So, the summer has almost gone, the garden has produced its goodness and you are just about ready to dig it all under and call it quits? Wait, don’t be so quick to stop on all the fun. You can have a winter garden, too! The Redding area affords us the ability to grow vegetables all year with a bit of foresight and preparation.

These vegetables actually do better during the fall, winter and early spring: peas, broccoli, kohlrabi, Brussels sprouts, cauliflower, carrots, lettuce, onions and beets, among others.
Growing these plants during the winter avoids the hassles with insects that you would have during the summer. My broccoli becomes hopelessly filled with aphids tucked deep down inside the tight flower heads, cauliflower burns, and peas just peter out.

Starting seeds right now will give you a very early crop next spring, as well.  I am ever mindful of keeping food about in case of emergency, and having a garden full of something to eat all year long appeals to me.
As you remove the spent summer plants, take time to rake away the old leaves and debris where insects and disease lurk.  It is best to rotate what you grow each time, such as root crops, or the brassicas (broccoli, Brussels sprouts, cauliflower, etc), to avoid build ups of bugs, and depletion of the soil.
I just did this with my bush beans.  They produced quite well, but this last couple of weeks the insects really weakened the plants, so I opted to rip them out after one last harvest.  I turned over the row and amended with organic fertilizers, raked smooth and planted my broccoli seeds.

I find it is best to start the seeds in flats ahead of time and have established plants to put out in the garden, but it does take more time and effort, so I am just planting seed directly in the garden, this year.  Care has to be taken to keep the seeds moist until they germinate and establish themselves in our triple-digit heat.

You will find it very helpful to use row covers of white fabric available in most garden catalogs, to keep the seed bed moist and protect seedlings from the blistering heat.  Since I use these covers year around, I find they are a worthy investment for a vegetable garden.

So, don’t wait until December comes and the new seed catalogs come in the mail, pore through your now-dogeared catalogs for your fall garden seeds and GET GROWING!

Here are some Tips from Stikrz:
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Keep all your old broken pottery and place the broken bottoms upside down in a shady part of your garden, like under large veggies. Snails and larger slugs will tend to congregate inside. Use short, flat pieces of wood to attract the smaller slugs.
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Bad snail year? Take your favorite flashlight and a small pail of hot soapy water. Visit your garden at night to round up the offending gastropods, and drop them into the water, it kills them fast and you don’t have to squish them. Salt takes too long and it is not good in the garden. Just don’t leave them sitting in the container for long. Ick.
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Need plant labels? Take an old set of plastic mini blinds and cut the slats to the desired size. They are sturdy, cheap and easy to write on with pencil or marking pen!

Mitsy Krzywicki (pronounced Kriz wik’ ki), a former Record Searchlight artist, now enjoys life as an avid gardener, freelance graphics artist and amateur photographer. You can drop her a line at czygyny@yahoo.com

If you have a sizable garden, and a healthy lawn, there is no reason you can’t create your own compost.

Good compost is pricey, and much of what I see on the market is not very well composted, especially the cheaper products. Unfinished compost can rob your soil of nitrogen as bacteria and fungi work to complete the breakdown process.

You can invest in one of the many plastic barrel composters available, if you don’t have a lot of green waste. They are handy, easy and complete the composting process faster than open piles. When you have the volume of waste produced as I do, then creating large bins or just piles will be needed.

This fall, instead of bagging your leaves, rake them up in a low pile and drive your lawnmower over it until they are chopped up, and start your compost with the resulting free, easily composted materials.

I use my copious quantities of white oak, mulberry and fruit-tree leaves in the fall by mowing them up with my leaf-catcher on my riding mower. Yeah, I am a cheater when I can get away with it!

You can  also spread these leaves over a garden area that will sit fallow over winter to about four or five inches deep, letting the winter weather break down the leaves, giving the added bonus of soft, fluffy soil underneath the blanket of organic matter, and no weeds sprouting next spring.

Lawn clippings are perfect for composting IF you do not put Weed ‘n Feed fertilizer products, nor spray your lawn with pesticides of any kind, since they will just contaminate your finished product.

If you have it available, it is a real bonus if you have access to animal droppings like horse, cow, sheep, rabbits etc. Since I have sheep, I also have lots of nitrogen-rich manure and soaked bedding to add to my compost piles.  Otherwise you may need to supplement the process with nitrogen fertilizer or compost starters available in gardening catalogs.

Separate the smaller-size green waste from the branches and tough, thick stems, if you can. I have two piles for this: one for the fines and one for the thicks that get carried to the burn pile later. Layer dry with wet materials if you can.

Set a sprinkler on top of your bin or pile to keep it moist, but not soggy. Turning the pile will help break down the material completely, but I would need a tractor to turn mine as often as I need to.

Here is some of the finished product from my compost pile, it needs to be sieved out for some of the larger pieces, but it is ready for my garden. When this pile gets all done, I will have all the compost I need for my garden, with no extra cost or worry about contaminants and heavy metals that can be found with commercial preparations.

Mitsy Krzywicki (pronounced Kriz wik’ ki), a former Record Searchlight artist, now enjoys life as an avid gardener, freelance graphics artist and amateur photographer. You can drop her a line at czygyny@yahoo.com

We’ve seen them everywhere: The white, pink and magenta flowers appear where little else is in bloom. These tough-as-nails plants thrive along our freeways up and down the state.

Oleanders, the perfect shrub for our hot summer climate.

Perfect? In many respects yes. Hardy, durable, cut-’em-to-the-ground-and-spring-back tough, they’ve earned a place in our landscape and hearts.

For a quick and beautiful hedge or screen, there is no parallel.

But, they are perfectly toxic.

When you next consider planting this shrub, heed the fact that it is packed with poisonous compounds.

Oleanders, members of the Apocynaceae (Dogbane family), are laced with bitter sap that contains Cardenolide Glycosides, which act upon the heart much like foxglove or Digitalis.

These toxic compounds have also been used from antiquity for various medical treatments. While studies and opinions differ on dosage, if enough oleander is consumed, it can prove fatal, especially to young children, small pets and livestock.

All plant parts of oleander, fresh or dry, are toxic if ingested. There are many recorded cases of oleander poisoning in this country every year. This may be of importance to people who have pets who tend to chew on plants, for play areas young children will frequent, or for situations that have plantings of oleander growing within nibble-reach of livestock.

In campground areas where coleander grow, care must be taken when choosing ’skewers’ for roasting. While the long, thin, sturdy stems seem perfect for the job, they can prove a disastrous error of choice.

Care should be used when pruning oleander. Gloves and long sleeves are adequate protection. Skin irritation can occur from contact with the sap, and safety eyewear is a must when working with the plant to avoid accidental splashing of the acrid sap into your eyes.

Oleander is very difficult to eradicate once it is large and established. Consider how large these tall shrubs will get at maturity. Oleander can be pruned severely without harm to the plant, but over-planting or planting too close to sensitive areas leaves the problem of frequent disposal of the trimmings. Burning any part of oleander creates toxic smoke, so care must be taken to minimize contact with the fumes if you decide to burn it.

Oleander is a beautiful and important summer-hardy shrub with many different applications in your yard, so it doesn’t need to be avoided when designing your landscape. After all, plenty of other toxic plants are commonly used in our yards.

Understanding the limitations and dangers of any plant should help you design your landscape appropriately, and help you keep it safe.

Mitsy Krzywicki (pronounced Kriz wik’ ki), a former Record Searchlight artist, now enjoys life as an avid gardener, freelance graphics artist and amateur photographer. You can drop her a line at czygyny@yahoo.com

Snails and slugs leave telltale slime trails, and generally eat the plant down to the stem.

Grasshoppers and crickets eat even more.

If your seedlings are cut right off at the base like a tiny tree cut for lumber, cutworms are the culprit. They live in the soil during the day and come out at night.

If your plant has been skeletonized, European earwigs might be the guilty party. Please don’t tell me the ‘books’ say earwigs don’t eat plants. My eyes tell me this species can devastate young plants and flowers.

Take a flashlight and go out at night and poke around. Chances are, you will see just what is doing the damage.

I seldom use chemical pesticides on my veggies. I have a number of things I use as controls first.

I keep broken pots and shards of pottery stuck here and there around the garden. Short sections of boards work, too. Pests gravitate to these areas in the morning and can be removed.

For snails, go out at night with a small pail of hot, soapy water and your flashlight, pick them off one by one, and drop them into the bucket. The hot, soapy water will kill them quickly, and is easier to do than stomping them (unless you enjoy getting your frustrations out this way). Leave the salt in the shaker. It takes too long to kill and poisons your soil. Just be sure to dump it all out in the garbage in the morning or you will have a nasty, stinky mess.

Slugs are harder to collect. A stick will usually lift them off the plant.

A bad earwig year is a bad year, indeed. One experience with finding a nest filled with hundreds of earwigs boiling out en masse is enough to give you the willies for the rest of the day. If you are not averse to using a can of Raid, use it when you find a nest like this, or try smashing them all. I haven’t tried the rolled-up newspaper trick I have read about to control earwigs, but it is worth a try. Place a few sections of rolled-up newsprint to welcome earwigs to destruction. Smash the roll of paper and throw it away in the morning.

I encourage you to incorporate wasps into your insect-eating arsenal. Unless you are deathly allergic to the venom of vespids, allow these creatures to nest in safe places away from constant contact from people.

I have witnessed many different species of wasps catching, eating and storing for their offspring all sorts of soft-bodied insects in great amounts. Most of the local species of wasps are fairly inoffensive and non-aggressive. I only remove nests that are around the porch or where I frequently work, and we do have lots of nests!

The image of the wasp shows a chewed-up ball of caterpillar, yum.

Learn to recognize the different ones. The caveat here is for the yellow-jacket, or meat bee. This creature is ill-tempered, aggressive and dangerous. The yellow-jacket is a more robust and compact wasp. Its hind legs do not dangle when it flies, it flies in a peculiar side-to-side motion, and it folds its wings when it lands. There are effective traps that will help control their numbers. Other wasps are not attracted to these traps. Keep a source of water close by, and sticks or fences where birds can perch. They eat a fair share of bugs, too.

We also have trouble with potato beetles, leaf hoppers and squash bugs. I have not found any effective biological control for these critters yet. I had a can of sticky spray called Tangle-Foot I used on yellow plastic cups attached to stakes, but someone gave it away, and now we can’t find it anywhere in town. There is a brush-on version of this sticky material that might work as well, but I haven’t tried it yet. All I know is that those yellow cups became covered with insects in short order!

When natural, biological controls don’t work, I use Ortho Bug-Geta, a pelletized insecticide that is applied around the plants, Neem oil or insecticidal soap in a hand-spray bottle or pressurized sprayer.

Petroleum- and chemical-based insecticides are too harmful and dangerous for use in your vegetable garden, in my opinion! Such powerful poisons kill all the helpful insects along with the damaging ones.

(Answer to the QUIZ: What is eating this plant?: Goldfinches! Yes, those sweet little yellow birds. At this point I don’t try to control them, since they eat bugs, too!)

Mitsy Krzywicki (pronounced Kriz wik’ ki), a former Record Searchlight artist, now enjoys life as an avid gardener, freelance graphics artist and amateur photographer. You can drop her a line at czygyny@yahoo.com

But, even if you are still in the process of soil preparation, lets talk about what to plant.

For a Redding summer, you will do well with tomatoes, green beans, carrots, all summer and winter squash (including pumpkins), corn, potatoes, most onion varieties, cucumbers, dry beans, peppers, beets, eggplant, etc. But did you know that you can also plan for a winter garden, too?

For fall/winter/early spring harvest, you might consider growing sweet peas, snow peas, Swiss chard, carrots, beets, broccoli, cauliflower, kale, kohlrabi, some onions and salad greens.  These plants, while languishing in Redding’s wilting heat, will generally thrive in our relatively mild winters.  These edibles will be started from seed around August, so there is plenty of time to think about what to put in. More on that technique later.

As I develop a taste for the unusual I tend to gravitate to the other companies that carry such interesting things as strawberry spinach; summer greens with edible red berries, and yacon, an unusual starchy tuber with big fuzzy leaves.
If you are only going to put in a few tomatoes or squash, then there are plenty of good places in town to purchase already started plants.  Please, though, if you like growing corn, you need to grow a lot of it to get it to produce, so don’t buy those 4-inch pots of a few, measly corn plants, unless you have cash to waste. Just get a packet or two of the same variety seeds.

Most of the common and favorite varieties of started plants can be found at the supermarket racks and department store nurseries, but Wyntour Nursery, Gold-Leaf Nursery and other nurseries in town carry the best selection of specialty varieties of tomatoes, squash and herbs and other garden favorites.  They also carry good selections of the perennial edible plants, like strawberries, blueberries, asparagus and other berries.  It is too late to obtain those plants, though. It is best to wait until next fall to consider those selections.

So, visit some Web sites and dream about pink tomatoes and red lettuce or purple cauliflower. Check out the supermarket seed rack, or get down to your local nursery and load up on what you have a hankering for. 

Just be forewarned, our frosts seem to be lurking about, even at the beginning of May, this year.  Your tomatoes with be toast and your peppers history if you put them out too soon without adequate protection.

If you do get some plants, and old Jack Frost just can’t get the hint and leave, you may want to move them up to 1-gallon containers and keep them on your porch or other protected area for a week or two, just to be sure.

I can say this from recent experience.  I have already lost my first tomatoes and peppers, and about half of my Stevia (a natural sweetening herb that I had started from seed a couple of months ago). It promptly and cheerfully dropped to about 26 degrees a few nights after planting, and even some protected plants were fatally damaged, as well as all emerging leaves on my Raywood ash, pistache, mulberry and white oaks and more! Yikes!

You can start your seeds indoors in a sunny window sill or under fluorescent lights, or directly into the garden.  Cover lightly with a good quality compost or mulch and keep well watered until the seedlings emerge.

Next time: Plant protection

Meet Stikrz, the creation of Mitsy Krzywicki, who writes a gardening column for Food for Thought. Stikrz will periodically share gardening tips. - Doni

When you set out small seedlings, take Styrofoam cups from which you have cut out the bottoms, and set them inverted over the planted seedling and anchor with a bit of soil. The cup will protect the seedling from harsh sun, drying winds, chewing bugs and can be used over and over.

Where to buy your seeds and plants?  Everywhere! There are a great number of good places to order vegetable seeds, and there is still time to get your orders in if you hurry.

Here are some of my favorites:

• Territorial Seed Company; http://www.territorialseed.com/  (Good all-around selection of vegetables.)
•  Totally Tomatoes; http://www.totallytomato.com/  (For you tomato-lovers.)
•  Seeds of Change; http://www.seedsofchange.com/  (This is a premier certified organic company, with unusual and    unique varieties)
•  Johnny’s Selected Seeds; http://www.johnnyseeds.com/  (They cater more to the market grower, but they have varieties I like.)
• Park’s Seeds; http://www.parkseed.com/and Burpee Seeds; http://www.burpee.com/ are still good places to buy, and even the seed displays you find in the store are great for last-minute purchases.

Mitsy Krzywicki (pronounced Kriz wik’ ki), a former Record Searchlight artist, now enjoys life as an avid gardener, freelance graphics artist and amateur photographer. You can drop her a line at czygyny@yahoo.com

Note from Doni: Please join me in welcoming Mitsy Kyzywicki and her first gardening column, Get Up and Grow! Mitsy, a top-notch graphic artist and illustrator, is also is a wealth of information about plants and gardening. I trust you’ll find her as interesting and inspirational as I do. Enjoy.

From the glimpse of your first carrot seedling to emerge from the soil, to the smell of a handful of dill, to the taste of the first ripe strawberry, vegetable gardening is just about the most satisfying hobby in which to indulge.

I love to grow my own food, and I would love to share some of my techniques.
I am not a gardener who subscribes much to conventional gardening methods, I tend to make it up as I go along. But I will resort to more formal methods when my experiments fail. (Meaning, I actually will read the directions!) Bear with me if you do it a different way. Of course, feel free to add your tried and trusted methods.

1. Garden placement. Full sun. If you can find a spot that gets a goodly portion of full sun all day, you are off to a good start. Vegetables need a lot of sun to grow vigorous and healthy, but if you can find a spot that gets late afternoon shade, you may find it helps in our scorching summer heat. A spot that stays shady in the morning, then gets hot sun later, or a spot facing a west wall, may not do as well.

2. Soil amendments. Most of Redding, unless you are blessed to live in a bottom-land area, has a heavy, nutrient-depleted, laterite soil. You will need to put lots of organic material in it to make your garden do well. Some folks like to put well-composted cow manure in their gardens. I use it, but I prefer to use products like Ferti-mulch, composted cedar or redwood mulch, something that has a bit more lasting power. I have used City of Redding’s compost products as well. Hand-dig in as deep as you can, or rototill it in. No matter what it is, if it is composted, it will help. Un-composted sawdust and bark will not help your soil until it breaks down, and will rob your soil of nitrogen.

3. Watering. I have been heard to say, “Redding, where watering is an art.” Our hot summer climate makes it important to make sure your watering method is sufficient. Overhead watering with a sprinkler works, and is the cheapest initial outlay of money, but tends to be water-wasteful, carry water-borne diseases, and will germinate a plethora of weed seeds. Flood irrigation works great if you live by the ACID canal, or have the time to run a bubbler at the end of a hose. For those of us who are water-use conscious, don’t want to be running around with a garden hose all day, and like to keep the weeds down, drip/low pressure systems are the way to go.

I use drip emitters, micro-sprayers of all kinds, in-line emitters, 3/4″ and 1/4″ recycled-tire soaker lines, and will be using what is called T-Tape this year. I use the drips and micro-sprayers in my all flower areas, but for the vegetables I prefer the soakers and in-line emitters, and, hopefully, the T-Tape. The soakers will begin to clog with scale after a year or two; big disadvantage for so large a financial outlay. However, the others will last years and years if properly cared for.
The local department hardware stores carry many of these items, but if you are doing a large area, and if you want to save money, go with the specialty businesses that cater to landscaping and plumbing materials only. Most of the folks in those businesses are very knowledgeable and helpful to even us emitter-ignorant.

4. Weeds. Get rid of them. Whether you pull them, hack them, or scrape them up, get them out of the area so they don’t finish off a couple of seeds in their dying gasps. Unless you live right next to open fields and pastures like I do, every season you prevent weeds from reproducing is another year of fewer weeds returning. Don’t spray with any herbicides unless you have these weeds from the pit of hell; Johnson grass, Bermuda grass, or bindweed (Convolvulus arvensis). In this tainted world today, one of the important points of growing your own veggies is not ingesting all the chemicals that get used on the commercial produce. Try to eradicate your weeds with mechanical means and not chemical ones. I do use Round-up in my vegetable garden, but only on the bind-weed, which is nearly impossible to kill by pulling, and I apply it with a brush or a sponge so no overspray gets on any plants or soil. For most of my weeding I love these tools shown here.

Next time: What to grow.

Mitsy Krzywicki (pronounced Kriz wik’ ki), a former Record Searchlight artist, now enjoys life as an avid gardener, freelance graphics artist and amateur photographer. You can drop her a line at czygyny@yahoo.com