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Almost Freezing? Ways to Protect Plants

12/29/2015

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We’ve had some close-to-freezing nighttime temperatures which may continue for another month or so.  In Pasadena, our last average frost date is January 28.  Plants that are stressed – in winter through lack of irrigation and cold and wind – are more susceptible to frost damage.  Here’re some ways to protect your established plants.

Watering
The first protective measure against frost damage is to water the plants so their full root zones are moistened, which luckily got helped along earlier in the month and again just last week.  Regular irrigation should be reduced, not stopped, as plant photosynthesis slows down and cold weather – especially with winds as we had a couple of days ago – dries plants out.   Although plant and tree roots are not very efficient in absorbing moisture during cold weather, be sure that they get the water they need but aren't waterlogged – good drainage is as important! 

Concentrating Warmth
To help concentrate daytime warmth, cover beds with clear plastic sheeting.  Anchor down the edges with soil or rocks to keep out slugs and others who love the succulent plants, and to keep the sheeting from blowing away.   
              
Protect citrus from cold damage by wrapping the tree trunks in newspaper and covering the foliage with plastic sheeting.  Note that cold soil and dry winds can cause the rinds of ripening fruit to develop bleached blotches, and leaves to turn yellow where the sun strikes. 
              
Take a cue from festive holiday lighting by stringing lights throughout trees. However, only the old-fashioned kind that emit a bit of heat are helpful; the new types don’t emit heat so they’re only pretty!

For overnight protection of tender plants, cover bougainvilleas, fuchsias, hibiscus, and other subtropicals with large cardboard boxes; or drape old sheets or tarps or plastic sheeting on stakes over them.   If they’re opaque, you must remove them each morning so the plant can continue its photosynthesis.

And, be sure that plastic sheeting doesn't directly touch the foliage, as it may conduct the frost directly to the leaves that it touches.

Move Container Plants
Move dish cacti and succulents and potted trees under cover for protection.  

Frost literally falls from straight down, so it’s more important to protect plants from above instead of the sides.


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Harvesting for Holiday Meals

12/22/2015

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     If you sowed seed or transplanted seedlings at least a month ago, you now have a nice selection of harvestable yummies in your garden to share with family and friends in holiday meals.  There’s nothing so satisfying for the gardener as announcing (stronger = pronouncing!) to appreciative guests how many  items are from the garden, barely half an hour since they were growing, be they edible or ornamental (preferably both!).  Here are some tips to keep those harvests producing through early summer.

Beets and their greens.  Gently pull individual beets that attain the size you prefer, and then water in the remaining ones to reanchor the soil around their roots.

Broccoli.  Cut the main head when it’s small, to encourage many more smaller florettes to develop at the leaf nodes.  If you chose “sprouting” varieties like the old “Purple Sprouting”, you’ll end up with much more food by the end of the growing season than the single-head varieties even with their follow-up smaller heads.  In addition, harvesting the “sprouting” types is so much easier since they’re already bitesize, instead of having to cut the big heads into little pieces.

Carrots.  Same as for beets.

Chard.  Rip, don’t cut, outer leaf stalks, leaving the centermost young shoots to continue producing like lettuce long into summer’s hot weather and perhaps beyond.  I have a couple of plants that’re still producing from being planted 2 years ago – they, like my kale, are three-foot-tall “trees” now.
 
Cilantro.  Grab the entire plant’s stems or small group of individual plants’ stems and cut about an inch from the soil.  If you won’t use all of this at once, wrap the base with a rubberband for easy later snipping of the foliage.  You want to cut the stems that low so you can harvest future new shoot clumps without including the first batch’s dead stems.

Kale.  Snap off individual leaves from the stem by tearing downward, leaving the centermost young shoots as with chard.

Leaf Lettuce.  Pick outer leaves only, leaving the inner-most two or three tiny leaves that’re an inch or so in size – these will continue the plant’s growth for harvest in another two or three weeks until early summer heat makes the plant bolt and go to seed.  Anchored by your thumbnail, snap off the leaves as close to their bases as possible, to leave as little remnant as possible for snails and slugs to munch.

Parsley.  Same as for cilantro.

Peppers.  Strangely enough, these “warm season” plants develop over the summer but produce the bulk of their fruits through the cool season as long as there’s no frost.  Cut fruits off the stem; trying to single-handedly snap the fruits off many times results in ripping more of the branch than you’d intended, including perhaps more fruit buds.

Spinach.  Same as for lettuce.

Flowers and Foliage.  Any time of year, take a quart-size jar or larger bucket into the garden already half-filled with water. Cut flower and foliage stems and immediately immerse the cut ends into the water.  You want as little time as possible for air bubbles to form in the stem which prevents water passage and results in drooping.  An additional technique is to recut the stems under water as you’re creating your arrangements. Use warm water to encourage blooms to open quickly, or cool water to forestall their opening.

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Décor From the Garden

12/15/2015

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     We have a plentitude of décor materials for these winter holidays right in our own gardens, however tiny! From that single blooming mum plant in a container to a wealth of veggies and ornamentals across acres of landscape, we’re indeed lucky to be living in Southern California! Adding ribbon and trinkets personalize our plant groupings at the front door, on the dining table, and in each person’s individual space.
     Looking at "regular" items in a new way can reveal many options. Adding green and red bell peppers provide classic holiday colors to a wreath on the front door. An oddly-curled over-mature Armenian cucumber or long-necked gourd becomes a highlight in a table arrangement. A tree ornament becomes special when it's the only one on a wreath hung on a child's door, signifying his or her special place.
      As simple as a bunch of favorite herb branches tied with a ribbon or as complex as a large and intricate wreath embellished with many sentimental items from a person's lifetime, materials can encompass anything you can get your hands on.  Try grapevine trimmings off the back fence, pine cones fallen from the neighbor’s tree, posies you dried yourself or chili peppers you strung last summer, a whole sunflower head, eucalyptus foliage and pods, evergreen clippings -- pine, spruce, holly, redwood, cedar, osmanthus, juniper -- honeysuckle trimmings, magnolia leaves and seed cones, wisteria trimmings, fresh and dried fruits and nuts, dried Indian corn ears with husks partially removed to reveal colored kernels, dried rosebuds, and pyracantha berries and leaves.
     Anything and everything becomes fair game when it comes to decorating. The essence of creativity is bringing materials together in a new and exciting way -- it's all up to you and your innate cleverness and sense of humor.


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 AH, THE FRAGRANCE OF HOLIDAY TREES!

12/8/2015

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     I’d gone to my local nursery in search of some veggie transplants.  Even before I got out of the car, I was overwhelmed by the spicy piney fragrance of the newly delivered trees.  Boy, did I time it right!  Our family usually can’t think about purchasing a tree for at least another week – and we also gauge our choice by weight and fragrance – so I was completely overwhelmed with the intensity, even toying with the thought of purchasing one immediately even though it’d be sitting in a bucket of water in the shade for more than a week.  But, I took a deliciously deep breath and moved on to the six-packs.
     Success!  For weeks I’d dropped in at various nurseries in the hopes that someone had some baby bok choy or tatsoi, asparagus, artichokes, celery, and some lettuce varieties besides the usual suspects.  I love the baby bok choy (pak choi) and tatsoi to add to salads and soups.  My husband doesn’t like kales or chard when cooked (how can anyone not love them stir-fryed with garlic and leek in butter and sesame oil?), but he does enjoy them raw in salads and doesn’t object when I add some (not a lot!) to soups with other strong flavors to camouflage the greens. 
     I also found additional asparagus six-packs and 4” artichokes to replace plants that hadn’t resprouted following their late-summer dormancy (I stick short stakes near the root bases so I know where to look). 
     I was especially happy to find a six-pack of celery.  This is one of the great food producing plants - if soil is kept moist but well-drained and perhaps a bit of late-afternoon shade during the really hot part of the summer, it'll produce right through summer.  The trick is to keep it fast-growing through sufficient water to "thin" the concentration of strong flavors.  Also, as pictured above, slip half-gallon milk containers around the transplant to help blanch the stalks for a more mild flavor.  The two really amazing things about growing celery for the first time is the amount of leaves - up to half of the plant (which is a wonderful resource for soup-makers) - and that there are so many stalks that keep coming after you harvest some (twist and rip from the base, don't cut!).  So much more worth growing than purchasing!
     My favorite lettuces are bibb and some buttercrunches, but both are labeled so generically these days in addition to being grown so fast with so much overfeeding, that I can’t really tell if they’ll result in the tasty firm crunchiness that I’m looking for, once they’ve “slown down” in my garden. Another great reason to grow your own from seed!
     Which of course I do, but I also want to plant some seedlings to fill in and produce before my own starts are large enough to transplant and produce.  Years ago, I felt too loyal to my own seedlings and consequently didn’t have much production since various critters munched many of the plantlets before I could, and then nurseries no longer carried seedlings so I was completely out of luck.  So now I go any way I can, overplanting in several areas! Besides, I like patronizing my local nurseries every way I can by discussing my preferences and purchasing plants, even one six-pack at a time!


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