Welcome back!

thank you, Nanelle! You'll notice that I was able to re-activate my old Modjadje account, dating from way back, with help from the tech staff here at Houzz and I will not be posting as "Dee aka Modjadje" again. Thanks for initiating this roll call ...

I returned to California gardening after 10 (unsunny) years in Oregon ... now getting a garden started from scratch. Hubby cleared large patches of chaparral around the home for a fire-safe zone (it's 10 acres of manzanita, toyon, some beautiful Madrones, Ponderosa pine, and in the lower-lying areas there's also Poplar/Aspen (not sure which), willow, and cottonwood. It's a hard slog, getting the bare bones in ... 13 trees planted during the year since we moved here, and lots of my favs growing in tubs on the deck. I'm an experienced container gardener, love to grow stuff from seed, enjoy the challenge of identifying mystery plants, and have a soft spot for South African native plants and bulbs as that is my country of origin. I'm also an avid rockhound and in seventh heaven because this property had been hydraulically mined in the late 1800s, then hard rock mined even later, and there are fascinating pebbles underfoot everywhere ... now and then I even find pieces of clear crystal with several of the sides still intact. My favorite forums are re. gardening with edibles, daylilies, container gardening, S.A. native plants, California native plants, and waterwise gardening.

Alameda, CA. 8 roses in the front of the house. Tons of citrus including quite a few that I have grafted from budwood. 3 avocados, 2 just starting to fruit this year. Santa Rosa plum, Fuji apple, 4-5 fig trees, fuyu persimmon and some blueberries. My nemesis? Spider mites. I am vigilant but they are pounding my citrus. Arrgh.

Modajadje - I wonder if we will return to CA after our move to Oregon. The summers have just been too hot for me. We get so little rain and this is the first winter without snow. We did get a little bit a couple of weeks ago, but very little. It was not that way when l moved here in El Dorado county. There used to be snow on the ground for months during the winter. Now we get only a little bit of rain. What area in Oregon did you live?

One of my earliest experiences on the property was growing 100 tomato plants from seed. The deer got the tops and the gophers got the bottoms. Fortunately, enough survived that we got a few. Now we have a fenced garden area. There are 8 Square Foot Gardens in there with hardware cloth and weed cloth on the bottoms. On the perimeters are 3 sunny beds and 2 shady beds, with part sun.

evelyn, I lived in the Willamette Valley, and also on the coast. I get affected by SAD in the long gloomy winters of the PNW that's why I'm so happy to have moved back to Placerville. I traded a moss-covered garden for a xeriscape garden :-)

I thought it was sunny and hot in the Willamette Valley. When we move to Oregon, we will rent first and see how we like it. We have lived in CA for most of our lives. Both SoCA and NoCA.

It's funny, you live in Placerville! We are practically neighbors. We should meet for coffee sometime. We live in Somerset, about 20 miles from Placerville.

Evelyn, I wanted to send you a message but don't see a way to do that ... pls email me on modjadje at gmail dot com and yes, I'd love to get together for coffee with a fellow gardener. I lived in Somerset, long ago, on Gopher Hole road :-)

I live up Grizzly Flat Rd., to Cosumnes Mine Rd. closer to Grizzly Flats.

I will email you, thanks!

Hi! Elk Grove, zone 9 here! I'd love to talk with other members in this area that have been able to plant/maintain Japanese maples and woodland type gardens :)

Oakland here, and I grow food in a community garden plot here in town. Four raised beds in the urban jungle. Currently growing: tomatoes, peppers, artichoke, asparagus, carrots, zucchini, patty pan, cucumber, beans, corn, lettuce, scallions, chard, kale and potatoes, with herbs and flowers for pollinators.

I grow everything from seed started indoors with grow lights.

Powdery Mildew is always an issue. I irrigate with ollas exclusively and am finding dry farmed tomatoes are the most successful. Always on the hunt for more dry farmed varieties. And always looking for another community garden to join.

I'm playing with the idea of going year round with some of these summer crops. Experimenting with potatoes first, and considering moving on to zucchini. Anyone had success with year round zucchini in the East Bay?

Hi mlissca, I'm in Oakland too! Gardening on just 300 sq feet in Temescal, but I manage to fit in 25 tomatoes, 4 citrus, dozens of peppers, a cucumber, some squash and all manner of herbs.

Given our literally 365-day growing season, I bet you can do year-round zucchini, especially if we have more 70-degree January temps. I had a serrano that was healthy and produced all through the winter.

I'm planning on phasing out summer crops though, and doing more greens and brassicas. Fingers crossed the aphids aren't too much of a problem.

And I here ya on the powdery mildew. It plagues me every year. My dahlias especially, but then the squash and tomatoes eventually succumb. This year I've been spraying with copper, and it keeps it at bay a *tiny* bit.

Best of luck to you!

Hello, I'm Steve and also in Crescent City! I just saw the first thread and then found this second one. I have slowly been converting my yard from all grass, blackberries & wild Crocosmia to Redwoods, ferns and a a few non-native decorative plants. I also just bought a narrow lot next door which was covered with blackberries and can now just barely see the light at the end of the tunnel. I have no gophers, but lots of moles. I've caught 7 since I started setting a trap about eleven months ago. I usually go a month or two before another one moves in and starts making mounds. I'm going mostly for the Redwood forest look. Many of my Redwood, Port Orford Cedar and Monterey Cypress seedlings were bought from Miller's in McKinleyville. I've also I've found good deals at our Farmer's Market. All of my trees are now in the 2' to 6' range but in five years, I think it will really begin to look like a forest.

Here in East Oakland, we're just trying to ride out the drought. We are probably an Urban Gardening Stereotype. We do greywater. We keep hens. Most years, we have bees. We've got a few mature fruit trees, and an adolescent orchard. We grow veggies. (Oh, the powdery mildew!) We grow hops. We collect caterpillars off our fennel, and raise them inside so the birds don't eat them. Our neighbors probably think we're crazy, but they like the fresh eggs, so they don't complain.

In Hayward since 1967. This home 1970. Long enough to see climate change..9b and few tropical's to 10a and a big increase in frost tender plants.

I have a bit of everything here. Cacti and Succulents to tropical fruit tree's and in my shade small backyard the jungle tropical's. IF it reminds me of a tropical climate- im a growin it!

btw,They are very small yards and we are on 8% reductions. I still use less then that.

Sherry / wcgypsy....Crescent City, Ca....

Here two years now, digging sod, planting, trying to figure out what 'normal' weather is. Posted at the end of the NorCal thread number 1....lol...

Steve...wow! Didn't know that there WERE any other gardeners in Crescent City!...

Hey, Steve....the grass, blackberries and crocosmia are the big 'in' thing here, ya know?

Black berries are okay, it is the Himalaya berries that pose the greatest challenge. Sure are tasty, though. Think that the very concept of "normal weather" has got to be thrown out. I can remember fondly the good old days when it rained like nobody's business and weedy lawns were green year 'round. <sigh>

A friend who has lived here forever and had a nursery business said that she knew the weather was changing when her kids could grow pumpkins and have a 5 acre pumpkin patch. I think we have both types of the berries here on the verge of the wild lot next door, and seeding all over here. The older man across the road has been picking them for years, but to me they're not very good. Seems it would take a ton of sugar to make them tasty. I really do need to make an all-out effort to control them.

Hi! I just found this forum, though no one has posted for a while.

I'm from humboldt county, 1 mile from the coast, in mckinleyville. I have many challenges here with gardening, and I am hoping to be able to correspond with people from my area, to ask them their experience growing figs and other fruits, nuts, etc that normally need heat.

It's a confusing zone, cuz we're zoned 9, but we don't actually have the sun and heat that's supposed to go along with that. About the only aspect we have of zone 9 is the frost dates.

kristincarol, I think I noted you are from my area; are you still on this forum?

Or, is there another humboldt county gardening forum?

@Seasideroses.......

No..... no posts for awhile....

Yes, McKinleyville.... where you lucky people are who can get to Miller's as often as you like. Being 45 miles away does keep me from spending the grocery money there, though.

This climate is all new to me as I spent 30- some years in a sub-tropical zone with no frost. This last month with 28 degree nights here are a learning experience for me...whatever makes it, makes it...and what doesn't, well, there are other plants waiting to occupy that same spot. I was bragging about how well the digiplexis and echium vulgare were holding up, in an exposed spot and they were not fazed at all and then a couple of nights later, they were toast....LOL....an surprises abound...plants that i would not have expected to stand up to the ice were not bothered, such as Coconut Scented Geranium. Feijoa / Pineapple guava has not been affected by our Winter, that's a bit of a surprise. What I miss most is my Fuyu Persimmons, just don't think I get enough heat, even in my most favorable spot. I, too, want figs...a small nursery here had Texas something or other that I may be tempted by....but I'm in a small yard now and not able to plant as much as I'm used to, though I'm trying. Came up here with the idea of planting all PNW stuff and then finding a lot of what I've always grown does well here also, including the Aussies, so I will have a strange mixture. I'm really big on all the grasses and am currently do a lot of wintersowing.

I only have two year's experience with growing here, so maybe not much help...and this Winter is different from what I experienced last Winter. We're 3 blocks from the water and even that may make a difference between your place and mine since it canbe goggy here and I drive a mile or two to the store...and no fog......

Good to hear from you...

I also plant according to what is most deer resistant and plant in wire against gophers...

Moving over from Roll 1.0 -- Still in Lake County, taking advantage of a lull between El Nino rains to do some clearing and pruning.

I have to replant a few things thanks to the Valley Fire (we hit the lottery, our house was one of the few they were able to save). If I had known, I would have waited to dig out the oleander last spring and saved our backs! An unknown flowering plant was the last plant in the way but now I have a clear space for a blueberry patch once the house is repaired. The new hardy kiwis barely had a chance to reach the top of their arbour. It's the only planting I want to replicate. I'm thrilled DH agrees the sod lawn is history, it's going native drought tolerant grasses.

Hi, I'm Evelyn. I am still in Northern CA, with lots of rain. It finally stopped today and maybe we will have none tomorrow. No gardening as it has been rather cold, wet and windy, and now very muddy.

We are getting our house and property ready to put it on the market, so we have been cleaning out everything and throwing a lot away, donating, etc. Steve has been repairing things and doing some woodworking projects.

We have not yet found the house where we want to move yet. Somewhere on the Oregon Coast, where the summers don't get so hot. It did not used to be so hot here, and every winter we had lots of snow. It has not snowed since Christmas Eve. I'm not complaining, we are getting to old to be shoveling a long driveway, and then what the snow plow leaves. Well, there was no snow last winter. That was a first, since I have lived here (in 1987). At least we got lots of rain, as we hardly had any of that either last year.

If it continues to rain so much, I hope that I can keep the weeds down so the house will sell. I have been working on the landscape as I have to install things that the deer will not eat. That has been a challenge. Rosemary, Santolina, Juniper, Boxwood are a few...any suggestions?

@seaside roses......

The USDA zone numbers are almost useless as a one-size-fits-all....Sunset zone stats are more reliable and informative whether I was in sub-tropical SoCal or here in Sunset Zone 17 Crescent City. Our clmate here in Crescent City will vary a lot from Brookings, Oregon 30 miles north or Pistol River, about 45 miles north. Due to the 'Chetco Effect', warmer air flowing seaward from inland along the Chetco River, Brookings will occasionally get days of 85 that to us are HOT now and we hurry back home on those days to Crescent City where it will be 10-15 degrees cooler....of course, to some that is not a good thing and they would welcome the warmer days. My friend in Pistol River had a much warmer, sunnier Summer / Fall than we did here in CC. Last month we were getting a few nights down to about 28 degrees and Pistol River was warmer on those nights than we were here. We often get high winds, seems that Pistol River gets more and stronger. It can vary a lot.

@xeres....

Oh how lucky you are to have escaped the fire! My niece lived on Cobb Mountain, her ex kept the house and it too escaped the fires, though her daughter's car did not. My cousin in Mokelumne Hill was lucky also, as were we when wildfires swept through Fallbrook some years ago. I never want to have to evacuate again and with our continuing drier weather, inland did not feel safe to me any longer, well, plus the whole water thing if you're a gardener. Use less and less water and costs still go higher and higher. Much happier here with the whole situation.

@evelyn_inthegarden....

Yes, getting ready to sell...yuck....we've done it a lot and it's difficult when you don't know exactly where you want to go and your house sells in a week....and now what? It does help to know family or friends in certain areas to help narrow down the choices, give you a direction. We knew we wanted to be back in 'northern reaches' again and I have a good friend from online for many years who lives in Piistol River, that made my decision for me. I have another close friend from where we lived in SoCal (Fallbrook) who wanted to escape also, having lived there a lot of years, came up this way and looked and loved Coos Bay and bought a house there, loves the whole community. They had friends, also from Fallbrook, who were visiting in Oregon, and dropped by Coos Bay to see why she was so thrilled and loved it themselves, bought a house on their second day there. Sometimes after having lived somewhere a long time, and getting older, you look around and ask yourself if you want to die there...LOL...and find that you want something totally different from where you have been.

Being California, we're used to having Prop 13, not the case in Oregon, nor Washington, where we built a house some years ago, and in deciding where we wanted to be now, that helped us decide on Crescent City. We like it here, though many others will not. Oregon property taxes are higher, some counties in dire financial situations with services being cut, and you do want to check out the water quality. There have been some issues this past year with high tides combined with low river flows due to the drought that have resulted in some salt water intrusion into the city well / wells in areas such as Harbor, just south of Brookings.

Actually there are many choices as far as deer resistance and I've been surprised tro find that most of what I was planting was deer resistant....Of course, it's going to vary for you with a different climate there and the varying tastes of deer and what's else is available to them.

Coming up on this threads 1 year anniversary! Glad to see some activity. Glad to see some rain (and a break in it). And glad to see the variety of climates we (still) have here in No Cal.

It has been unusually cold, unusually early here, but most of my winter veg is doing okay; collards, mustard greens, raab, "broccolini ", favas, sugar snaps, shallots, garlic). I am overwintering late season peppers in my unheated garage as well, but onion plant seedlings again prove elusive. I also changed the position of an orchid I keep outside, and hope it will start flowering again.

wcgypsy, did you think that someone who has lived in the area for 4 decades would not know about the gopher problem? Yes, only 2 years--too short a time to know everything about anything.

@ nanelle...

I'm jealous over your veggies. I have a fenced in area over paving with tables for right now....deer protection until the property can be securely fenced against deer. My veggies this year consisted of my French Filet Beans planted in large bins...and strawberries in pots, blueberries in tubs and a Meyer Lemon Tree....need to focus on more food.

I lived in a tight suburban neighborhood in San Jose for nine years and never saw a gopher but after moving south to the countryside, I was inundated with them: a huge unhappy surprise!

I've lived with gophers for 40-some years, but did not see any evidence of them here at the new place until we added onto the garage and disturbed what must have been a whole compound...LOL...they showed up in abundance...so much so that I started planting in wire even the plants I'd always known to be gopher resistant in case they wanted revenge. Chicken wire is just one of those things I keep on hand. It would be nice to live where there are no gophers.....but I'm so happy not to have rabbits and coyotes that the gophers are like old friends. Just get tired of making wire baskets before planting. And, at least in our immediate locale, we don't have Boomers.....

I went the first 30 years in this house with no gophers. THEN,the old cottages next to me were demolished 20 years ago,leaving a half acre open field just across the street from the Hayward greenbelt....a few years later the gopher mongols moved in. I cant plant anything without crossed fingers now. I avoid expensive palms. Luckily,King and Howea palms are not edible- mostly. They are still there many years now. I cant vouch they've never been nibbled.

Yeah- I'm THAT close to the greenbelt..only gophers and drag strip Mission blvd between me and paradise. Oh boy.

Ah well..... I guess you just have to consider all those 30 years you were lucky. I last lived on the same property in SoCal for over 30 years and for maybe 25 of those years, we had no rabbits. When they arrived, they arrived in truckloads...LOL.....and I had to start planting things the rabbits didn't like. All in all, I preferred the gophers.

Wow. You guys are making me glad, for once, to be gardening in Oakland. No gophers in my teeny 350 sq. ft. urban garden :).

Right now, I'm pulling in plenty of lemons, snow peas (a fave), kale and other cooking greens. Still waiting for my lettuces to really come in and for my chard to take off.

Indoors, I've just started my summer veggies: a small batch of tomatoes, peppers and some annual flowers.

Right now I'm doing lots of Wintersowing....and with our weather warming up and some sunshine, also getting much needed weeding done. I'll never catch up.

I have packed away all of my wintersowing supplies in anriciption of moving. We are still packing and cleaning out areas and of course when the snow finishs melting and the ground dries out a teeny bit, then l will be doing more cleanup and weeding in the gardens. Also transplanting parts of prized plants...but not too many. I don't want this to be a big deal. We will see what happens from there.

Yes, gypsy, the weeding will never be "done"

Before we moved, I gave away and sold hundreds of plants and pots....but my good friend here loaded me up with more...thankfully..

It took us 5 loads from SoCal to get here and we're in a much smaller house and still getting rid of stuff. Do not move more than it is worth spending money on just to keep it. Tell that to your husband if he's a hoarder......we were planning to rent this house while looking for property to buy...found that we actually like this neighborhood, have good neighbors, a well, parking in the rear of the house.....AND...we stiil had two storage units full of stuff and just couldn't see having to move it all again...the owner decided it was a good time to sell to us....

I am in NorCal SF Bay Area peninsula, Belmont specifically. Have a large backyard with no fruit trees, hoping to start some this year along with citrus. I do have two raised beds for vegetable gardening. Got lettuces, swiss chard, kale, mustard, cilantro, green onions in them right now. Soaking sugar snap peas, radishes and beets to be put in this weekend.

evelyn_inthegarden did you make the move to Oregon? and where did you settle? unless you went to the coast, you are probably experiencing high temps along with us here in Placerville at this time ... unseasonally hot, 10 degrees warmer than usual for this time of the year. Must say, my cucurbits are growing leaves like gangbusters, but not producing many female flowers ... even though I water them twice a day in their large containers ... survival instincts? :-)

Hi Dee, We are still here. It is still too hot, but Placerville is hotter. We are still looking. I am still weeding since spring. I hope we get a smaller property as l cannot keep this all up in a timely manner.

Are you still enjoying Placerville?

Evelyn, you might consider Corvallis, OR and McMinville, OR. Corvallis is a quite large college town, McMinville is smaller, with a college of its own (much smaller, denominational) ... both are in close proximity to the eastern edge of the Coast Range and situated in very pretty agricultural surroundings. If i remember correctly, there is a gap in the Coast Range which allows the cooler maritime air to move inland (benefiting Corvallis) ... Yes, I'm still enjoying Placerville; knew what to expect weather-wise because i had lived here from 1990 'till 2002. So glad we had such good rains this past winter! unfortunately the Star Thistle loved it as much as i did :-( ,,,

Oh, do you have a lot of it? We have a patch of it on the property, but I just don't get around to it until I have weeded all the landscape and garden beds. I do some in the early morning and then some between 8 and 9 in the evening if the 'skeeters aren't too bad. I weed from spring until it is done. I have my veggies in containers...tomatoes in large pots, squash and bush beans in square foot garden boxes (4' X 4') of which my husband made for me. I pour vinegar on some weedy areas that do not have desired plants in them.

It was 90° here today, way too hot for me. I bet it was hotter at your place.

wcgypsy - Are you the same gypsy on Dave's Garden on the Back Porch?

hmmm...well, I've been wcgypsy for years and I was with Dave's Garden for years until IB bought it, then I left. I don't know about the Back Porch. Followed Dave after DG, when he started Cubits, then All Things Plants, he's now acquired the National Gardening and is renaming All Things Plants to Garden.org site.

Evelyn, so do I! (grow my vegies in 4x4 planters, built with concrete blocks). Built a fence around it, to keep the blasted deer out. Question about squash: what kind are you growing? I have spaghetti squash for the first time, also yellow crookneck, a melon, and South African "gem" squash. Tell me please, can one eat spaghetti squash while it is still young? currently the fruits are already about 8 inches long and roughly 5 inches wide ...

I've got containers too.

Nanette ~ It looks like all of your gardening is on your deck. Is it all hydrponic?

I used to garden in redwood raised bed boxes until the redwoods growing in my yard took them back.

Boxes toward the front of the picture, redwoods in the background.

This one gives a better sense of how big they are, which I'm told is how far the roots go.

I gave up fighting with the roots.

The planters are "sub-irrigation" or "self-catering planters", mostly Earthboxes,

but at least one of them seems to have more space for water than soil. I "smuggled" some garlic from France last year, and put them in one of these last October, and most of the roots are directly in the water.

I don't have any real hydroponic set ups though.

PS I actually brought the garlic back peeled so it was legal.it is sending up scales as we speak!

Non edible

PSS I notice the original roll call thread is open again. Is there a mod who can combine them?

Original Northern California Roll Call