Question:

Answer From Pat:
If you have already read and are following the instructions on compost in my book (pages 97 to 99 and other references in index. Also the chapter in my memoir “All My Edens” called “Romancing the Compost Heap”) and composting still doesn’t work for you, here is my estimation of the problem. First it really would help if you gave me a little more information on such items as the size of your compost pile (for hot compost 3 feet X 3 feet x 3 feet is best) and your method of composting or what you have put into the pile. Without knowing all that it is a little difficult for me to provide accurate advice, but I certainly can guess what the problem might be. So here goes:

If a gardener has a compost pile that never heats up nine times out of ten the cause is one of two problems. The first problem is that the compost pile is being kept too dry or too wet. Wet sloppy piles cannot heat up. Wet piles are sometimes putrid and smelly. This means too much nitrogenous waste has been added. Fix this by adding a few wood shavings (carbonaceous waste.) But dry piles without adequate moisture can’t heat up either. You need to keep the pile properly moist and spongy, not soppy wet. Also, a dry pile that is moist on the inside and cooking on the inside can catch fire so one does need to monitor compost piles and toss and turn them so you put the dry stuff inside and mix the inside to the outside again to cool the pile and keep it cooking.

Another major problem folks often have is that the pile contains too many dry woody ingredients (carbonaceous materials) and not enough nitrogenous waste. Nitrogenous waste is like sloppy garbage left from veggies and fruits at the kitchen sink or it is manure or grass clippings or wet green stuff from the garden. (For more details see my fertilizer chart on my website and also my soil amendment chart on page 28 of my book.) Woody ingredients are dry wood, dry leaves and twigs and left-over plant materials like corn cobs. (These are difficult or impossible to compost). All the leftover at the end of the veggie season, the plant matter may be dry by the time you pull it out, chop it up, and compost it. You will need a lot of nitrogenous ingredients, like soft green leaves of tomato plants, to heat up these layers of carbonaceous ingredients.

Then if you want to create a hot pile and not a slow pile you also need to toss and turn the pile to keep air in there, to cool the pile if it gets too hot or to heat it up again if it begins to cool down. This is a lot of work and I personally can’t do it myself, so there are other ways to do this, such as the drums companies sell for composting. When you use a drum you need to follow the instructions that came with it exactly and also you need at least 2 of them or even 3 of them or you will be continually adding more ingredients while it’s cooking. That’s not the right thing to do. When creating hot compost the fast-composting way, you want to make just one pile at a time and then let it work.

Slow composting is different. You just pile stuff up and keep it moist and make sure there are no tree roots in it and eventually you will get lovely compost out of the bottom and this kind of pile can be any size. I have written about this many times. (See both books and other places on this website.)

If the problem is too much carbonaceous waste and not enough nitrogenous waste, and this is usually the problem when compost doesn’t “cook”, my recommendation is to use human urine to heat up the pile. Just pee in a bucket and pour it straight onto the compost and keep the compost damp with water from the hose and you will get a nice hot compost pile. Then toss and turn it. Human urine is clean healthful stuff and a great source of nitrogen. (It also contains phosphorus and potassium. See comments on page 32 of my book and on my fertilizer chart.) Just pee in a bucket or (If you are a man) straight onto the compost and that will heat up the pile eventually. This is the organic way. (The inorganic, synthetic fertilizer way is to add sulfate of ammonia to compost to heat it up, but as organic gardeners we don’t use synthetic fertilizers.) Of course, you could use blood meal, but blood meal comes from cattle and some folks don’t like using it. Also it’s expensive. Why spend money when you are throwing a perfectly good, free nitrogen source down the drain? Urine contains salts but you will be adding enough water from the hose to wash out most salts. And by the way, human urine makes great rose fertilizer. Just dilute it 8 or 10 to one with water. Pour it on the ground, not on the foliage, and continue to irrigate roses regularly to wash out the salts. You will have super roses. (You can use the stuff straight as a weed killer so remember to dilute it well when using as fertilizer.)

Related posts:

1. Spent Brewery Grains as Compost or Soil Amendment
2. Compost Pile Too Hard to Turn Over
3. Horse Manure Compost

I have heard of placing ice cubes over the top of the plant locations at night to give them that additional chill, is there any sound meaning to this.

Thank you for your help in this matter.

Answer from Pat:
To put it flatly, do not advocate growing rhubarb in the coastal zones of Southern California, and I do not know any varieties especially adapted to growing here. Rhubarb is best adapted to a cold-winter climate with snowy winters, and there’s no use quibbling about it. In Southern California rhubarb plants don’t go properly dormant and in summer they usually die from root rot.

If you live in an interior zone where winter frosts are a yearly occurrence, (daytime temperatures below 40 degrees Fahrenheit), then you may be able to grow rhubarb and harvest palatable stems in the cool weather of spring and fall. (The pink early-spring growth and red fall stems are always best.) People who live and garden in the mountainous zones of Southern California can usually grow pretty good rhubarb.

There is an additional and more serious reason I am not enthusiastic about growing rhubarb here, and that is that since the plants never go properly dormant, their stems stay too green.

In my opinion, green rhubarb stems are unhealthy to ingest due to the high percentage of oxalic acid they contain. Most gardeners are aware that the green leaves of rhubarb are a deadly poison and have killed people who eat them. (During the Second World War there were several sad occasions when hungry people in England who did not know better were killed from eating cooked the leaves of rhubarb.)That should give us a clue that though green rhubarb stems may not kill us they are not good for us. People with a tendency to kidney stones should never eat rhubarb anyway and most likely they should not eat asparagus either since these two vegetables can lead to a serious attack of kidney stones when ingested by people who have that tendency.

There are so many good things we can grow so easily in California that they can’t grow back East, like artichokes for example, and we are so lucky to be able to grow vegetables year-round, why not concentrate on plants that are well adapted here? I’m happy for those folks who put up with snowy winters, that at least they have a few things to crow about. Tell you what: Next time those lovely pink rhubarb stems are for sale in spring, why not splurge and buy a bunch? Bake up a great pie or boil a batch of yummy jam. Devour it with pleasure and be glad you didn’t have to shovel snow all winter!

Related posts:

1. Growing Lilac (Syringea vulgaris) in Southern California
2. Rhubarb
3. Fruit Trees in Southern California

Answer from Pat:
Yes, I sure do have a suggestion. You need to undertake a program of corrective pruning in winter or very early spring after your tree has dropped its leaves and before new buds open, followed by annual fall pruning to keep the tree growing and bearing. You also need to undertake a regular schedule of cleaning up the tree to remove all mummified fruit, debris, twigs, and dead fallen bark, and thoroughly clean up the ground under the tree in winter, followed by spraying with fungicide more than once in winter to control the pests and diseases that can and will beset neglected peach trees. Also cover the ground with fresh mulch under the tree after spraying and pruning. This will do much to control diseases, and fertilize your trees according the the time and directions provided by your local University Extension. Placing a layer of aged manure under the tree after cleaning the ground in fall, and covering the root zone but not touching the trunk, could do much to aid the health and recovery of your tree and would provide both fertilizer and mulch. (Deciduous fruit trees do not have a heavy requirement for fertilizer but they do need some.)

It sounds to me as if your tree is suffering from a disease such as brown rot, which results in mummified and rotting fruit, or it may have other fungus diseases such as bacterial leaf spot, which can also turn fruit brown and shriveled. Also, your failure to prune is why the tree can no longer bear much fruit. Oozing of sap can be caused by diseases such as gumosis, but also from peach-tree borers and other pests. Unfortunately, neglected peach trees always go into severe decline and seldom if ever come to a good end.

Peach trees need more severe winter pruning than any other deciduous fruit trees because the fruit is only born on one-year old shoots. Dormant spray is done to control pests as well as diseases. If you do not prune and if your tree isn’t bearing or only bearing on the tips, this is because you haven’t pruned it enough to stimulate growth of adequate new wood that will bear the following year.

Go to your local book store or look online and purchase a good book on pruning deciduous fruit trees. Make sure it contains diagrams. You will also need to know when to prune in your area. Here in California where I live we have a mild-winter climate so we prune our deciduous fruit trees in January. In summer the only pruning we do is to remove suckers arising from branches or from the ground. In Ohio the right time of year to prune a young peach tree is March. But your tree is a mature tree, and timing for that might be different, so refer to the University Extension In your area and phone the Master Gardeners for advice. I would expect March to be the time to prune, but I am not sure about the correct time to prune in Illinois, so ask the experts at your University of Illinois University Extension. Also send for a copy of Ohio State University Extension Bulletin 528. “Training and Pruning Fruit Trees.” (Mentioned below.) You can also find out if there is a similar publication in Illinois.

For your own safety I recommend you purchase a sturdy three-legged ladder. A three-legged orchard ladder is one of the best purchases a gardener can ever make. I have owned one of these for many years. With good care it can last a lifetime.

Brown rot is a fungus disease that attacks fruits and twigs of stone fruits. Peach leaf curl attacks the leaves of peach trees twisting them out of shape and can kill trees. Another disease is bacterial leaf spot which causes black or brown spots on green leaves and brown sunken areas on fruit. In order to prevent these diseases from ruining your harvest and killing your tree, in addition to pruning you will need to undertake undertake a regular program of annual dormant spray in late fall and winter, which you will need to repeat more than once. (Ask your University Extension when spraying should be done and wear protective clothing.) Spray with a product such as dormant disease lime sulfur spray mixed with horticultural oil against pests. Some organic gardeners claim that beneficial fungi control all negative fungi in their gardens, but obviously this is not the case in your garden. Thus you need to spray with dormant spray. If you are an organic gardener, choose an organic product, such as Bonide Organic Lime Sulfur Spray. Even organic gardeners need to use dormant spray on roses or if they intend to have any luck growing deciduous fruit trees, especially peaches that are more subject to disease problems than any other fruit tree.

For more information: Please refer to the information on peach leaf curl on pages 59 and 62 of my organic book and see the information on pruning of peaches and other deciduous fruit trees discussed on page 51. Page 382 once again covers the subject of peach leaf curl at the right time of year when we need to control it here. This timing of course will not be right for you, but will help others reading this blog.

For how to correct your tree’s shape and size, see UC University Extension Publication 8058: Pruning Overgrown Deciduous Fruit Trees. (This pamphlet is on the internet and includes excellent instructions for correcting an overgrown deciduous fruit tree.) Also see: Ohio State University Extension Bulletin 528. “Training and Pruning Fruit Trees.”
Ohio University Extension Fact Sheet 4321-1086 will also give you much information on growing peaches and nectarines in the home landscape.
University of Illinois Extension has some helpful information also: http://urbanext.illinois.edu/fruit/tree.cfm?section=tree
Also see this valuable information from the University of Illinois (Your state!) http://urbanext.illinois.edu/fruit/peaches.cfm?section=tree

It is not too late to save your peach trees but I hope you realize now you can’t simply plant them and forget them.

Related posts:

1. Corrective Pruning Fruit Trees
2. Dormant Spray For Low-Chill Apple Trees
3. Preventing Sap From Oozing from Peach and Nectarine Fruit

Question from Chris:

Answer from Pat:
Thanks so much for writing. First, I want to encourage you in your desire to get an internship in Panama on a new sustainable community.

A glance at the site indicates that this community may be early in its development, may offer great learning and service opportunities, and may be an exciting adventure as well as one of lasting value. When and if you arrive there, you will doubtless have opportunities to learn a great deal about the area and the work required of you to make your 5 acres into a productive farm or garden while growing plants adapted to the climate in Panama and recycling back into the land all the organic waste products from the animals you raise and the plants that you grow.

I’m sorry I do not know of other organic farms in Panama, but once you arrive there I would suppose you will have the opportunity to meet other gardeners and learn from them the rhythm of farming and gardening there, what crops to grow, and when to plant and harvest. Every climate offers its advantages and drawbacks, but timing is all-important. The best way to learn these things is to talk to long-time organic farmers in the area. If there are none then you will have to rely on books and scholarship to know what to do when. In the 1940′s, my mother purchased and then ran an organic farm mainly by reading “Rodale’s Organic Farming and Gardening Magazine” and also a current, multi-volume encyclopedia of farming. Then she would have us all do exactly what that magazine (which was very good in those days) and also the encyclopedia said to do. She also wrote lists of tasks and then crossed them out as we accomplished these items. Another way she learned was from the County Agent, which was the name in those days of the Farm Advisor. I doubt you will have anyone like that in Panama, but it is important to listen to experts whenever you can and to learn from them.

When we had our farm we were living in a cold-winter climate. You will be in a tropical one and tropical gardening offers totally different and new challenges. In Africa several years ago I flew over a large area of small individually farmed and owned “strip farms” Each one was about an acre in size. These were hugely productive, but this one area (near Lake Victoria) had a nearly ideal growing climate with ample year-round rain. Torrential rains can ruin crops and rot seeds and roots, just as longtime drought can kill crops also. Dealing with insect and animal pests and plant diseases organically in Panama may also present challenges and be quite different from anything you have faced prior.

You say the soil is good and that is excellent news, but your task as an organic gardener will be to put back into the ground at the end of each season and before the next season, whatever nutrients your plants subtracted from the soil. In this way you can eventually leave it even better than you found it. You also have a chance to learn the economics and time management of farming. I wish you good fortune in all these endeavors.

With good wishes for your success and happiness in this project.

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1. Vegetables for Southern California
2. Raised Bed Planting
3. Companion Planting Has No Scientific Basis but Planting a Wide Range of Crops Works

ANSWER FROM PAT:
Dear Pam:

Please refer to the detailed, step-by-step instructions for growing cantaloupes in a tire on page 197 of my book. The most important points in these instructions are putting manure and fertilizer in the bottom of the hole, covering of the ground around the tire with black plastic to increase heat, planting in May in order to give the melons a long enough growing season (June—almost July, is a little late, but it may be okay), watering by soaking the ground in the tire with water from the hose instead of drip, letting the plants go dry for the last week or two when melons are almost mature, and picking them at “full slip”. And, of course, it’s hugely important to begin with a great variety that will give a good harvest even in a coastal zone. The one I recommended in my talk and in my book is ‘Ambrosia’, that has a shorter number of days to harvest than most varieties and is super sweet with great flavor when properly grown in a home garden.

As for thinning, as explained in the step-by-step instructions on page 197, plant 5 or 6 seeds in each hill or tire, and thin them to the two strongest by clipping the others off. Seeds germinate easily.

As far as what yield you will get from your plants, that depends on what variety you chose, how well you grow them, and whether the plants were properly pollinated either by bees or by hand. Please see the sections on pollination on this website for instructions how to hand-pollinate if you do not have bumble bees in residence. With optimum conditions and care along with plenty of bumblebees and honeybees in my garden, I usually harvested between 10 to 20 ‘Ambrosia’ melons from each tire.

Related posts:

1. Why Did I Get So Few Melons? (Pollination of Melon Plants, by Hand or By Bees)
2. Squash
3. Melon

Answer from Pat:
Citrus trees as a group are not well adapted to drip systems but they can survive on regular landscape water and drip systems can be arranged so that they can provide enough water but it is necessary to leave the drip system on for at least an hour and maybe several hours at a time to give citrus trees enough water this way. When they are young citrus trees need, watering three times a week the first week with the hose. Built a water basin around the root ball and apply enough water to thoroughly wet the root ball and surrounding soil. Do the same twice a week for the next four weeks and after that once a week. Once a citrus tree is established the timing of the irrigation can be lengthened. A mature citrus tree may need irrigation on intervals of once every two weeks or one month but the entire area under the canopy of the tree, up to within a foot of the trunk needs to get the equivalent of two or three inches of rain per irrigation. (This is for mature trees.) Some trees can go six weeks between irrigations during winter in rainy years.

Much depends also on drainage. If the soil is clay it retains moisture better and thus irrigations should be deeper but further apart. If the soil is fast draining, the tree must be watered more frequently or it will dry out.

The most important fact to keep in mind is that the soil surrounding the and also the root ball of the tree needs to be moistened until at least one foot deep of the ground becomes wet at each irrigation. It is not enough to sprinkle a little moisture on top.

Drip systems such as you described watering for 8 minutes twice a week could not possibly be giving your trees enough irrigation unless the drip systems gave out a flood of water in 8 minutes that would cover the ground at least one inch deep and sink in. I think they are about to die from lack of water. The fact they haven’t died yet only attests to the rugged, drought-resistant quality of the tree. When trees are not watered enough the first thing the tree does is get rid of its fruit. Then it drops all its leaves in the attempt by so doing that it might survive. That is why your lemons are going brown. They are atrophying from lack of water. If the tree can do it, it will drop them off and next thing to go will be the yellow leaves.

Just figure it out mathematically. Drip systems all have headers and emitters. Emitters are marked with the amount of water that they give off. So whether your trees are getting enough water partly depends on how you have put your system together and how much water the emitter gives off in an hour. Here is an example: Let’s say each tree has 4 emitters surrounding the root ball and each emitter is the kind that gives off one gallon of water per hour. That means your tree would get 4 gallons of water in one hour but would only get 1 gallon in 1/4 hour. In 8 minutes it would only get a little over 2 quarts. Spread that amount of water around the tree and just think how little water you are giving your trees, less than a few cups a week, not enough to even moisten the top of the ground. It is a wonder they are still alive and maybe they have already died.

Another way to figure out how much water plants are getting is to dig down with a trowel and take a look. We had wonderful rains this year and if your trees were planted in clay soil doubtless the ground moisture kept them alive for a while but not this long unless there is some other source of water you haven’t told me about.

Citrus trees also need fertilizer. Citrus are big feeders, and one needs to begin feeding them in February. If you have not watered adequately they were unable to take in any nutrient at all. For detailed instructions, please read pages 63, 64, and 65 in my organic book. But first, for goodness sakes, check the soil, then grab the hose. lay it on the ground with the end stuck in a pot so the force of the water doesn’t dig up the soil and leave the water running slowly for an hour or more in each spot so the water sinks deeply into the ground to irrigate those poor thirsty trees! (But once again, check the soil first to make sure it is dry as a bone as I suspect it is.) Maybe with luck you can still save your trees.

A final note: Far from it being wrong to combine citrus trees with other plants in the landscape, these trees have been used as ornamentals in Mediterranean landscapes for hundreds of years, probably thousands of years. Lemons have cultivated as far north as northern France and Holland, where since the Middle Ages you see them in paintings in gardens where they were brought indoors in winter. Lemons were grown in containers in elegant gardens and at least since the 16th century and maybe earlier brought into heated, glass-fronted, south-facing buildings called “Orangeries” in winter. It is ridiculous to think citrus don’t grow well with other plants. I’ve seldom heard anything more idiotic. But what is NOT good is growing citrus trees in lawns where they get too much water or where the lawn steals all the nutrients needed by the trees, or where the trunks get hit by sprinklers so they fall prey to gummosis, an oozing fungus disease. These are the things that are bad, not the proximity of other plants, which are undoubtedly good since they muddle up the bugs.

Related posts:

1. Citrus and Coffee Trees as Houseplants
2. Feeding citrus trees
3. Choosing Citrus Trees for home garden

Question from Dave:

Answer from Pat:
You are very lucky to have a steady supply of horse and pony manure, but I would not mix pine needles with the manure if I were you. This actually won’t create the correct green/brown mix (Ie: carbonaceous mixed with nitrogenous.) Straight horse manure, alone, (unmixed with anything) is close to the correct green/brown ratio already. One can just pile it on the ground and let it age and once aged it can then be combined into garden soil. In some cases stable bedding is included with the manure. Usually there is enough liquid nitrogenous stuff (horse urine) included with the bedding to sufficiently rot it in time, but this would not apply to pine needles. The needles most likely wouldn’t rot.

You are very lucky to have a steady supply of horse and pony manure, but I would not mix pine needles with the manure if I were you. This actually won’t create the correct green/brown mix (Ie: carbonaceous mixed with nitrogenous.) Straight horse manure, alone, (unmixed with anything) is close to the correct green/brown ratio already. One can just pile it on the ground and let it age and once aged it can then be combined into garden soil. In some cases stable bedding is included with the manure. Usually there is enough liquid nitrogenous stuff (horse urine) included with the bedding to sufficiently rot it in time, but this would not apply to pine needles. The needles most likely wouldn’t rot.

Since we are having such good rains right now it’s an ideal time to spread the clean manure directly onto the ground over the roots of plants you want to mulch and gradually feed. Let it age right there and dig it in in spring prior to planting. By spreading it right on top of the ground all the goodness of the manure will be washed down into the ground by these rains and not wasted on the ground under the manure pile. It also causes less runoff this way since it is less concentrated and there is more ground to hold the nutrients in the soil instead of letting them wash away. Spread the manure on top of any ground that you want to improve with organics, such as a vegetable garden or flowerbed or over the roots of fruit trees or ornamentals. There is no reason to add the pine needles to the manure.

In my book I describe a compost made from alfalfa and manure layered together. This combination is different from one using pine needles, since it makes a great quick compost which is ready in about two months. (As soon as it cools down and you can no longer see what went into it, it is ready.) You can then use it as mulch all over the garden or dig it right into the ground. The reason this works so well and makes such a nutritious compost so quickly is because alfalfa is not carbonaceous but green or nitrogenous waste. In fact alfalfa is a major source of nitrogen when used alone as fertilizer and it rots quickly in the ground. Pine needles, by contrast, have no nitrogen in them. They are pure carbonaceous material, and they have a hard coating and texture that means they take much longer to disintegrate. (It should be noted, however, that the needles of certain pine trees, such as Aleppo Pines, are smaller and thinner and rot quicker than those of other pines such as Torrey pine trees, whose needles take months or even years to rot.) Composting pine needles is usually a long process and they are also highly acid. The best use for pine needles in a garden is as a long-lasting mulch covering the root zones of acid-loving plants, such as azaleas and camellias. Some people like to make a separate compost pile for pine needles, simply leaving them piled up until they age. Then they can even be used in soil mixes for acid loving plants.  Other folks use them on garden paths in woodland areas under trees and shrubs, or at the backs of wide flower beds, but always on top of the ground. They make a very clean, good looking path cover.

Related posts:

1. Avocado’s in Spring
2. Chicken or Horse Manure
3. Spent Brewery Grains as Compost or Soil Amendment

Question from Jenny:

Answer from Pat:
Three suggestions come to mind for a tree to fulfill your requirements in coastal Carlsbad, one mile inland, most likely Sunset Zone 23. One is a dwarf pine. There are several possibilities to choose from among dwarf pines, such as Mugho pine (Pinus mugo) which grows slowly to 4 or 8 feet in height and 8 to 15 feet wide, dwarf Japanese black pine (P. thunbergiana ‘Thunderhead) grows to 6 feet in height but is better adapted further inland, or your could choose a Japanese white pine (P. parviflora) of which several dwarf and gray forms are available. A second suggestion is India hawthorne tree (Rhaphiolepis ‘Magestic Beauty’). This tree is easy to grow and gets ever more beautiful as it ages and never will be too large. Please read what I said about the characteristics and easy care of this tree when answering the query of another readerhttp://patwelsh.com/wpmu/blog/trees/small-drought-tolerant-evergreen-flowering-trees-for-a-parkway/. My third suggestion is Strawberry tree (Arbutus unedo.) Arbutus can be trained into a great shape in age and the species is slow growing. The best place to look for trees is at tree farm, such as Briggs Tree Company or Pardee Tree Nursery, to name two suggestions, since you can find specimens already shaped and advice is likely to be more specialized than at most nurseries, where trees might have stood for a while in the can.

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Native plants like best to be planted in plain, native, un-amended soil. Amended soil where garden plants have grown is not the best environment for native plants because native plants are sensitive to fungi and other pathogens that have been brought in with exotic plants. Best scenario is to plant natives straight into bared bulldozed ground with all prior plant material removed.

• Make sure plants were well watered prior to planting. (If they are dry water them in the can again.)
• Clean any existing mulch off the ground, making a large bare space surrounding the hole that has no mulch. (Mulch must not touch roots or get mixed into native soil.)
• Dig the hole to the same depth as the depth of the plant from soil level to bottom of root ball.
• Place the soil you remove from the hole onto clean ground. Or you can put it onto a tarp.
• Fill the hole with water and let it drain out.
• Fill the hole a second time with water and let it drain out once again. (In very dry soil it’s wise to do this 3 times before planting.)
• Carefully remove plant from can supporting root ball with your hands so roots do not break. (Native plants have notoriously fragile roots. Plants are often killed by careless handling at planting time.)
• Sometimes roots are wound around in can. If so, gently loosen them but take care while you are doing this that roots don’t break off from the crown of the plant because of the weight of the root ball.
• Place the plant into the hole with the top of the plant on the same level as surrounding ground. Check the soil level. Fill in with native soil removed from the planting hole and press down with hands, never with feet.
• Use the extra soil taken from the hole to form a watering basin on the edge of the rootball. A week later move water basin out further.
• Replace mulch on top of the ground.
• Water the plant thoroughly.
• Water again the next day.
• Water 3 times a week the first week.
• Water once a week thereafter.
• In summer spritz tops of foliage in early morning or evening to mimic the effect of a brief monsoon rain that washes off dust but doesn’t really get soil wet. These plants can absorb moisture through their leaves. For many natives, watering the ground surrounding their roots in warm weather is likely cause root rot rot and kill the plants.

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1. Native Plants of the Southern California Coast
2. Native Plants Suitable For Planting Near A Coastal Lagoon
3. Planting a Clump of Three Birch Trees. European white birch (Betula pendula)

Message from Pam:

Answer from Pat:
Tomato Cages AreToo Small for Cucumbers and Indeterminate Tomatoes.

First time gardeners soon learn that tomato cages are not big enough for supporting full size, indeterminate vines of tomatoes. Tomato cages are only good for supporting small, determinate tomatoes growing in pots on patios and porches. Tomato cages are thus not nearly tall enough for supporting most varieties of cucumber. However they might work for a miniature bush variety designed for pot culture.

Most regular garden cucumbers need to be grown in a straight row and provided with a stable, 5-or 6-oot tall trellis on which they can grow straight up. A section of 4-or 5-inch square hardware cloth supported on commercial metal fence posts hammered into the ground works well. I showed this type of support on my slide show as well as a more attractive, though strong, bamboo trellis held up with fence posts. Most varieties need a five-or-six foot high trellis. You do not need to tie them up, just weave the climbing plants in and out as they grow upwards. The vines are very tough and wiry, and the weight of cucumbers hanging on them does no harm whatsoever. Cucumbers need to grow straight down so the fruit hangs unsupported and thus grows straight. Cucumbers lying on the ground can get a bent out of shape and may fall prey to pests, diseases, or rot.

Cucumbers are easy to grow. Quality comes from planting the best, most disease-resistant, flavorful hybrids, such as Burpee’s Burpless (a long Japanese type), which I have grown with great success, or other similar superior F1 hybrids. Additionally, keep them well-watered and fed so they grow rapidly. If cucumbers ever lack water during their growth they will be bitter. A well-grown cucumber will practically explode with growth. You have to keep an eye on them daily to keep up with the picking.

Don’t throw out your unused tomato cages. They can be used in the flower garden to support perennial flowers, such as dahlias. Just put them on the ground at planting time so the plants can grow up through them. Use them on bushy plants that will fully hide the cages. (If using for dahlias, you may need to add additional support later on as dahlias grow taller.)

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