Does your 3rd edition reflect the changing climate  growing seasons.  I have your older book  (2000), and I love the month by month guides.  We mostly have vegetables, fruit trees, are try to get a cutting flower garden growing.  We are in San Diego Zone 10A (according to nursery).   My main concern is when to plant, and at what time of the year.

 

 

I love your question, especially since it deeply affects the spot where I find myself right now as a writer and thus deserves a thoughtful answer and a bit more information than you have asked for. First: No. The third edition of my month-by-month book does not specifically address climate change, but it does adhere to earlier planting dates for summer crops than most current garden experts are espousing, such as those who write for local newpapers. For example, my books have long advocated planting tomatoes on March 1, the first planting date for summer crops, but a writer in the San Diego Union said to plant tomatoes in April, which is too late in my opinion especially because of climate change. My experience is that tomatoes can hang onto blossoms even in mid-February if given a bit of winter protection so that cold nights won’t make blossoms fall off. I have been telling this to audiences and covering this in my talks for several years.  Also, later in the year, even as early as July temperatures get too hot for tomato blossoms and there is nothing practical one can do to  keep them cooler, so they fall off. Thus, during the last two years I have planted my tomato seedlings in mid-February with excellent success. If there is any danger of frost where you live you would need to give winter protection, but that has always been true and is covered in my books. (The problem with blossom drop from temperatures that are too cold or too hot applies also to peppers.)

 

In talks I have demonstrated a clever way to give my tomatoes warm nights in February, March and April, by making a sort of makeshift trellis over them with bamboo sticks tied to stakes on the sides. My next step is to loosen the tendrils of my Sugar Snap peas that had been climbing a wooden trellis on the north end of my raised bed and then flop them on top of that make-shift trellis. My tomatoes are very happy under this leafy roof and they have winter sun from the south so they are not in shade. This is great in an additional way since it makes it easy for me to reach the peas and keep on harvesting. I plant my Sugar Snap peas on September 1, which is my first day for planting winter crops and they will continue bearing for several months after they are flopped over and growing sideways. (I also show this trick in one of my talks and have photos from years ago.) By the time the Sugar Snap peas are about done, the tomatoes are touching them and already bearing fruit. I began eating tomatoes this year in late April or early May and harvested peas all spring instead of needing to pull them out when I switched to summer crops.

 

Now back to my books and global warming:— We are living through an era of change, including Brexit, a new kind of warfare called terrorism, global warming, interest rates that stay low forever and many other things. Well, publishing is changing too. For some time I’ve wanted to write a new, shorter, concise edition of my all-organic book that was suggested to me by the Master Gardeners of San Diego County. It would have a spiral binding that would lie flat and could be taken into the garden or potting shed and have in it all my month-by-month checklists, tips and hints and step-by-step how-to. It would also cover global warming as it affects gardening in Southern California. I loved this idea, but meanwhile something was happening in publishing that is negative for writers, especially regional writers like me, and that is that publishers only want digital books. You can explain to them that gardeners don’t want digital books and that makes no difference. They no longer want to sell books in print editions unless they are nationwide best sellers that generate huge amounts of cash. Meanwhile, regional writers like me made most of our money not from speakers fees or even from royalties but from the books we sold at our talks. Thus it was a financial shock to me when my publisher suddenly stopped printing my book last year without a word of warning to me but kept the digital book and also my copyrights. Furthermore, they were stonewalling me and my agent. In the old days when they stopped printing a book they gave your copyrights back, but now they don’t and are in their legal rights because they still have a digital book. I am not alone. A longtime editor of the Sacramento Bee told me he is hearing the same story from everyone. He said, “They have dropped your books, they have stolen your copyrights and they are treating their writers like dirt.”

 

When I tell this story to most folks they say,”Why don’t you self-publish?” The reason is that, despite a mistaken belief to the contrary, self publishing is hugely expensive and is similar to pouring money down a rabbit hole. I recently heard from my friend, the retired Sacramento Bee editor mentioned above, that he has recently learned I am 100% right about that. He wrote a book for a very wealthy man and the entire experience of publishing it has been an horrendous and expensive mess. Currently, unbeknownst to the general public, several crooked publishing outfits are promising the sky to bilking would-be writers and bilking them of mountains of cash that for ego reasons they pour into self-publishing. (My friend’s book was one of these cases.) What makes these poor people think they can make money publishing books in print when legitimate publishers who have been in the business for so many years are themselves backing out?

 

When my book was dropped from print last year, I was stymied because I could not write a new edition without going through the laborious process of changing one word in every sentence. Nonetheless, this year I began doing just that. I began writing a new concise edition, but what I found out was that I too have changed: Willy-nilly, I have grown old! This change was not unexpected. I knew it would happen someday and since I am, thank God, healthy and have never smoked, eat right, exercise daily and come from a long-lived family, is likely to continue for some time. Thus I’d not intended to retire at least until age 90.  After all, I can still write and give a good talk and I’m just as fired up as ever to spread my message about Southern California gardening. What I had not taken into consideration was that once one is over 85 years of age, which I have been for a couple of years, everything takes longer. But I also realized that if my agent were successful in finding me a new publisher, that publisher, also, would want to drop my book from print within a year or two. My only solution is to go with the flow. These days I’m spending a lot more time painting in watercolor and oils, my lifetime hobby. Who knows? This too might morph into a career.