You Can Grow That: If I Were Planting A Vegetable Garden...

If I Were Planting A Vegetable Garden.

A rerun from March 2003

"Spring, the sweet spring, is the year's pleasant king;

Then blooms each thing, then maids dance in a ring,

Cold doth not sting, the pretty birds do sing,

"Cuckoo, jug-jug, pu-we, to-witta-woo!"

Thomas Nashe (1567-1601)

The sun is out, green shoots are everywhere, and spring is here! While the nights are still too cool for summer vegetables to be happy in the ground, there is planning and soil preparation we can do and seeds to buy and start. Once the night temperatures are above 55F, the seedlings can go in.

If I were planting a summer vegetable garden for the very first time, I'd....

Find a sunny spot, a hose, and a couple of shovels and kids.

Take some samples of the plants that are growing there to find out the best way to get rid of them.Mow them off or chop them down, if appropriate, maybe even cover them with plastic for a little while.

Dig the edges and make a layout, then water the area with a sprinkler for a little while and plan to come back to it in a few days.

Measure it and plot it on paper.

Go and ask about what grows well here and when to plant it.

Decide what I wanted to grow, writing down everything. Don't forget flowers and herbs!

Then....

Go through and turn the soil once to bury the chopped weeds, and water again lightly. Let it sit for a couple of days.

Turn it again with shovels, spading forks, or a rototiller, mixing in bags of soil amendment that you buy (or have delivered bulk; add some fertilizer to this). Turn, mix, and rake this until the dirt is mixed with the compost and the soil feels kind of fluffy. Rake it all smooth and make your rows.

Roll out a simple drip watering system, or a soaker hose. Hold this in place with "anchor pins" or bent pieces of wire. Make sure you'll be able to control the water to your tomatoes separately from all the other plants, as they'll need a lot less frequent watering as the season goes along.

Plant! Put in your young transplants, watering each one as you go. Plant seeds carefully, covering them with loose soil and pressing it in gently, then water the whole bed. You'll want an attachment for the hose that makes a gentle spray of water for the seedlings. Don't forget to label each row.

Put down something to prevent weeds. Landscape fabric covered with mulch, multiple layers of old newspapers (omit the colored sections), a thick layer of bark�.weeds grow faster than baby vegetables!

Then....

Check the seeds and young plants each day for watering. You can water with your hose for the first few weeks while the plants are getting going; then you'll use the soaker hose for deeper waterings.

Go buy a good book on vegetarian cooking! Deborah Madison's is the best I own.

If I were limited for space, and wanted a little bit of everything, I'd plant:

At least 3 - 4 tomatoes. One reliable hybrid, one small-fruited type, one or two sauce types for cooking, and at least one heirloom type for fun.

 

A couple of bell peppers, including one that is a different color; one productive hybrid such as 'Gypsy', and one medium-hot pepper for salsa such as Jalapeo or Anaheim.

A cucumber that isn't likely to get bitter, such as Lemon or a burpless type, or an Armenian one to train up on a fence.

I'd do several plantings of bush beans a few weeks apart, crowding them in around other plants 'cuz you pull them out after you harvest them. Or make a narrow teepee and grow some pole beans, but be sure to keep them picked or they'll stop producing!

Some seeds of carrots, beets, and radishes.

I'd probably plant an eggplant. I always do, for some reason.

At least a couple of plants of basil. Although I find the pot I plant near the front door is the one that gets used the most. And some other fresh herbs: Italian parsley, chives, oregano, and a couple of plants of English thyme--all scattered around the edges of the garden, or at the entrance, mixed with some lavender for fragrance and beauty.

Some green onion seedlings for seasoning.

Some strawberries--but don't expect any fruit to make it all the way to the house.

One squash plant. Period. And we LIKE squash.

At least a couple of potato plants, because they're fun to harvest and taste very sweet fresh from the garden.

A couple of okra plants, because they're easy to grow, don't take much space, and it's worth a try cooking them.

A few large sunflowers for seeds, even if it's just for the birds.

If I had unlimited space, and lots of shovels and kids and time, I'd have

Every kind of sunflower, and lots of cosmos for the butterflies and hummingbirds.

Borage for the bees, and flowers for the good bugs.

Enough Ambrosia melons to have one every day.

Gigantic watermelons, and some that fit in the icebox.

Wax beans and green beans--and purple beans and Italian beans, and interesting beans for drying for soups.

Sweet peppers of every possible color, green and ripe. Hot peppers to use, and some to admire from afar.

Tomatoes to share, cook, and can.

Okra and eggplant of every kind, just to give away.

Three or four kinds of potatoes, so you could dig up a mix of new baby ones right from the garden to boil for your dinner that evening.

Sweet white corn from July through September.

Three different types of summer squash, so some could grow into huge misshapen monsters.

Winter squashes for baking on rainy days. Pumpkins for pie and fun. Weird gourds.

A long row of pickling cucumbers so you could pick a few each day to make pickles or relish every week.

Some beds planted in cover crops to be ready for the fall garden.

Alpine strawberries and mint to sample while you sit in the nearby shade--watching the kids and shovels at work.

Maybe that really is Where The Sidewalk Ends.

  © 2013 Don Shor, Redwood Barn Nursery, Inc., 1607 Fifth Street, Davis, Ca  95616

    www.redwoodbarn.com

  Feel free to copy and distribute this article with attribution to this author.

Lilacs and Redbuds for Spring!

Lilacs and Redbuds for the Sacramento Valley

Watch out for sentences that begin with “in my day.” It's a sign that some old guy is about to tell you a story about the way things used to be.

Syringa 'Sensation' -- lilac

Well, in my day, people planted fruit trees in the winter, bulbs in the fall, tomatoes in April or May. And some flowering shrubs (including roses) and shade trees were also planted in the winter, when they're dormant. But as each new cohort of beginning gardeners comes along, I realize that these seasonal gardening cycles haven't been passed down from the previous generations. Nowadays lots of people look for daffodils in spring, fruit trees in summer. Industry terms like “bare-root” are no longer common knowledge.

Most deciduous fruit trees, most roses, many shade trees, and a lot of flowering trees, shrubs, and vines are grown in fields like agricultural crops. They're planted very close together, pruned and trained minimally, and then dug up by machines in December. That's when the whole supply for the season becomes available. All the soil is washed off the roots, and they are stacked and bundled and shipped off to nurseries all over the world.

The roots are bare, so they are called bare-root. They're dormant, and stay that way for several weeks. So garden centers can stick them in shavings or sand, keep them moist, and (hopefully) sell them to you before they leaf out. Or they can pot them up when they have time. If sales are strong, selection tends to dwindle by late spring. This applies to certain popular flowering shrubs. I want to highlight two of these that have best availability in the winter and spring.

Lilacs

“I didn't know we could grow those here!” is the most common thing I hear about this old favorite garden plant. This is reinforced by many online resources which inexplicably list lilacs for “zones 3 through 7.” We're in USDA zone 9. They don't bloom reliably in Southern California or coastal climates due to a lack of winter chilling. But we get sufficient chilling here, and they sure do bloom.

Those online references are usually from the East coast or Midwest, and California is different. The zones they are referring to are USDA zones. West-coast gardeners do better to use the Sunset Western Garden Book. We're Sunset Zone 14, and Sunset lists the Common lilac (Syringa vulgaris) for zones 1 - 11 and 14.

When we bought our rural property it came with lilacs that had been planted decades prior by the original owner. They've always grown and bloomed well for us with very little care; in fact, the original shrubs have reseeded. And I've planted more. Lilacs tolerate nearly any soil type, prefer alkalinity (something that likes Davis water!), and accept drought. Full sun is best. They will grow in some shade, but mildew on the leaves can be a problem. You can prune them, or not, as you prefer. Just wait to do it until after they bloom. The only caveat as to location is that they should not be in a cold-sheltered location. Lilacs want winter chill, so don't plant them against your house. Out in the open is best.

Cercis 'Don Egolf' -- Chinese redbud

There are hundreds of varieties; dozens of species, with many hybrids within and between those species. Best-known and loved are the varieties of Common lilac (Syringa vulgaris), as they have the largest flowers and most fragrance. They bloom at the end of the branch in the spring, and the bushes have an upright habit. Others bloom all along the branches, with clusters of smaller flowers, often also very fragrant. A good example is the Arboretum AllStar, the laceleaf Persian lilac (Syringa x persica laciniata). These tend to have a more informal, arching growth habit.

Climate change indicators?

My lilacs bloom from early to late April, varying slightly by year and by variety. Lilacs have long been noted as plants that mark the season: their leaf emergence and bloom is a sure sign of spring. In fact, they hold a special place in the study of phenology, which is the science that connects seasonal biological phenomena to variations in climate. Gardeners and botanical gardens have been recording the dates of flowering of lilacs for generations.

Phenology is just a fancy term for what old gardeners have done for years. “Plant corn when oak leaves are the size of a squirrel's ear,” is an example. Handy if you have an oak tree and a squirrel nearby. Or this: “Plant bean, cucumber, and squash seeds when lilac is in full bloom.”

In the 1950's a more systematic approach to using phenology was developed. In order to provide consistency, and avoid planting an invasive species, a naturally sterile variety of Syringa chinensis called Red Rothomagensis was distributed to hundreds of sites around the country, and a reporting network was created. The results? “Regional differences were detected, as well as an average 5-6 day advance toward earlier springs, over a 35-year period from 1959-1993… spring warming is strongest regionally in the northwest and northeast…” So when grampa says, “sure seems like the lilacs are bloomin' earlier than they used to,” he is right.

Want to participate? Check out the USA National Phenology Network at www.usapn.org.

Red Rothomagensis is sometimes available in garden centers.

Redbuds

Every March when the redbuds in the Arboretum come into bloom, we get lots of inquiries. Compared to lilacs, these get a little dicier. Do they grow here? The answer is more complicated.

Western redbud (Cercis occidentalis) is our native species, represented locally in the Warren G. Roberts Redbud Collection in the UC Davis Arboretum. It grows fine here so long as you don't water it very often after it is established (usually by the second summer). Western redbud is very prone to crown rot if it gets watered too frequently. It is a multi-stemmed shrub, rarely grown as a tree.

Eastern redbud (Cercis canadensis), very common in nurseries, doesn't like our dry heat. During hot spells the leaves get badly spotted and burnt. That goes for the regular species as well as the red-leaved variety called Forest Pansy. You can try planting them in the shade of a taller tree, but expect unsightly foliage by mid-summer. This species is not at all drought tolerant.

Just to confuse things, a variant or hybrid of the Eastern redbud called the Oklahoma redbud is quite heat tolerant. Usually classed as Cercis canadensis texensis, it has a thicker, glossier leaf that resists sun scorch. A smaller tree than the Eastern redbud, but larger than our Western redbud, it can tolerate some drought, and also can take regular watering, so it is one of our best choices for the garden.

Yet another good garden variety is a variety of Chinese redbud (Cercis chinensis) called Don Egolf. This seedling was discovered in the U.S. Arboretum in Washington. Very slow-growing, it also happens to be naturally sterile. If the seed pods of the other types bother you, this one is cleaner. The flowers are a more intense dark magenta purple than the other varieties. Tolerant of watering as well as some drought, it has an upright form but only appears to get to about ten feet tall.

Redbuds can tolerate nearly any soil type, and don't mind alkaline water. No pruning needed.

Lilacs and redbuds both fit in a low-water landscape. They have spectacular blooms, and are carefree.

December musings: edibles--You Can Grow That!

The off-season edibles.

Sitting in my kitchen the day after Thanksgiving, cracking pecans I had picked up that morning and roasted, drinking pomegranate juice somebody had squeezed from a mere fraction of our crop, and eating a last ripe, red sweet pepper from the vegetable garden, I thought about heading out to see if the Satsuma mandarins were getting sweet enough. Some of the Robert Livermore walnuts were mixed in with the pecans.

Earlier I'd told the workers at the nut processing plant next door, who like to take a walk for their break each afternoon and who often enjoy our garden, to go ahead and help themselves to some of the Fuyu persimmons. I don't really have a use for 300+ fruit this year, and that is a light

crop. Their husbands like to harvest the prickly pear cactus fruit: I've watched as they stand along the county road, carefully digging the thorns out with their pocketknives before they eat the fruit on the spot. Sometimes the tender new growth disappears for nopales.

Looking out the window at my meadow of fine fescue, I thought to myself, this Sacramento Valley of Northern California is sure a nice place to garden. We get enough chilling for the deciduous ftuit and nut trees, but we aren't so cold that (most) citrus are harmed. And the number of plants on my property that just take care of themselves and produce food for casual picking and eating always amazes visitors. I'm not talking about the vegetable garden, or the actual orchard. Just things I've planted in various places that I put almost no effort into.

Ripe kumquats

are on my tree year-around, and the tree is right along the rose garden path for easy picking.

Pineapple guavas

in abundance every October.

Quince

. Hmm. They smell great in the fall, and I have friends who use them.

Walnuts

and pecans in fall, sitting on our kitchen counter through the winter.

Persimmons

: Fuyu from November, Hachiya from December, until the birds finish them off.

Pomegranates

in November and December. Finally found a way to juice them this year!

Satsuma mandarins

are anticipated by extended family and friends for the holidays, and through January.

Navel oranges

ripen from February to April.

Strawberries

in early spring, Boysenberries and their cousins in late spring. I really should get the caneberries under control, but they do make great bird habitat.

Midsummer we enjoy the Persian mulberries

until the birds take over the harvest.

Almonds

in late summer.

Family, friends, and strangers expect to harvest from the fig

trees that have been on our property for decades.

What's interesting is that these zero-input food plants mostly provide food in the 'off' months. Mid-summer my regular orchard trees – peaches, plums and pluots, and all the other prune-me water-me crowd – are abundant. And the vegetable garden is overflowing. But just as all that is winding down, as I've enjoyed that last worm-free apples (a tiny percentage of the crop, sad to say) and the sauces and salsas are made, it's those fall nuts, winter citrus, and spring berries that fill the gap.

What care do these all get? I water them. Some as little as once a month. Fertilizer? Nope. I could prune them for size control, but mostly I don't bother. Birds enjoy the surplus that's out of reach. I'm fortunate to have unlimited space, but most of these could

be kept small in a regular back yard. Pecans and walnuts are very large trees, perhaps not suitable for your situation. Persimmons will get plenty big if you let them (my Fuyu is at least thirty feet tall), but can be kept lower. Consider fruit litter when you plant them. If you don't eat it, the fruit may end up on the ground.

There's a lot I could add, and probably will. Meyer lemon, Chilean guava? I'm sure I'll find places for those, too. If it's edible and there's a path, there's probably a place for it. I have an Arbutus unedo

(Strawberry tree) that people like to sample now and then. Jujube fruit mostly falls to the ground; I really need a dehydrator! If I gave my asparagus bed, now over two decades old, more attention it might yield more. As it is I get a sampling of shoots in early spring, and enjoy the beautiful ferny foliage in summer. Maybe some day I'll even harvest some of my bamboo shoots.

Kumquats

Quince

Pecans

Mandarins

More pictures at our website here: http://redwoodbarn.com/Decmusingsedibles.html

I've linked a number of my articles about water conservation on one page here: http://redwoodbarn.com/waterconservation.html

Great Natives for Valley Gardens

Low Water Plants continued:

Great Natives for Valley
Gardens






written for the Davis Enterprise, November 01 2012
This is part of a continuing series of articles on plants that can grow and look good with low water. The focus here is on low to medium shrubs for very limited irrigation, especially natives. Low-water taller shrubs were discussed in our November 2011 article.

Note that some California native plants require drought, as compared to tolerating drought. They'll die if you water them too often. In garden references you'll sometimes see the notation "needs good drainage" or "short-lived." Those are code for "susceptible to crown rot," meaning that if they get watered too frequently in warm weather they may get attacked by Phytophthora, a fungus-like organism that invades the plant at the crown and kills it swiftly. Many, but not all, of our native plants are vulnerable.
Watering deeply and infrequently, and avoiding mulch around the stem, are the best practices for avoiding crown rot.


Low and ground-cover shrubs

Botanical name: Arctostaphylos species
Common name: Manzanita
As a group I am leery of manzanitas because they are so easy to kill, being very sensitive to overwatering. But a couple of garden cultivars are less vulnerable. Howard McMinn grows to about three feet tall, four feet wide or more. It has a dense growth habit, with shiny green leaves that contrast nicely against the red stems.
Baccharis pilularis Twin Peaks
Dwarf coyote brush.
Very tough, drought-tolerant native. Great for attracting beneficial insects. Otherwise a dull, somewhat scruffy looking plant. Unbelievably resilient, so it earns its place on my list on that account. Nobody's going to say, "ooh, look at your coyote brush!" But you don't ever have to prune or even water it.
Ribes viburnifolium
Catalina perfume
Will grow in considerable shade, spreads steadily to make an attractive ground cover. Fragrant evergeen foliage. Light pink flowers in late winter attract hummingbirds; small red berries attract songbirds.


Salvias: sages.



Salvia splendens
Red Hot Sally
For many years, the annual Scarlet sage was the best-known member of Salvia. These showy flowers are planted in spring, bloom through fall, and then die with frost. But the blooms are non-stop and they attract hummingbirds as readily as their perennial and shrubby cousins.
Salvia Pink Frills
Patrick Worley, the breeder at Suncrest Nurseries who introduced this describes it as a "greggii type" to about 2 feet tall and wide. These lighter colors stand out nicely against the dark green foliage. A plant will have 30- 50 flowers at a time during autumn.
Salvia Dancing Shadows
The breeder describes these as "painted icy pink and white flowers" on red-violet stems. Another profuse bloomer in the sun-loving, drought-tolerant Salvia greggii group.
Salvia Golden Girl
Yellow is the holy grail of Salvia breeders, and this is the closest yet. Suncrest Nurseries describes it as "very compact" to 18 inches, which makes it a low-grower in this group.
Carpenteria californica
Shown here in May, the native Bush anemone gives several weeks of bloom in late spring. It is actually a rare species, growing only in a few sites in Fresno and Madera counties. But growers of native plants have popularized it for California gardens. Unlike many natives, it is not fussy about soil and can tolerate regular watering, but is also tolerant of drought.
Mahonia aquifolium
Oregon grape
Ok, it's not native here, but it is native over on the northwest coast. Mahonia has bright yellow flowers in winter, edible fruit that attracts songbirds, and tolerates drought or watering, sun or shade. Prickly leaves resemble holly. This original species is tall and rangy, but new forms have more compact growth habit, shinier leaves, coppery new growth, and more abundant bloom.
Botanists recognize hundreds of species in the genus Salvia, possibly up to a thousand. While most gardeners knowSalvia officinalis (garden sage, from Europe) used in cooking, more than half of the species are from South and Central America, with a few species from California and the Southwest. Some types are frost tender and prefer regular watering. A few like some shade. But our native species and their hybrids are generally very tolerant of drought and hot sun.
The flowers of Salvias are fascinating up close. They are "bilabiate" which means "having two lips." There are often glandular hairs on the flowers and leaves. The stamens are fused into a lever, which bends down and deposits the pollen on the back of the visiting bee or bird as it probes the long flower tube. The female flower stigma develops next and is bent down to receive the pollen. The flower is adapted to many pollinators, rather than any specialized one. Salvias are always active with wildlife. Hummingbirds, butterflies, carpenter bees, and bumblebees are attracted to the flowers. Beneficial insects harbor on the foliage. Songbirds like the small seeds. A mixed planting of salvias, lavenders, rosemary, and daisies will give year-around color, help prevent garden pests, enhance pollination, and require very little water once established.
Southwestern native sages
Salvia greggii, S. microphylla, and more. These are the stars of the autumn garden, at their peak of bloom right now.
For gardeners, this is one plant group where there has been a sea change in availability of species, hybrids, and cultivars in the last couple of decades. My 1970 edition of the Sunset Western Garden Book lists ten species on about half a page, with only three cultivars. Native plant specialists carried a couple of species. In the herb section of your local garden center you could find common garden sage for use in your holiday turkey stuffing. Annual Scarlet sage was a popular summer bedding plant. That was about the extent of the Salvia trade.
Then in the early 1990's Salvia greggii, now called Autumn sage, started to show up. No named varieties, but it caught on quickly for the bright pink late summer and fall blooms. Now Salvias cover six pages in the new 2012 edition of Sunset. One grower has 30 to 40 varieties available.
What makes these important for Valley gardeners is that many of them come from hot, low-rainfall regions. Salvia greggii is native to the high deserts of southwest Texas and Mexico. Salvia microphylla, Graham's sage, comes from Southeastern Arizona and Mexico (it is recognizable by the much more fragrant foliage, which occurs in some of its progeny). When you bring these two together in a garden, they hybridize very readily and reseed happily. So now there are dozens of natural and intentional hybrids, in an ever-increasing range of colors.
For taxonomy buffs: the naturally occurring, original hybrids between S. greggii and S. microphylla and other species were given the name Salvia x jamensis. The 'x' indicates an inter-specific hybrid of known parentage. But that was a while ago. The exact parentage of many of the new cultivars is simply unknown at this point, so they often just have a cultivar name; e.g., Salvia 'Dark Dancer'. The genus name (Salvia) is properly italicized; the cultivar name should be in single quote marks. Neither is standard editorial practice in the news industry, but it is how you will usually see the name in journals and reference books.
Hybrids and cultivars in this complex group are generally 2 to 4 feet tall and wide. Most branch heavily from the base. S. greggii types tend to get woodier and taller, eventually a little rangy. You can cut these back in spring to keep them shorter and more compact. The bloom is light and steady in spring and summer, and absolutely profuse in fall.
The color range started in reds and pinks, then broadened to lavenders and purples. A light yellow form appeared; now there are some stronger yellow ones.
Every time I think I have a favorite, another variety comes along. In addition to those shown here, I have created a pinterest board of my Salvia pictures: http://pinterest.com/redwoodbarn/salvias/
California native sages.
Mostly spring-blooming, these have denser growth habits than the previous species and tend to get larger.
Salvia apiana 
Silvery-white leaves give this the common name of White sage. Three feet tall and wide; white flowers, intensely fragrant foliage. Hardy to 20 degrees F or lower. This is the one used for burning in purification rituals. Hard to propagate and thus not common in the trade. It is easy to kill by overwatering.
Salvia clevelandii 
Cleveland sage is a Southern California native that grows to about three feet tall and a little wider. It has attractive grey-green foliage, and tall whorls of blue flowers in late spring. A very useful shrub in low-water landscapes, it combines well with non-native low-water plants such as Cistus (rockrose), lavenders, and rosemary, as well as natives such as Ceanothus (wild lilac) and manzanita. A few cultivars: Allen Chickering has lavender-blue flowers; Winnifred Gilman's are darker blue.
I have found this plant often harboring ladybugs in the adult and larva forms in winter and early spring.


A few other native shrubs



Romneya coulteri
Can you see why it's called Fried-egg flower? Matilija poppy is the other common name of this Southern California native. A big (up to 8 feet tall!), spreading, somewhat coarse-looking plant with flowers that bob above the foliage in summer. Easy, tough, moderately invasive, tolerant of watering or drought.
Carpenteria californica
Bush anemone
This slow-growing, tidy shrub to four to five feet, from our coastal mountain range, has shiny leaves and a compact growth habit. White showy flowers in late spring resemble anemones. Tolerant of sun or light shade.
Ceanothus species and varieties
Wild lilac
Attractive shiny leaves and fragrant blue flowers in spring. Water deeply and very infrequently in summer; they are notorious for dying abruptly in warm weather when they get watered too often. There are low spreading types. Centennial stays under a foot tall and spreads several feet. Yankee Point grows to two to three feet tall and spread six to eight feet or more.
The UC Davis Arboretum touts Valley Violet, a well-mannered low shrub with small leaves and unusual lavender-pink flowers.
Several varieties grow to six feet or so, some spreading wider. Julia Phelps has dark, small leaves and vivid cobalt-blue flowers; one of the showiest in bloom.
Ray Hartman, mentioned in the Nov. 11 article, is big, fast, and upright, tall enough to train as a screen or small tree to fifteen to twenty feet.
Mahonia aquifolium
Oregon grape
Native to the coast side of the coastal mountain range. Shiny leaves, bright yellow flowers in winter, blue berries that attract songbirds. Tolerant of sun but better-looking in some shade and tolerant of deep shade. Compacta is a denser, shorter variety. John Muir and Ken Hartman (a hybrid) are selections with denser foliage, spinier leaves.
As you change over your landscape for lower water use, consider some of these plants native to California and the southwest for their durability and beauty!
Previous columns about low-water plant choices in the Davis Enterprise columns here.
Look for the October and November 2011, January 2012 and June 2012 columns.

More pictures of Salvias here
and on Pinterest here.c 2012 Redwood Barn Nursery
www.redwoodbarn.com

Pistache for posterity

A 94-year-old lady came in today and bought our largest Chinese pistache to plant in her front yard.
 I was raised that you don’t mention a lady’s age. But she volunteered it, and I think at a certain point that old rule doesn’t apply.
I’ve known her for a long time. She isn’t getting around as well as she used to, so her sister drove her in. Her sister lives in Texas, but comes out to visit and help out now and then. She’s 91.
 The old walnut tree in their front yard died, so it had to be taken out.
 “We weren’t going to replace it,” said the sister. “At our age, we’d never see it grow. But,” she paused.
“You should plant trees no matter what your age,” I replied.
“Yes, you should,” she agreed firmly. “Plus, our doctor lives across the street, and he said he wanted us to plant a tree.”
“You do what your doctor tells you,” said the older sister with a smile.
So, doctor’s orders, she bought the largest tree we had and arranged for a young man to come out and plant it.


 The city had planted one Chinese pistache already in their front yard a while back when the Modesto ash came out. That one is a female tree, doesn’t color up so well. “The females do have pretty berries,” I said. “And the songbirds enjoy them, even if they are a bit of a mess.” But they especially wanted the fall color. 

The reason we sell the grafted Keith Davey Chinese pistache is for that reliable fall color and the fact that it doesn’t have the berries. Most people prefer that; they want to know they’ll get that familiar bright red color. And while the pistache berries aren’t squishy, there sure can be a lot of them. Pistacia chinensis is dioecious, having separate male and female trees. With nursery stock grown from seed, you have a 50-50 chance. And the fall color ranges from yellow to orange to purplish to red.

I’m partial to all of them. I live along the freeway, where CalTrans has planted mixed seedlings. And Chinese pistache is fecund enough that more seedlings have augmented that stand. I bought a tray of seedlings from a grower years ago, culled out those that lacked good fall color, and planted half a dozen of the best on my property. I have some male and some female. Lots of winter songbirds enjoy the female trees. But I understand why homeowners want to know what they’re getting. For reliable fall color, plant Keith Davey.

Chinese pistache is one of our most common landscape trees. It can tolerate drought (many of the trees on or adjacent to my property get zero summer irrigation). It can also tolerate reasonable lawn watering. No pests and few diseases. A small percentage of trees in some parts of town die from a vascular disease that looks and spreads like verticillium wilt. The pathogen hasn’t been confirmed, but if you do lose one I suggest avoiding trees that are known to be susceptible to that when you replace it. But thousands of them grow without incident around the Sacramento Valley.

 The growth rate is what we call moderate. Watered deeply, fertilized a bit when young, they grow two to three feet a year up and out. In ten years you have a nice medium tree with equal spread to height. In a couple of decades, you have a good-sized tree. Eventually they can get quite large. Roots are deep. A little gawky when young, they barely require pruning once established.

This is the tree that has the most reliable, consistent fall color in our area, beginning in late October and continuing through November. When they turn color varies with watering regimen, exposure to cold, soil nutrition, and other factors. Unirrigated trees, such as those along the highways, turn color first. And even with the right genetic material, some trees don’t give good color some years. A tree in a sheltered courtyard may disappoint you, and some years are better than others. Nature is fickle.

 But if you want fall color, this species is your best choice here. And in the right year, the right place, the right tree, the results are spectacular.

 I like their attitude. Yep, they can grow that. And you can too.

Rethinking Lawns

Lower Water Lawn Options

written for the Davis Enterprise, July 26 2012

As Davis faces water rate increases, garden professionals get lots of questions about ways to conserve water in new and existing landscapes. Previous columns have discussed low-water options for shrubs, ground covers, and trees in the landscape. The biggest water-user of all is the lawn. But that presents a conundrum, because the lawn is part of the yard we really use. Someone moving to a new house was asking about options and noted, “I have a big conflict about water usage. But we have two small kids who play on grass. Tough to play on cacti beds!”

Let’s not disparage lawns too much. That water use does provide natural air conditioning, heat reduction, and reduces dust. A normal lawn watered optimally requires about a thousand gallons of water a week per thousand square feet. But it takes that water and pumps it back up into the air around your yard, providing evaporative cooling. Grass is much cooler to walk on and work around than are bark, decomposed granite, concrete, and other non-plant surfaces. In California we use our yards as extensions of our living areas, and there is no question that a lawn is a more comfortable place to be than a drier landscape. Dogs and kids like to play on them.

As noted in my October column: "Form follows function," Louis Sullivan said. Let your landscape form follow the actual use patterns of your family. Lawns are for kids and dogs, and are usually unneeded in front. Put lawn where you will use it, not just where you'll look at it. Reducing your total lawn area is a simple way to save water.

You can probably reduce your total water usage on your existing lawn. Lawns don’t need daily water. A rule of thumb for traditional lawns is one inch of water, two times a week. Measure to see how long your sprinkler takes to put out an inch of water. I find most people aren’t watering long enough, but are watering way too often.

You could get a “smart timer.” Once the realm of commercial turf areas such as golf courses, these have become less expensive and may be appropriate for those of you with large lawns.

These amazing lawn sprinkler timers communicate with local weather data sites to determine the rate of watering needed, and adjust accordingly. When weather is cooler than average, they reduce the output. You can do the same thing, of course, but it takes some awareness of actual water use rates. The IPM web site maintained by UC Davis has links to weather stations all over the state, providing ET data (ET = evapotranspiration, the rate at which plants use water. It is measured in inches, just as rainfall is. Lawns use up to two inches of water a week in our hot, dry climate).

Go to http://ipm.ucdavis.edu/WEATHER/index.html and find the local weather station. Add up the ET rates and provide the water use calculated for the previous week.

Or you can be intuitive: if it’s cooler than average for the time of year, cut how long your sprinklers run a bit. We tend to fluctuate between short intervals of high temperatures, and periods when the delta breeze prevails and cools us off.

Keep an eye on your lawn. If it is looking duller green than usual, it is probably water stressed. Poke a trowel into the soil and assess the moisture. Water rates we give are optimal. Perhaps we can all learn to accept a little turf stress as long as the overall appearance is good enough.

If that all seems too complicated, the smart timers may be worth the investment. Local irrigation supply companies can give you more details, and a landscape contractor can install one for you.

Second option is to change your type of grass. All grasses are not equal in their water use. Until the advent of tall and dwarf fescues, most lawns were blends of bluegrass and perennial ryegrass. Those are the highest water users, and tend to be more susceptible to diseases. If you’re in an older neighborhood, it is possible you still have a blue/rye blend.

The newer, coarser-bladed fescues (tall and dwarf) can get by with as little as 20% less water than those older grasses. They are deeper-rooted, so they can go longer intervals between waterings.

If you have an older lawn, simply converting your lawn to a tall or dwarf fescue would enable you to cut your water use immediately. But they have a less refined look and require taller mowing height (preferably about 3 inches height in summer). If you are in a neighborhood built from the early 1990’s on, your lawn is probably already one of these blends of “dwarf tall fescue.” Yes, I know it’s an oxymoron: “dwarf fescues” are the lower, slower-growing strains of tall fescue.

Fescue is an important group of grasses. Most lawn blends that are labeled for shade contain another type: the fine fescues. The two most common are creeping red fescue and chewings fescues. They happen to tolerate more shade than other grasses, including the dwarf and tall fescue cousins. But we should all be using these more, as they are tolerant of even less water. Data I have seen show fine fescues can use up to 20% less water than the dwarf/tall fescues. They grow in full sun just as well as in shade, and make a very attractive lawn. As with other fescues, it is very important to mow them high (the grass, not you). Fescues have a high growing point. If you cut them too short, especially in hot weather, a lot of the individual plants will die out and the lawn may thin out. Mow at three inches if possible.

So converting your existing lawn to fine fescue can enable you to use 20 to 40% less water overall. If you don’t mind the appearance of grasses of differing texture, you can just over-seed your lawn and let the fine fescues fill in around your present grass mix. Otherwise, you can kill your lawn with chemicals or black plastic first. Fall is an excellent time to do the seeding, and it’s a pretty simple operation.

1. Mow your lawn as short as possible.

2. Rent a dethatcher and run it over the lawn. This machine rips out old, dead stems and leaves, exposing bare soil between the remaining healthy grass plants.

3. Apply a starter fertilizer.

4. Seed the fine fescue grass at 1 lb. seed per 100 square feet.

5. Top-dress the lawn with a fine layer of bagged compost.

6. Water daily, one or two times each day, until the grass germinates and grows to an inch or two of height.

7. Gradually reduce watering. Once you’ve mowed once or twice, you can revert to your regular watering schedule.

Timing this whole project just before a rainstorm in October or early November virtually guarantees success.

A final option is to consider a meadow. These fine fescues make very attractive groundcovers when left unmowed. On my rural property I have a large area where I seeded chewings fescue, hard fescue (a pasture grass), and creeping red fescue. I water as little as every two weeks in the summer. We allow it to grow long for an informal look. Once a year, in the spring, my strapping son rents a high-wheel mower from JB’s Power Equipment and mows the whole thing to prevent flowering and to manage any weeds that might be trying to poke through the grass.

It’s a great area for throwing balls for our dogs, and kids of all ages love to lie on the soft green grass. It’s very active with wildlife: last year when he mowed it praying mantids were scattering in all directions. Swallows fly above the field each evening. Unmowed grasses are important harboring sites for beneficial insects.

The UC Davis Arboretum is establishing a large area of California native grass in a meadow at the edge of the lawn area near the oak grove on the west end. They’re using Blue grama (Bouteloua gracilis). Other options include native strains of Festuca californica and Festuca rubra (there are those fescues again). These are available as small plant starters through Suncrest Nurseries, a wholesale grower in the Bay Area. And many larger ornamental and native grasses can be used for informal meadows. The key is to plant a mowable, walkable, lower-growing species where you’d be walking on it, and then plant some of the taller ornamental grasses on the edges.

We need to rethink lawns. Not necessarily get rid of them, but put them where we use them. Create the effect we want with lower-water grasses. And develop a new culture: less clipped, less formal, more appropriate, more sustainable, and less expensive.

You can find previous columns about low-water plant choices in the Enterprise archives. Look for the October and November 2011, and January 2012 columns. They are also available at http://redwoodbarn.com.

A work in progress: the UC Davis Arboretum is converting a large part of the lawn at the west end to native grasses. Please don’t walk on it while it’s establishing! This species should be able to grow and look good with much less frequent watering than traditional turf.

Our meadow of fine fescues. This area was seeded with chewings, hard, and creeping red fescues. The first two form clumps, the latter spreads. The effect is informal, great for playing with dogs and kids.

Here creeping red fescue has been seeded pure in a shaded area and allowed to grow without mowing, making a soft ground cover. Creeping red fescue is more tolerant of shade than most other lawn grasses.

The leaf blades of the fine fescues. The individual blades are rounder and much narrower than other grass species. You may already have these grasses in your lawn, as they are often added to seed blends for their shade tolerance.

Many ornamental grasses can be planted, preferably in groups or masses, on the edges of lawn areas to continue the visual effect. Most are much more drought tolerant than traditional turf species. Here is a specimen of Nassella tenuissima (formerly Stipa tenuissima), a fine-leaved ornamental grass.

c 2012 Redwood Barn Nursery

www.redwoodbarn.com