Golden Gate Gardener

Report from San Diego County

On my last trip to my dad's house in San Diego county while we still are part-owners of the house, I took a few last photos of that wonderful banana tree that Dad loved so much and transplanted when he was 96 or 97. It has fruit set again, and he won't get to enjoy it this time, since he passed away in November of last year. But it makes me happy to see that happy tree growing in the sunlight.

I know it's hard to see the bananas in the shot, since they are in shadow, so I cropped it in on them.

In addition to the bananas, there were the last of the ripe avocados, navel oranges, and Meyer lemons on the tree that I pruned, fertilized, and watered back to health. The Valencia orange has young fruit, and is covered with blossoms so sweet-smelling that they take your breath away when you walk out the back door. (We put a sprig in the car to carry the fragrance with us up the Valley on the drive home.) And the loquat tree was laden with fruit that was just ripening. There was even fruit setting on the little guava tree that he planted in the last decade of his life, and rescued from scale, with my help and advice, using a plastic dish scrubber and a horticultural oil spray. Well, he missed that fruit, but again, the garden is thriving and makes me happy to see.

More blooms, and more on class

I am back from Southern CA once again and will have some photos to share of subtropical and tropical fruit, but wanted to be sure to include a couple more Bay Area spring bloom shots and mention David Goldberg's photography class one more time. 

This tree is an ornamental plum. The double blossoms are so voluptuous against the otherwise bare limbs of the tree.

And this one is a tree peony. I wrote about these in my SF Chronicle column (at SFGate.com) a couple of weeks ago, but didn't have a photo then. This one is blooming in the Asian plant section of the SF Botanical Garden in Golden Gate Park. These plants, which are really shrubs that grow to about 4 feet tall, have the same lovely flowers as the herbaceous peony of colder climates, but can thrive in S.F. and other places that have very mild winters. This one is a single blossom, but there are also double-flowered varieties. There are even yellow and orange tree peonies.

I notice that a number of viewers of this blog have been linking from my blog to the blog about the Garden Photography Class that starts next Saturday. One last plug before it begins. It isn't taught often, so if you think you will want to know how to take better plant or garden photos, this is the moment to jump.

Maybe you still love to shoot film, or maybe you have purchased a good digital camera, or are thinking about going digital. Maybe you have been shooting a bit and wondering how to get better at it. This class will get you into the nitty-gritty of using your camera better and with more confidence, and will get you into gardens that will inspire you to want to shoot more photos. Check it out at www.gardenphotographyclass.typepad,com. There are links there to see photographs by the instructor or to enroll through UC Extension. 

Spring Blooming Trees in San Francisco

  I've been looking at many blooming trees this past week, following my own advice of a couple of weeks ago. They bloom so briefly and are so lovely. Here are a few. This is, I believe, Magnolia x soulangiana.

At the San Francisco Botanical Garden, formerly Strybing Arboretum, I wandered among many beautiful trees. There was a cherry Prunus x yoedenensis, the one that blooms in Washington, D.C. (below, left)

Then, a little farther on, there is a magnificent Michelia doltsopa I know, "Say what?" I don't know that it has a common name, but it is lovely. It's a relative of magnolia that is native to China and the Himalayas. The huge white blossoms of Michelia doltsopa are fragrant.

Finally, I couldn't resist including a dawn redwood just leafing out. One of my favorite trees and this is the very best time to see it. It's a relative of our California redwoods and sequoias that was discovered growing in China in the 20th century, long after it was thought to be extinct. The man who found it growing visited San Francisco a few years ago and saw our trees. Unlike our redwoods and sequoias, it is deciduous. So in spring you get the tiny, delicate leaves budding out, so tender and pale. And of course the trunk is wonderful, looking like it was macramed. There is a grove of these trees, they seem to create their own color of light at this time of year. If you live nearby, visit the garden in the next week and you will see what I mean.

The Gardens on Alcatraz

Because I have been doing some consulting for the Historic Gardens Project on Alcatraz Island, I have been to the island several times recently. I first heard that there were remnants of gardens on Alcatraz several years ago when I was working on my book Wildly Successful Plants. I learned that many of the plants I was writing about had survived from historic gardens that were planted there. Starting with a military base in the mid to late 1800s and continuing throughout the period when the island was the site of the famous federal prison, inhabitants have been gardening. What survived includes succulents, pelargoniums (geraniums), fuchsias, roses, and many more kinds of plants. These days, there is a full-time gardener on the island and teams of volunteers who work on Wednesdays and Saturdays. The gardens are starting to revive.

I took this photo last week in the Officer's Row gardens. In the 1880s there were houses here, with gardens between. After these houses were demolished, in 1941, the places where they once stood became cutting gardens. Here volunteers are tending the renovated gardens while staff is observing their progress.

Even the less tended areas of the island have a wild beauty. There were concrete residences on the south end of the garden, where employees of the prison lived. These were demolished, and succulents like these Aeoniums have begun to cover them, as if they were nothing but a different sort of rocky cliff. This part of the island is off limits in summer and fall, so that the island's many birds can nest undisturbed. In winter, you can wander over more of the area.

Ahd this stone wall is covered with various wild and domestic plants. In summer it is abloom with Centranthus (Jupiter's beard).

And, of course, the views are spectacular. Worth escaping from the big, dark cell block teeming with tourists and heading for the paths. The blackened skeletons of flower stalks of Agave americana spring up picturesquely here and there in front of ruins and the marvelous views of the surrounding bay.

Here is one of the birds of Alcatraz. There are many kinds on the island, including perhaps a few more gulls than most visiting humans would prefer. But these gulls don't seem accustomed to begging for human food, probably because you can only eat in the area near the docks, so they don't get much encouragement. Looking down over the cliffs on the south and west sides of the land, you may see herons, cormorants, and other water birds.

I'll be going out to Alcatraz once a month, and will report on their progress. But already, it is definitely worth a trip to see what is going on in the gardened areas. Or consider becoming a garden volunteer. You can learn more about it at www.parksconservancy.org/calendar/index.asp?event=194 by calling (415) 561-3062 or emailing cashford@gardenconservancy.org.

Garden Photography Class Starts Soon

A few words about David Goldberg's upcoming class on Garden Photography, which is being offered through UC Berkeley Extension. It starts on Saturday, March 29th. It will be held at the Extension's downtown SF campus, with validated parking next door. It includes 3 field trips to Bay Area gardens, where you can practice the skills you are learning in the classroom. And, most importantly, David is an excellent teacher, who will put energy into helping you improve your photography.

The photos in this entry are David's. You can many more of his shots on his web site: www.davidgoldbergphotography.com. You can learn many more details about the class on his typepad blog page: www.gardenphotographyclass.typepad.com. Whether you want to improve your plant and garden shots for personal reasons, or need better shots in order to market your work as a garden professional, this is the class that can get you from here to there. It isn't offered very often, so I encourage you to get it while it is available.

Of Time and Blooming Trees

I often find the concept of time to be a challenge. Some of my happiest moments are ones in which I am not aware of time at all--when I am researching points of fact, happily following trails to dead ends until some of the paths lead to wonderfully satisfying answers. Or when I am gardening, pondering the nature of weeds, of soil, and the paths of the elements through living creatures. I wake to time when I am hungry or cold, and pick up with what the rest of the world is doing at that time of day.

I am aware of "little time", the time that passes from week to week, I am writing, teaching, gardening, and doing the things we all need to do to live. I know a lot of this "little time" has passed and has become "big time" when I know both of my parents have died, my dad at the age of 100 years. I know my father's 5 siblings are also gone, and that seems like the passing of an era. I have even lost cousins, three of them at last counting. But the reality that "big time" has passed doesn't always seem real to me.

The time that enters my soul most deeply, and makes the most sense, is the time shown by the passage of seasons in the plants and animals that I see and hear every day. When it is spring, as it is now in San Francisco, and I drive about and see the many flowering plums, I am clear that time is moving along, and that it has come again to the wonderful time when trees flower and the sun quickens the growth of so many plants. In our Mediterranean climate, it is a second spring, as it were, following the spring of the grasses, when the hillsides turn from gold to green. It is now the spring of the trees. Soon it will be the spring of the warm season annuals as they germinate and grow quickly into summer plants. Then we have summer, which, though not very warm here in San Francisco, does have plants specific to it--the ones that need the longer days and brighter sun it offers. Then we have a brief summer and fall, and then we are back to the spring of the grasses.

I am driven to have tea in the Japanese tea garden in Golden Gate Park at this time of year, and mourn the years when rains fall on the days I could go there to enjoy the plum blossoms. I celebrate the return of the mockingbird. My friend tells me she was taught it was a "trash bird," but oh, when one sits on my roof and wakes me at 4 with its complex song, I can't really be angry, because it is telling me that the spring is here.

The blooming of seasonal wonders connects me to "big time" in all its aching reality and makes me value "little time" all the more.

Loveliest of trees, the cherry now

Is hung with bloom along the bough

And stands about the woodland ride.

Wearing white for Eastertide.

Now of my three-score years and ten,

Twenty will not come again.

And take from seventy years a score,

It leaves me only fifty more.

And since to look at things in bloom

Fifty springs are little room,

About the woodland I will go

To see the cherry hung with snow.

Alfred Edward Housman 1859-1936

Go ahead, change the ages and the times in the poem--I hope I have more than 70 springs too--but the feeling is right, that we should relish the beauty of each season in each year. Go see some blooming trees. Take a walk on a hill and look for wild flowers. Visit the Tea Garden.

Chayote Sprouting! Banana Blooming!

For the demonstration garden at City College, I have set 4 chayote squashes in cutting mix, in hopes of getting 2 sprouted plants for the arbor we have built. By the first week of February, 3 of the squashes have sprouted! Two of them looked like this one, just small sprouts, slightly curled as they emerge from the fruit. An innocent beginning for a huge plant. By this time, there will be quite a bit of root formed already, to find water and prepare to grow a shoot.

And one of the fruits has unfurled its first leaves. You can see the tendrils starting to form, searching already for something to hang onto. You don't see any seed leaves (cotyledons), since they remain inside the chayote fruit, held together like the palms of two hands. We eat them when we eat the fruits. Being tropical, these fruits never form a hard shell for their seeds, and never go completely dormant. Well, I shall keep you posted. If this plant gets too long and rangy, I will have to trim it back before I plant it, but once it gets going, not much will stop it.

Meanwhile, in the City College garden, the January King cabbage formed its mature head right on schedule. It was ready at the end of January, all pink and blue-green, with the flat shiny top that indicates it is ready to eat. And the chard is still doing well too. It is in its last months now, since I have decided to take it out this spring and have no chard in the garden until fall in an attempt to escape the predations of the leafminers by giving them nothing to eat one summer.

Down at my dad's garden, in San Diego County, though he has passed away, his banana is looking really good this year. The recent rains gave everything a fresh, bright look. I love the vivid colors of the bracts that surround the young banana flowers.

Chayote Progress Report

The countdown to chayote planting is underway. The City College construction class kindly lowered the arbor that last month's class built. It was going to be a bit tall for harvesting the chayotes. Robert, the course instructor, said lowering it was good experience for the class. A client might request that. (See photo of the arbor before lowering in my January 19th post.)

Next step is to mount some hardware cloth on two sides of the arbor for the plants to climb. They attach by tendrils, so can use both the vertical and the horizontal wires. Then we need to take out another section of fence. The one on the west is only about 6 feet from the arbor. Too close for comfort, since the chayote will reach out in all directions. We are going to try to keep it on the trellis. A brave effort, considering what the plant wants to do is be 30 feet tall and wide.

Finally, the 4 planted chayotes are still in the greenhouse. One has sprouted nice green leaves. I am hoping for another to sprout, since the plants need 2 in order to enhance pollination. As my Guatemalan friend Maria-Marta said, it needs a "novia."

My cousin in Indiana asks me if she could grow chayote if she started it very early. I'm afraid not. It is a tropical perennial plant. It only flowers when the days get short in late fall. This is because it is adapted to short tropical days. In a place with a cold winter, it would freeze shortly after it began to bloom, thereby never making any fruit. And, although the young stem tips and leaves are edible, and would be produced in summer, I'm not sure the plant is worth growing just for them.

Well, here in San Francisco, where eggplants and melons are rarely satisfactory, and tomatoes are borderline, we like to fee lucky to be able to grow something that doesn't do well elsewhere.

I'll send photos of the chayote soon.

Rainy Day Greens

The gardens of the City are certainly green these days, but the gardeners are a bit blue, since it has been very difficult to find a dry day to work in gardens comfortably. It has been raining nearly every day for what seems like forever, but is really probably about a week and a half. And most of the rains have been really heavy, no misty days, just cold, driving rain.

Yes, we do need the rain. We are at 14 inches for the season now, 2 inches more than the average at this time of year, but don't we always want a more perfect arrangement? Maybe three days of nonstop rain and then four of sunshine each week until we reach the season's rainfall quota. That would be an improvement.

I ran out on Saturday afternoon and trimmed some of the plants in my front garden under a sky that looked threatening, but didn't drop any rain for several hours. The garden doesn't look wonderful even after that work, but I know it will look better for it in a few weeks. It is mostly a study in green now, from the chartreuse of the golden feverfew, through the gray green of California poppy leaves and the grayer green of bush morning glory. The white paludosum daisies are blooming, steel blue Cerinthe and clear blue Echium vulgare 'Blue Bedder', and an occasional red Schizostylis (crimson flag). But, already the watsonia leaves are about 2 feet tall and the sparaxis leaves are a foot, which means they will be sending up flower stems soon.

Today I sowed seed of collards, Florence fennel, and celeriac indoors and I have lettuce and leek seedlings in the windowsill. My Saturday class sowed all sorts of flowers and vegetables, which are in the greenhouse at the college. Can spring be far behind?

What's up in the City College Garden

What is literally "up" is the new trellis. I plan to plant it with chayote squash, a subtropical vine that should cover it completely in a year or two. Chayote, also known as chayote pear, has pale green fruits that taste rather like a summer squash, but are borne in the winter. A mature plant can produce a couple of hundred fruits a year. That's a lot of food unless you have a lot of eaters, but I am planning to share them with students, and since they will be ready in November and December, finding students to try them shouldn't be a problem. In addition to the fruits, one can eat the young shoots, though there may not be enough of them the first year. (In Guatemala, where there are many of the plants, people pick and eat just the tendrils.)

Chayote plants can reach 30 feet tall, and if there is a tree, or a wall, or a building close by, they will climb it. Better be sure there is nothing near that will let the vine climb so high you can't reach the fruit. This trellis has a defensible space on one side, but on the left side, I want to take out one more section of fence, so the vine can't leap onto it and take off.

At present I have 4 squashes in the greenhouse, set in potting mix, waiting for them to grow. The seed never hardens, you just plant the entire squash and wait for the seedling to emerge. I'm hoping for seedlings I can transplant by March. (I'll plant 2, so they can cross pollinate.)

The chayote trellis is to be the centerpiece of a new planting of Central and South American upland edibles in the garden. Stay tuned for more on this project.

Meanwhile, the more ordinary crops are doing fine. These Brussels sprouts, planted in mid-August, were starting to bear by December.

And here is 'January King' cabbage, planted on the same day in August as the Brussels sprouts. I took this photo in late November. As you can see, the head is starting to form, but it isn't ready yet.