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Thanksgiving leftovers are almost eaten, my guests have all gone home, and it rained last night.  It was the first rain of the year.  Granted it was only a tenth of an inch, but to my rain-deprived brain, it sounded like a deluge.

The skies have been gray all day, which, combined with sweatshirt temperatures, propelled me into the garden to prune.

I have a love-hate relationship with pruning.  I know, that if I want abundant crops of apples, nectarines, pluots, apricots, peaches, grapes, and figs, I have to prune.

Beautifully pruned grapes at Copia

While there is a certain satisfaction that comes from snipping and cutting and shaping trees, I have so many to do (about 20 at last count) that the prospect of  annual pruning is totally overwhelming.

And it isn’t just the pruning that’s the issue.  There’s the disinfecting too.

Peaches and their relatives in particular are very susceptible to pests and diseases.  If I’m not careful, my pruning tools can transmit them from one tree to another.  To avoid that kind of contamination, I disinfect my tools as I finish pruning each tree.  Tools get dipped in a 10% bleach solution or spritzed with spray or foaming bathroom disinfectant, then wiped with a dry towel.

The foaming disinfectant is definitely more fun.

Because pruning is such a huge task, I tend to take it in stages.  Figs are far and above the easiest trees to prune thanks to their soft wood.  I hardly ever need to use a saw, just pruning shears, a lopper, and my favorite pruning tool, a Fiskars pruning stick (no, they don’t pay me to say that).

Fiskars Pruning Stik - I love it!

There is another reason I like to start with figs; I want to prune them before they develop next year’s fruits.

Shortly after I pick the last, succulent fig of the year, tiny green orbs begin to form at the  tips of each fig branch.  Those orbs are next year’s fruits.  If I wait too long, I’ll prune off those developing fruits and voila!  No figs next year!

I learned this the hard way.

Today, I started my pruning with the ‘Brown Turkey’ fig that stands aside the stairs to my vegetable garden.

'Brown Turkey' Fig

I first pruned off all the branches that were growing too tall. I cut off some dead wood and then I worked on the arch I’ve been directing over the stairs.

I started the arch several years ago.   It is slowly taking on the shape I want – one that will eventually allow me to reach up and pick figs as I walk down the stairs!

My post-pruned fig  doesn’t look beautiful now, but when the new leaves come out in the spring, my tree will be gorgeous!

'Brown Turkey' Fig Post-Pruning

In a future blog I’ll explain how to prune to control the direction of branches.  But before it gets dark, I have to head out to the garden and finish one more task.

Rather than composting the branches I pruned off my figs, I’ll cut them into 8″ long lengths and pot them up.  With a protective cover (i.e. a loosely tented clear plastic bag), they’ll root over the winter.

By next spring, I’ll have baby trees to share with my fig loving friends!

What’s the surest way to get the most flavor from vegetables and fruits?  Grow em yourself…..from seed!

Starting vegetables from seed was the topic of the talk I gave at the Los Angeles County Arboretum and Botanical Garden’s Festival of Flavors this past Friday. The topic seemed fitting since the huge variety of vegetables seeds on the market offers gardeners their widest range of possiblities!

It always seems so magical to me to start with little pieces of what look like wood; Add with some water, light, and a bit of seed starting mix to make those seeds  sprout and grow into bountiful plants that produce delicious vegetables.

Homegrown veggies always put supermarket veggies to shame.

By 3 pm Friday, the seats in the speakers’ area were full and everyone had a package of gourmet red chard ‘Scarlett Charlotte’ seeds I brought with from my good friend Renee Shepherd of Renee’s Garden Seed.

My dear friend and mentor Jan Smithen, author of Sun Drenched Gardens, introduced me to the audience and away we went.

I love the fact that people are interested again in growing their own vegetables, herbs, and fruits. It only follows that they are interested in starting them from seed. It is a skill that was once commonplace, then nearly lost, but is now coming back around again. Much to my delight!

We started with a lesson on reading seed packets.

Its ironic how important label information is and how little effort most companies put into their labels. Some companies do a great job and Renee writes some of the best. She deftly combines romance and detailed how-to with delicious suggestions for cooking and eating each variety.

Being a frugal gardener (is there any other kind?), I presented several examples of containers for starting seeds – old cottage cheese or yogurt containers, take-out food containers, or plain ‘ole four packs recycled from the nursery.

I prefer four packs to six packs, since the cells in a four pack are large enough to support seedlings all the way to transplant. With six-packs, seedlings can get only so large before they need to be “moved up” to larger containers. Saving that step saves my time, and it also means seedlings develop faster since they don’t have to go through transplant shock twice (once being moved up and the second time when I put them in the ground).

And by the way, someone asked me about using egg cartons. The simple response is: “don’t bother.”

Anything being reused has to be disinfected first, of course, to keep the tiny seedlings free of deadly bacteria and fungi. I give containers a good soak in a 10% bleach solution (one part bleach to 9 parts water). While I’m at it, I throw in plastic plant labels so I can reuse them, and I give my pruners a dip too (I dry and oil them afterwards).

Fresh seed starting mix is important as well. As compared to potting soil, Seed staring mix is more finely milled so the tiny seedlings have an easy time pushing up through the surface. It is also pasteurized to kill the pathogens. Black Gold seedling mix is one of my favorites. I had the purple-and-black label bags with me on Friday.

We spent half an hour going through the how-to process of how to start seeds, both small and large, in containers and as what I like to call “seed sandwiches” (more on that in a future blog).

When we ran out of time to talk about how to do cuttings, the audience insisted on continuing. So, I spent another 15 minutes demonstrating cutting basics a beautiful pink-flowering perennial Salvia chiapensis from Monrovia growers.

The audience was wonderful. They were tremendously enthusiastic asked great questions – always the most fun part of any talk.

During the hour-long presentation, I divulged some of my favorite hints for success …Think I’m gonna give them all away here? No way! But I’m happy to share those secrets when you invite me to speak to your group or event!

Today’s weather:  

High 59.9 F, Low 38.6 F.  

Today’s rain: 0.03″.  

Rainfall so far this month 2.08 inches.  

Rainfall so far this season (since July 2008) 6.56.”  

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Its raining!  So, is the drought over?

Hardly….  Even if this year’s rainfall is greater than normal, water travels hundreds of miles to reach Southern California and the mountains it comes from have been suffering years-long droughts.  

And frankly, even if they weren’t in drought, we’d still need to cut back.  Southern Californians use too much water!

Gardens are our top water conservation opportunities.  One of the easiest ways to cut back on garden water is to get rid of your lawn.  

That’s why I teach “Bye Bye Grass.” Bye Bye Grass is a class that teaches you how to get rid of your lawn and what to do with the space once the grass is gone.  

My next class will be on  Thursday March 5 (6:30 to 8:30 pm) and Sunday March 8 (2 to 4 pm) at Quail Botanical Gardens (www.qbgardens.org) (Advance registration is required).

Hear me talking about the class and about low water landscape on this morning’s local news:  http://www.kusi.com/news/goodmorning/39567992.html

By the way, lest you think that no-grass gardens are dry and brown looking, nothing could be further from the truth! Look at these gardens….

A Suburban home that shed its front lawn

A colorful drought-tolerant flower border

Weather Report:  Last night’s low 35.9 F.  Today’s high: 81.4 F.  Precipitation: 0.

 What a glorious day!  Sunny, warm enough but not too warm, and I got to spend most of it gardening.  This morning was “garden club” at my children’s school. 

Several years ago, the school asked me to create a planting activity for a holiday celebration.  “Sure,” I said, “where’s the garden?”  Where was the garden indeed.  Seems that in the original plans for the school (this is a private school), there had been a garden, but by the time construction happened, the garden had fallen by the wayside.

Six years and hundreds of volunteer hours later, the school has a 5,000 square foot (more or less) garden that includes a butterfly garden (of course!), an herb garden,  raised bed planters for the lower school children, a greenhouse, a raised bed in the shape of California planted and replanted each year by the fourth graders as they study about the state, and so on. 

Everyone is invited to work in the garden on the first Sunday morning of the month.  This month being January, we gathered on the second Sunday.  Several adults and a bunch of kids showed up to weed, prune, water, and rake.  Once a month is never enough to keep the garden as clean or weeded as I’d like, but that’s as much time as I have.

That was the morning

The afternoon was working in my own garden, something that I seldom have time to do these days, between giving talks, teaching classes, scouting gardens for articles and TV shoots, writing books, designing gardens and the kazillion other things I do. 

I’m pretty excited, though, because for our next episode of A Growing Passion, my TV show, we’ll be focusing on home vegetable gardens.  One segment is on building raised beds and for that, we are going to build three new beds for my garden.

Most of the beds in my vegetable garden are nearly 15 years old.  Though my husband built them of redwood, they are now paper thin.  I found that out when, for the first time, a gopher got into one of the beds this past summer. 

I assumed that the wire mesh that lines each bed had rusted away, until I started digging out the tunnel to see where it went.  Much to my surprise, it went sideways (!) right through a piece of wood that sat just below the soil surface.    Clearly the bed had lived a good life that now, sadly, was over.

Replacing the beds, of course, means that I also have the opportunity to update the layout.  The entire vegetable garden is surrounded by a perimeter fence to keep out bunnies and, in the early years, kids, balls, and toys.  

The kids are teenagers now, but the rabbits are still here, so I still need that fence.  The space measures 24’ on each side and I’ve often regretted not making it larger. 

Because the rest of the garden grew up around the vegetable garden, I can’t really expand its size of, but by playing with the length and arrangement of the beds, I can just about double my planting space.  Now that’s exciting!

So, in preparation for tearing out the old beds, I had to empty them.  One of the 4’x 8’ beds were was filled with self-seeded leeks (if you grow leeks, leave one to go to seed and you’ll have leeks for years to come).  They were going into a big bed (4’ x 11’) built a few years back for a show on the DIY network.  

Digging and planting, digging and planting.  Two of my three favorite activities (the other is pruning).  

As the sun went down, I finished mulching the leeks with a thick layer of aged straw.  Funny thing, the leeks that took up about 4’ x 4’ self seeded expanded to just about fill the larger bed!

I can’t wait until the leeks are big enough to harvest.  When they are, I’ll make my family’s favorite leek recipe, braised leeks with lemon.  Yum!