Through The Garden Gate

Rain, bare root plants, Christmas gifts
Rain, lots of it. It washes away valuable soil, so mulching the surface of the garden is important. Hoeing weeds now, is of the moment, as they are putting down deeper roots. The soil is soft and the weeds can be destroyed if you get at them. It’s a good time to prune out dead branches that may fall from the pounding of winter storms. Look up to check your trees. If you need a professional to prune out dead limbs, or take out a dead tree that could fall on your house or garage, now is a good time to take care of it. Climate change may bring ferocious winds or heavy rains; we don’t know what our climate will do.
A thoughtful gift of a couple of bare root fruits trees might cheer a friend or family member as we go into the bleak days of January. They can be ordered now and when they arrive, heel them in. This means to lay the tree on its side and cover its tender bare roots with soil until it can be planted. This is also true of bare root vines, shrubs, and any other perennial plant that is sold bare root.
Bags of organic compost and mulch, or even a truckload of compost from Sonoma Compost, are a wonderful gift for a gardener. No gardener ever has enough good black, rich soil. A medium-sized gardening basket with a handle, filled with a pair of new gloves, new Fiskars pruning shears, and mud clogs with warm wooly socks—ahh, what a heavenly gift! It’s not too late to plant natives. Head out to your favorite native plant nursery and look for a Salvia ‘Hot Lips’ or a Cleveland sage with its sweet fragrance. Great gifts, there’s no end to them. And help your gardener plant them for an extra boost to the gift.
Give a gift of membership in the local Milo Baker chapter of the California Native Plant Society or the Madrone chapter of the Audubon Society. Both organizations present monthly lectures and offer wonderful field trips. The winter birds are here in our bays and the ocean to feed, and an educational trip to the coast to identify and enjoy the ducks and shore birds is truly exciting. Go to www.cnpsmb.org or www.audubon.sonoma.net for more information.
Another nature organization, the Xerces Society for Invertebrate Conservation, is informative and fun. A $30 membership includes a subscription to their pretty little magazine, “Wings.” It’s full of photos and stories on bees, butterflies, dragonflies, and other insects. And for only $15, which includes shipping, you can give a gift to someone or yourself of a colorful 2013 calendar, “Dragonflies of North America.” Go to www.xerces.org or call them at 1-855-232-6639.
Did you ever wonder if there is a difference between a yam and a sweet potato? Yams, the deep orange, sweet-fleshed tuber was brought to American by the slaves of West Africa. It’s a vining plant in the Dioscoreacaea family, which is distantly related to grasses and lilies.
The sweet potato is a vining plant in the morning glory family, which Columbus supposedly encountered growing in the Caribbean. The sweet potato (Ipomoea batatas) is only distantly related to the white potato, Solanum tuberosa, in the Nightshade family (which includes tomatoes and eggplants). So now you know!
The amazing story of the Franciscan manzanita (Arctostaphylos franciscana) will be the subject of a January 15, 2013 CNPS meeting. It was thought to be extinct in the wild, but was rediscovered at the Doyle Drive rebuild in San Francisco in 2007. Betty Young, past president of our local CNPS and present director of Golden Gate National Parks, will talk about how they took cuttings of the plant to propagate, and how the twenty-ton plant was relocated. We will find out how it’s doing now and see photographs of the relocation process. Meetings are held at 7:30 p.m. at the Luther Burbank Art & Garden Center, 2050 Yulupa Avenue in Santa Rosa. Free refreshments. Contact Leia at 322-6722 or

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for more information.
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. Have a very safe and happy Holiday Season.