Five things to do in the garden this week:
1. You can plant virtually anything now. This includes annual flowers, herbs, and vegetables with the exception of late-maturing varieties of heat-loving crops such as peppers, melons, pumpkins, cucumbers, and corn. In cool soil, these varieties might either fail to germinate or, if transplanted into the garden as seedlings, struggle to develop properly and never recover from their initial funk. Although peas are classically planted in the fall in Southern California, since they grow well in our mild winter temperatures, it is still possible to plant them now before longer, hotter days arrive. We think of sweet peas (Lathyrus odoratus) – grown not for eating but for their fragrant flowers in pink, red, and blue – as annuals, but there are perennial sweet peas (Lathyrus latifolius) too that are worthy of our attention. They grow easily from seed, but also persist in the garden due to their rhizomes. Perennial sweet peas, although vining like their annual cousins, have flowers without fragrance.
2. You may notice a lot more weeds than usual due to our heavy rains. There may be a temptation to put down what is known as “landscape fabric” to prevent germination and growth of weeds. This, however, is a fool’s errand. I have never seen landscape fabric prevent weeds from growing where it was used. Annual and perennial weed seeds can still blow into the area and root in the mulch layered on top of the fabric, regardless of whether the mulch is shredded wood and bark from a tree trimmer’s truck, gravel, or ornamental stone such as river rock or beach pebbles. Furthermore, roots of perennial weeds, which can go down ten feet deep, will still be there and send up shoots eventually which will find their way through tiny openings in the fabric. And don’t think plastic sheeting is any better since it will eventually crack and tear, inviting subterranean roots and seeds to push new growth through these fissures. In addition to weeds eventually appearing where the fabric or plastic was layered, the effect it has on surrounding plants is not healthy. Landscape fabric stifles root growth since it interrupts oxygen flow through the soil.
3. The author of “Dry Climate Gardening” offers a design tip where colors opposite each other on the color wheel are recommended as garden companions. For example, keeping in mind that yellow and purple are opposite on the color wheel, we might want to combine drought-tolerant plants exhibiting these colors. Where yellow is concerned, water-thrifty fare with yellow flowers would include Jerusalem sage (Phlomis fruticosa), both green leaf and gray leaf yellow gazania, yellow yarrow (Achillea ‘Moonshine’), the succulent yellow bulbine (Bulbine frutescens), yellow lantana, Conejo buckwheat (Eriogonum crocatum), as well as California native plants in the sunflower or daisy family. Where drought-tolerant species with purple flowers are concerned, Spanish lavender (Lavandula stoechas) comes to mind, as do sea lavender (Limonium perezii), purple flag iris (Iris germanica), and purple bougainvillea.
4. The key to getting the most out of annual flowers is to plant them early while the days are still relatively short and cool. Certain annuals planted now in a well-composted flower bed may continue blooming until the fall. These include French marigolds (Tagetes patula), those marigolds of small stature, making sure to remove faded blooms to keep flowers coming; lobelia in dark or light blue; red salvia (Salvia splendens) and mealy blue sage (Salvia farinacea); sweet William (Dianthus); petunia and nicotiana (both related to tomato so, in the spirit of crop rotation, avoid planting where tomatoes grew); gold, orange, or red nasturtium; purple or white cupflower (Nierembergia); cosmos. If you lack homemade compost, prepare the soil with rich amendment and fertilize as often as once a week with a liquid or granular, water-soluble product, at 1/2 to 1/4 of the recommended concentration.
5. When building a compost pile, remember that a moist, well-aerated pile breaks down most rapidly. The aerobic bacteria that digest the pile – just like you and I – require water and oxygen for their metabolism to function at maximum capacity. To this end, you will want to keep the pile watered down with a hose and turned over with a spading fork on a regular basis. A device known as Ms.Tumbles Compost Tumbler simplifies this process. It consists of a 35-gallon rotating spherical drum on a three-foot stand. Specially made for composting kitchen waste, it includes a drainage hose from which you can extract compost tea, an elixir that immunizes plants against bacterial and fungal diseases.
Send questions, comments, and photos to joshua@perfectplants.com
