Gardening Tips: February 2013

My name is Stevie Hall.  I am a new contributor to The Carmel Valley Life and will be writing about gardening in the Carmel Valley area.  I will share seasonal gardening suggestions and will tell you about local garden and nursery resources.

February is still a good month for planting cool season vegetables and annuals and is a great month for getting your garden ready for spring and summer.  You will make your soil very happy and fertile if you give it a blanket of compost with some alfalfa pellets (from Mary’s Tack & Feed or Grangetto’s) mixed in.

Plant:  The nurseries are full of bare-root roses, some new, many tried-and-true.  A couple of my favorites are Barbara Streisand (hybrid tea, mauve, fragrant), Della Reese (hybrid tea, purple, fragrant) Mr. Lincoln (hybrid tea, deep red and VERY fragrant and Julia Child (floribunda, yellow and fragrant).  Think about planting berries (blackberries, raspberries and strawberries) and grapes.  It takes a couple of years for the plants to bear fruit but how cool to grow your own berries and grapes.

Spring has come to Costco; I just bought 15 blooming primroses for about $13, and bags of clematis, iris, and hosta bulbs for a ridiculous price.  You’ll soon figure out that I’m a dedicated Costco shopper but I also love Mia McCarville and Cedros Gardens in Solana Beach, the Armstrong’s on Via de la Valle, and the Walter Andersen’s nursery on Scripps Poway Parkway.  I’ll be telling you about the various nurseries both nearby and in the county plus where you can find great compost, fertilizers and whatever else you need for your garden.

In future articles, I’ll tell you how to make a worm box, how Square Foot Gardening™ has changed my life and my adventures with composting.   I hope you’ll tell me your garden interests and what garden topics you’d like to learn more about.
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Stevie Hall is President of Gardeners 92130, a 501(c)(3) non-profit garden club affiliated with California Garden Clubs, Inc.  “I am a California native, born in Santa Monica.  My husband, Ned Hall, and I  moved back to California from Connecticut in 1987, living first in Rancho Santa Fe, then Solana Beach and, in 2000, moved to the St. Augustine section of Torrey Hills.  My very first interest in having a garden and my very first garden was when we moved to our home in Torrey Hills.  Along the way I’ve become a certified consulting Rosarian and belong to three rose societies.  My rose obsession began to wane a few years ago as I’ve become more and more interested in growing fruit, vegetables, herbs and now succulents.  I am an obsessive reader and whenever a new gardening idea begins to beckon me, I head to the (Solana Beach) library for whatever books they have on the subject.  I am eager for every growing season.  The thing about a garden is that plants just want to grow and if they get the food and water they need, the possibilities are infinite.  Just thinking about it makes me want to get outside and get my hands in the dirt.”