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Good morning everybody Welcome to Garden Party we’re your virtual series from the Southern California news group to give you tips tricks and insights for getting the most joy and productivity out of your gardening experience and also I have to say help you find a community of
Like-minded green thumbs or in my case I Wannabe Green Thumb I’m Sam Dunn the senior editor for premium content here at the Southern California news group I need to say thank you to our reader reward subscribers and really to all of you for supporting our virtual programs
By the way if you are a reader rewards subscriber attending today you’re automatically entered to win a $100 gift card to Home Depot which should help you with some of your gardening needs and if you’re not a subscriber well why aren’t you a subscriber go to scg.com slss
Subscribe to find your local paper and join us as a regular reader now before we get started I need to remind you of a few things if you have questions use the Q&A feature on your Zoom tool bar on your screen all the questions will be addressed at
The end of the presentation today but certainly if you want to make comments as we go use the chat feature found on your Zoom toolbar as well also keep in mind you’ll have slides to refer to as we go and don’t worry you won’t miss anything the session will be videotaped
And a link will be sent to you so you can share it or just revisit some of your favorite moments it’s also posted atg.com virtual events and that’s where you can find all of our past virtual shows including garden party bookish uh all of the virtual programs we do here
At the Southern California news group and you can also see what’s coming up now it’s my pleasure to say our longtime gardening columnist Laura Simpson’s going to be taking over with today’s presentation so go for it Laura all righty let me share my screen here you can see my pretty
Slides all righty so you guys can also see that right so okay guess we be talking into the ether here okay so I’m Laura Simpson I’m a Master Gardener I’m also a master food preserver um I’ve been writing the Press Enterprise or Southern California news group Garden column for about five years
I guess now um I have uh lots of experience with gardening in Southern California I have um yeah I’ve been a master chronus since 2002 live near Tula California like in the French Valley area um I used to be a medical researcher working with monclonal antibodies and um you know infectious disease and
Oncology and I’ve got five kids and a husband who’s also a Master Gardener so let’s get started okay so we’re talking about small space gardening today um so I kind of wrote this with Southern California um gardeners in mind um assuming that most people have kind
Of small yards we’re not we’re not the Midwest where you know it’s normal to have like an acre or two 20 um so we’re working with small yards um Courtyards and patios are a big favorite too if you have a condo or an apartment or something um townhouse L times all you
Have is a courtyard or patio to work with which you can grow things on that and also I’ll touch on container gardening which um is ideal for small space gardening so let’s start with small yards kind of looks like a typical California subdivision here um okay so considerations when you
Have a small yard um there are limitations of course you know space of course is the big thing but also availability of sunlight um houses are built really close together here um sometimes you have like maybe 10 feet or even less between your neighbor’s wall and yours um and also there’s the the
Fences and walls that will also kind of limit the amount of sunlight you can get so a lot of times you’ll have a like a sidey yard that’s maybe you know eight feet wide and maybe hardly gets any sunlight at all and so you’re kind of wondering what what should I plant here
What can I plant here um so just to keep in the mind where where your sunlights h um drainage if you have if you have a Mucky area of your yard unless you want to grow your own rice Patty or something you will have to do something about your
Drainage um most plants do not like wet feet it’s a fast way to kill a plant and just it’s it gets gnarly I mean if you have mud it can it can start to stink you can end up with mosquitoes if you have a puddle sitting there so you want
To make sure that you have good drainage um access and ease of movement you you don’t want to go overboard and you know recreate like the Apocalypse Now I have two dogs that are love to tell me when my Amazon packages com that um okay um also it’s nice to be
Able to create an illusion of more space and there’s some tricks you can use to to do that okay so sunlight um here’s a good example it’s pretty snazzy looking uh neighborhood but um if you have a south or west facing wall um it’s going to receive more intense sun and heat for
Better or For Worse so in the summertime you know you may not want to put your Cales on a south or west facing side of your property because they were going to get incinerated I mean where I live it gets to be you know 110 degrees in the
Summer sometimes so you’re going to want to keep that mind um North or east facing side is going to be cooler in the summer and actually quite chilly in the winter time because of the shade um keep in mind the Shadows cast by your house and your fence and your neighbors and
Reflected heat one thing I need to mention is that a lot of people have you know wooden privacy fences between them and their neighbors um well and then there you know those those um wooden fences break down look pretty ugly and then you go and replace it with a vinyl
Pence which looks really nice you know they’re very attractive and all but keep in mind they reflect heat like you wouldn’t believe they actually will um they’ll reflect heat a lot um I had a neighbor who had bark mulch in front of their vinyl fence and the vinyl fence
Reflected so much heat that the bark M started to smoke so keep keep that in mind I’m not trashing on vinyl fences just that you you want to be careful with you know keep that in mind that’s something that you should you should keep in in mind and maybe plant something there instead
Of just keeping bark mulch or you know uh wood pile or something next to a vinyl fence because of that reflected heat the um drainage is a big problem as well we have crummy soil here frankly um if you live in a newer subdivision what they do when they start a subdivision or
Whenever they plant something they run you know they they drive heavy equipment back and forth over the the space that they’re going to build in right that’s to compact the soil so it doesn’t liquefy during a Bigg earthquake okay that’s that’s a good thing we don’t want ground liquefaction however when you go
To try and dig into it it’s like trying to dig into concrete um so we do have we do have chromy soil that’s usually super compacted so this this ends up causing problems with drainage um so what you’ll see people do is you know the original
Idea um back in like when we first bought our first house like in 1994 and everyone had grass and they what they would do is they would use a curb core and drain pipes you know buried drain pipes and um you know the the surface
Drains you see those a lot still um so when the excess rain comes it just it just gets directed away from the house that’s a good thing um but um there’s other things you can do as well um Dry River beds have become real popular which is what you see here
In this picture um so you have the the PE the Pebbles um the the Mexican beach pebbles and you know various sizes of rocks what is nice about the dry River beds is that it slows down the flow of water this does two things it helps prevent
Erosion and it also keeps the water on the ground for a little bit longer so it hopefully can percolate down in and replenish the groundwater if you have you know a curb cor and and that water is rushing away then um you know it doesn’t have a chance really to percolate back down
Into the groundwater which we you know we kind of need could use all the groundwater we can get hold of right I mean kind of been in a drought forever so that’s something that is um really really beneficial to the environment and also to your to your property as well um
One thing that works really nice too you can see they have grass planted alongside the edges of this stried Riverbank which makes it look more natural but also grass has very fibrous roots that helps prevent soil from washing down into that dry River bed and
Making it look kind of you know ugly so that kind of It kind of anchors it as well so that’s another nice feature of this of this landscape design um swes and BMS of course you know swes um that’s what you would put the dry the
Dry River bed the Dry Creek bed in in um worms will help uh will help direct the water as well and of course the most important thing is as far as a homeowner you want to make sure that the water does not sit near the base of your house near your
Foundation so you do want to direct it away but um when when when they build houses they they they have to have it graded so that it directs water away from the foundation and so that’s you want to you want to keep that grading intact but
Just to enhance it this way it looks prettier so access or ease of movement um you know gardening you know it usually involves like pushing a wheelbarrow around or pushing the you know the green waste container around you want to be able to move through your garden you
Want like a wide enough space um recommending three feet or wider for a pathway you know especially like something like this with the arbor you want to make sure you can get your wheelbarrow through there because it’s a real pain in the butt to take like
Armloads of weeds and um walk them to the front yard to put in your green waste you want to be able to to make it um maintenance as easy as possible um avoid straight lines just becau for aesthetic reasons mostly um it helps when you have a curved pathway it just
Um it’s more aesthetically pleasing but also it it creates an illusion of more space as well when you have a pathway you definitely want to have stable material because um you know not too cool if you you trip over stuff so here’s flagstone this is very beautiful these are very heavy
Um you know you want to make sure that they they’re sit into the ground and um that they’re not going to rock back and forth with flagstone and and these these kind of pavers you want to I like having things like I believe it’s dandia um between those pavers that helps anchor
It and keeps them from tilting and you know popping up and stuff so that’s something that that you w to also keep in mind you don’t want to you don’t want to trip um that would be a bummer and also uh permeable papers so permeable would be something like this
Where if it rains the water can percolate down into the into the the ground instead of running off so that when they talk about permeable pavers things like this you know um P you know interlocking pavers are somewhat permeable um of course flagstone Stepping Stones things like that those
Are um when they talk about water efficient Landscapes that’s what they um that’s what they’re that’s what they mean is is that so creating illusion of more space like I said before the the curved Pathways that helps as far as you know you you come around the corner and
You get a new view of something that you didn’t see before um it’s um also like adding vertical interest in this case this Arbor um gives you some vertical interest and um you know you can have a nice a nice uh Wisteria find or something on there um
You want to keep in mind focal points too I mean in this picture you have you know pots and um you know it’s like a a basket back there but like you know potted plants or a vase or a water feature or something also repeating elements that helps tie the whole
Landscape together so um you you have like repeated colors you flowers that are the same color you know or they different shades of pink you know you have you have like a it looks like poppies or something in the foreground and then you have it looks like a red
Bud in the background so that that that kind of ties the whole thing together um you know I want to mention something about the curve Pathways to our our landscape we have a rather small yard as well um I kind of joke around and say our yard is kind of like a
Hoarders Botanical Edition because um people give us plants and we can’t turn them down we have so many plants and trees and stuff so when I looking for my husband when he’s out in the yard I feel like yelling Marco and then he po I know
Where to find him so that can it can have a straw backs but but you know that’s part of the fun of it all right okay so Courtyards and patios this is like way prettier than anything I own um so you when you consider when you have a
Courtyard or patio you that’s your private space you want to have it kind of like hidden away right um you want to you want to keep seeding available um water features are really nice uh for reasons I’ll tell you in a few minutes and of course there’s hardscaping
Container planting you can use you can use those as a point of Interest as well so for privacy of course you’re kind of hard to get when you have such small Lots but you can um partially enclose your space and here you can see that they used a hedge you know these um
Topiary type plants and hedges to um to kind of T you know give you a little tucked away feeling there um you know I kind of Border you know like a planted border or something um overhead privacy as well if you’re if you’re if you’ve got a patio and you
Have a neighbor who has like a two-story house and looking out on your patio um you know think about some ways you can generate privacy Shea trees something like a crepe myrtle um you know one of these multi-trunk um patio trees are really nice it gives you a little bit of
Privacy and shade um or an you know an umbrella they this um sail cloths that are pretty cool um also an arbor is nice this is they have an arbor back here you can’t see the top of it I don’t think but um but that would provide some
Privacy for a seating area back there um where you can imagine what this looked like you know without without the um the pathway without the plantings and stuff it would have been pretty wide open but but the way it is it’s set up here it’s it looks like it’s a nice private area
So very pleasing to the eye um seating of course you want to have a place to stop and have a beer um um so this is you you know you’re working in the garden it’s hard work you want to be able to sit and rest for a
Little bit right um also seaing can provide a focal point for um for you to um for your garden um allows you to sit and just kind of look out and enjoy your garden and um you know fire bow or you can have like a you know a little
Beastro table or something there it’s something where you can you know what’s what’s the garden without being able to sit down and enjoy it and then uh of course water features are really nice there’s um H I love these I love these big earns with the bubblers because one thing that’s really
Nice is you don’t have like a a drowning Hazard like you would with a pond or something like that you wouldn’t have you can have this you know little kids around and stuff also the way that the water spills over the edge here um little birds love to hang out there
Right on the edge and um Splash around and stuff especially like the little hummingbirds and stuff that’s it’s a real fun type thing a little spill Fountain is really um really attractive to local birds so you can you can get some pretty cool visitors there and um
You know it’s it’s uh it burbles enough so it can hide a lot you know can hide a lot of unwanted sound and if your neighbors got some giant Rave going next door it’s not going to do that but um you know as far as distant car noises
And things like that it can it can help disguise it so um that’s one thing that’s really nice about white water features however all Wildlife likes water features I found this Photograph and it’s um this gentleman had a beautiful Pond and he lived in Arizona
And um I think outside of Tucson and um he got up one morning and it was in the middle of summertime and there three full mountain lions breaking out of his pond so that’s pretty cool but um yeah you you you want to make sure that you know your kind of wildlife you’re
Attracting is not gonna eat you um okay so hardscaping containers here’s a nice example where you have you know the vases and um looks like a little Fireball in the background there and um you know once again permeable pavers and here they have um the pavers with the
Fine gravel in between which still allows the water to drain into the into the soil um you know large containers really you know something dramatic you know and then also uh decomposed granate which is also something that helps decomposed Granite is basically um really fine fine gravel
So it has it has like no nutrient value for plants but it um it it drains fairly quickly um but it’s something that that people use in their yard and so we’re going to go with container planting here um so if you want to do container planting you want to consider like what
Kind of plants do you want to grow in a container I mean a lot of plants aren’t amable to Containers um then you want to make sure that you pick the right container um I’ll touch in a little bit on soil mixes because there are different kinds of soil mixes um
Watering setup and maintenance so choosing your plants and I do have a I do have a talk I believe on house plants in a couple weeks so um I’ll go over house plants at a later date so choosing your plants I mean um Google’s a wonderful thing especially in
The garden section you see something that catches your eye we go ahead and Google it and see what the requirements are does it need does it need like a lot of sunlight or does it do okay in lower light levels does it need like diffus light or can it go into direct sunlight
Um is it sensitive to temperature some plants are very fussy about drafts and things um what kind of watering schedule does it need to get watered every single day or can you kind of you know just like maybe soak it let it drain and then it’s good for a week
Or two um also pest susceptibility there’s a lot of um uh for instance English IV I tried to grow it I’ve never been able to grow it in California it has a terrible tendency to get spider mites and the spidermites really like um dry hot weather so I had
Great luck in Connecticut where it was It was kind of humid during the summertime and then um during the winter time I had I had pans of water on top of my my radiator so they didn’t really get bothered by spidermites there but here I just have not had any luck so selecting
Containers you want to make sure if you’re planting um if you’re planting directly into a container you want to make sure that that container has some drainage um you know a lot of these big containers have like maybe a hole about the size of a half dollar
Right which um usually is okay but what you want to do is make sure that um that the water can drain out of that hole um I I I had somebody who um was having a terrible time they had these big beautiful vases on their pool deck and
They had um some sort of succulent big succulent plants in there but they kept dying because the the containers wouldn’t drain now the those big vases had holes in the bottom of them a single hole but the fact is that they were sitting directly on concrete and so it
Was sealed up so it wasn’t allowed to drain freely so um I told her you know you need to like get those little feet or you know put it up on on bricks or something you need to have something you need to lift it up so that the water
Could flow out of that hole so that’s something to keep in mind as well before you spend a lot of money on a big container and more money on a a you know big agabi or something and then have it have it die because the container wouldn’t drain so big very important to
Have good drainage some containers don’t have a drainage hole which you can either drill a hole in there or use a like a plastic pot you know like a nursery pot and then just pull it out you know water it pull it out and let it
Drain all the way and then pop it back in so that the the outer container is more like a decoration type thing um uh salt leashing you’re you see this a lot with those terracotta pots they have um they have a tendency to um show the the white salt deposit on the
Outside of those pots that’s something that we have we have very hard water here almost everywhere in California we’re you know especially when um when they start tapping into the reservoirs and um you’ll notice that the water gets extremely hard and so you’ll have uh
That salt deposit on the out here on the outside of those containers um so you may want to scrub that off it’s kind of unsightly um and occasionally you’re going to want to flush that container with a lot of water to get rid of the salt salt will build up in in these
Containers um heat conductive so if you have a metal container if you have a black or dark colored container um it’s best not to put it in a very sunny spot because it’ll cook your plants and it gets very very hot um if you have your
Heart set on a dark container on a south facing patio what you can do is put um you know put your actual plant pot it in a in a like a nursery pot with those drainage holes and then set that inside the dark container then you have like a little airspace that
Helps insulate you could also like wrap it bubble wrap or something you want to have insulation but the very inside surface of that pot will get very hot if it’s if it’s dark or if it’s metal um look for UV resistance um a lot of these lighter weight pots that look like
Ceramic but they’re like almost like a foam or resin type thing they have a tendency to crack and break after a couple years in the Sun so there are some that are more resistant than others you might want to um keep that in mind as well for outdoor um outdoor
Containers usually bigger is better because you don’t want to have to be out there watering three times a day during the summertime you want to be able to you want to be able to um water it and have it stay moist for a little bit um also plants that are put outside they
Have a tendency to grow a lot faster they’re exposed to more sunlight than say a house plant so with house plants you don’t want to over over pot them so to speak you don’t want to put a little bitty house plant into a big pot because they’ll it’ll just dry it doesn’t grow
Fast enough to take up that pot space okay where am I okay soil mixes I had a couple questions about soil mix um you can buy you can buy potting soil or you can also um you know you can also make your own um I like the cor the the
Bricks you can get they’re like highly compacted they’re just like way cool just like very compacted you cut you cut open the wrapper and you put it into a a wheelbarrow or a rubber made bin and you add hot water to it and you keep adding
Water to it and fluffing it up um it’s a it’s a nice inexpensive way to get um you know soil material it’s not going to have any nutrients in it so it’s actually good for like seed starting and stuff but um qu compost vermiculate you know you want
Compost for organic matter for for um nutrient value and then vermiculite helps um keep it things fluffy but also can hold some water so it kind of modifies the water content um osac Co I love osmac Co for container planting because it’s it’s like slow release so
You you put a handful in there and it dissolves over time so it gives it a steady dose a fertilizer um otherwise it’s really easy to over fertilize a a potted plant and consider your potted plant it’s kind of like a captive right you know it it’s depending on you to
Provide it with fertiliz fertilizer and water it can’t send its roots out so it has to um it has to rely on you it’s kind of a responsibility like a kid or something okay so worm castings as well worm castings are awesome for um for soil mix especially for outdoor outdoor
Plants um I found that we castings sometimes have warm eggs in there so I tried putting worm castings in my house one of my house plants and I ended up with those little red worms crawling across my kitchen floor so uh I would recommend leaving wor castings to the outdoor plants for that
Reason unless you unless it doesn’t bother you to have earthworms in your kitchen um then you want to do like a yearly CHP dressing like like I said the the hard water here you’ll see like it’ll leave a crust on the top of your of your um of your potting soil you can
Um scrape some of that off and then replenish it just give it some compost and some some good stuff just to just to kind of like refresh the pot so that’s something you could do like maybe once a year if you have a plant that’s that’s a
Perennial that is you know been in that pot for a while never never overwater um if you underwater that plant will recover you I mean unless it’s like totally if you if you forget the water for six months it’s not going to sur survive but if it’s wilting because
It’s underwatered if you give it a little bit of water it will perk right back up if you overwater and it starts to wilt that means that the roots have started to rot and that plant is a goner and it it pretty much won’t recover me sometimes you can take a cutting from
The top and try to root it but for the most part it’s it’s fatal if you if you let it sit in water so long that it wils um make sure you use dilute fertilizer for that reason that you have like it’s easy to burn these plants when they’re
In a pot um you want to flush the salts out so like maybe once a year take it out take it um put it put it someplace where you can um you know just like totally flush flush the soil make sure that the water the water is coming out the bottom of
The pot freely and just you know basically rinse the potting soil because um the the salts will build up in the soil and your plant what you’ll see is like the Leaf tips will turn brown that’s a symptom of um salt burn in the Potted particularly in a potted
Plant and so if you see those Leaf tips turning brown and you see like the white stuff on the pot and maybe a crust on the soil it’s probably time to it’s probably time to uh to flush that thing out um so it’s really it can be tricky to tell
Whether something is overwatered or underwatered um most of the time you can tell just by picking up the pot if it’s feeling light it’s underwatered if it’s really heavy well it’s overwatered um if you’ve overwatered by accident let’s say you’re like oh c i I gave it
Too much water but it hasn’t started wilting yet or if it’s just starting to look sad but not this sad um you can you can possibly recover if you i’ I’ve managed to save a few plants this way where you dump out you dump it
Out and um you know kind of push this the muddy soil away from the roots and look for any roots that are black and rotted trim those roots away to anything that’s that’s like slimy root rot um you want to trim away the rotted roots and you’re going to probably want to trim
The top of it um the the top of the plant a little bit and then um and then replant it in some fresh potting soil that’s that’s a little bit drier so that it kind of sucks the excess water away from the roots I’ve managed to save a
Couple plants that way so if you have something that’s you know you’re very fond of or it’s expensive or you know you want to save it and it’s not too far gone um that’s one way I call it plant surgery root surgery I guess um so that
It’s it’s kind of it’s kind of a pain um if you if you dump it out and it’s and it stinks it’s probably not good anymore it’s probably the the whole pots probably got mold and um you know Anor robic bacteria in there and stuff so um something
To something to you know give you some hope I guess um okay so maintenance if you’re doing um if you’re doing an indoor indoor plants you only want to go up one size so if you have a 6inch pot and and it it’s looks like there you
Know it’s been in there for a while and the roots that filled up that pot you just want to pot it up to like 8 in if this is an indoor plant or something that’s a slow growing plant um outdoor plants you can you can kind of
Get away with potting up a little bit more aggressively but usually just one size you don’t want to you don’t want to put something that you have in a 4inch pot into like a 12in pot like I said you’ll water it and that water will sit
There in the soil because the RO haven’t caught up and um they won’t take up that water and so the water sits there in the soil and you know starts to stink so po of one size when it’s an indoor plant or something that’s slow growing
Um you want to occasionally trim it you know make sure you get like um make sure you get the dead stuff off there if you have you know any damaged damaged leaves are good to trim off you know also wash it off um we’re depending on where you
Are usually it’s going to be kind of Dusty so dust and dirt on the leaves um will keep it from photosynthesizing the leaves can’t do their job if they’re dirty so um also um dust on the leaves can attract like aphids and and some other pest insects so Wasing those
Leaves off is is usually a a good idea every so often um you’re going to want to fertilize uh occasionally not too much like I said oku is just perfect for that and then um pest control as well so um yeah with Pest Control um for inder plants that
Are I like I like using Boney it’s a it’s like a a granular type um uh pesticide it you want you you sprinkle it onto the surface of the soil you water it in the plant takes it up and so like little there’s little um scales or
Aphids or you know little mites and stuff the ones that suck the life out of your plant well they that will kill those because you know it’s a systemic and so it’s a nice um it’s a good pest control for for anything that’s not edible you can use a systemic um
Particularly indoor plants because they’re not you’re not they’re not going to affect like pollinators and stuff um any kind of uh for outdoor plants if you have if you have like aphids or scales or something um you can use like insect todal fat do not use Dawn I’ve seen it
So many times Pinterest is full of really bad ideas so um Dawn is Dawn is terrible for plants it it will strip the cuticle off of the leaves and then the leaves will dry out and and the whole plant will die using insecto cyal Stope it will
Only dry out the insects it won’t it won’t affect it won’t hurt the plant so use use Horticultural stuff on your plant don’t don’t you know unless it’s something the the University of California um agriculture and natural resources um page they do have like a couple of home
Remedy type things you can use but um for the most part like don’t get your info off of Pinterest it’s just a really people get some crazy ideas and um you know spraying spraying vinegar on your plant not a good idea you know Dawn
Dish so um you can use oil like a summer oil or intial oil that’s good for like scales um it dissolves their um their exoskeleton so things like that but um for the most part the you know Pest Control yeah get your get your information off of the um
The pest control section of um the University of California which is on my Resource page which is here so yeah the um these are this is a good website too this gardening know how there’s a lot of very knowledgeable people that that write in it’s kind of like a Kora type
Thing where they they’ll write articles and um I’ve found them to be quite reliable CET magazine really good for um inspiration design inspiration they have the magazine also the books um fine gardening is also a wonderful magazine um I kind of call it gardening porn because all his pictures are just
Unbelievably beautiful and um I’ve never been able to get my yard to look like that um take a local garden tours and see what works with your for your neighbors and for people that live in your town as well as local Garden clubs and the garden clubs are worth um joining
Because um especially like in the fall when people are digging up their bulbs and dividing stuff you can get a lot of free stuff you know they have plant exchanges and stuff so um the G your local gardening clubs are are a real good resource and then um because with
California I mean you know the inland area if you live say even in Tula I mean people can grow avocados in Delo or up you know up the hill they can grow avocados up there and then um down your Pachanga where it’s like a low-lying area you can grow more
Of the stone fruit that needs that needs the cooler temperatures but you can’t grow you can’t grow Citrus there because it does get Frost so even within like one one um zip code you can get enormous variability and so that’s where the local garden tours and the local Garden
Clubs come in handy you can you’re G to find out what works for people and a lot of times they they they’ll share cuting and seeds and stuff with you so I’m all for freebies right so anyway that was the last slide so well Laura thank you that was great
Information we actually speaking of local garden and local tours we the first question of many that we have is where do we find local Garden clubs and local tours I’m assuming that you list some of them in your uh ongoing columns with our newspapers but is there another
Resource you can recommend you know I would try like Facebook I’ve seen um some stuff on Facebook um where else you know asking at local local nurseries maybe not like Home Depot or something but some of the smaller nurseries like Armstrongs and also to our audience I
Want to say we have a whole uh Archive of of a few years of garden party uh virtual programs you might want to check that out at our our virtual uh archive atg.com virtual events so are you are you game for some questions we have a oh
Heck yeah yeah we got plenty of time so yeah we’re not going to get through all of them even though we have a lot of even though we have a lot of time the first one um concerns water spaces and mosquitoes we have uh we have a few
Questions on that do bubblers cause mosquito problems and can you talk about water spaces and mosquitoes okay so mosquitoes which I um everyone was plagued with this last uh summer it seems I’ve gotten more mosquito bites this last summer than I have um since moving to California um
Mosquitoes will breed in still water and so if you have a bubbler you know you have like a little fountain or anything any moving water will not you you won’t get mosquitoes breeding and that um if you have but that’s the good news the bad news is they only need about a
Tablespoon or so of water to breed so they found like you know if you have like say recycling or something and and there’s like water collecting in a in a beer can that you’ve got in your recycling bin they can they can breed in that they can breed in all sorts of
Really remarkably small amount of water but it has to be still water and so like you know if you have a wheel bow and it doesn’t take long for those mosquito lar to show up I mean maybe a day or two and then you’ll see you’ll look and there’s
Like little swimmers in your in your wheelbarrow in your watering can or something so um be aware of any place that might have um uh stagnant still water and so that’s going to be that’s going to be your mosquito be breeding grounds and a couple years ago when we had the the
Foreclosure crisis and I know that the vector control people were just going crazy because really going crazy yeah trying yeah cuz the the swimming pools imagine how many mosquitoes can breed in a abandoned swimming pool So speaking of water um and proper drainage we have a question from Casey McDuff how do you
Find a contractor who knows how to build a sale for proper drainage and percolation do you do you have any great suggestions for that I would go with like a licensed um uh landscape architect you know there’s there’s there’s a lot of people out there that are you know there’s there’s
Gardening there’s like you can hire a garden partner and the what is it the moow and blow type people um but you know that’s pretty much all they can do is mow and blow you want to get somebody who is like a a licensed uh like a landscape architect because they they go
Through the the training and they um they know what they’re doing and they’re also more familiar with like local laws and what you know the permitting process because if you’re going to do any kind of grading or anything like that you need to need to make sure you have the
Proper permits or they can um you know that that can add up to a lot of fines and stuff California’s very very picky about that so yeah I would go with a um you know somebody who’s who’s licensed as a landscape architect Shard designers and stuff but the architect is what you
Want to what you want to look for right shifting gears uh to the question of pots for container gardening do terra pots get too too hot in the summer a audience member wants to know um you know it depends uh prob not as hot as like a black ceramic pot
Um one thing with terracotta pots is I I’ve seen pen Smith I love his his stuff he um what he does is he he uses like a sealer on on the terracotta pot and then he use he just puts like a he puts the nursery pot inside the terracotta pot so
That airspace will insulate it helps insulate from the heat so the roots aren’t right directly against the um the pot so that helps and if it’s um if it’s really bad you can you move the pot or you can um or you can um you know theoretically you could you could
Use like bubble wrap or something you know some sort of insulation to um protect that to protect the roots yeah good well we have some questions on types of soil and potting um ly hunt wants to know if excuse me if Peete Moss is recommended and also Sylvia Watkins
Wants to know can I make potting soil for my succulents if so how oh so um yeah succulents uh you can use uh I think um use like a sand but they do have potting soil for succulents and usually involves it’s usually not very nutrient Rich so it may
Um and it’s not going to hold water but it usually has like sand or something in it I do not have a recipe for um for potting soil for succulents um I have I have my my one recipe for um potting soil would be for our our we have blueberry
In um half whiskey barrels and the CHR blueberries need acid so we have there’s a a potting Sol recipe we use for those guys but um um there should be something you know I would there’s like a also on the internet I’m I’m sure there’s like a succulent Society there’s like there’s
Like there’s all different plant societies and plant groups there’s a San Society um so if you go on to one of their one of their websites they probably do have a recipe that would be that would be helpful but I if the top of my head I don’t have one I also want
To recommend to to the audience member do look at our archive because we have covered succulents and native plants before and I know that’s coming up uh NE next time but we’ve also covered it in the past and you might just do a little digging through the archive um a
Question do you have to throw out potting soil after a few years or can you just supplement um if you have a problem with disease I would throw it out um you know and also you know if you have like a big pot you I mean do you
Really want to dump that whole big pot out and you know replace the potting soil no probably not so that’s why the the idea of top dressing so if you have you know something that’s that’s kind of big and it’s you know that plant’s been
In that pot for a while and you have no desire to dump this thing out and replenish that well just like scrape off the first few inches of soil and then just just um just put like compost or something refresh it that way so that’s what they call Top dressing I guess but
Um that should that should um do the trick great and we have a question excuse me hold on just one second my Frog’s in my everyone’s recovering from that nasty cold yeah oh I hope not Erica LeBlanc asks what is a good source for brown material for compost she she says I have
Mainly kitchen scraps but don’t have ready access to brown stuff and I have NP okay yeah you want to have like you want to have enough Browns to to uh because otherwise your compost will stink and get Icky um when we were for we have a we have a lot of brown
Material I mean shredded paper um at one point I was going going to Home Depot to their lumber department and getting bags of sawdust that’s a lot of carbon right there so that and that sucks up a lot of the excess moisture that’s another um good source of of
Carbon um one thing that Jim likes to do is he’ll get a bail of straw don’t use hay you use straw as the bedding that doesn’t have the seed you know the hay has seed heads in it right you don’t want to use that get the straw and then
Just like um he runs over it with a lawn mower to chop it into little bits and um then he uses that both for um mulching particularly in the vegetable garden he’ll put a big layer of of that on you know where our tomatoes are planted and
Um he’ll o mix it in with a compost if it’s if the compost is getting too gooey um dried grass clippings which you know if you if you have a lawn mower with a bag you may want to spread that out and let them dry and then throw them into the compost
Pile what fresh GL grass cing are going to be green um but if you let them out to dry then um dried leaves from raking up in the fall and there are lots of lots of potentials yeah we have we have another question Sylvia Watkins ask after flushing out salt does anything
More soil or fertilizer need to be added to the soil after flushing out salt um you know it depends on when you flush it out um I don’t recommend adding fertilizer like right before the winter time or right before ad dormant season uhuh because um particularly if you you
Know if if giving a plant fertilizer tells you you know grow leaves so it’s going to grow these little leaves and then if it’s dormant season it’s going to drop those leaves so it’s like wasted a whole bunch of energy growing new leaves that’s just going to drop or if
It’s something that’s Frost sensitive um the new leaves are much more susceptible to frost damage and so you you don’t want to push a lot of new growth right before ad dormant season or right before winter time if you’re flushing out in the springtime yeah sure just go ahead
And add a little bit of um compost or a handful of osmo Co or something um but it does it the the flushing of salts out doesn’t really doesn’t I don’t say it like takes out all the nutrients but um you know it’s mostly going to work on the
Salt fair enough Michelle gamberi and Deborah mcmanis had a question on the name of the pesticide you mentioned BR is it B how do you spell it uh b o n d it’s um it’s a a systemic pesticide for house plants don’t um I don’t recommend using systemics for outdoor plants
Particularly flowering plants because it can poison the bees because that systemic means it the plant takes it up and it goes all the way through the plant and so it can show up in the flowers in the leaves you know and that’s why you don’t see a lot of
Systemic um pesticides for that are approved for Edibles or fruit trees because of that but um for a house plant you’re not you’re not worried about the bees visiting your house plant um so I I like using bony for um for for indoor like house plants not not the outdoors
Though speaking of aable plants we have a question um an attendee says they have been told not to fertilize herbs basil Etc is that correct that is a myth um interesting actually um herbs do like decent soil I I’ve read so many places where it’s like
Oh you know herbs like crappy soil it’s like well they might survive in crappy soil but they don’t like crappy soil nobody likes crappy soil so except for maybe like stink net or one of these horrible like weeds but um no herbs like they like decent garden soil
Too yeah so you you want to you want to um give it give it some compost or a little bit for lier or something one more question because this is about small container and and believe me everybody we’ll have future shows that that will answer some of your other
Questions there’s so many Lisa Lippert wants to know if how can I tell if my potted trees need to be repotted into a larger pot and how do I do this to keep from hurting the tree um okay if you have some of the signs that a plant probably wants to get into
A bigger pot are the roots are starting to grow at the bottom of the pot um in which case a lot of times if if it’s on the ground those roots can like they can be sneaky and they’ll get down there and spread and you won’t be able to move
That pot you’re not going to transplant that thing because you’re not going to be able to move the pot so um but that’s one sign is um if you see Roots starting to come out because then they’re they they want to they want to like spread their wings and move move out um
Sometimes you’ll see like the the pot itself is like packed with roots um you you know sometime sometimes it’s just that you’re you’re not going to be able to transplant when it’s when it’s big it’s just not worth it’s not worth throwing your back out over it just like
Top dressing just refresh the soil you know yeah well sadly that is all the time we have today there are dozens of other questions um thank you Laura we’re going to see you next time thanks yeah right to me and then uh right to the Sonic California news group and you
Might see it up in the column there absolutely um meanwhile we we’ve got California natives coming up on February 21st and if you register for that program you can catch up on Virtual programs you’ve missed and there’s a lot of back information folks by going to scg.com Virtual events it’s free it’s
There for the taking and as Laura said if you’d like to share your thoughts from today or if you have additional questions just email us at events atg.com we’ll make sure the these get to Laura I’m sure they’re going to be fodder for for future columns and keep
Reading us folks and keep coming back thanks so much we’ll see you again great Co bye