It's Coming

As I walked around my garden today, assessing and planning, I felt it.  Flowers are unfurling, birds are mating, the air has a smell that means spring is on the way.

our peach tree - unknown variety

Fruit trees are in full riotous bloom. 

braising greens - different kinds of chard, beet greens, kale

Spinach (Regiment) and Carrots (Cosmic Purple)

The winter greens are growing fast now.

Trillium chloropetalum

Ranunculus californicus

Abutilon hybridum 'Red Princess'

Helleborus orientalis 'Pretty Ellen Purple'

I believe this is Geranium pratense 'Mrs. Kendall Clark"

The woodland garden is brightening up. 

Sidalica malviflora Checkerbloom

Solanium xanti Purple Nightshade

Felicia echinata

Teucrium fruticans Shrubby Germander

And the sunny spots are looking distinctly purple these days!

While eating lunch at the outdoor farm table, I watched the Pygmy Nuthatches chasing each other around in the wheat - I wonder if they are mating, or eating the seeds! I desperately want start planting and satisfied myself with getting 50 sunflowers in the ground - the varieties Sun Samba, Cinnamon Sun, and Chocolate Cherry. We'll see how they affect nearby plants. I also seeded the tomatoes inside under lights- only 32 varieties this year, some old favorites and some new ones - and potted up this year's peppers for the greenhouse.

Solstice is this weekend - WAIT - no it's not - wow I really AM feeling springy - just the time change happening this weekend. Well, anyway, what's doing in your garden?

March Wreath

Many common weather sayings, like "April Showers Bring May Flowers" and "March Comes In Like  Lion and Leaves Like A Lamb" don't really apply here in Northern California. Our showers come in the winter, mainly, and our spring comes early. Not so this year. We had a very dry winter, but we're experiencing a bit of a March Miracle as the rain has come down with a vengeance in the last week. Cold temps too, but it doesn't seem to stop the Mediterranean flowers from blooming.

Our March wreath is a testimony to that. Glorious rosemary, so fragrant. The whole house smells of it. This is that upright cultivar, Rosmarinus officinalis 'Tuscan Blue,' rather than the one that crawls on the ground, Rosmarinus officinalis 'Prostratus.' Both are nice, but the flowers in the prostrate form are more gray than blue, and I do like this lovely lavender blue color. I have both forms growing in the garden, but neither one blooms, probably because I'm always snipping it for cooking. I found this bunch in the border of our nearby open space.

Rosemary is in the mint family, Lamiaceae, and I've always liked the old story about it; the Virgin Mary is said to have spread her blue cloak over white-blossomed rosemary when she was resting, therefore giving it its color. 

My first-weekend-of-March-chores include starting tomato seeds indoors, reseeding some peppers that had germination troubles, and opening the bee hive sometime when it's not raining. What are your weekend gardening plans?

Swings

It seems like every day, there is some new crazy weather story. Temperature swings are now the norm. Here's just a couple things that I've read lately:

1) The arctic circle is experiencing a heat wave, over 32 degrees.

2) Los Angeles has had only one rain event in 365 days, and that netted .3". This is data coming from a scientist I've recently started following on twitter.

3) California's almond crop is in danger from freezes.

4) Early spring is expected in Washington DC.

5) Record warmth for the east coast, after an extremely tough and cold winter.

In our own experience, this winter has been crazier than usual. Firstly we got hardly any rain - Martinez (north of here), before our 'big' storm yesterday (more on that in a minute), had amassed only 7 inches according to the Contra Costa County Flood Control Dep't. In early February, we had a strange heat wave, with two weeks of soaring temperatures - it was 85 here in our yard one of those days. You know what happens when we get an early heat wave like that - everything starts blooming. Pears, plums, peaches, almonds - everything put on buds during that period and started to bloom. Then late February arrived, with below-freezing temperatures, very unusual for this area (our last frost date is February 15th). We had one morning of 28 degrees, several others of 30. 

Then, yesterday - hail. 

This is also extremely unusual for us. Even my teenaged kids went out and played in it (as much as teenagers can allow themselves to 'play') and took pictures. And this morning, on my trip to the post office, I was not surprised to see snow on Mt. Diablo, which usually happens a couple of times a year, but in December or January, never this late.

I swear, when that hail started, my first thought was "oh no, the wheat!" and when I texted Tom that it was hailing, he texted back, "oh no, the wheat!" So far it seems ok this morning, but my goodness, it really brings home how hard it is for people who make their living growing crops, and how their entire yearly income can be destroyed by one weather event. I have serious respect for farmers, who constantly experience what it's like to sometimes have zero control over outcomes. 

Seems to me that climate change is beyond obvious, and it always surprises me when certain folks deny that it's happening. I really feel that it is time to start thinking and planning for the future - the near future - when it becomes even more extreme. Do you agree? If so, in what ways are you preparing?

Meanwhile, a reminder about native bees. Even though we all love mulch (and there's lots of reasons to love mulch!), remember to leave some areas of your yard uncovered. This allows our native bees to make their nests and raise their young, underground. Before this cold snap, I noticed a lot of native bee activity, so they'll be emerging for good soon. Also, leaving a little dish of water out for pollinators is helpful; make sure it's shallow, and put some rocks, broken pottery, or sticks in it so that the bees don't drown. If you're worried about mosquitos, just change out the water every 1-2 days (and throw the old water in the garden somewhere - in other words, don't waste it).  And speaking of emerging creatures, Vector Control recommends putting out yellow jacket traps around now, to try and catch the queens before they lay babies. I find that this brand is the only one that really works.

Now I'm off to do some homework. I have one class that requires me to memorize 250 trees by Latin and common names, and family names. Spelling is crucial. I can definitely feel my brain working hard when I'm studying these trees. Hopefully the knowledge will stick for the rest of my life, and I'll be an ace at identifying both native and imported trees!

Four-Egg Days

Did you know that eggs are seasonal?

Usually, during the winter, older chickens take some time off laying. Then, when the days start to grow longer, some sort of internal timer goes 'ding!' and they start laying again. And oh, when they do, happy day.

We have six chickens, two of whom are done laying for good and need to be 'taken care of' (insert mental picture of me drawing my finger across my throat). But the other four, two of whom are older, and two of whom are younger, are all laying regularly again. This is great news, because it means eggs are back on the menu. We love them scrambled with diced bacon, fresh greens from the garden, and a little turmeric. We love frittatas with leeks and herbs from the garden, broiled with a little parmesan on top for salty color. We love chocolate pudding made with the bright, fresh, orange yolks. Having eggs again is like being rich.

Have your chickens started laying again? What are your favorite egg dishes?

Sunflowers

We can all agree that sunflowers are beautiful, but I'd like to propose that they are also one of the most complicated and interesting flowers on this planet. 

We admire them for their height, their large inflorescence, their cheerful presence, their ability to move in a breeze and make the garden dance.

But they also have attributes, both good and bad, that make them extremely fascinating. Let's go through them one by one and discuss.

1) Sunflowers track the sun.

You may have witnessed young sunflowers following the sun with their heads (this is called heliotropism), but it wasn't until 2016 that scientists discovered the why and how of this process. They determined that sunflowers, like humans, have a circadian rhythm, a behavioral cycle tied to an internal clock. But the plant's 'turning' is actually different sides of the stem elongating at different times of day.  This has to do with a plant hormone called 'auxin,' which does a lot of neat things, like assert apical dominance, but also elongates cells on different side of the stems at different times of day. 

Here's a neat video that explains this process very simply:

2) Pollinators love sunflowers.

We all know sunflowers are great for bees. Honeybees collect both pollen and nectar from the flowers, but native bees are actually more efficient pollinators of sunflowers. Here's why: Honeybees tend to forage either nectar or pollen on a single foraging trip, which means they visit different flowers on the sunflower inflorescence, neglecting others; native bees collect both nectar and pollen on foraging trips, ensuring cross-pollination. This is due to the kind of flower this plant makes, which I will discuss in the next point. But if you'd like to see more about this, you can check out this page from the Xerces Society. 

3) An odd, interesting, cool flower

Sunflowers bear a type of inflorescence called a 'capitula,' which is actually composed of two different kind of flowers: Ray and disk. The inside of the sunflower is comprised of a lot of little tiny flowers called 'disk' flowers. Each has five tiny petals that are fused into a cup-like structure, 5 stamens (male parts), and a pistil (female parts). Each disk flower makes one seed. On the outside of the flower, the things that look like petals are called 'ray' flowers. They have all five petals fused to make one huge petal, and they also have five stamens and a pistil, and make one seed. This is a feature of all plants in the Asteraceae family, though each species can have vary in the amount of ray and disk flowers it has. 

Photo credit: Smith College

4) Allelopathy

Here's one of the not-so-great features of sunflowers. They are allelopathic, which means they exude chemicals that act as herbicides to the surrounding plants. All parts of the sunflower - seeds, hulls, leaves, flower petals, roots, root exudates - act this way, and can inhibit the growth of other species. Many plants do this - you might be familiar with the allelopathic qualities of walnut, for instance - and it ensures survival of their species, which is a good thing. But it's not a good thing for us gardeners, as we usually want to grow sunflowers mixed in with other, lower plants. Apparently grasses, potatoes, and beans are particularly susceptible, but I have noticed that even native wildflowers will not grow well around sunflowers. 

Which is why I vowed, last year, to stop growing them, as a gardening friend reminded me when he saw pictures of 200 sunflowers in my 'greenhouse.'

Usually I add sunflower seeds to my wildflower seed mixes and broadcast into the pollinator gardens. I never have good luck with this, because most of the sunflower seeds get eaten by birds or squirrels immediately. This is why I decided to germinate the seeds inside the greenhouse this year instead of directly in the garden. But I also have noticed that, in the areas where a sunflower does manage to germinate and grow, there is little growth around it. 

What I have discovered in my research that the allelopathic compounds in sunflowers especially affect the germination rates of other seeds. So, if the other seeds have already germinated in the pollinator gardens (and they have), and I've already got the sunflower growing well in cups in the greenhouse (I do), it might work to add these plants in and see how the other plants do around them. But, do I really want to take that chance? I'm just not sure. I might plant a couple in with other things just to see for myself what happens to more mature plants. But the bulk of these sunflowers are going to be planted in an area with no other plants around them, I think. 

What about you? Do you grow sunflowers? Have you noticed this affect? Do you see lots of bees on your flowers? Have you seen sunflowers tracking the sun? Do you love these flowers as much as I do?