An Auburn scene

On Linclon Avenue, Auburn Ca. That's a mural on the wall straight ahead. I like how it blends in with the landscape. 

Auburn courthouse

Auburn's courthouse was dedicated on July 4th, 1898. Still in use. More info here.

Looking east from Prospectors Road

When you reach the top of Prospectors Road, Garden Valley, this this is the view. Prospectors Road was used before Marshall Rd was built.  

Missing a smokestack?

Not so hidden behind a fence in Isletown sits, what appears to be, the smokestack from the old paddle-wheeler, "Delta King". How it ended up here, is a mystery. 

What happened to Arbor Day?

What happened to Arbor Day? I remember it being something the nursery trade joined in on. Checking today I see it’s been taken over by Calfire (our state fire agency). When you look up more information we’re directed to the National Arbor Day Foundation, out of Nebraska. Following the link, “View the California State Report”, we’re taken to a 2014 dated news release.

Depending on which state you live in, the day is celebrated at different times. Here in California the date is March 7, Luther Burbank’s birthday. Luther Burbank was California’s most famous horticulturalist, being responsible for developing hundreds of different types of fruiting plants, as well as ornamentals, think Shasta Daisy.

While Earth Day on April 22 is popular, it’s more of a broad area of interest celebration. Arbor Day, however, was made for the nursery trade. It’s a day when we are suppose to plant a tree! If there are any California nursery trade organizations left, and I don’t know if there are, why not take this up? If there are no trade organizations willing too, why not take it up on our own?

The message of planting a tree for the future is exactly the type of activity we need to encourage. Non-denominational, above politics, and something anyone can do. Live in an apartment? Plant a tree in a container, inside our out! Trees can be fruiting, ornamental, helpful for wildlife, or any other reason for planting a tree. I remember some nursery group trying a “Plant Something” campaign. I never liked that because it’s so open ended. Plant what? Here we have an opportunity to plant a very specific item, a tree.

The nursery trade always seems to be wondering how best to promote itself. Here we have a specific date, on which to do a specific thing, that will make a positive influence on the person planting it, the neighborhood, and the world. Why not promote this? If the trade won’t do it, I’m going to do it. How about you? Something as simple as letting people know in advance of this special date, how your store can help, and giving them the encouragement to “get it done”. You could even map out where these new trees are being planted, with pictures of the people planting the tree. Next year let’s check in and see how the tree is doing. Post more photos of that tree planted last year, and the new one they are planting.

A horticultural tradition is born!

LE Cooke Nursery closing after 73+ years

The news that LE Cooke Nursery is closing is a sign of just how depressed the independent retail nursery market is. According to the statement they released, their customer count has, over the last 10 years, fallen from about 1700 to about 500, and still declining. This leaves one bare root supplier for California, Dave Wilson Nursery.

As LE Cooke mentions, the worrisome part of this for those of us who love to garden and grow things is, “other wholesale nurseries selling canned fruit trees seem to be purchasing solely on price and not the best varieties for homeowners, but rather commercial farmer varieties with quality geared for shipping and storage to the markets, not best flavor that we seek.” Yes, the box stores and their suppliers are partly responsible for the dumbing down of the gardening public. They don’t care if the varieties they sell are the best for your area, just how quickly they can sell through them. People who have never gardened, or are interested in gardening will find success eludes them and eventually give up. This is not good for the long term outlook of bringing in new gardeners, and customers.

Are bare root fruits and berries a dead category? Will people only buy in cans? I’m concerned that the planting of fruit trees in one’s backyard may be slowing down. Why plant, when mobility and job changes causes one to move more frequently? Why invest in the small orchard when you’ll just have to leave it all eventually?

Those of us who still make a living in the independent garden center trade now have to find new suppliers, and in many cases there are no new suppliers. As more, and more large growers jump on the box store train, the remaining ones will close. There are simply not enough of us smaller stores to keep them afloat. This is not a death knell for small garden shops, but it does mean we have to continue being nimble, and quickly responsive to the ever changing garden center scene.

It’s certainly interesting, and a bit sad to see the predictions we made 10 years ago coming to fruition. Major suppliers heading to the box stores, small garden shops continuing to close, and most important, a public that will never know there was something better, and much more special, than that chain store garden shop.     

Let's turn Sacramento into Silicon Valley East?

This article, which appeared in today's Sacramento Bee, say's, "the Farm-to-Fork boast is all wrong for a town that yearns to be Silicon Valley East...It’s time to step away from the world-class provincialism that has long constrained Sacramento. Let go of the images of our agricultural past, lest our economic future be limited to farm-to-forklift jobs."

The article describes how Silicon Valley, "which once laid claim to being the world’s canning and dried-fruit packing capital, shrugged off its rich agricultural heritage. Along with neighboring San Mateo County, it embraced a new moniker: Silicon Valley." 

Why do we want so badly to shrug off our rich agricultural heritage? We want the overcrowding, and sky high housing costs of Silicon Valley here?

I find it weird that a population that seems to thrive on the "idea" of local farming, and locally sourced food, would want to emulate Silicon Valley, a once wondrous farmland turned into sprawl. I have no desire to see our region turned into Silicon Valley East, though it's headed in that direction. Where shall we grow our food if all the best agricultural land is paved over? Sacramento needs to get over wanting to be "somewhere else" (Silicon Valley this time), and figure out how to be itself, in all its agricultural glory. 

Millennials in the garden

According to this article in The Telegraph, Monty Don, an English horticulturist and TV host say's we shouldn't waste our time trying to convince Millennials into the garden. According to Don, "I think we put far too much interest in trying to get ten to 20 year olds interested in gardening. I think you should do everything you can to try and get them interested up to the age of 10.” 

I agree. No one pushed me into horticulture, or the garden. My interest developed on it's own without any encouragement from the trade. As Don say's, "When you’re 15 whatever your parents tell you you should do, you’re not going to do it. Any self respecting 15-year-old [will rebel] and so they should."

"I think much better to make sure they have access to it up to the age of 10 and of course don’t take it away at that point, and just let them come.”

The marketing attempts from most of the trade organizations geared towards millennials fall on deaf ears. Millennials will migrate to the garden on their own, if they choose. Likely it will be the realization that in the garden the hope for our future rests. Not with new technology, new media, or slick ad campaigns, but in the garden where one can make a difference that is real and dynamic. Horticulture is the future, and millennials will realize that when they do. 

Amazing camouflage!

Leaf or insect?

The photograph shows insect camouflage in the case of Zaretis ellops, or "The Seasonal Leafwing", a moth found in Costa Rica and Mexico.  The two little holes in the “leaf” don’t always occur with all members of the species, making each one quite unique. Check out the variations here. Amazing.

The rain continues here, with another 6 inches (15.24 cm) predicted for the next couple of days. Every now and then people wander into the garden shop picking up a few seeds, or seed starting equipment. Until the rain stops and we get some dry weather people seem hunkered down, waiting…

The Grow Room from Ikea

“All it takes to complete the 17-step, architect-designed DIY garden of your dreams is plywood, a visit to your local community workshop, rubber hammers, metal screws and some patience”.  This is billed as the way to feed communities in the future.

This from the designers, “local food represents a serious alternative to the global food model. It reduces food miles, our pressure on the environment, and educates our children of where food actually comes from. The result on the dining table is just as fascinating. We could produce food of the highest quality that tastes better, is much more nutritional, fresh, organic and healthy.

The challenge is that traditional farming take up a lot of space and space is a scarce resource in our urban environments. The Growroom is designed for cities and with it’s size 2,8 x 2,5 meter it has a small spatial footprint as you grow vertically. It is designed to support our everyday sense of well being in the cities by creating a small oasis or ‘pause’-architecture in our high paced societal scenery, and enables people to connect with nature as we smell and taste the abundance of herbs and plants.”

It’s an interesting design and could be a fun project, but feeding neighborhoods with this? I doubt it. What we need in cities is more open space and gardens growing out in the sun. Soon all our green spaces will be inside and the outside world will be metal and concrete. It’s not about just producing food, but creating a better neighborhood, and city.  We need outdoor places for people to be and soak up the sun, and food gardens would serve that function.

More here: Huffington Post

Another rainy friday

Another rainy day, with more to come. Now we hear that it may rain right through March, which doesn’t surprise this California native. Not so great for business, but in horticulture you have to roll with what Mother nature provides. Seen it rain right through May, and this would be the year it might happen again. This is now our rainiest winter, ever.

Here is a link to Ian Baldwins, “Reading the 2017 Tea Leaves”, concerning the up-coming year in garden retail. I found this quote most enlightening, “simply put, the biggest, most expensive end of the range of almost everything, sold out first. It didn’t matter whether it was wreaths for the front door, ‘everlasting’ Christmas trees or swag for the mantle, the most expensive selection sold out first. The $2000 everlasting tree sold before the $800 one, the new clever lighting set sold before the cheaper one designed five years ago and the biggest table-runners went first.” This has to be evidence from the most wealthy sections of our country? This is not what’s happening in central California outside the Bay Area, at least in my observations. I do wonder if we sometimes forget the part of the state that really hasn’t seen this kind of business. Do these various garden surveys tend to skew towards the more wealthy enclaves in the country?

Here is a video of a young horticulturist and her business in Britain. I like the enthusiasm and the pride of trade she exhibits. We need more young people to take up horticulture, and work in the garden.

Not much going on here at the garden center as it’s raining, and everyone around here is hunkered down waiting out the next storm, which the weather service named “Lucifer”. Sounds like trouble. I’ll let you know.

A new morning (or, “I’m alive!”)

After a few days of sunny and mild weather, the rain has returned for what appears to be the upcoming week, and beyond. It’s nice to have had a break in the rain, as we are now in record  breaking territory for the wettest year on record. However, the drought is not over according to the powers that be. Southern California, that oasis in the desert, has not gotten the required amount of rain to pull them out of drought. They don’t need to worry, since we have their water safely impounded behind secure dams, like Oroville. 

A Upworthy video popped up on my Facebook feed extolling the virtues of urban Gardening for food production. Most of these videos have a hopeful feel that we can feed the growing populations in the if we just bring food production closer to the people eating the food. It all sound great, and you might think we are making some headway here but, ¼ of all front gardens in Great Britain are being paved over for automobiles. Seems the idea of moving to the city and taking part in the public transportation system doesn’t fly when you have a car. Lot’s of hopeful wishes and happy videos out there.

We got ripped off a few weeks ago. Someone drove in, cut the lock on the gate, and drove off with 100’s of bags of our soils, drip irrigation equipment, etc. Amazingly the stuff was spotted by an alert deputy and much of it returned. The crook who took it is on the run, but the deputy seemed confident they will eventually be caught. So we have had to install security cameras, motion detecting equipment, and extra lighting. While I don’t like this kind of stuff, what can we do? No when the motion detector goes off I can quickly see, via our smartphone, all the different areas of the nursery. Seems thieving has been on the up-rise around here.

That’s all for today. Just waiting for the rains to let up so we can start planting for spring. It’s always too much, or too little water at planting season. Just the way it is, and what makes horticulture and gardening a challenge.

“Nearly one in four front gardens in the UK is completely paved

"Nearly one in four front gardens in the UK is completely paved over" according to The BBC. When did this happen? A country once filled with gardeners, and now ¼ of all front gardens are paved over? This despite evidence of the environmental, and health benefits, of gardens? The horticulture trade is partly responsible for this by feeding into the “instant gratification" desire.

When I started in the nursery business back in the early 80’s flowers were sold without blooms. We sold flats and flats of flowers with not one bloom, just a sign with a picture of what the flower would look like. People bought these, and patiently waited for the blooms, which came along quickly. Then the first flats of blooming flowers started showing up in the later 80’s. People naturally gravitated towards these flats of flowers as you could plant them, and voila, “instant” color. No more waiting for the blooms to come naturally, no planning ahead, just buy already blooming flowers. Problem? They don’t grow! They have been treated with PGR’s.

PGR’s, or “plant growth regulators” are used by growers to stunt the growth of the vegetative part of the plant, to promote earlier flowering. PGR's are applied as a spray, or dip. Growers have seen the results of selling these flats with already blooming flowers. Unknowing customers buy them up! Their lives seem so busy, and there is no time for patience, and they demand instant gratification. However, the plants don’t grow like they did in Grandma’s garden. The little flowers have blooms, but the alyssum doesn’t cascade over the wall like grandmas did. The marigolds never gain any height. The flowers bloom, but seem stunted. People figure they are doing something wrong, don’t have a “green thumb”, and give up.

Growth regulators are also used so the plants stay small enough to fit on the racks of the large semi-trucks that deliver the flowers. Uniformity of growth for transport overshadows growing healthy, various sized flowering plants. Again, this sells plants at the nursery, but doesn’t build a lifelong love affair with the garden. Hence, in our efforts to satisfy the ever demanding public, we have cut corners, and taken much of joy out of a once joyful hobby.

There is hope as some smaller growers do not use PGR's , and promote that. These healthier non-treated flowers will grow better, and flower longer. Most important the gardener will have success, and benefit from the patience that the garden use to teach those that listen. In the long run we may grow a whole new population of gardeners, who fall in love with the garden and continue that relationship far into the future, instead of paving that future over with asphalt.  

BBC article: http://www.bbc.com/news/science-environment-38772477

Asparagus and rhubarb roots