Which vegetables to plant when:<\/h1>\n
\u201cVegetable Planting Guide\u201d by Vince Lazaneo.\u00a0<\/a><\/p>\n Even though I refer to my notes from past seasons for precise planting times, for a glance at\u00a0which vegetables I can plant at any given time I always go to this guide. Vince\u00a0is a retired farm advisor for San Diego County with the University of California Cooperative Extension and he supervised my Master Gardener training class. He has been growing vegetables in Southern California for longer than I\u2019ve been alive. The information is general but thoroughly reliable.<\/p>\n <\/p>\n Book<\/strong>:<\/p>\n The Home Orchard<\/a>,<\/em>\u00a0published by the University of California (this is an Amazon link, but your local library might have it too — I borrowed this book from the library many times before I bought my own copy)<\/p>\n Website:<\/strong><\/p>\n Dave Wilson Nursery<\/a><\/p>\n One of the largest growers of deciduous fruit trees in the United States, Dave Wilson Nursery is located in California’s Central Valley and they also maintain a website with a treasure trove of information.<\/p>\n I often refer to their Fruit Tree Harvest Chart<\/a>, which is an excellent way to help choose varieties to plant so that you’ll get fruit ripening at different times throughout the year.<\/p>\n I also often refer to their YouTube videos<\/a> on everything from planting to pruning to irrigation to behind-the-scenes stuff like how they harvest and ship their bareroot trees.<\/p>\n Videos<\/strong>:<\/p>\n Chuck Ingels, a University of California Cooperative Extension Farm Advisor, presents on growing deciduous fruit trees to a group of Master Gardeners in this video called “The Home Orchard Part 1.”<\/a>\u00a0The\u00a0pruning section starts at 36 minutes. This video is great because Ingels explains things clearly, shows many photos that illustrate his points, and relates his own experiences in his own yard. He talks about the “fruit bush” style just after 52 minutes. Also, continue into “The Home Orchard Part 2.”<\/a><\/p>\n Tom Spellman of Dave Wilson Nursery prunes fruit trees plus gives some of his reasoning in this video titled “Winter Pruning.”<\/a>\u00a0Perhaps the best thing about this video is that you can watch Spellman make the cuts; then you can go out to your tree and imitate if you like. I’m sure you’ll find it useful to watch some of the many other videos Spellman has done on pruning too.<\/p>\n Document<\/strong>:<\/p>\n Fruit Trees: Training and Pruning Deciduous Trees by Chuck Ingels (again), Pam Geisel, and Carolyn Unruh.<\/a>\u00a0The information is dense, but it’s all there, and it’s freely available as a pdf. It’s kind of like the condensed version of the book The Home Orchard<\/em>.<\/p>\n “Avocado Production in California: A Cultural Handbook for Growers” by Gary Bender, technical editor.<\/a><\/p>\n While there isn\u2019t a great single resource for growing avocados at home, the best of what\u2019s available is this handbook for commercial growers. It is edited by Gary Bender, former farm advisor in San Diego County, who also taught my Master Gardener training class on avocados. The handbook is split into two \u201cbooks.\u201d\u00a0Book 1<\/a>\u00a0discusses avocado history, botany, variety selection and planting.\u00a0Book 2<\/a>\u00a0discusses irrigation, diseases and pruning.<\/p>\n \u201cPropagating Avocados,\u201d published by the University of California<\/a>.<\/p>\n Written by some of the most experienced people in the world and including principles and techniques specific to California conditions, this resource has all of the information\u00a0one needs to get started down the road of grafting avocados.<\/p>\n “Eating Seasons of My Avocados”<\/a> is a chart that I made a while back and still refer to because it aggregates information from multiple experts.<\/p>\n “Selected Avocado Varieties”<\/a> is a chart made by Julie Frink, who for many years has observed the many varieties that are grown at the University of California’s South Coast Research and Extension Center in Irvine in Orange County.<\/p>\n Avocadosource.com, brought to us by The Hofshi Foundation.<\/a><\/p>\n “The free, virtual library of avocado knowledge,” it calls itself. I have spent many evenings getting lost in this online library, to my wife’s bewilderment. I have read every issue of the California Avocado Society’s Yearbooks there, I have read all of its Forum discussions, etc. If you have an avocado question, the answer can be found somewhere on avocadosource, no doubt.<\/p>\n [\/et_pb_text][et_pb_text admin_label=”Text” background_layout=”light” text_orientation=”left” use_border_color=”off” border_color=”#ffffff” border_style=”solid”]<\/p>\n <\/p>\n <\/p>\n [\/et_pb_text][et_pb_text admin_label=”Text” background_layout=”light” text_orientation=”left” use_border_color=”off” border_color=”#ffffff” border_style=”solid”]<\/p>\n How can\u00a0the un-local Davis Garden Show<\/a> be the best one for Southern California? It’s partly\u00a0that the radio show\/podcast is\u00a0that\u00a0<\/em>good, and it’s partly\u00a0that co-host Don Shor grew up in La Jolla and knows about growing plants here better than we do and kindly remembers\u00a0to make side notes about how gardening works in our slightly drier and milder neck of the woods.<\/p>\n The Davis Garden Show broadcasts every Thursday at noon, when Shor is usually joined by co-host Lois Richter. You can listen to the show live from the KDRT website<\/a>, but I always stream or download the podcasts on my computer or phone, which you can do from here<\/a>\u00a0or here<\/a>.<\/p>\n <\/p>\n Gardeners and farmers are kin, and I’ve found myself listening incessantly to this podcast where one farmer, Chris Blanchard, interviews other farmers. The\u00a0Farmer to Farmer podcast<\/a>\u00a0has given this gardener wheelbarrows of food for thought.<\/p>\n Some of my favorite episodes are the ones with:<\/p>\n Nigel Walker of Eatwell Farm<\/a>, from whom I gained a deeper appreciation for soil,<\/p>\n Jim Gerritsen of Wood Prairie Family Farm<\/a>, from whom I learned a whole new universe worth of insight on potatoes,<\/p>\n Bob Cannard<\/a>, who\u00a0challenged me to reassess my relationship with weeds,<\/p>\n and\u00a0Karl Hammer of Vermont Compost Company<\/a>, who would be entertaining enough to listen to even if I didn’t care about compost. But maybe the most fascinating thing I heard in the interview was that he raises hundreds of laying hens that live solely off of his mountains of compost.<\/p>\n [\/et_pb_text][\/et_pb_column][\/et_pb_row][\/et_pb_section]<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":" Vegetables Which vegetables to plant when: \u201cVegetable Planting Guide\u201d by Vince Lazaneo.\u00a0 Even though I refer to my notes from past seasons for precise planting times, for a glance at\u00a0which vegetables I can plant at any given time I always go to this guide. Vince\u00a0is a retired farm advisor for San Diego County with the […]<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":2,"featured_media":0,"parent":0,"menu_order":0,"comment_status":"closed","ping_status":"closed","template":"","meta":{"_et_pb_use_builder":"on","_et_pb_old_content":" \u201cVegetable Planting Guide\u201d by Vince Lazaneo.\u00a0<\/a><\/p> Even though I refer to my notes from past seasons for precise planting times, for a glance at\u00a0which vegetables I can plant at any given time I always go to this guide. Vince\u00a0is a retired farm advisor for San Diego County with the University of California Cooperative Extension and he supervised my Master Gardener training class. He has been growing vegetables in Southern California for longer than I\u2019ve been alive. The information is general but thoroughly reliable.<\/p> \u00a0<\/p> Dave Wilson Nursery<\/a><\/p> One of the largest growers of deciduous fruit trees in the United States, Dave Wilson Nursery is located in California's Central Valley and they also maintain a website with a treasure trove of information.<\/p> I often refer to their Fruit Tree Harvest Chart<\/a>, which is an excellent way to help choose varieties to plant so that you'll get fruit ripening at different times throughout the year.<\/p> I also often refer to their YouTube videos<\/a> on everything from planting to pruning to irrigation to behind-the-scenes stuff like how they harvest and ship their bareroot trees.<\/p> \"Avocado Production in California: A Cultural Handbook for Growers\" by Gary Bender, technical editor.<\/a><\/p> While there isn\u2019t a great single resource for growing avocados at home, the best of what\u2019s available is this handbook for commercial growers. It is edited by Gary Bender, former farm advisor in San Diego County, who also taught my Master Gardener training class on avocados. The handbook is split into two \u201cbooks.\u201d\u00a0Book 1<\/a>\u00a0discusses avocado history, botany, variety selection and planting.\u00a0Book 2<\/a>\u00a0discusses irrigation, diseases and pruning.<\/p>Deciduous fruit trees<\/span><\/h2>\n
General growing:<\/h1>\n
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Pruning:<\/h1>\n
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Avocados<\/span><\/h2>\n
General growing:<\/h1>\n
Grafting avocados:<\/h1>\n
Harvest times of avocado varieties:<\/h1>\n
Everything about avocados:<\/h1>\n
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RAINWATER<\/span><\/h2>\n
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\nBrad Lancaster’s two books,\u00a0Rainwater Harvesting for Drylands and Beyond, Volumes 1<\/a> and 2<\/a><\/em>, are both rich with experience and information and diagrams and photographs. Volume 1<\/em><\/a> is an overview of principles and methods for “welcoming rain into your life.” Volume 2<\/em><\/a>\u00a0has the subtitle of “Water-Harvesting Earthworks,” by which is meant things like ditches for water to pool in, rock dams across gullies, and half-moon shaped berms to prevent runoff. If I had to choose only one, I’d go with Volume 1<\/em>. While Lancaster lives in Tuscon, Arizona, where rain falls in the summer, we in dry-summer Southern California can still apply much from these books with only minor adjustments.<\/p>\nGRAYWATER<\/span><\/h2>\n
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\nArt Ludwig has been practicing what he preaches in Southern California for decades, and his book\u00a0Create an Oasis with Greywater<\/em><\/a> can help you skip over common errors in attempting to reuse household water in your yard. The information in the book is grounded in Ludwig’s personal experience and not, say, the recommendations of academics or bureaucrats. The text is permeated with helpful numbers, drawings, and real-life examples. Perhaps the title is the only part of the book that I’m not satisfied with, as the only way you’re going to use graywater to create an oasis — like the one shown on the book’s cover — is if you turn on your faucets and use a lot of water from your district in the first place (and therefore pay for all that district water). Nevertheless, I wholeheartedly agree with this quotation from the book: “Lifestyle change is far and away the best way to conserve resources . . . If you can choose between reducing and reusing, reducing is the priority.” In a sense, it undermines the thesis of his book and yet he’s honest and willing to say it.<\/span><\/p>\nPodcasts<\/span><\/h2>\n
Davis Garden Show<\/h1>\n
Farmer to Farmer Podcast<\/h1>\n
Vegetables<\/span><\/h1>
Which vegetables to plant when:<\/h2>
Deciduous fruit trees<\/span><\/h1>
General growing:<\/h2>
\u00a0<\/h1>
Avocados<\/span><\/h1>
General growing:<\/h2>
Grafting:<\/h2>
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