Learning from a garden’s living classroom

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• Making the cut: The ins and outs of effective pruning

  Making the cut: The ins and outs of effective pruning

  January means different things to different people.

  For some it means good books, bunny slippers and naps by the fire.

  For avid gardeners, January is the time to grab a pair of pruners and head outside to the fruit trees and vines that await our attention. Careful pruning can make the difference between a bountiful crop of fruits and berries and an unhealthy, unproductive orchard. When we prune we get rid of dead and diseased branches and we improve the structure of a tree.

• A Gardener's Notebook: Oh no! Not another gardening book!

  A Gardener's Notebook: Oh no! Not another gardening book!

  Sunset Western Garden Books and I go way back. I remember leafing through my mother’s old “First Edition” 1954 publication. It covered about everything one needed to know about gardening.

  Of the newer Sunset Western Garden Books in my library, the 2001 seventh edition was my bible during Master Gardener training. I didn’t think the 2007 edition had enough new material, so I passed on that one. But what gardener can resist the newly released ninth edition?

  “Not another garden book,” you say. Here’s my rationale for buying it. This edition is the first to feature plant photos exclusively. Not that I didn’t enjoy the illustrations of the older versions, but a color photo, well, they’re in color. The plant encyclopedia of the new 2012 edition has been updated and includes 1,000 more entries. There is a “Gardening, Start to Finish” section for beginning gardeners.

• Regular nitrogen applications benefit citrus trees

  Regular nitrogen applications benefit citrus trees

  Q: I just moved into a house that has been empty for several months. There are neglected citrus and avocado trees in the yard. How should I care for them? -- Susan Finn, San Luis Obispo

  A: Is it any wonder that we love living on the Central Coast? In most areas of the county, citrus trees and avocados can be grown with relative ease. They are beautiful year-round. They produce bountiful quantities of delicious fruit. Few scents are more intoxicating than citrus blossoms. Surely, one of our most important gardening tasks should be proper care and feeding of these wonderful gifts from nature.

  Lack of proper nutrients can affect fruit size, flavor, color and abundance. Commercial citrus growers use sophisticated techniques to analyze the nutritional needs of their trees. For the home gardener these tools are not practical, but there is some basic information that will help us care for our orchards.

• It’s back! The Cambria Garden Tour and Gourmet Garden Event

  It’s back! The Cambria Garden Tour and Gourmet Garden Event

  The Cambria Garden Tour is back! Taking a one-year hiatus leaves avid gardeners anxiously anticipating this upcoming event. This year, I assisted the tour’s selection committee in identifying seven gardens that represent Cambria’s finest. Without giving away too many secrets, here are the backyard paradises offered on the 2012 garden tour:

  • Need ideas for tough plants that can thrive in salt and wind? Participants will visit the garden of Mark and Chris Landgreen on the bluffs overlooking the Pacific Ocean. The landscape provides a foreground for the vast water view. Low-growing, drought tolerant plants like ceanothus and rockrose provide color. A carpet of dymondia surrounds the rock pavers. There’s a modified Zen garden and an enclosed area for potting and growing grapes, vegetables, and herbs. The seating area and pizza oven by the front door provide a sheltered area to “sit a spell.” An added treat: local classic cars will be on view on the cul-de-sac out front.

  • Around the corner you’ll visit an

• Low impact development? In gardening? Yes!

  Low impact development? In gardening? Yes!

  Here’s a scholarly expression I bet you never thought you’d hear in a discussion about gardening: Low impact development practices. Abbreviated as LID, the concept covers gardening aspects such as site planning, land use, hydrology, and erosion and sediment control.

  In a nutshell, LID includes an innovative approach to storm water management that goes against the current practice of storm water disposal, where runoff is conveyed to costly water treatment facilities or rushes into local creeks.

  Instead, water is captured close to its source using small, cost-effective landscape features to implement infiltration, storage and evaporation. This principle models the way nature managed rainfall at its source before urban development covered up all the soil and caused this thing called runoff.