Planting in Zone 10

Q. I live in Zone 10 Orange County, CA and am ready to start my planting. What herbs/veg/berries/fruit can I begin to plant? Is there a site that guides me by month?

A. First: There is no exhaustive list of jobs to do online for your climate zone, but my month-by-month Southern California garden books contain a complete checklist of garden jobs at the end of each monthly chapte, with page numbers referencing detailed instructions in the text. These lists are one of the reasons this book has become known as “the local gardener’s bible”. The lists are exhaustive—no one except a botanical garden could possibly grow all the plants they cover—, but they’re not meant to make people feel guilty, only meant to help folks know when to plant, prune, feed, and water specific plants and plant groups and also control their pests and diseases. These checklists include jobs to do in that month for every group of plants we grow, such as deciduous fruit trees, roses, vegetables, lawns, perennials, annuals, bulbs, geraniums, ornamental grasses, citrus, avocado, and ornamental trees, shrubs, and climbers, etc. and even for many specific plants that are popular in Southern California, such as cyclamen, for example, or hydrangeas. In order to cover all this online, you’d have to put the whole book online. In this case, a book works better.

Secondly, you state that you’re ready to plant and you ask what to plant now. HERE’S THE ANSWER: January is our main bare-root planting month. This is an absolutely great month for planting anything you can purchase bare root. (Bare roots mean the plant has been field grown and has been dug up and all the earth cleaned off the roots prior to sale.) See my book for instructions how to plant. If you don’t want to purchase it, go to the library and consult it there. Here are some of the plants you can purchase now bareroot at your nursery and take home and plant this month: Roses, deciduous fruit trees (be sure to get a low-chill variety appropriate to your Sunset climate zone, not the USDA climate zone; see below for explanation); select ornamental deciduous flowering trees such as purple leaf plum (Prunus ceracifera ‘Niger’) and others; certain deciduous climbers, especially Chinese wisteria (Wisteria sinensis ‘Cooke’s Special’) and others; grape vines; artichokes; short-day (sweet) globe onions; strawberries; cane berries such as raspberries (again get low-chill types); low-chill blueberries; and rhubarb, asparagus, and horseradish.

You can also plant pre-chilled tulips early this month and choose and plant camellias and azaleas now because their roots are dormant while they’re in bloom, and also purchase early-flowering cymbidiums for growing in containers. (Be sure to choose good varieties in special colors and with many flowers per spike held well above foliage that bends over rather than standing up and hiding the flowers.) This should provide you with a huge amount of planting this month. You will also save a lot of money and if you are smart and consult Sunset Garden Book you will get the right varieties for your climate. Wait until March to begin planting summer vegetables and for planting all plants other than those mentioned above.

It’s best not to go to a big-box store for your bare-root plants unless you really know what you’re doing. You could easily come home with plants such as Delicious apples that will not bear good-quality apples here. You will get apples, but they will be small, warty, brown, and sunburned from lack of foliage. Delicious apple does not get enough winter chill here to bring out the foliage necessary to shade the fruit. Reliable nurseries will give you better advice and sell you the best varieties of plants that are correct for growing here in our mild climate zones.

Thirdly: Speaking of climate zones, what system of zoning are you using? When you say you live in “Zone 10, Orange County” it sounds as if you are relying on the USDA (United States Department of Agriculture climate zones.) Many nursery plants are marked with these zones, which is a shame because these zones don’t work well at all in Southern California. The Sunset Climate Zones are the ones we should rely on here, but there is no Sunset Zone 10 in Orange County. (Sunset Zone 10 is in the desert, for example, Victorville is in Zone 10.)

Thus, I believe you probably live in one of the coastal zones of Southern California, most likely Sunset Zone 22, 23, or 24. (Irvine and Santa Ana are in Zone 22. San Juan Capistrano is in Zone 23. The lower-elevations of Laguna Beach are in Zone 24.) I believe that every local gardener needs a copy of the latest edition of Sunset Western Garden Book—your Orange County zone maps are on pages 51 and 54 of the latest edition) and also a copy of my book, “Pat Welsh’s Southern California Organic Gardening, Month by Month.” Gardening is different here in Southern California and you need all the help you can get! Good luck with all your planting.

To clarify what I wrote earlier, here is an additional note: A good rule to follow is “Don’t ever try to rush the seasons.” In Southern California we garden year round, but we plant cool-season crops in fall and winter and warm-season crops in spring and summer. As a general rule, begin planting cool-season vegetables in September, and begin planting warm-season crops in March. It’s too early to plant summer crops now, other than bare-root plants. One can, however, put in a late-planting of cool-season crops, such as members of the cabbage family now in January, but then they will get off to a slower start and later take up space you will need for warm-season crops in March. It’s best to get in tune with the rhythm of our seasons from the get-go and thus benefit from having enough time for growing both winter and summer crops in the correct timing with the weather, the temperature, and the length of days.

That said, you can always plant the vegetables that we grow here year- round: beets, carrots, radish, turnips, and parsley, plus there’s always time for a crop of lettuce or mesclun. (Lettuce does very well planted in January.) But as a general rule it’s a great idea to clean out the winter crops at the end of February and start over by adding soil amendment and fertilizer and replanting in March and then doing the same at the end of summer in early September. Getting rid of faded plants, composting the remains, and cleaning up the garden twice a year plus amending the soil and fertilizing prior to replanting, helps to cut down on pests and diseases and makes for a successful garden.