We just received a shipment of oversized camellia sasanquas (yuletide -red, setsugekka - white, apple blossom - pink).
They are in 15 gallon pots and incredible with big, meaty, full blooms. We don't normally get this type of camellia from our premier grower (Monrovia). This is a true rarity, and we snagged them up for you!
Available at Miller Avenue, Kentfield and Sloat Blvd locations only.
Thursday, July 31, 2008
In the nursery this week...
Perovskia Blue Spire
Calibrachoa
Lovely succulent containers
Succulent close up
Tuesday, July 29, 2008
Wednesday, July 23, 2008
We like this quote
"I don't know whether nice people tend to grow roses or growing roses makes people nice."Roland A Beowne
Saturday, July 19, 2008
Wednesday, July 16, 2008
SF Chronicle: Rain gardens capture storm water, clean it up
We profiled rain gardens in the July 2007 issue of our Gardener's Notebook. You can read it here and also read the Chronicle's rain garden article, below.
Rain gardens capture storm water, clean it up
SF CHRONICLE
Ron Sullivan, Joe Eaton
Wednesday, June 18, 2008
It's a bit odd that "green" roofs have become popular here sooner than rain gardens. A green roof certainly does a lot to compensate for the footprint of a building in terms of microclimate heat, maybe habitat loss and certainly rain runoff - the last of which carries with it the prospects of overtaxed sewage systems, flooding, erosion and the pollution of streams and the bay.
Look at those admonishments stenciled over storm drains for clues: Runoff from paving and other hard surfaces carries particulates and pesticides, petroleum and fertilizers, and other nasties into the water in small bits that accumulate to toxic levels.
Roof gardens require attention to engineering, weight, leakage potential and access for maintenance. Hauling the lawn mower up the chimney is the stuff of sitcoms, but even the toughest plants need attention unless you decide to cultivate a garden of weeds and whatever else chance might deliver. It's fun until chance delivers an acacia and its roots creep up on you with ill intent.
Rain gardens are easier. A rain garden is a planting designed to soften the destructive force of rainstorm water and reduce runoff by slowing it enough to allow more to soak into the ground. It might use plants, swales (shallow channels), rocks of various sizes, and/or temporary ponds to do this. Depending on the plants used, it might or might not need irrigation in the dry season.
You can use rain gardens to compensate for the runoff from your house and garage roofs, and driveway, sidewalk and patio - all impermeable surfaces - and they can be pretty and provide habitat for other pretty creatures.
There are formulas to calculate how much runoff your roof is responsible for in a year. Multiply your roof's square footage by 623, divide the result by 1,000 and multiply that by the number of annual inches of rainfall wherever you live. Compensating precisely is not the point. Anything you can do to reduce immediate rainwater runoff is a good thing.
Rain gardens also conserve water where we're going to need it - in our gardens. Pete Veilleux mentioned one very basic system in the June 13 Chronicle's quarterly Green section: Unhook some downspouts from the storm drains or aim them away from the walk or driveway; connect the spouts to perforated pipe wrapped in landscape cloth; lay the pipe in swales or depressions of your own design to carry water into your garden; conceal, if desired, with mulch.
Cheryl Sullivan, a senior landscape architect with Cunningham Engineering in Sacramento, spoke about rain gardens, also called bioretention cells, during a recent climate-change conference at UC Davis. She made several suggestions about creating such gardens, one of them urgent: "If you disconnect downspouts from underground drainage," she said, "create a swale or slope to take it directly to the rain garden; don't have it pooling around the building."
A rain garden is an anti-Army Corps of Engineers, old-style approach. When creeks got channelized and concrete dikes raised along riverbeds, the idea was to move water away as fast as possible. The problem is that there's always somebody downstream who objects to being on the receiving end.
Rain gardens make moving water slow down, absorb, nurture. Vegetation does this via stems and roots, and it's also a natural filter for pollutants, both because it slows the flow, letting particles and substances drop out onto the streambed, and because lots of those pollutants are actually plant nutrients (animal fecal particles, for example) or get harmlessly absorbed and chemically broken down by the plants and soil microorganisms. Biological sewage treatment plants like Arcata's work this way.
Because these "non-point source" pollutants generally reach hazard levels only when accumulated from a big area and concentrated into a small one, they've never yet been caught threatening a bioretention site or the groundwater there, Sullivan told us.
If you get a sheet of water flooding your yard, sidewalk or street after a hard rain, you can help solve the problem. A rain garden isn't a pond (though it can include one), so there doesn't have to be a mosquito or stagnant-water hazard; it should drain in about 48 hours. It can be a swale - a fairly shallow depression in the ground, lined with plants or drainage rock - and/or a sink of sorts that lets the rush of a rainstorm stand still long enough to percolate away into the ground.
"Rain gardens cost only three or four dollars per square foot or less to install," Sullivan told us. "You do have to know something about your soil conditions and plants. The range of plants is huge for California - in general the plants need to tolerate wet to dry conditions, and be appropriate for the local soils. Bunchgrasses can line the bottom of a swale or a slope; plants like manzanitas that resent bad drainage should be at the top."
Above all, she said, "Experiment with plants! Landscapes are always changing, in reality, the garden is a piece of performance art."
Rain gardens capture storm water, clean it up
SF CHRONICLE
Ron Sullivan, Joe Eaton
Wednesday, June 18, 2008
It's a bit odd that "green" roofs have become popular here sooner than rain gardens. A green roof certainly does a lot to compensate for the footprint of a building in terms of microclimate heat, maybe habitat loss and certainly rain runoff - the last of which carries with it the prospects of overtaxed sewage systems, flooding, erosion and the pollution of streams and the bay.
Look at those admonishments stenciled over storm drains for clues: Runoff from paving and other hard surfaces carries particulates and pesticides, petroleum and fertilizers, and other nasties into the water in small bits that accumulate to toxic levels.
Roof gardens require attention to engineering, weight, leakage potential and access for maintenance. Hauling the lawn mower up the chimney is the stuff of sitcoms, but even the toughest plants need attention unless you decide to cultivate a garden of weeds and whatever else chance might deliver. It's fun until chance delivers an acacia and its roots creep up on you with ill intent.
Rain gardens are easier. A rain garden is a planting designed to soften the destructive force of rainstorm water and reduce runoff by slowing it enough to allow more to soak into the ground. It might use plants, swales (shallow channels), rocks of various sizes, and/or temporary ponds to do this. Depending on the plants used, it might or might not need irrigation in the dry season.
You can use rain gardens to compensate for the runoff from your house and garage roofs, and driveway, sidewalk and patio - all impermeable surfaces - and they can be pretty and provide habitat for other pretty creatures.
There are formulas to calculate how much runoff your roof is responsible for in a year. Multiply your roof's square footage by 623, divide the result by 1,000 and multiply that by the number of annual inches of rainfall wherever you live. Compensating precisely is not the point. Anything you can do to reduce immediate rainwater runoff is a good thing.
Rain gardens also conserve water where we're going to need it - in our gardens. Pete Veilleux mentioned one very basic system in the June 13 Chronicle's quarterly Green section: Unhook some downspouts from the storm drains or aim them away from the walk or driveway; connect the spouts to perforated pipe wrapped in landscape cloth; lay the pipe in swales or depressions of your own design to carry water into your garden; conceal, if desired, with mulch.
Cheryl Sullivan, a senior landscape architect with Cunningham Engineering in Sacramento, spoke about rain gardens, also called bioretention cells, during a recent climate-change conference at UC Davis. She made several suggestions about creating such gardens, one of them urgent: "If you disconnect downspouts from underground drainage," she said, "create a swale or slope to take it directly to the rain garden; don't have it pooling around the building."
A rain garden is an anti-Army Corps of Engineers, old-style approach. When creeks got channelized and concrete dikes raised along riverbeds, the idea was to move water away as fast as possible. The problem is that there's always somebody downstream who objects to being on the receiving end.
Rain gardens make moving water slow down, absorb, nurture. Vegetation does this via stems and roots, and it's also a natural filter for pollutants, both because it slows the flow, letting particles and substances drop out onto the streambed, and because lots of those pollutants are actually plant nutrients (animal fecal particles, for example) or get harmlessly absorbed and chemically broken down by the plants and soil microorganisms. Biological sewage treatment plants like Arcata's work this way.
Because these "non-point source" pollutants generally reach hazard levels only when accumulated from a big area and concentrated into a small one, they've never yet been caught threatening a bioretention site or the groundwater there, Sullivan told us.
If you get a sheet of water flooding your yard, sidewalk or street after a hard rain, you can help solve the problem. A rain garden isn't a pond (though it can include one), so there doesn't have to be a mosquito or stagnant-water hazard; it should drain in about 48 hours. It can be a swale - a fairly shallow depression in the ground, lined with plants or drainage rock - and/or a sink of sorts that lets the rush of a rainstorm stand still long enough to percolate away into the ground.
"Rain gardens cost only three or four dollars per square foot or less to install," Sullivan told us. "You do have to know something about your soil conditions and plants. The range of plants is huge for California - in general the plants need to tolerate wet to dry conditions, and be appropriate for the local soils. Bunchgrasses can line the bottom of a swale or a slope; plants like manzanitas that resent bad drainage should be at the top."
Above all, she said, "Experiment with plants! Landscapes are always changing, in reality, the garden is a piece of performance art."
Tuesday, July 15, 2008
Come Grow with Marin Master Gardeners
Enjoy gardening and working with people? Come Grow with Marin Master Gardeners
Information Sessions on how to become a Master Gardener
August 21 at the UCCE Office
1682 Novato Boulevard, Suite 150-B, Novato, 2 pm
September 4 at Marin Art and Garden Center
30 Sir Francis Drake Boulevard, Ross, 6 pm
Applications available online at: http://www.marinmg.org/
or call the Master Gardener Desk: 415-499-4204
Information Sessions on how to become a Master Gardener
August 21 at the UCCE Office
1682 Novato Boulevard, Suite 150-B, Novato, 2 pm
September 4 at Marin Art and Garden Center
30 Sir Francis Drake Boulevard, Ross, 6 pm
Applications available online at: http://www.marinmg.org/
or call the Master Gardener Desk: 415-499-4204
Monday, July 14, 2008
Back on View from the Bay
Leigh Glaser from View from the Bay was back at our Kentfield nursery to talk with our own Jennie Strobel about deer resistant and drought tolerant plants. View the video here!
Gardener's Reward Program members: Use your earned Savings Certificate by August 30th
For Sloat Gardener's Reward Program members who earned a savings certificate this month, don't forget to redeem your savings card. Postcards are valid through August 30th, 2008.
Friday, July 11, 2008
Looking for Answers?
We have several great gardening reference books to check out this summer: the Sunset Western Garden book, Pests of Landscape Trees and Shrubs, and Golden Gate Gardening (food gardening).
The Sunset Western Garden book is basically in four sections; the first section describes the different climate zones of the west. The second section has lists of plants for specific situations, such as Hedges and Screens, Attracting Butterflies and Birds, Dry Areas, Shady Areas, Coastal Gardens, etc. The third section (the plant encyclopedia) lists plants alphabetically and details water and sun requirements, as well as height and width, bloom season/color, etc.
This is very helpful when choosing plants for say, an entranceway. If you don’t research the eventual height of those darling little trees in the growers’ pots, you may end up with “the trees that ate the front door and the garage!” You may spend hours every year trying to prune the monster trees back to their juvenile size. Is this a good use of your time? Or would it be better to pick a tree whose height in maturity is naturally small and well-behaved?
The fourth section is a Practical Guide to Gardening, a must-read for beginning gardeners. You can find information on staking trees, dividing perennials, gophers, sowing wildflowers, and even a glossary of all those weird gardening terms we use, like hybrid, espalier, etc.
There are also basic design tips, designing to conserve water, the most effective ways to water, an explanation of which gardening tools do what, sowing seeds, and how to protect tender seedlings.
Pests of Landscape Trees and Shrubs, from UC Davis, identifies the most common pest insects, and has pictures of what their damage looks like, their life cycle, and discusses the most effective and least-toxic ways to control them. It also identifies the innocent good bugs in the garden who may often control the actual pest insects. Did you know that only 3% of the insects in the garden are bad?
There are also pictures of diseases like Gray Mold, Powdery Mildew, Rust, Pythium Root Rot, Pitch Canker and more. The cause and solutions are discussed, sometimes just changing and correcting the watering schedule is enough to solve the problem.
There is also a section on Non-infectious Disorders, like nutrient deficiencies, salt damage, incorrect pesticide application, sunburn, frost damage, etc. There are two Problem-Solving Tables in the back. The first table lists what the problem looks like and probable causes, the second table lists specific plants and their common problems and causes, fantastic!
Golden Gate Gardening is even more locally-based, and was written by Pam Peirce, a resident of SF, instructor at City College and gardening columnist for www.sfgate.com. She discusses composting, growing vegetables organically, cool season and warm season veggies, and when to choose seeds over seedlings for the whole coast, not just San Francisco. Pam‘s book is a simple, straightforward guide to “growing your own”, and is well-researched, with “outside the box” veggies that thrive here.
There are also lots of gardening tips about preparing your soil, fertilizing, harvesting and even recipes! We are so lucky to be able to grow and enjoy fresh veggies all year, it’s always a treat to see Pam show up at a Christmas dinner with a fresh green salad adorned with brightly-colored edible flowers, all from her own garden.
Monday, July 7, 2008
Gardener's quote of the day
My green thumb came only as a result of the mistakes I made while learning to see things from the plant's point of view. ~H. Fred Ale
Thursday, July 3, 2008
Plant winter squash now!
"Winter squashes are the forgotten vegetables. Almost no vegetable is as easy to grow or keep. With fertile soil, full sun and ample water, vines take off. And after plants become established, they're so carefree, it's easy to forget them until fall when their rediscovery makes the harvest that much sweeter."- Andy Tomolonis
Tuesday, July 1, 2008
Planting tip of the month
When creating beds for vegetables, annuals and perennials, dig in Sloat Loam Builder. One bag covers 25sq. feet. For luxury soil (oooh), incorporate additional Sloat Planting Mix at the same rate. Use one 5 lb.box of E.B. Stone Agricultural Lime and one 4 lb. box E.B. Stone Sure Start for every 100 sq feet.
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