A Gardener's Thoughts & Fancies

The Monthly Gardner – May – Growing Your Own Vegetables

May is the month to finish up your spring planting by focusing on those heat-loving vegetables. While many of Southern California’s native plants are beginning to shut down for the dry summer months, if you plant your vegetables now and keep them well mulched and watered, they should flourish throughout the summer and provide a [...]

Continue reading...

The Monthly Gardner – March

March and April are the ideal times to get your garden planted. This includes most summer annuals and perennials, warm-season and cool-season lawns, some cool-season and warm-season vegetables, and almost all permanent garden plants, such as trees, shrubs, ground covers and vines. But I would hold off planting tropicals for a couple of months until [...]

Continue reading...

The Monthly Gardener – February

“Buds’re bustin’ out of bushes, And the rompin’ river pushes, Ev’ry little wheel that wheels beside the mill!” Okay, Spring may not be “bustin’ out all over” as Oscar Hammerstein put it, but there are certainly enough buds beginning to make an appearance and the fact the Trader Joe’s  is selling daffodils does suggest that [...]

Continue reading...

The Monthly Gardner – November

November in Southern California is the beginning of our rainy season, although, this year, it did begin a bit early. And while October is the ideal time to plant, if you haven’t already done so, November offers a window of opportunity for a number of plants, including: onions, strawberries, ground covers, a variety of bulbs [...]

Continue reading...

The Monthly Gardner – October

October, with its cooler days and the occasional sprinkle (our Southern California “rainy season” actually begins in November), is the ideal time to plant most perennials, with the exception of tropicals, which should be planted in late spring or early summer, and bare-root plants, which should be planted in January. The reason is simple: get [...]

Continue reading...

The Monthly Gardener – September

Our New Blog Because a number of my readers have asked, “What should I be doing with my garden this month?” I’ve decided to start a monthly blog post that deals with just that –– what you should be focusing on in your garden during that particular month. I thought September was a great starting [...]

Continue reading...