Sanhedrin Nursery – Garden Blog

• Primroses, in their rainbow of colors, will light up your flower beds and boxes this winter and spring.

• Plant seeds of broccoli, cabbage, lettuce and other spring vegetables now.

• Spray for peach leaf curl with copper sulfate. Peach and nectarine trees may suffer from this fungus disease without a protective spray.

• English daisies are an early-blooming perennial with showy red, pink or white flowers just in time for Valentine’s Day! They will bloom all spring in partial shade.

• Bare root fruit trees, grape and berry vines, and ornamental trees and shrubs are still available.

Asparagus Time

Each year, when spring rolls around, the asparagus bed comes to life. Around April 1st, the rich green spears start poking their heads up out of the bare soil, reaching for the light. Every day a few more points appear and anxiously we await the harvest of one of our favorite crops.

Asparagus takes a lot of work initially, but it is not difficult to maintain an established bed. Plants can live for 20 years and produce many pounds of spears, so it is important to start them off right.

Soil should be rich, loose, well-drained and located in full sun. Add plenty of well-rotted manure or compost and rock phosphate dug deeply into the soil: double-digging will greatly benefit asparagus.

Start by transplanting 2-year-old roots into your garden. Dig a trench 12 inches deep and place roots 18 inches apart, spreading out the roots around a small mound.

Set roots deep enough to cover the crowns with 2 or 3 inches of soil. Initially, cover them with only one inch of soil. When shoots begin to come up, add soil around them until the trench is filled. Then add a four to six inch layer of mulch to keep the weeds down, and maintain the high soil-moisture content necessary for best production.

Asparagus need plenty of water, especially the first growing season. Keep the soil wet at least 8 inches deep.

In July, side-dress the plants with 5-10-10 fertilizer or compost, and cultivate lightly into the soil. Keep the bed well weeded as the crowns are getting established, and maintain a thick mulch through the summer.

In the fall place a 3-inch layer of manure around the plants. Or, if you’d rather, remove the mulch and apply a balanced fertilizer at about 2 pounds per 100 square feet then replace the mulch.

Leave the dried tops until spring when they can be broken off and composted. An important part of asparagus culture is allowing the ferns to mature during the first and second year. This green foliage is needed to promote strong roots. Vigorous top growth in one season is the best assurance of good yield the next.

Harvest begins when the plants are three years old. The first harvest will last only a week or two. In later years, cutting may continue for 6 to 8 weeks.

The first spears will push their way up when we are still having frosty nights here in Willits. So be sure to protect these tender shoots from frost.

There are different varieties of asparagus and you may want to try more than one. ‘Mary Washington’ is the most popular variety with heavy yields of long, straight spears with tight tips. The sweet, tender spears have gourmet flavor and a 60 day cutting season.

UC 157 is a hybrid developed at UC Davis. It has deep green, smooth cylindrical spears, and early spring production. This variety produces higher yield than older standard varieties.

‘Jersey Knight’ Asparagus is a variety that grows only male plants. The stalks are much larger , and they yield 3-4 times more top quality asparagus than any other variety.

‘Sweet Purple’ has deep-burgundy spears and a higher sugar content than green varieties. The spears are generally larger and much more tender than standard varieties.

Homegrown asparagus is really a delicacy. There is little comparison with the store-bought vegetable of the same name. So do yourself a delicious favor, and plant an asparagus bed this winter.

• The “Wave” petunias make wonderful hanging baskets for full sun. They come in purple, bright pink, reddish-purple and pale “misty lilac.” They can also be used for a colorful summer ground cover.

• Rhododendrons are in full bloom now. Choose plants now for spectacular blooms in your shade garden.

• Cage or stake tomatoes while still small so that you can train them as they grow.

• Alpine asters, columbine, sea pinks and Tiny Rubies dianthus are outstanding plants for spring bloom in the perennial border.

• Ladybugs are a big help with aphids in your greenhouse or garden. Release at dusk in problem areas.

Cool as a Cucumber

For a heat-loving summer vegetable, cucumbers are about as “cool” as they come. Originally from the hot, dry regions of Asia and Africa, the crisp, white flesh of cucumbers have always seemed refreshing. Now a staple of summer salads in this country, this is one vegetable that should be in every garden.

Cucumbers are climbing vines that are easy to grow. There are many different varieties from the ever popular, round, yellow lemon cucumbers to long and thin slicers. Cucumbers are usually divided into two groups: the smaller, faster growing varieties used for pickling and the longer varieties used for slicing.

There are also “burpless” varieties and “yard-long” Armenians, both with non-bitter skin that you can eat. In addition to fresh eating, cucumbers can be preserved by pickling them, an art which is centuries old. You can pickle any small cucumber, and enjoy them that way all winter long.

Cucumbers will grow well in most good garden soils. They like warm weather and at least 8 hours of sun a day. Since cucumbers are 95 percent water, they need long, deep drinks of water to grow fruit that is not bitter. Temperatures above 100°F can cause bitterness or stop fruit production.

When planting, add compost to your garden soil and use a complete organic fertilizer, like fish emulsion, to help get your cucumbers off to a good start and provide nutrition throughout their growing season. When the vines are about a foot long, side dress with compost or fertilizer which should take effect just as the plants blossom. Stand back and wait for an abundant crop of cool cucumbers.

Most varieties of cucumbers are vines, and they love to climb! Try growing them on a trellis. Cucumbers grown on trellises tend to produce healthier fruits, which are uniform in size and shape, and 2-3 times more cucumbers. They are also cleaner at harvest time and the air circulation provided by the trellis helps prevent diseases.

Trellising cucumbers frees up space in the garden, and you can plant lettuces or other greens under the trellis in the shade provided by the growing vines. Plant the vines 18 inches apart. Cucumbers grown on the ground need more space, so plant them 36 inches apart and space the rows at least two feet apart.

Cucumbers need plenty of water to be juicy and crisp. Plants that do not get enough water produce small, bitter, deformed fruits. Soak the soil deeply when you water.

Pick cucumbers frequently when they are young and tender. The goal of a cucumber vine is to set seeds and if even one fruit is allowed to mature, the whole vine will quit producing. Gently twist or clip off the fruits being careful not to break the vines.

Cucumber vines are not heavy producers, except for lemon cucumbers which share their abundance all at one time! Expect 1 to 3 pounds per plant, so you may want 6 plants per person, if you are going to make pickles, and 2 plants per person for fresh fruit only.

Plant cucumbers now for delicious, cool fruit this summer.

• Spring vegetables can be planted now. Start your garden with broccoli, cabbage, lettuce spinach and chard. It pays to grow your own!

• Flowering dogwoods, Japanese maples and tulip magnolias can be planted now during the dormant season from balled & burlapped specimens.

• Clean out bird houses. Remove old nesting material and scrub the inside with a solution of one part bleach to nine parts water.

• Blueberries make delicious fruit on attractive plants that you can use in the orchard or the landscape. Choose varieties now.

• Cut branches of forsythia, pussy willow, quince, spirea, and dogwood and bring them indoors to force them into bloom.

Time for a Little Planning

If you’ve been thinking about planting a vegetable or herb garden, but haven’t taken the plunge yet, this is your year. With food prices on the rise and other uncertainties, this is a great time to get started.

Start with a plan, whether a simple one or a complex diagram, so that you’ll be ready to begin planting when the weather permits. You need to decide what you are going to plant and when you are going to plant it.

Vegetables can be divided into warm season crops and cool season crops. Cool season crops include broccoli, cabbage, Swiss chard, spinach, lettuce, peas, carrots, onions and beets. Some warm season crops are tomatoes and peppers, squash, cucumbers, melons, corn and beans.

Cool season vegetables can be planted directly into the garden in March. These hardy plants can stand the frosts that will continue through March and April.
Warm season vegetables can be planted in the garden beginning in May. The average date of the last frost in Willits is May 12th, and sometimes there are killing frosts through the month of May. So you need to be prepared to protect young transplants and seedlings until summer arrives.

You can also plant some of the cool season vegetables for a fall crop, but these must be set out in August in order to fruit before the very cold weather arrives in mid-November. Part of your garden plan should leave room for these fall vegetables. In our climate, if you wait until the summer crops come out to plant fall crops, you will be too late.

First decide which vegetables your family eats and have some idea of how much. Do you eat one head of lettuce a week or three? Then determine how much produce you want to can, freeze, dry, or store. Successive plantings of certain crops, such as beans, will give a longer harvest period and increase your yield.

Try not to plant vegetables from the same family (peas and beans or squash and pumpkin) in exactly the same location in the garden more often than once in three years. Rotation prevents the buildup of insects and disease. Use your previous years’ plans as guides for rotating crops.

A good vegetable garden must have at least 6 hours of full sun each day. Eight to 10 hours a day is ideal. No amount of fertilizer, water, or care can replace needed sunshine.

An area that gets less sun can successfully grow beets, chard, carrots, radishes, cabbage, spinach and lettuce.

Once you have a plan laid out, visit your local nursery to choose seeds from the seed racks and you will be ready to plant. You will also find transplants there in season and plenty of help for new gardeners. Happy gardening!