Garden Master & Author David King At Santa Monica College on March 27

CONTACT:   Bruce Smith                                              FOR IMMEDIATE RELEASE

                        Public Information Officer                       DATE: March 12, 2012

                        (310) 434-4209                                          www.smc.edu

“SEEDS: LOCAL & GLOBAL” AT SMC MARCH 27

         Santa Monica College is pleased to present a free lecture, “Seeds: Local and Global,” by garden master and author David King on Tuesday, March 27 in Humanities & Social Science Lecture Hall 165 on the main campus, 1900 Pico Blvd.

         King is the founder of the Seed Library of Los Angeles and garden master of TheLearning Garden at Venice High School. An engaging and popular garden speaker, he is also a noted garden blogger and author of the forthcoming book, “Growing Food in Southern California: What to Do and When to Do It.”

         The Seed Library of Los Angeles was established to facilitate the growth of open-pollinated seeds among residents of the Los Angeles basin. The library is building a seed collection and repository, educating members about the practice of seed saving, and creating a local community of seed-saving gardeners

         King’s talk is sponsored by the SMC Global Citizenship Council, SMC Center for Environmental Studies and SMC Club Grow.

         For information, please call 310-434-3911.

The Southern California Garden in March

March. Baseball teams are in Spring Training in Florida and Arizona. Tomatoes are growing in a protected location with 'bottom heat' so they can be set out in the garden close to the end of April.

We've all heard the old saying about March coming in like a lamb and going out like a lion, or is it coming in like a lion and going out like a lamb? Whatever the exact saying, it correctly alludes to March as a more schizophrenic month; certainly a truism as far as gardening goes. On one hand, we are still tending our winter vegetables, cabbages, broccoli, cauliflower, and lettuce, while on the other we need to be planning on what we will soon be eating in summer.

Those of us on the coast can continue to plant more winter vegetables if we haven't had our fill of all those cabbage family plants. I usually find I can grow winter vegetables right on into late May in most years. Some of the winter veggies will 'oversummer' for us; leeks, fennel, chard and kale will hold on in most summers although they can look downright ratty once our June Gloom has left us.

Royal Purple Pod beans can be planted even in February, certainly by mid-March, I'll have a row growing. This is the only bean that will germinate in cold, wet soil and they are worth growing even later. I have had good production from my Royal Purple Pod beans even when snails have decimated the leaves, they taste great and turn a deep green when they are cooked. All other beans, in most years, will need to be planted no sooner than late March or early April because of their need for warmer soil.

You can buy tomato starts in March, but I wouldn't want to plant them out until later in the month. Tomatoes will survive cool soil, but they will only thrive in warmer soil. If you want to grow tomatoes from seed, I usually sow mine in February. I start them in a location sheltered from insects, but still in direct sun – I use a grow mat that warms the soil to about 70° so the tomatoes get off to a good start – I sow basil the same way at the same time. Other summer crops I start in pots to be transplanted later, including peppers, eggplants and okra, need more heat so I don't even mess with those until after mid-March. They will be ready to plant out into the garden come the first of May (allow about 6 weeks to get them up, up and away).

I'm awfully fond of lettuce. One of my Summer rituals is making a big production out of the First BLT of the Year with the L and the T coming from my garden – if I'm lucky I'll have also baked the bread myself too. The hard part is getting the L and the T to cooperate with the vagaries of weather. Tomatoes love heat and to really fruit they need temperatures above 84° while most lettuce is positively allergic to temperatures above 75°. There are some varieties of lettuce bred to be less heat sensitive – Jericho and Summertime are the two I'm most familiar with – look for them in seed catalogs and try planting lettuce plants north of taller plants to give them more shade.

In a fit of fanaticism, I once grew lettuce year round. I created a bed just for lettuce. I stapled a copper snail barrier to keep those salad lovers out to my wooden raised bed, and set up a series of little misters to spray the plants twice a day with a cooling mist. But the most significant feature was an old window screen (frame and all), resting over the plants on four 18” wooden stakes (easily purchased at a local garden supply store). The screen proved to be the most effective part of the whole operation. I was able to grow lettuce thru the brutal Californian summer right on into the middle of October, when a heat wave and an irrigation failure contrived together to completely fry the remaining plants. Fried lettuce has about the same appeal as month old sushi. If you want lettuce all summer you might give this – or some of this – a spin in your garden.

March is a month filled with activity – daylight savings time now starts at the end of the second week and boy do gardeners need that extra hour! Look at what you have in the ground and begin to imagine full size tomato, pepper, eggplant and basil plants growing there. Try to contain yourself and get a reasonable view of what you really can plant. Check out the suggested planting spaces on the plants you want; measure to see how many you can reasonably accommodate. No, don't multiply by four! (We all do it anyway, don't we?)

Now that we've gotten ourselves into the garden and have a few things growing, I want you to begin to think about your soil. Here's a lovely little exercise that will tell you more about your garden soil: Dig into a place in your garden, going down about nine inches. Try to get below any mulch and get into the area where the roots will live. Get approximately a cup's worth of soil and put it in a pint container. Add a tablespoon of alum, you can find a lifetime supply in the spice section of any supermarket. Fill to within ½ inch of the top with water and shake vigorously. Allow this to stand for at least an hour, but 24 hours is better. Now observe what you have in your jar.

Observe carefully without disturbing the water too much. You will see that the soil has self-sorted into layers. The bottom layer is sand. The middle layer is called silt or loam and on top there is a layer of clay. The water should be clear, any floating debris in the water is mulch or compost material called organic matter.

The thickness of the separate layers define your soil. If sand is the predominate layer, your soil is sandy and will not hold water or nutrients. If clay is the thick layer, you will need a large dose of patience because your soil is hard to work, but is more fertile than the sandy soil. If your middle layer is the fat one, your soil is the dream of those on either side of you and you should play the lottery more often because you are blessed with good fortune! Most of us, though will experience the two dominant layers operating together to create our own unique set of opportunities and problems.

Every characteristic of clay soil is the opposite of a sandy soil. Silt is the 'silent majority' of the soil community. We all want silty soil. Few of us have it.

Looking at this chart, you can see if you have a sandy soil, you will need to water more than a neighbor with a clay soil; like wise you will have to consider more nutrients because your soil won't store them. You will be able to plant earlier in the spring because your soil will be warmer than a clay soil, but you'll need to add a lot more organic matter more frequently. It isn't good or bad, it's just different.

Characteristics of Soil Components

Property/Behavior	Sand	Silt	Clay
Water holding	Low	Medium +	High
Aeration	Good	Medium	Poor
Drainage rate	High	Medium	Slow/Very slow
Soil organic matter	Low	Medium +	High
Decomposition of organic matter	Rapid	Medium	Slow
Speed of warming	Rapid	Medium	Slow
Compactability	Low	Medium	High
Storage of nutrients	Low	Medium	High
Resistance to pH change	Low	Medium	High

Sandy soil will more readily forgive mistakes of too much fertilizer, too much water and so on because it holds nothing for any length of time. Not even a grudge.

A clay soil is higher in nutrients for plants and takes less water to get a crop. But screw up with clay soil and it holds grudges for a lot longer. If you even walk on clay soil when it is wet, you can create clods that will haunt you as you try to plant later in the year.

Neither, though is ideal. Silt, in the middle, is what gardeners dream about. A soil that is neither too much clay and is therefore easier to work nor too sandy that holds no nutrients for the garden crop. If you have too much sand or too much clay, take heart, I have a solution in two words:

organic matter

Organic matter is any material that used to be a plant. Technically, it is anything that used to be living, but I would rather you skip disposing of the bodies of your victims until you get to be a much better gardener. Stick to plant material for now.

Yes, compost is one of the organic materials you can add to your soil, but it's not all. Anything that used to be a plant is fine. My preference is for slightly unfinished compost. And I'm glad you asked why, because I am dying to explain it.

Finished compost is delicious. I love the stuff – but UNfinished compost has chunks in it that you can identify what it used to be – it hasn't quite broken down completely. This material still needs critters of all sizes to finish into a dark unidentifiable compost. Those critters are the key to soil fertility. They are multi-celled animals like earthworms or they are fungi or bacteria or critters that are a little of both, 'actinomycetes.' Penicillin is one of the actinomycetes – and that smell of good garden soil that smells musty and sweet? That smell is the smell of actinomycetes. We want to have all these creatures in the soil because the plants derive the nutrition from them that past generations have tried to add with various fertilizers.

I don't have any scientific proof, but I do know from many years of gardening, we are being asked to buy a lot more stuff than we need. You will get big beautiful tomatoes if you use all those expensive fertilizers, but it's not a sustainable model and you'll get good tomatoes without the expenditures and you'll save money. If you go about using fertilizers, I think the fertilizers either kill off the actinomycetes and fungi in the soil, or make your garden a very inhospitable environment for them, I'm not sure which, but I am sure that the addition of fertilizer in the long term ruins the fertility of your soil. And I believe this is true about chemical and organic fertilizers alike, although, organic fertilizers tend to be milder and therefore less harmful than the chemical ones.

A few fertilizers, though are the exception. I have used, and if I need to, I will use again, including  alfalfa meal and cottonseed meal. Alfalfa meal has nitrogen, but is noted for inspiring rather than hindering microbial activity in the soil. I have used it in the beginning of the summer garden as the soil begins to warm. I used to use it all the time, but got lazy and now only use it when I think I need to get things rolling.

Cottonseed meal is a provider of nitrogen and somehow seems to release the nitrogen over a long period of time, unlike most fertilizers that seem to have only a very short beneficial effect. If you elect to use cottonseed meal, go out of your way to find organic cottonseed meal – the commercial cotton crops are doused with unending amounts of chemicals, and many of the commercial fields are planted with genetically modified cotton these days. I haven't used cottonseed meal for about 6 years, although if I was putting corn into a soil that had marginal fertility, I would not hesitate to use it.

Look at the list below. If you haven't yet, get orders off to the seed companies to get your seeds for the summer. Get cracking now and you'll reap huge rewards this summer!

Warm Season Vegetables

Basil

Lettuce Leaf, Genovese,

Beans - drying

Black Turtle, Cannellini, Hutterite Soup, Jacob's Cattle

Beans – Lima

Christmas

Beans- snap

Roc d’Or, Romano, Royal Burgundy, Romano, Blue Lake

Sweet Corn

Golden Bantam, Stowells Evergreen, County Gentleman

Cucumbers

Lemon, Mideast Prolific, Japanese, Armenian

Eggplant

Pingtung Long, Rosa Bianca

Melons

Jenny Lind, Ambrosia, Hales Best, Golden Midget, Small Shining Light

Okra

Star of David, Clemson Spineless

Peppers (Sweet)

Banana, Pimento, Cubanelle, Marconi,

Peppers (Hot)

Ancho, Corno di Toro, Anaheim, Jalapeno

Pumpkins

Small Sugar, Howden

Squash (Summer)

Zahra, Lebanese White, Black Beauty, Yellow Crookneck

Squash (Winter)

Sweet Dumpling, Red Kuri, Queensland Blue, Musquee de Provence

Tomatillo

Purple de Milpa

Tomatoes

Black from Tula, Juane Flamme, San Marzano, Black Krim, Stupice and millions of others!

Start These In Containers	Start These In The Ground	Move to the Ground from Containers
More tomatoes	Still some of the	Ultra-early tomatoes
Peppers	Winter veggies	Lettuce, cilantro,
Eggplants Basil	Beets, radishes, lettuce, cilantro	Any perennial herb (marjoram, oregano, etc)
Summer squash	Purple beans (early)
Winter squash (late in the month)	Green beans (later)

Refer to the text for exact dates.

Beets In Orange Juice

By now you should have the beginnings of a beet harvest – and if you've followed my lead and put in some Golden beets, these sweet treats from the garden can be treated nicely this way. Other beets will stand in readily, but the golden beets in the juice is exquisite.

With the beets sliced into thick slices, I parboil them to the point their skins will slip off easily, and they are just beginning to be soft enough to eat. They usually have to cool quite a bit, but once you can handle them, slip the skins off and compost.

Put the beet slices in a skillet with orange juice. Add a little cinnamon or other spice you think will compliment the beets and saute until tender.

Serve as a side dish to a simple, earthy meal. They are fantastic.

The Garden In February

Summer's harvest from last year include these gorgeous peppers (what did I plant last year?) and San Marzano tomatoes. Both were prolific and delicious. When summer is over, I don't want to touch another tomato, but by February, I'm gearing up for a fresh BLT!

The short days of winter are getting perceptibly longer. We are half way to the Spring Equinox, which is half way to the Summer Solstice. These dates were vitally important in an agrarian cultures and as one gets more involved in gardening, it is easy to see the reasons that made these dates important to people dependent on agriculture. Knowing what to do and when to do to it in their garden was necessary to avoid starvation.

Valentines' Day marks my traditional weekend for starting my tomato crop for the coming year. I've become accustomed to it coming a bit modified to a bit earlier, but whenever I do my main crop of tomatoes, I sow plenty of basil seeds at the same time – they grow together as much as they eat well together. I have been seduced into starting an earlier crop of short-season tomatoes, lately. Territorial Seed Company has a list of 'ultra-early' tomatoes with names like Glacier and Northern Delight with 'Days to Harvest' of something like 56 days. They grow to a plant about 18 inches high and produce tomatoes about 2½” in diameter – what I call a 'saladette' tomato – that are very tomatoey and tangy – more tangy than I like, but for the first tomato of the year, who's going to bellyache about that? I've even started these little fellows around the first of January! Whenever you start tomatoes, and whatever tomatoes you use, the procedures are about the same. Just remember that most tomatoes, with these ultra-early tomatoes being the exception, don't like to be planted into cold soil so wait until your soil has warmed (to about 65° at minimum!) before setting most tomatoes into your garden.

One method of starting tomatoes I have done in the past used fluorescent tubes about 6 inches above the pots for the beginnings of tomatoes. This is opposed to starting them outside with a heating mat underneath to keep the roots warm and, if you have some sunny spot for them I found this works well enough. Peppers and eggplant, needing more heat, are started about 2 weeks later in the first week of March. All seedlings cannot be allowed to dry out and must be protected from predation, it doesn't take even a small critter (snails and slugs or tomato hornworms) many bites to remove an entire plant when they are as small as this. More on the seed starting indoors shortly.

About a week after Valentine has shot his arrow, start the first summer squash (zucchini and the crooknecks) seeds. I usually also start a couple plants of cucumbers right about then too. I wait until the Ides of March before starting winter squashes (the hard skin type that are best eaten after being stored for time). These first plants may struggle if the ground hasn't warmed, but that's OK, we'll balance that out by starting a few more of each later.

Most of these big-leaved, vining plants like squash and cucumbers get a whitish powdery look long before they are done producing. This is called 'powdery mildew.' It is a fungus that gets on almost all of these plants and causes them to live a shorter life than they would without it. Until I find varieties that are resistant to it, I simply grow another plant to fill in when the first one succumbs. I don't spray for it because it seems a waste of time to me; if you spray, you must spray constantly and I just don't see it as being efficacious. I accept that the plants will get mildew and will die because of it and I make plans accordingly: Zucchini #1, funeral on July 8^th. Zucchini #2, funeral on August 29^th. Clear your calendar for composting service. Frankly any more zucchini than that is more than any person ought to have.

Come February, I start thinking “baseball,” which will be right around the corner. (“Wait until next year”, is the universal call among gardeners and baseball players everywhere!) Dodger Spring training starts next month and I'll begin to reacquaint myself as to who is with us and who has been traded and is now agin us. Win or lose, I’ll be out in my garden soon, radio in hand. Something about that baseball optimism that dovetails nicely with my gardening optimism. You don’t have to “think baseball,” but I do and it lifts my spirit in this slight lull before the summer garden gets up to bat. It's one of my favorite traditions.

With any amount of luck, February is our rainiest month which means we won’t need to be watering all that much. I have more or less permanently built up beds with paths between them, so walking through a wet garden isn’t that big of a deal. If your garden isn’t laid out like that, take care not to walk through the parts of the garden you intend plant when it’s thoroughly soaked. Your footprints will compact the soil and cause needless grief later when the soil has dried out. Especially in clay soil.

February is the last month we will want to prune dormant fruit trees. One cannot plan that they won’t have broken dormancy any later than this. See flowers? Or leaves? That’s “broken dormancy” in a nutshell, the sap is running inside the tree and pruning after that drains more of the tree's vitality – mind you pruning late won’t kill your tree, some folks do this kind of pruning regularly – it’s my preference to do my pruning with the least harm to the tree and for me, that means before the sap begins to run and that means December or January in my Zone 24 climate. I have learned over the last few years that my nectarine and peach trees break dormancy first and I need to consider pruning them in late November/early December. But I've proven that procrastination has its benefits! I find I can use the flowering branches for bouquets and I've got no shortage of nectarines! I'm thinning that tree incessantly, even with a hard pruning. Lateness hasn't stopped any tree I know from producing!

Don’t forget to deal with slugs and snails. In these wet, cooler months, these destructive little mollusks multiply with alarming proficiency and present huge problems. You cannot get rid of them forever. They are migratory, so even if you could rid yourself of every single one in your garden on Tuesday, you'd have a whole new supply by Friday from next door. And more on Saturday. It can be a discouraging thought! However, the only real way to deal with these transients is with persistent effort. You deal with today's snails today and leave tomorrow's snails to tomorrow. Sounds like something I heard before, maybe in yoga class?

Some gardeners keep a five gallon bucket on hand with soapy water in it (one of those plastic buckets you see in a hardware store's paint department – cheap and rust free) and drop the critters in for a quick death. Others put a board down with one end slightly raised. Slugs and snails will congregate there and can be simply crushed with one swift footfall. Good for the soul. And soil. A fairly new product, 'Escar-go' is on the market and is non-toxic to mammals (you, your children and dogs and cats etc), and actually benefits the soil. Slugs and snails eat it and die. Probably not as humane as crushing them, but more acceptable in polite society.

No matter what you do, you will probably always have problems with snails and slugs in our climate unless you are fortunate to have a possum on hand. These homely, if not downright ugly, members of the rat family (look at the tail) consume slugs (mostly) and will resort to snails if hungry enough. I am fortunate that The Learning Garden is blessed with a possum or two that have negated any need to bait or board for snails and slugs. I also avoid growing the Oriental cabbages and greens (sheer delight for snails and slugs) and savoy cabbage; slugs, more so than snails, love to live in between the crinkles in these plants and it can take gallons of water and lots of time to remove all that extra protein from dinner before you serve it (I have always found doing this after you serve it to have undesirable repercussions!)

Broccoli is being harvested, along with cauliflower, cabbage (clean those slugs!), peas, scallions, carrots, radishes, beets, new potatoes, chard, kale, and lettuces by the bushel. The garden looks stellar at this time of year, it is bursting with produce of deep green, blue green, punctuated with red and yellow (chard) flags. Heads of broccoli and cabbage show off their refulgent harvest, while the tops of carrots and beets peek out from their cool soil homes. Peas hang delightfully from those bright green plants, with colorful poppies in outrageous bloom and the honey scent of sweet pea flowers in their lovely pastel colors wafts on cool breezes across the garden. Freesias are towards the end of their bloom cycle (there's another heady scent!) with narcissus blooms standing tall.

Don't stop planting lettuce, I will continue to start seeds of lettuce right up through May. I have it easy being so close to the Pacific Ocean – here, cool season plantings can stretch through all months except late July through late September. Warm season crops aren't nearly so flexible because our night temperatures don't get all that high – the soil is cool and hardly gets warmed up enough for the summer crops until July.

The real summer garden begins to take shape next month...

Tomatoes. However you say it, cucumbers and tomatoes are the number one plants gardeners think of when they think “Summer Garden.” There are more varieties of tomatoes than there are potholes in the greater Los Angeles area. Just check out the offerings of the members of Seed Savers Exchange: They list page after page of tomatoes. Tomatoes come early, mid-season or late. Tomatoes are cherry, saladette, plum and beefsteak as well as black, cream, green, red, striped, yellow and many shades in between. Tomatoes come as plain ol' tomatoes or heirloom, and (had enough choices?) determinate and indeterminate. It's a complete overwhelm of choice. Determinate tomatoes are similar in growth to bush beans, giving you short plants that bear all at once (more or less), while indeterminate are like pole beans that bear over a long stretch and get quite large to boot.

Here are a few common varieties I've grown for you to consider:

Cherry Tomatoes

Sweet 100 – a great productive and sweet little red tomato that is as dependable as a beach day in July.

Orange Sunshine – lots and lots of very sweet little tomatoes!

Yellow Pear – a lot of folks like these, but I think they are mushy. Very productive though.

Golden Nugget – a ton of cream colored little guys that are sweet with low acid – always a bonus in my book.

Ultra-early Tomatoes (less than 65 days from transplant to fruit, under good conditions)

Glacier – sounds like an odd name for a tomato, but it's one of several bred to grow under non-tomato conditions – cool and wet. Produces a saladette sized tomato that is punchy tart but tastes more like a tomato that most the hybrids in the store.

Northern Delight – as above and I've had good production with it. Look also for Beaverpole Lodge tomatoes, bred to grow in Canada! A great way to get the jump on tomato season.

Saladette

Jaune Flammee – a lovely bi-colored tomato (give it something to climb on!) that is red outside and gold inside – good tasting and beautiful!

Green Zebra – yup, it's ripe when it's green. I think they are little too acidic, but plenty of my friends like 'em.

Moonglow - Solid orange meat, few seeds and wonderful flavor. A favorite of any one who grows it.

Black from Tula – not really 'black,' but a very deep red. Delicious, though not a heavy producer – the skin is so thin I think it's best to take your plate and fork to the garden and eat it right at the plant!

Stupice – a small early plant that is worth growing because they also taste good and come in quick!

Plum (or paste tomatoes, my favorites!)

Black Plum – almost a mahogany tomato – tasty and meaty, an indeterminate tomato that produces quite nicely

Cream Sausage - A unique colored variety with creamy white to light yellow sausage-shaped fruit, very productive bushy plants do not require staking; a really different tomato sauce!

San Marzano – the most productive of the paste tomatoes and the biggest plant in this class of tomato – a very good, standard production tomato for paste tomatoes.

Striped Roman – a beautiful tomato on the vine and on your plate! Rich red flesh with streaks of gold in it. I've not made a paste with this one yet, they didn't last that long! But look for me to say more about them in the future!

Beefsteak

Brandywine – the taste that everyone is looking for in a big tomato, winner of many different taste tests. We can't really grow them very well in West Los Angeles because they need 85 F through the night as well as the day. Pasadena and other points inland can grow them, though.

German Johnson – a large pink tomato that is really juicy and yummy.

Mortgage Lifter – there's a great story about the name of this tomato I'll tell you at a cocktail party one of these days. For now, I'll say it tastes great and is not less filling, a lovely juicy tomato that rates.

Persimmon – this is the largest tomato I've ever grown in West Los Angeles. One sliced tomato could fill two dinner plates with meaty orange/yellow slices. However, the six foot plus plants only gave me one tomato each! Way too much space even though they were the sweetest and tastiest tomato I've had the pleasure of growing.

You'll notice I didn't include any of the Best Boy or Early Girl or other common hybrids. It is true they are productive and will give you a good crop of bright red fruits, but I think they are too acidic and have tough skin, so I don't grow them at all. There are so many delicious tomatoes in this world, to stick to those few seems silly to me. I grow my standards (San Marzano, Jaune Flammee, Black Plum and Garden Peach) but I always experiment with some new tomatoes every year! Plant lots of basil and marigolds at the same time you plant your tomatoes as they make good companion plants.

And now is when you want to begin to start seeds for your summer garden, if you have a protected place to sow the seeds. You don't need a greenhouse or a cold frame, though both of these can help. It is possible to start seeds in an apartment without any decent balcony space. I did it for a good many years as I bounced from tiny apartment to tiny apartment. Come February, I religiously put seeds of my regular tomato crop and lots of basil under the lights.

By the way, it is a law of nature, Lord knows I don't make this stuff up, but if you need one plant of something, start seeds for six! If you start one seed, it will day – might be loneliness, I don't know, but it won't survive. However, if you grow six, they will all live. Give the other five away, you'll make other people happy and there is no better way to make yourself happy. Works with other things too, not just plants.

If you have a little space – Lord knows I didn't have too much! – you can start seeds on a table indoors. All you need is an inexpensive 'shop light' fixture – usually you can find them for right around $20 – add a couple of cheap 'cold' fluorescent bulbs – you CAN pay more, as much as $20 for 'full-spectrum' bulbs, but you don't need them for growing seedlings. If you were growing plants under the lights to full maturity, springing for the extra oomph of bulbs that have more of the light spectrum is useful, but for the quick trip your seedlings will have before they go out doors, getting more expensive lights is a waste of money. The cheap bulbs are called 'cold' light because they have a preponderance of cold – blue spectrum – light. They will need to be close to your seedlings, but that won't be a problem.

I used bricks to prop the lights up to the height I needed for my seedlings – you might find other, more attractive solutions. My choice was based on what I had lying around for free and bricks it was. To raise the lights required adding a brick to each end – it wasn't pin point control, but it worked.

Florescent lights do not distribute light equally along their length. The center has the most light and the ends the least. They also begin to loose effectiveness as soon as you start to use them. I think three years is all you can get from a florescent bulb even though it will still be putting out light. Your seedlings will get leggier when the bulb fails to put out sufficient light and it's a sign that it's time to move on.

The surface where this is placed needs to be waterproof. In addition to watering your plants, I frequently misted mine (sometimes I got them twice a day; which was my goal, but I made my goal infrequently). One of the hardships we place on indoor plants is the lack of humidity in our homes. Misting helps mitigate that. In addition, some of your watering will inevitably spill over making a waterproof surface essential – or, if not waterPROOF, at least water-impervious. You don't want to warp an antique dresser or something.

Set the lights as close to the plants as you can and raise them only just before the plants begin to touch them. I had my lights on a timer that turned them on at 6:00 AM and off at midnight. Why so many hours of 'sunlight?' Because the bulbs are so much less bright than sunshine, they need to be on a long time to fulfill the plants' needs.

In addition, I provided my plants with a small fan. It was one of those oscillating fans which would blow on the plants as it swept back and forth the length of the trays. This accomplishes several things. It makes for stronger plants; swaying in the breeze builds a stronger stem and helps create a stockier plant. The circulating air also keeps fungus at bay – especially the fungus called 'damping off.' This is a killer of baby seedlings that has broken a lot of gardener's hearts. You say goodnight to your babies that are lovely little guys in the evening and come back to say 'good morning' in the dawn only to find your little fellows all 'cut' off at the soil surface.

They are not really 'cut.' They have been attacked by the damping off fungus (which is actually any of about seven different fungi) and the stem, just where it emerges from the soil, has been turned to mush, hence the seedling keels over as though it was cut off and lies there with no chance of resuscitation. Sad to say, your plant children are goners. In your mind, hear Taps being played.

All for the want of that little fan that would have helped mitigate the fungus. You don't NEED the oscillating type – if that proves to be expensive or difficult to find in the size you want, the kind that doesn't oscillate will work as well. You will need to turn it on and turn it off a couple of times in a day to approximate the oscillating. You want the stems to 'work against' the wind to build strength. And the on/off, though a little more time consuming, does work.

Another part of seed starting is to use a potting mix that favors the seedling. I have found a simple combination of peat and vermiculite (very fine perlite works too). One part of peat for each part of vermiculite gives a person a very lovely seed starting mix that will hold a lot of water and get the seeds sprouted. It is not wise to leave them in this water-retentive mix much beyond their first true leaf stage if you can help it. If you are not doing a lot of plants from seed, you can also use a regular good potting soil and get out any big chunks of anything by sifting it through a riddle. Really fine seeds like snapdragons may require you to screen the potting soil down to a very fine size, but most seeds can survive pretty good in a coarsely sifted potting soil.

By starting your own seeds at home, you will have a staggering number of choices for all your garden plants! The ones offered by the nursery pale in comparison to what you can have – and you will have access to all the new varieties before your neighbors will because the seeds are often introduced before the plants. Nurserymen don't like to plant millions of a new variety of anything that hasn't proven successful all over, where seedsmen will want to have their seeds trialed all over the country. It's fun to be able to show off what you grew THIS year to your neighbor who won't have access to the same plant in a nursery for at least one year, if not more! Purple and yellow cauliflowers come to mind. As does my Genovese basil which I was growing for almost ten years before everyone realized that this was one of the best basils for pesto.

Starting your own plants at home is also a better ecological choice. 2009 was a tomato disaster in the eastern United States. The problem stemmed from all tomatoes for sale in all eastern seaboard nurseries were started in the south eastern US and somewhere down there, at least some of the plants became infected with a fungus called “Late Blight.” From the initial infected plants placed in the nurseries alongside other plants, quickly most plants were infected. This caused the highest mortality among the tomato population seen in recent years. Those folks that grew their own plants avoided complete devastation. One friend started all his own plants from seed and could see a good harvest coming along. He had a few empty spaces in his garden and, on a whim, bought a couple more plants from a chain store nursery to fill in. Those purchased plants died fairly soon after being transplanted – and some of his healthy home-grown plants got infested before he realized what was happening. A good gardener and a quick thinker, he destroyed all the infected plants and was able to prevent the spread to the few remaining uninfected plants. He still got some tomatoes, but many of his neighbors had complete failure. Growing your own saves that from becoming an issue. Maybe with a little extra effort you could provide seedlings for your neighborhood?

Growing plants from seed is not hard. Most books and seed packets will tell you the depth at which to put the seed making it sound like they have access to the Holy Grail of seed planting. Most of that is something akin to hogwash. There are many different depths at which to plant a seed depending on a lot of factors so ignore those depths. Let me tell you, in containers, the rule is always, better too shallow than too deep. If you plant too shallow, you can always add more potting soil around your little guys, or plant them deeper when you transplant, but if you plant too deep, you'll never see them again. Sowing seeds in the ground is a little more complicated, I’ll get to that!

With your shallowly planted seeds, it is imperative that you keep that top layer of soil moist. It need not be wet, but constantly moist. This is very different from how you will water your regular garden, which should be much less frequently and much more thorough.

Soil is put in the six packs and pressed down, not so hard as pushing it out the bottom, but don't be faint on it either. I want it in the cell up to about an eighth of an inch from the top and just barely springy. For smaller seeds, like tomatoes, basil, peppers, eggplants and even up to okra (planted in late March), I will put up to five seeds per cell of the six-pack, putting one seed in each corner of each cell and one in the center. If the seed is not fresh, I might even put in more. Using a light pinch of soil I cover the seeds only after I've made out a plant tag for the six pack. The tag should read with the date across the top (i.e. 02/04), then turn the tag counter-clockwise and write the type of plant (i.e. Tomato) and underneath, the variety (Glacier – an ultra-early tomato and why I can start it on 02/04).

If you write your tags this way all the time you will find it easier to look at what you've grown consistently without your head tossing back and forth to make up for tags written clockwise, followed by counter-clockwise. And if you ever work in a nursery, you won't be fired the first day for being backwards.

Little seedlings do not need fertilizer, in fact fertilizer can damage them. Not until after they have their first true leaves do you need concern with any fertilizer. At that point, I would use a solution of fish emulsion at about half the strength the directions say. Don't over do it.

Once your plants have sprouted and are beginning to put on their second set of true leaves, you must begin to harden them off. Place them outside in a protected location – in fairly deep shade of a tree, for example, and move them slowly closer to full sun a bit at a time, getting them into full sun in about a week. If you don't have a tree like that, the other choice is to put them out in full sun for two hours on the first day, four hours on the second, six hours on the third and so on until they are out in the sun for the whole day. Or, you can put them under some shade cloth and begin to move the cloth back a little of each day until they are completely exposed. Any one of these three methods will work – which one you will use will depend on your circumstances. If none of those will work, you are on your own; use your creativity and you will be able to figure out what you need to do that will work for you.

Let's take a second to discuss this 'true leaves' thing. The first leaves that come out of a seed were already in there, waiting for the right conditions to shed the hard seed coat and start growing. Water acts on the seed coat to soften it and the first set of leaves (two leaves, for most of our food plants – some, like onions, have only one) come out. They often look different, sometimes very different, than the regular leaves, so we call them the 'seed leaves' – or, in botanist speak, the 'cotyledons.' Plants with two seed leaves are, botanically-speaking, dicotyledons, or for us common folk, just 'dicots.' Grasses (which include bamboos, onions, lilies, and irises) have one leaf and are called 'monocots' for monocotyledons. Those of us growing from seed, need to learn what the cotyledons look like or we'll be weeding out our baby plants. Tomatoes, spinach, and all the cabbage family have quite distinctive cotyledons with not a whit of resemblance to the regular plant leaves. All the leaves after those first baby leaves will look more or less like what you'd expect, only smaller than a full-sized plant.

The summer garden, which most of us still think of as THE garden because our desire for the heat loving veggies, is coming fast! Hurry up, check your seed inventory. Now's the time to put your seeds into six packs or other containers! Summer will be here before you know it!

Start These In Containers	Start These In The Ground	Move to the Ground from Containers
Ultra-early tomatoes	Beets (still)	Any left over transplants still hanging
Regular tomatoes (about the 14th)	Radishes (still)	around – although you won't get the best yield, if you have the plants and
Basil (same time as tomatoes)	Carrots (short season)	the space to put them in the ground, do it!
Cucumbers (later in the month)	Turnips
Summer squash (later in the month)

Refer to text for more exact dates.

Hot Chocolate That Kills

I know you probably don't have chocolate growing in your garden, but it's that time of year – you might need some fortifying. This Hot Chocolate, pronounced to be “Adult hot chocolate,” by one young taster, is not be trifled with. The caffeine of the coffee and the chocolate make this a picker-upper and the cayenne pepper makes a person say 'yowser, baby!' It's all good in my book.

1 cup very strong coffee

1 teaspoon vanilla extract

¾ cup sugar (or less)

3 oz. Bittersweet chocolate

⅛ teaspoon cardamom

⅛ teaspoon cayenne pepper

⅛ teaspoon nutmeg

pinch salt

3 cups whole milk

Bring coffee to a boil in a sauce pan, add vanilla, sugar, salt, and other spices. Simmer for a minute and add the chocolate in chunks. Whisk until it thickens from the melted chocolate; add milk and simmer for another minute to warm throughout. Whisk it to froth and serve at once.

January's Garden

Rain on a broccoli, the photographer and his camera. We are grateful for the rain - even this so-called 'negligible precipitation.' A drought is predicted, but since when have 'they' been right?

One of the wonderful things of living in Southern California, this close to the Pacific Ocean is the delightful mild weather we enjoy. This is both a blessing and a curse. Further inland and on almost all of the North American continent, 'gardening' this time of year means looking in the seed catalogs that have begun to fill your mailbox. If you aren't getting seed catalogs on a regular basis, you haven't been gardening a long time.

One of the truisms I try to practice is to garden with passion and gusto. Gardening means growing all of it yourself and learning what works and how it works. At the beginning of the year, with all the promise of a newness and resolutions, this is an exciting time for me in the garden. On days it isn't raining, the cool weather makes some of the more strenuous work a little less onerous and on warmer days it is usually not severe enough to make such work onerous. So this is the time to do more than simply think about a general garden cleanup and time get busy if you haven't done it already.

It is still time to look after the plants of perennial food growing in your garden. If I haven't yet, I begin to prune my fruit trees. This is typically a job I will procrastinate as long as I can without actually doing. If you have no experience at fruit tree pruning, do your trees a favor and order a pruning handbook from University of California’s Agricultural and Natural Resources Division (The book I have used a lot from ANR is Home Orchard: Growing Your Own Deciduous Fruit and Nut Trees Publication Number: 3485, Author: C. INGELS, P. GEISEL, M. NORTON ISBN-13: 978-1-879906-72-3 Copyright Date: 2007) or purchase a pruning book from a reputable source. Remember that these trees will live a lot longer than a typical pet and we wouldn't treat our cats or dogs with the indifference many people show trees. Pruned correctly, an apple, plum or peach will produce luscious, tasty fruit for many years. It's actually harder on you (and the tree) to prune incorrectly, so find out how and do it as right as you can in the first place. There are very few gardeners who actually know how to prune fruit trees. Some trees will only fruit on old wood and some only on newer wood. If you or the person you hire someone who doesn't know this, you could ruin the tree for many seasons to come. Get someone who knows fruit trees and pay them or learn how and do it yourself! Make the cuts with clean and sharp tools and follow a few simple rules.

This is the tail end of the 'dormant season' when one typically purchases deciduous fruit trees, apples, apricots, grapes and ornamentals such as roses. If you are putting perennial herbs in the ground (sage, rosemary and thyme – parsley is a biennial, with apologies to Paul Simon), this is the best time to put them in the ground – even though you may plant them here year round. Buy your trees or vines from someone who knows where you live in order to insure you are getting plants that will produce for you. A local neighborhood nursery will only carry plants that will do well in your climate whereas a big box store will carry things that are more likely to grow over a much wider area. You'll also find the selection at most big box stores to be woefully short and the staff indifferent, at best, to your needs.

Mail order suppliers are excellent venues for purchasing trees. One of my best finds was from a mail order nursery. I called and talked to one of the staff asking a few questions. There is no replacement for a person with knowledge. Based on where I was gardening, he suggested I grow Dorsett Golden apples. I took his suggestion and I have been blessed with year after year with a delicious, sweet and crisp apple that has wowed visitors to my garden ever since.

When I prune the deciduous stone fruit trees (including peaches, apricots, plums and apples,) if I have had problems with insects in the trees, I finish the job by spraying the trees with dormant oil. But only 'IF' – there is little to be gained by killing off the flora and fauna of your trees by spraying willy-nilly. I know this is not what other books say, but I argue that healthy soil will help your trees survive better than killing off a few supposedly harmful insects. Besides, it kills off beneficial insects as well as the harmful ones.

Having said that, of all the pesticides, horticultural oil, with it’s low toxicity to mammals and its 100% effectiveness on pests is one of the best that is listed for organic gardens. If insect infestations are of concern to you, this is the best time to spray because the tree is dormant, not actually growing. A dormant oil spray can control many pests in these kinds of trees. However, take precautions if you feel you must spray. Follow the directions of the package very closely – using pesticides in ways not described on the label is against the law and usually defies common sense. Look for formulations that are not petroleum based and you'll at least have a more 'sustainable' poison to spray.

While pesticide labels will allow you to spray in the morning or in the evening, please only spray in the evening. Do NOT spray ANY pesticide in the morning ever. Spraying in the morning can allow the pesticide to kill off honey bees which we desperately need – while spraying in the evening will insure the bees have returned to their hive for the night. Organic pesticides, including horticultural oil, are only effective when they are wet and, when sprayed in the evening, are dry by the morning. Honey bees have been having a hard time of it lately and should be one of any gardeners' biggest concerns: Please only spray any insecticide in the evening.

However, if you don't have pests to begin with, please consider not spraying at all. We are counting on our trees for food, so we will want to be proactive in their care, but we also need to be intelligent in our use of killing agents in our environment, and in particular around our food. Much of the problems we face in our world today are the result of mankind's irreverent use of “-icides” of all types and to use them prophylactically instead of only if and when needed.

Somehow, our culture has become convinced that warring with nature is a fight we can win. I believe we are foolish when we spray “just because.” If you have pests, deal with them as the year goes along – and deal with them in ways that avoids all sprays, all “-icides.” I think we can be a lot more intelligent in our dealings with the critters that compete for our food supply and spraying is just admitting we are too stupid to deal with something in a more positive fashion. This does not mean I NEVER spray. But when I do spray, I do think I've just not figured out a less destructive way to solve the problem. Better people than I have called me stupid so, yes, sometimes I do think I might have done better.

On the other hand, all of your citrus fruit trees are evergreen, so they can technically be pruned at any time of the year, but they are best pruned when there is nothing better to do and the day is not too warm, so the person doing the work doesn’t overheat. You cannot spray citrus with dormant oil sprays because they are never dormant. (Something that is 'evergreen' doesn't go dormant – basically 'evergreen' means, no dormancy.) A recent innovation has been the formulation of lighter oil sprays that are called 'summer oils.' They do the same thing as dormant oils with a much less heavy hand and so can be sprayed when the days are warmer and on trees with living leaves. They work well, perhaps not quite as well as dormant sprays, but they are pretty effective. Their drop in effectiveness might be that they are used on trees with leaves and therefore the spray doesn't reach all the insects rather than any lack of killing power on the part of the spray; I don't know if research has been done to show it one way or the other.

As above, though, if you don't HAVE to spray, please don't. A healthy garden is shared among many critters – insects, birds, fungi, bacteria, mammals and humans. By introducing poison to your garden, you run the risk of killing off more than just your target species. Try to find an intelligent way to solve your problems. Read up on the pest. Find it's enemies and make friends with them. Your garden will be healthier and so will you.

This may be a cold month and, if we are blessed, rainy. But we still have to keep our eyes out for Santa Ana winds – sometimes hot and sometimes cool, but always dry and desiccating to all garden plants, but plants in pots suffer even more. If your skin is crawling and you need more skin cream, or lip goop, you can bet your plants need more moisture too! It’s best to get out there with a hose and help your irrigation system keep up – you’ll enjoy your garden more – the “best fertilizer is the farmer’s shadow.” Still.

Are you ready to think about summer yet? You mean you never stopped thinking about summer? You are completely overwhelmed with seed catalogs and drooling over their wonderful photos and several hundred new mouth-watering, irresistible new varieties that must be tried… all in a 10’ square bed. If you aren’t getting these free catalogs, a you haven't ordered from one yet. What have you been waiting for? Go to the list of seed houses (Appendix II) to make your day! Maybe your month!

Of course, you could skip buying seeds altogether and join with your neighbors in creating a seed library. Like a library of books, a seed library lends seeds, all 'open pollinated.' You allow some of the plants to flower and set seed and at the end of the growing season, return to the library the same amount you borrowed. It is a win/win situation in many ways (more on this elsewhere) and it's for free! Doesn't get a lot better than that.

So, what will it be this year? Eight different sweet peas, half a dozen different lettuce plants? Look at all those tomatoes for sale and how about those new violas? If I knock down the neighbor’s garage, I think I could add some squash and pumpkins…. do you think they'd mind too much? Probably not when they get the chance to eat some...

In the Garden, we are still putting out plants of broccoli and cabbage, chard and Brussels’s sprouts and we can still sow seeds of beets and carrots. Lettuce, the golden child of our winter gardens is the great hole-stopper – whenever any plant has to come out, have a six pack of lettuce on hand – preferably of different colors of lettuce – and plop one in the hole. One of my favorite tricks is to use red lettuces with green lettuces – or different shades of red and green to make a colorful food garden. Lettuce should be a top selection on everyone's list of border plants! Merveille des Quatre Saisons (about the only French I can say without sounding foolish, a marvelous red/green butter lettuce that performs well all through Fall to late Spring), next to Black Seeded Simpson (a very light green leafy lettuce) make a stunning color combo – but I also like Merlot, very dark wine red (aptly named!) alongside Black Seeded Simpson or Parris Island Cos, the quintessential Romaine lettuce. Color and shape, texture and form all come together in the lettuce patch – I swear I can't get through a seed catalog without ordering one or two more packets of lettuce seed. It is an addiction for me! The lettuce loves of my life right now are Merveille des Quatre Saisons, Black Seeded Simpson, Drunken Woman Frizzy Head (I'm not lying!), Parris Island Cos, Red Yugoslavian, Rossa di Trento, Tango and Winter Density. All I have to do, however, is look through a new catalog and I'm easily swayed into the leaves of another. I do like homegrown head lettuce, it's not nearly the garbage found in stores – the ribs are thick and filled with water making a marvelous refreshing salad for a warm day.

No one, no matter what kind of soil you have, you should never step into your garden beds. We want to keep the soil in these beds as fluffy and light as grandma's meringue (not my grandma! Some theoretical really good baking grandma!). Adding lots of organic matter will do that for you, but you must stay out of the beds – your footprints will ruin the 'fluffy' we are hoping for our roots.

If you have clay soils, be especially careful to not step in your garden beds. Make paths around the beds and make the beds small enough to reach the center without stepping into the bed – if you have the opportunity to collect tree chips from an arbor company pruning a tree nearby, see if you can collect a couple of large trash cans full of the stuff. Spread it three or more inches deep wherever you have to walk while gardening. You will need to replenish this every so often, but you'll find it so helpful as it will keep weeds from growing in the paths near your garden beds and provide you with the opportunity to walk all around your garden beds without getting mud on your shoes no matter how wet the day! Under the top layer of mulch, the wood chips will be breaking down 'growing' really lovely soil through the years.

Each chapter will have a chart like the one below. I indicate the month, or months, I believe are the best for starting different vegetable seeds. “Start These in Containers” means you will plant the seeds in some kind of pot held in a sheltered location (hopefully away from pests) to later “Move to the Ground from Containers.” The remaining seeds will be stated directly in the ground where they will grow to maturity. Some seeds can be done either way and, if that's the case, I will usually do both. The ones started in containers and moved to the garden will often will mature later than the ones started in situ. A gardener can have two different harvest times and the two different strategies may also pay off if one of the plantings gets hammered by a weather event or insects.

Start These In Containers	Start These In The Ground	Move to the Ground from Containers
Ultra-early tomatoes	Carrots	Broccoli
Broccoli	Beets	Cabbage
Cabbage (early)	Fava beans	Chard
Lettuce	Parsnips	Peas
Spinach	Lettuce	Fava Beans
Fava Beans	Spinach	Lettuce
	Lettuce	Spinach
	Cilantro	Kale
	Peas	Cauliflower
	Garbanzos	Garbanzos
	Lentils	Lentils

There will be a recipe for every month. Here is the one for January, when chard and chickpeas (garbanzos) are in season:

Moroccan Spiced Chickpeas & Chard

Chard should be in abundance right now and that often leads to 'chard overload,' how many times can you steam chard and hit it with lemon juice and still wolf it down with glee? I'm limited but this recipe never seems to fail to satisfy.

The ingredient list only looks daunting. Most of that list is simply a plethora of spices and you will find you already have a lot of them and need to use them up sooner rather than later. I have made this missing a spice here and there and missing raisins (don't make it without raisins if you can help it they really add a sweetness). It doesn't take long to make and the flavors run the gamut from sweet to savory and it is a delightful mélange. Serve with rice or quinoa for a satisfying vegetarian dinner.

• 3 tablespoons extra virgin olive oil

• 2 cloves garlic, minced

• ½ sweet onion, minced

• 1 teaspoon paprika (sweet or smoked according to preference)

• 1 teaspoon ground cumin

• ½ teaspoon turmeric

• ¼ teaspoon thyme

• ½ teaspoon salt

• ½ teaspoon ground cinnamon

• ¼ cup golden raisins

• 1 tablespoon organic tomato paste

• 1 bunch chard (about 8 ounces) washed, center ribs removed, and chopped

• 1 cup cooked chickpeas plus 1 ¼ cups of their cooking liquid, or 1 can organic chickpeas with liquid plus ½ cup water

• 1 teaspoon hot sauce or ¼ teaspoon cayenne (optional)

Add the olive oil, onion, and garlic to a heavy-bottomed Dutch oven or 3-4 quart pot, and turn the heat to medium. Allow to cook for about 5 minutes, then add the paprika, cumin, turmeric, thyme, salt, and cinnamon. Stir together and cook for a minute or two until fragrant. Add the remaining ingredients, cover, and turn the heat down to medium-low.

Be sure to stir every 3-5 minutes to ensure that the bottom does not burn and that your ingredients are evenly combined. You can add a tablespoon of rice flour if you like your stew thicker. Remove from the heat after 20 minutes. Serve with rice or quinoa.

david