

We were baffled. The other boys dropped their fruit and ran. I was too annoyed. I did not want to waste the big fruit that the persimmon tree had put so much work into. So, . . . I threw it. It made first contact on the right side of the windshield, and slid its sloppy ripe goo over most of the windshield to the driver’s side. Yes, it was glorious!

I stood there briefly in awe before I realized that the driver of the car was just glaring back at me . . . with the LOOK! Yes, it was the look; the look that said, “If I did not have these short leprechaun legs, I would run after you and beat you into the mud!”. Then I ran off to join the other boys, believing that was the end of it. I occasionally saw the Datusn around the neighborhood afterward, but did not think much of it, unless the leprechaun driving it happened to glare menacingly back at me.

We started high school a few years later. Part way through the first day, I got to my physics class just before the teacher arrived. I was already seated when he walked in, and glared right at me. Yes, it was HIM; the leprechaun! For the first time ever, I saw him smile. He did not have long fangs dripping with blood, but he was terrifying nonetheless. This was going to be a long nine months!

It wasn’t that bad. In fact, the leprechaun was one of many excellent professors at my high school. We all liked him. He did have an odd way with word problems though; you know, those situations involving ‘object A’ and ‘object B’. We had word problems like, “If object ‘persimmon’ weighs .75 pounds and is traveling east at 25 mph, and object ‘Datsun’ weighs 2,000 pounds and is traveling southwest at 25 mph, how much force will object ‘persimmon’ exert against object ‘Datsun’ when they collide?”.

Posted on by tonytomeo · 25 Comments

White Supremacy

winchesterMany people have a favorite color. I learned how seriously some people can take their preference for a particular color when I was in high school, and taking care of the yardwork for a few homes in the neighborhood. There were three tract homes next to each other. One was grayish blue, with a silvery blue Sedan deVille in the garage, and a garden of blue flowers. The middle house next door was soft amber yellow, with a buttery yellow Oldsmobile 98 in the garage, and a garden of exclusively yellow flowers. The house next door to that was iron oxide red, with an exquisite rich red Electra in the garage, and a garden of, you guessed it, red flowers.

The blue garden was the most challenging because true blue is not easy to find, and the big hydrangea kept trying to bloom pink in the slightly alkaline soil. Yellow was the easiest. There is no such thing as too many marigolds; and I really like nasturtiums! Red was my favorite because it included a few white flowers to contrast with the rich dark shades of red. Between the dark green juniper hedge and the deep red petunias, I grew a row of white petunias. A few white pansies got mixed with two shades of red pansies. I grew my first white geranium there, with several shades of pink and red. I really liked the white flowers.

Then I went to school with Brent. He was from a neighborhood with a purple Bonneville and an orange Caprice with a small dent in the driver side tail flank (which I can explain in another essay). Brent loves color! To him, white is only good for brightening dark areas or highlighting other colors. I can not argue with him. He is a landscape designer. I am primarily a grower. He knows a lot more about color than I do.

Well, by the 1990s, while I was growing citrus trees (which, incidentally bloom primarily white), ‘white gardens’ became a fad. How annoying! I always liked white; but loathed fads! I had this thing down long before it became a quaint coffee table book! It was mine! Brent thought that it was funny, especially since my garden had very little white in it. I would not give up my brightly colored nasturtiums and geraniums that I had taken with me to every home I lived in since childhood. I grew sunflowers, and yellow and orange gladiolus in front because they looked so good on my old apartment building. Too much white just would not have been right.

Eventually, I moved my blue lily-of-the-Nile and roses from a side yard that was not visible from out front, and planted only white flowers around a big white oleander tree. I had callas, daisies, iris, dahlias and white lily-of-the-Nile. There was not a lot of bloom at any one time, but there was enough for me to brag to Brent about. I had such attitude about it that Brent said it was more than a mere ‘white garden’. He said it was my ‘White Supremacy Garden’! Oh my! Take a look at the picture above. That is Brent and me back in the early 1990s. I am on the right. When we were in school, Brent would sometimes get marked absent at our night classes.

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Baker Creek Seeds

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The problem with growing the same reliable plants that I have been growing for so long is that I rarely get to try something new. Seriously, my rhubarb was in the garden long before I was born, and will be around long after I am gone. I will probably never grow a different variety of rhubarb. The same goes for my lily-of-the-Nile, geraniums, many varieties of bearded iris, all nine apple varieties and all fourteen fig varieties! Sustainability can be such a bother. Only on rare occasion, I grow something from seed that I do not already have available. I do it in moderation; and I do not feel too guilty about it.

California is the best place in America for gardening, but ironically, we do not have as much variety of vegetable seed to choose from as other regions do. We can get all sorts of weird kale and heirloom tomatoes, including some that were recently developed to exploit the heirloom tomato craze; but if it is not a hip new fad, we might not have access to it. (Yes, ‘new’ ‘heirloom’ varieties) I still get my favorite simple and common vegetable seed from the local hardware store like I did when I was a little kid. There is not much in between. Most vegetable seed here is either very simple and common, or hip and trendy.

Baker Creek Seeds is one of my favorite seed suppliers, both for the formerly common varieties that I grew up with, as well as varieties that might be common in other regions, but not available here. I know it sounds silly, but we just do not have much variety of collards, okra, beets and turnip greens to choose from. The catalog of Baker Creek Seeds, which can be found at rareseeds.com, has it all. If you can not find it in their catalog, you probably do not need it. Although I cringe to say so, Baker Creek Seeds has more heirloom varieties than any other supplier I can think of.

I cringe at the term ‘heirloom’ because I do not like fads or crazes. Baker Creek Seeds does it differently though. Their heirlooms are legitimate and documentable, with nothing to prove, even if some of them look like the ordinary modern varieties. The tomatoes do not need to be blotched, striped, wrinkled, black, purple, ugly, or whatever it takes for them to be marketed as ‘heirloom’, although a few of them are. Some were developed by the Amish. Some were developed by Early American settlers. Some Baker Creek Seeds are heirloom in other cultures, but new introductions here. You just need to take a look at what they have.

All of Baker Creek Seeds are ‘pure’. This means that they are NOT genetically modified. This is their ‘Safe Seed Pledge’:

“Agriculture and seeds provide the basis upon which our lives depend.  We must protect this foundation as a safe and genetically stable source for future generations.  For the benefit of all farmers, gardeners and consumers who want an alternative, we pledge that we do not knowingly buy or sell genetically engineered seeds or plants.  The mechanical transfer of genetic material outside of natural methods and between genera, families or kingdoms, poses great biological risks as well as economicc, political, and cultural threats…”

This makes their work significantly more difficult. Any seed that fails to meet their strict standards can not be marketed. Sadly, some heirloom corn varieties are no longer available because they became contaminated by pollen from genetically modified corn. While so many unscrupulously exploit the ‘sustainability’ fad with products that are contrary to sustainability, Baker Creek Seeds is the real deal. They can be found at rareseeds.com.

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Wandering Jew

70927It could not have survived out in the desert for forty years. Wandering Jew, Tradescantia fluminensis, would have desiccated before its first summer. Well watered gardens are a completely different situation. Wandering Jew can become invasive and mix with other more desirable ground covers, only to die back and turn dark brown through winter. It starts over the following spring.

The one or two inch long leaves and succulent stems are very tender, sort of like busy Lizzie (impatiens). Stems root wherever the swollen nodes touch moist soil. New plants are ridiculously easy to propagate by cuttings, or simply by scattering pruning scraps wherever new plants are desired, and sprinkling a bit of soil or compost over them. Because it is so tolerant of shade, wandering Jew is an easy cascading houseplant. A variegated cultivar has slightly larger leaves.

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Change Of Scenery

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Hollywood is the Capital City of the entertainment industry because there is such a variety of scenery within relatively minimal proximity to Southern California. Before Hollywood, silent movies were made mostly in Niles, located about halfway between San Jose and Oakland, for the same reason. Snowy mountains, foggy forests, arid deserts, idyllic beaches, open prairies, placid lakes, and wild rivers can all be found within only a few hundred miles. California really has it all. The Santa Clara Valley alone has more climate zones than the entire state of Kansas.

I have not moved around California much. I spent a few summers in San Bruno and Montara, went to school in San Luis Obispo, and sometimes work in the Los Angeles area, but otherwise lived in the two adjacent counties of Santa Clara and Santa Cruz, just a short distance from the homes of my ancestors. Los Gatos is actually in both counties. Technically, most of my gardening has been within Sunset Zones 15 and 16. However, my garden in the Santa Cruz Mountains gets more than two feet of rain, which is about twice what the western side of the Santa Clara Valley gets, even though it is in the same zone!

That is not the only difference. Instead of homogeneously rich alluvial Santa Clara Valley soil, I work with a variety of strange soils; sometimes filled with pulverized sandstone, sometimes sand under a thin layer of forest duff. I do not know what I will find until I start to dig. The Santa Cruz Mountains are such that I might have less flat area dispersed over nearly nine mountainside acres than friends in the Valley have on a single flat suburban lot. Much of it is shaded by tall coastal redwoods. The deer in the Mountains eat more than the gardeners in the Valley can steal.

This all makes it very challenging to grow many of the plants that I enjoy so much and acquired from the Santa Clara Valley. Some adapt quite nicely; but many of the most important ones really want to be back in the Valley. The rhubarb from my great grandfather’s garden looks great, but seriously lacks flavor. I just want to keep it going long enough to find a sunnier and warmer spot with richer soil to relocate it to. The two quince trees that were grown from cutting from an old tree in western San Jose seem to be fine, but much of the fruit gets taken away by rodents before it develops.

Then there are the fig trees. There are fourteen of them! About half are copies of the first fig trees I ever met when I was a kid. Some are black figs. Some are white. I think that only one is a honey fig. They are all very important to me. I am very fortunate to be able to grow them. However, like the rhubarb, they need a sunnier and warmer spot. If they make any fruit at all, it is bland and pithy. My objective with them now is to grow them in the cool and partly shaded spot where they are presently located so that they can provide cuttings to plant when a better situations becomes available. In that regard, they are actually doing just fine!

I really wish I could do my gardening in the Santa Clara Valley; but if I had to do it the other way around, it would be just as difficult. I mean that if I had a big garden in the Santa Clara Valley, and had to give up gardening in the Santa Cruz Mountains, many of my favorite plants would not like the transition. The Mountain grown apples that I have always taken for granted would never be as happy in the Valley. Neither would Douglas firs or bigleaf maples. Redwoods are common in the Valley, but are not the same as they are in their natural range. There’s no place like home.

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Houseplants Bring The Outdoors In

70927thumbPhilodendrons, dracaenas, ferns, palms or any sort of tropical foliage inside our homes only create an illusion of closeness to nature. Naturally, these plants live in very different climates, mostly thousands of miles away. Not only do they have no business in our homes; they have no business on the North American Continent. Some can live in the garden, but only with unnatural watering.

They are only known as houseplants because they ‘can’ live in the house. Almost all are from tropical regions; and most are understory plants that naturally live in the shade of larger trees. They work nicely as houseplants because they tolerate the shade of home interiors. Because they are from tropical regions, they have no concept of winter, so do not need chilling for winter dormancy.

The disadvantages to their tropical heritage is that they are confined to domestic lifestyles here. Many would not survive frosty winter weather. Some might survive, but would not be happy about it. Others would not like the aridity (lack of humidity) during the summer. Houseplants that get moved out to the garden for part of the year must be grown in pots so that they can be moved back in.

While inside, there are no natural predators to control the insects that feed on houseplants. Scale and mealybug can proliferate enough to not only damage houseplants, but to also make a mess of their sticky honeydew below the houseplants they infest. Spider mites can proliferate where dust accumulates on foliage. That is why houseplants sometimes like to be rinsed by a gentle rain.

Since they are confined to pots, houseplants must be watered more carefully than plants that get to disperse their roots out in the garden. Some large Boston ferns and spider plants may need quite a bit of water to be applied very regularly. Some dracaenas, palms and ficus trees may want to get slightly dry between watering. As soil deteriorates, old plants might need to be repotted.

Houseplants are grown for their lush evergreen foliage, and such lush foliage can be sensitive to fertilizer toxicity. Even if fertilizer is applied lightly, toxins can eventually accumulate if fertilizer is applied very regularly. This problem is usually corrected with repotting. However, plants that never need to be repotted might like to be taken outside to get water rinsed through their potting soil.