Taking time to smell the roses can be extended to enjoying nature too as we go about tending our gardens. Recently, while in my garden, a beautiful black and blue dragonfly came along that I have never seen before. It landed several times on a steel stake, in fact, long enough that I could get […]
One of my gardening delights is to enjoy the beauty of Narcissus as they welcome spring. As the Van Engelen, Inc, a bulb purveyor, puts it “Narcissi are the art and soul of spring” There are so many kinds of Narcissus and other spring bulbs it is sometimes hard to make the choices because it […]
Saving seeds can be a fun thing to do and you can save seeds from plants that you find particularly satisfying. You can save a little money too. Some terms and definitions are in order to help understand the basics of seed saving. Self-pollination occurs on plants with ‘perfect flowers’ where the transfer of pollen […]
Gardening is like most human endeavors prone to making errors. Last year I had a great harvest of strawberries from April to July. These were plants that I dug up at my old home the previous fall and moved them to my new home in Morada. I spaced the plants about 12 inches apart and […]
It will soon be officially summer and time to enjoy summer blooms. In last week week’s column, Kathy Ikeda advocated for Salvias and they are a great flowering perennial for our California Mediterranean climate. Another flower group that I love to grow is Lavender which is also well suited to our dry, warm climate. It […]
Recently. Phil Pursel, representing David Wilson Nursery come to our monthly Master Gardener’s meeting to tell us about backyard fruit growing techniques. Yes, Master Gardeners do have meetings once a month to hear speakers to educate us on gardening issues and this one was very relevant. The size of home lots has shrunk noticeably in […]
In the last report on our garden tour, I described some historic gardens in Hamilton. For me, it was one of the best parts of the trip, but there were still many excellent gardens to visit and I am sharing some of those with you today. Near Wellington we visited the Otari-Wilton’s Bush a Native […]
The Auckland Botanical Garden was a large expanse of lawns and trees, but a disappointment as the roses were not well tended. There were some worthy sculptor pieces in the gardens. We visited 21 gardens on this 2 week tour. Our first garden, Ayrlies, north of Auckland, is acknowledged by some as one of the […]
In January, Pam and I were fortunate to get included on a garden tour of private and public gardens in New Zealand. The tour was sponsored by the Northwest Horticultural Society located in Seattle and organized by Earthbound Expeditions which is also headquartered in Washington. There were 32 of us and we all managed to […]
Our Central Valley’s wonderful climate is conducive to year around gardening, something the rest of the nation likely cannot relate to. I normally get my seeds at our local Lockhart seed store, but in July, I only needed a few seeds for my winter garden, so I went to a nearby big box store for […]