Planting a vegetable garden just seems to go along with spring, doesn’t it? Like an instinctive and seasonal rite of passage. But, says George Winter, owner of Wyntour Gardens in Redding and the Red Bluff Garden Center in Red Bluff, “if you want a vegetable garden, the fall and winter garden is generally easier and less maintenance than the spring and summer one. Time seems more measured in the fall garden - not so hectic,” in George’s opinion. “Temperatures will still be hot when you plant your garden planted in late August early September, but they cool off pretty quickly so you won’t be working in blazing heat; the lower temperatures also mean fewer bugs, and of course your chances of rainfall are much better. So if we have a normal fall and winter, you will be watering your fall-planted garden far less than you had to water your spring-planted one. Planning and planting a fall and winter vegetable garden is very similar to planting your spring/summer one, except the odds are stacked in your favor, so your chances of success are very good.”

Now, of course there are some caveats. You are unlikely to get fabulous tomatoes or cucumbers from your fall planted garden unless you have a greenhouse or other pretty serious protection from cooling temperatures. But most fall-planted crops enjoy the North State’s warm August and September weather for germination and getting established followed by the cooling nights and days of October and November for steady growth. Most fall planted crops can withstand the light frosts of late October and early November fairly well and in many cases a light frost will actually improve the health, vigor and taste of certain crops - like chards and beets.
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Worms, Worms, Worms. Some people love ‘em, some people are a little nervous around them and the way they wriggle and squirm. But no matter which kind of person you are, you can rest assured that creating compost with worms is an excellent way to recycle many of your food scraps and a good way to make top-grade fertilizer for your garden. Free. Well, close to free once you set up your worm bin.

I have a good friend from elementary school who has had a smallish worm bin in the cabinet under her kitchen sink for years. Other gardening friends up near Redding in Happy Valley, Alice Wilkinson and Tom O’Mara have a big wooden worm bin built of recycled boards outside in their vegetable garden. You may have read about Alice’s discussion with Doni Greenberg on Anewscafe.com about her worm bin earlier this year.
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Have you noticed how the concept of beauty evolves as you grow older or as you garden longer? Just ten years ago, if you had told me that I would consider a bouquet of carnivorous plants as lovely a sight as I had ever seen, I would have replied (politely, I hope) that I was really more of a pansy, peony or poppy girl. So no-one was more surprised than I was when I recently encountered a bouquet of carnivorous plant spent flower heads and traps and I thought to myself that they were some of the most strikingly lovely plants I’d ever seen. It’s not that I have forsaken peonies, not at all. Rather, I can happily attest that one of the benefits of growing older as a gardener (and as a person) is that your concept of beauty deepens and widens to include all manner of beauty. Photo: A sample of David and Cathy Walther’s carnivorous plant collection, including the double-flowered, speckled white trapped Sarracenia leucophylla ‘Tarnok’.

David Walther, co-owner with his wife Cathy of Spring Fever Nursery in Yankee Hill, has been intrigued by carnivorous plants and been growing them in his home garden for close to 10 years. His collection currently includes many plants comprising multiple varieties of half a dozen or so species. I first saw David’s collection in mid-spring, when a handful were beginning to bloom. I visited them again in late-summer and their dramatic colors, structures and over-all interest were still going strong. While many carnivorous plants have very attractive and showy flowers, it is the traps and the spent seed heads that persist and that, in my opinion, hold multi-season interest for the gardener. Photo: Sarracenia flava, the tall plant with dangling yellow flower petals, in bloom and Sarracenia leucophylla x. willisii ‘Dana’s Delight’ in bud.
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“So it might be about testosterone,” Chris Hunter says to me - only half-laughing - about his affection for tropical plants. “Tropical plants just get so huge with even one year of growth - they’re amazing! And those leaves…” he finishes, as if to imply that the leaves on tropical plants are beyond articulation. After all, when you read the word “tropical” what came to your mind? Maybe clean white sand and the wide blue sea, maybe a Piña Colada with pineapple slices and a colorful little umbrella, but if you are a plant person you probably thought of BIG green leaves. Lots of them. Planted together in dense, self-humidifying, dappley-lit configurations a light warm breeze through which results in an mesmerizing shifting shadow play when top lit by a hot sun. Ahhh, that’s tropical. Photo: Banana palm leaves.

Chris Hunter is a fairly young nurseryman but a long-time fan of tropical plants. He and his fiancée Courtney Paulson are co-owners of Magnolia Gift & Garden in Chico and co-gardeners of a home garden that has trialed many tropical plants: some with a sad outcome, others - the ones discussed shortly - with a very happy outcome. “We have used our garden as a botanical science lab and most of the plants we sell we have grown,” Chris assures me. Chris has worked at nurseries in the Bay area as well as here in the North State. More than 6 years ago now he began working at what was then Zamora’s and which subsequently became Chico Creek Gardens, owned by well-known local plantsman Mike Thiede. Courtney began working at Zamora’s more than 8 years ago and early this year, Chris and Courtney bought the nursery and re-named it Magnolia Gift & Garden. Photo: Courtney and Chris near one of the tropical beds at Magnolia Gift & Garden. (more…)