Spring Prepping the Vineyard

I mentioned previously a few weeks ago, all of the spring sprucing I was doing in the garden. Well, my husband, John, and I have also been doing some sprucing in the vineyard, and prepping for the year ahead. It can be a big chore, but also very rewarding. Time well spent now means a continued healthy vineyard and a successful harvest in the fall.

Vines have been pruned back to their two cordon arms. Vineyard rows have been mowed twice already to keep weeds low and at bay. I have tried sowing cover crops a few times between the rows, but have been unsuccessful most likely because of low winter rains. The vines have drip irrigation at each plant, but no irrigation in the rows.

For one reason or another, our grapes last harvest were beautiful, but half of our normal yield. I heard and read that most of California vineyards had lower than usual yields. It could also have been very little winter rains, high winds at flowering, etc. Many factors could have played into it.

I have added compost to our vines before, and thought it might be a good time to add some rich compost to them this year. While I am doing my flower beds, let’s do the vineyard too!

This year I added and mixed in three generous shovels of compost to the base of each grapevine to add back organic nitrogen. Compost has amazing qualities to benefit soil and plants. See below for my many related past posts on composting. I am composting year-round, but with the quantity to cover each grapevine, I bought a yard and a half of compost from Agriservice El Corazon in Oceanside. It helps if you have a truck, or access to a truck, although Agri Service El Corazon delivers too. If interested in delivery services, please visit their information online, and call them for more details.

Adding Rich Compost to Each Grapevine Base

I have been composting for a very long time on our property. When you have chickens, it is almost a necessity. Chicken manure is “green gold” and not to be wasted. It is a perfect green to add to your compost bin besides your kitchen scraps, and landscape greens. It is a hot manure however, and will burn your plants if it not aged and broken down into compost with your other ingredients.

I add compost mixed with my soil for every plant, tree, and vegetable bed I plant. Compost adds back valuable nitrogen, and has about ten fantastic attributes. Compost is also very dark and adds a dressy look to your flower beds and around your landscape.

For composting tools, products, and services, please look into what your local city offers. You might be surprised.

Related Past Posts on Composting:

Ten Ways Composting Benefits Your Soil

How to Compost in Your Backyard

The Green Way to Lose a Lawn

Bon Appétit et Bon Weekend…Bonnie

My First Ever Peony, ‘Belle Toulousaine’, and African Daisy, Arctotis ‘Wine’

This time of year warrants more time in the garden than in the kitchen. I just can’t help it. Cool in the morning, warming up as the day goes on, I am fueled to work on many projects to spruce up around our home and garden. Wishing for more rain, but grateful for what we have gotten so far.

Since January, I have had my large pine trees trimmed, replenished walking paths, been on weed patrol, mulched flower beds, added new plants, and enjoyed working on various fun garden projects.

One of my new plants from Armstrong Garden is the Belle Toulousaine Itoh Peony, suitable for our warm climate here in San Diego. Belle Toulousaine peony was given its name in homage to Toulouse, the beloved hometown of its breeder. I visited the charming area of Toulouse, France in 2019 with French General Getaway, which I highly recommend! So this new peony has an extra special meaning to me.

A real beauty with stunning bright pink blooms, great for cutting, and shown above starting to blossom after our recent rain. It should stay a nice size of 3’ wide x 3’ high. My first peony, and I am very excited to see it fully bloom.

Regaining the Potager

Another project I have been working on is reclaiming and enhancing the potager. Last year the squirrels wouldn’t let me have a vegetable garden. With patience my husband and I live-trapped and relocated 16 squirrels to better digs. Mr. Coyote also might have contributed. So far so good, I have been able to start vegetables again. I added a sentry row of Green Globe artichokes, planted in protective wire baskets to discourage the gophers. I refreshed and added to the Chandler strawberry patch, mulching with pine straw. I am experimenting with various container tomatoes.

St. Francis Oversees Newly Planted Rose Garden

This winter I have been adding more roses to the garden. Many in front of our home entry, and now five matching pairs of roses in the St. Francis garden. Newly planted, and still with their labels waving, I am hoping these roses will be happy and prolific with beautiful blooms. I have always loved the majestic pink and fragrant Yves Piaget rose since I saw an entire field of them blooming on a tour at Rose Story Farm in Carpinteria, California years ago. Now I have two! I tried to plant the rose garden above from tallest to shortest, and with the idea that pinks and apricots would blend in nicely with the muted multi-colored roses. Another experiment, that I hope works out.

A New Welcoming Look

Repositioning a rain gutter to a better location, prompted a project to make this north entrance more inviting and welcoming. It still needs a good power wash, but I am waiting to do this after the rainy season. The existing Duranta ‘Skyflower’ drapes over the stucco wall to soften lines and in summer provides beautiful wispy purple blooms. An open alcove is a perfect spot for a happy flowing ivy atop a vintage urn, much like a really good but unruly head of hair. Two flanking boxwood ‘Green Beauty’ in simple grey planters, and an obedient greyhound statuary further create a welcoming atmosphere and plenty of room for thoroughfare.

Potted Purple Pansies All Grown Up

I feel the more I can do in the first three months of the year, the more it benefits the ensuing year. I am sure you have been busy too, working on your projects. Please share, if you have been spring sprucing in your garden.

Bon Appétit et Bon Weekend…Bonnie

Heirloom Tomatoes Grown in a Past Summer

I’ve written a lot about tomatoes in the past, grown a lot of tomatoes, and certainly cooked and eaten a lot of tomatoes. Tomatoes are a summer reward to all. In the past, I’ve picked up my favorite tomato seedlings such as Celebrity, Early Girl, Sungold, Black Krim, and Cherokee Purple. I planted them in my prepared garden in April, and lovingly maintained them from spring into summer harvest. At some point, these tomato plants grow and grow and become unruly. The ripe tomatoes are wonderful, yet the garden seems to have gotten out of hand.

This year I decided to intentionally contain my tomatoes and grew them in a different way, mainly in containers. The various seed catalogs have tomato selections for everyone’s taste, literally.

Please remember determinate tomatoes reach their full maturity quickly and set all of their fruit at one time. Most tomato plants suitable for containers are determinate. Indeterminate tomato plants are vining, need pruning at times, have an extended length of growing season, and continue to produce fruit throughout the season.

New Tomato Varieties I Am Growing This Year:

1) Shady Lady. This is a determinate hybrid tomato that needs no staking. I really like that idea. It is deep red in color, with heavy foliage, and great flavor. It is known in California as a top performer in tomato fields. I first heard about this Shady Lady tomato from Georgeanne Brennan, when I took her weekend Provence class at her home and garden outside of Davis, California. I don’t think she is hosting her cooking class anymore. She raved about this tomato, how many plants she grew, and how she shared them exclusively with her chef friend for his kitchen. This is the year to try Shady Lady. Readily available online.

2) Tasmanian Chocolate. Renee’s Garden Seeds. Heirloom container tomatoes with short vines that offer abundant mahogany-red tomatoes with rich, delicious, well-balanced flavor.

3) Cherry Falls. John Scheepers Kitchen Garden Seeds. Beautiful tomato plant with oodles of cascading cherry tomatoes.

4) Husky Cherry Red. Home Depot. I picked this up on whim because it is very suitable for containers.

Starting Seeds Indoors

I started these seeds in a seed tray and with seed starting mix from Grangetto’s I have had for a couple of years stored away. The seed warming mat really works and helps seeds germinate quickly. You can find all kinds of seed warming mats online. I poked a small indention into each soil-filled cell with a chopstick. Seeds are tiny. Keeping your soil moist with a spray water bottle is critical. I placed my sowed seeds and mat on top of my dryer in my laundry room where there is a skylight and under the counter lighting, also critical for germinating your precious seeds.

I am experimenting and starting more seeds other than tomatoes, such as different basils, heirloom Italian eggplant, different lettuces, kale, and more. Another honorable mention is Fino Verde Little-Leaved Basil offered at John Scheepers Kitchen Garden Seeds, that is applauded by chefs, for the tiny size of leaf, depth of flavor, and rich color.

Please share if you are growing flowers and vegetables from seed for your garden and potager! I would love to hear about your seed adventures!

Related Past Tomato Blog Posts

Bon Appétit et Bon Weekend….Bonnie

Sweet Peas On New Trellis

I always love making seasonal garden bouquets for my home, and maybe some to share. It means so much that they come from my garden, grown with love and care, but also the beauty and happiness they resonate. They also are such a big part of seasonal living which I love!

I recently started a project close to my potager. I created a dedicated trellis row for growing more flowers, and perhaps a few other things like extra tomato plants. It is a more focused attention to growing flowers for cutting, which can be rotated season to season. Think planting sweet peas and ranunculus in the fall, sunflowers in the spring, pumpkins and gourds in the summer.

Impromptu Winter Garden Bouquet, Narcissus and Viburnum ‘Spring Bouquet’

I really owe this to the talented flower farmers, floral designers, garden stylemakers, and garden enthusiasts that share their flower passion online and on social media. There are so many, and it seems everyday a new person pops up. Here are a few of some that I follow and in no particular order. Some have their own websites, and most are on Instagram.

Slow Flowers Society. Founded by Debra Prinzing in 2013, after writing her book Slow Flowers. A Who’s Who of American Floral Farmers, Slow Flower Florists and a branding platform that promotes, connects consumers with farmers, florists, designers and retailers.

Floret Flowers Erin Benzakein heads up her family run flower farm and seed company that specializes in unique, uncommon and heirloom flowers.

Menagerie Flower Felicia Alvarez with her beloved garden rose production farm offers bare root and potted roses, and educational workshops. She has a new book rose book coming out, Growing Wonder, for all rose lovers.

Willow Crossley Willow Crossley is a fabulous UK floral designer who offers floral design, and much more, including online floral workshops.

B-Side Farm Lennie Larkin is an incredible Sonoma flower farmer and florist with great entrepreneurial spirit.

Claus Dalby. A mild-mannered Danish gardener, photographer, broadcaster, and YouTuber who is simply amazing. On Instagram.

My French Country Home Sharon Santoni in Normandy, France, gives you glimpses of fantastic gardens all over France, as well as her flowers, floral bouquets, and potager from her own garden.

Potted Vintage Container with Purple Pansies and Ornamental Cabbage

I haven’t even touched on flowers and vintage container design you can create at home like the simple design I did above. That merits a whole category on its own!

Bon Appétit, Bon Weekend, et Happy Valentine’s Day…..Bonnie

Morning South Garden

Coop de Manion

Last of the Wisteria

Happy Heavenly White Narcissus

Incense Mix Sweet Peas—Love the Purples

White Garden Before the Blooms

Cheery Cherokee Rose

Just Joey Rose, World’s Favorite Rose in 1994

Bud Break in the Vineyard

Follow Your True Path

Spring Sunset

Happy Spring and Bon Weekend….Bonnie

February 2021, Winter White Garden, Leucojum Blooming, Looking West

I am not a Landscape Designer, but I have had success in creating garden rooms from my vision. These garden rooms take time, and thought, and hard work. Don’t forget patience. In the end, however, the garden room I create usually evolves into something much better than my original inspiration and the original vision I had in my head, and I am overjoyed. I thought you might be interested in how I do it.

This is somewhat similar to what I wrote and mused about in January 2021. Dream big. Create a vision. Make your intention, own it. Release it to the universe to manifest it. Detach yourself from the outcome. If everything is aligned, your outcome is delivered to you, incredibly better, and so much more than you could have ever imagined.

May 2019, Spring Time White Garden, Roses and Alstroemeria Blooming, Looking West

1) Have a garden location or garden room area where you want to create a special spot. It might be a blank canvas, or it might be an existing garden that needs refreshing or revising.

2) Find inspiration in garden magazines, tours, books, and even word of mouth. Save these inspirations in a file. I found the inspiration for my white garden, two photos above, in a Garden Design May/June 2010 magazine article featuring a Charleston, South Carolina garden. I have not been to Charleston yet, but hope to get there one day. This particular photo really caught the vision and idea of what I wanted to do. It was a small garden, close to the house, appeared enclosed or walled, was European influenced, used topiaries, appeared to be half garden/half patio, was elegant, and visually beautiful.

Inspiration Photo from Garden Design Magazine May/ June 2010, of Charleston, S.C. Garden

3) Be aware that your piece of inspiration will most likely not be carbon copy of what you want, but it will have the bones in it, of what drew you to it. It will be much more than you ever imagined.

4) Put in your structural boundaries, or build your perimeter. First, we built a new fence near our property line, where none had existed. I planted a podicarpus privacy hedge on the north, and a privet hedge on the south close to our home. Our existing garden shed was the south boundary, and the back of my garage, the east boundary.

5) Create more garden details. Instead of brick, I used a stone pea gravel to create a large square which would anchor half of the garden. The other half of the garden, I created a square boxwood parterre with a bay laurel topiary tree, and iceberg roses, and connected them with mulched walking paths.

6) Add your adornments. Collect these over time. I had an existing vintage “garden baby” fountain, which found a home, front and center in the pea gravel square. It is also a cooling water feature in this little garden, and a great spot to watch little birds relaxing and bathing. Later I acquired two faux pillars, light as a feather, but very real in appearance. Next came more vintage pots, in white, and so white was the theme for the garden.

7) Assemble your plant materials, plan for different plants to bloom each season. Plan your plant palette. I planted several white iceberg roses, some bush, some topiary. Alstroemeria “Casablanca’ are tall, have movement, and anchor each pillar. Leucojum, perennial bulbs planted in the old garden, return each year unscathed through the pea gravel announcing spring is around the corner.

8) Let your garden design itself. Over time, I find the garden starts to take over, and create its own design. Picture an abandoned house or church, where the landscape slowly creeps in, and starts to reclaim the structure, and design itself. My privet hedge created a natural archway with a side limb reaching out to the pillar. Creeping fig, which was so hard to start in the beginning, now has almost totally covered each pillar.

Before Photo, Looking East, Circa 2001

Immediately above is the only photo I have of the garden somewhat early on, and I think it is around 2001. It is not even what the garden looked like when we first moved in. The camelia bush was existing, but there was no lawn, only weeds. The big change came in 2010, when we completed our home remodel, and this space became a small but inviting area for an intimate garden.

After Photo, Looking East, February 2021

Immediately above, is how my white garden looks today. Happy and healthy, and looking forward to spring!

Leucojum Blooming

Click on Spring Blooming Gravetye Giant for my past post on the perennial bulb beauty. Please share where you get your garden inspirations and/or how you have created your favorite garden. Do tell!

Bon Weekend….Bonnie

Shasta Daisies Make a Great Welcoming Entrance

I want to share with you a great garden tip for an informal hedge, the perennial Shasta Daisy, Leucanthemum x superbum, Luther Burbank’s original hybrid. I struggled to find a suitable hedge or border for the entrance of my home because it is a sunny expansive area, had to look good year round, and present a warm and inviting entrance.

Why I like creating a border with Shasta Daisy:

1) I didn’t even buy the first starts, but were given to me by a dear friend. With the right happy conditions Shasta Daisy multiplies by itself, into a 2-4’ tall x 2’ wide mass. I wanted a fairly tall border in front of my Intrigue roses.

2) They bloom in July or mid summer when other parts of my garden are waning. The bright white flowers create a warm, cottage effect which put a smile on your face. Dead heading spent blooms encourages more blooming. Once all of the blooms are finished, I still have a beautiful green frilly perennial border throughout the year.

3) Shasta daisies like sun, but will fair well with some shade. They like moderate water. I have them on drip away from my home.

4) Butterflies are attracted to them, and often are fluttering around them.

5) In the spring or fall, I can divide plants to increase or reduce the width of my border.

6) Shasta Daisies glow in moonlight.

7) They are an excellent cut flower, last a long time in a vase, for your garden bouquets.

8) Shasta Daisies are easy to care for, fairly disease resistant, and respond well to a good pruning once a year.

9) Mass planting or repetition is always solid design.

Do you have this wonderful perennial in your garden now? Not only are Shasta Daisies great for a border or hedge, they do well in containers too!

Smiling Shasta Daisies Are Perfect Greeters

Climbing Eden Rose In My Potager

It has taken me three years to cultivate a single bloom from my climbing Eden Rose. It is not easy to find Eden Rose in local nurseries. Search for this rose in pot and bareroot form for sale online. Heirloom Roses is one source for it in a pot.

I first planted my Eden Rose in too shady a spot where it struggled. Finally, this winter I transplanted it to my potager arch to co-mingle with my young Golden Dorsett apple trees. It is very happy now, and has exploded with happy blooms. Eden Rose is a versatile repeat bloomer with an unusual blend of pastel pinks, creams, and yellows. I simply love this rose, and it reminds me of Provence!

I saw and recognized Eden Rose while visiting the magnificent potager, Bastide des Saveurs, near the village of La Cadiere-D'Azur in the Bandol Region of Provence. Here is a link to my past post and visit with Chef René Bérard in May 2015.

Chef René Bérard told me this rose was called Pierre de Ronsard. In the back of my mind, I knew it had another name, and did some exploring. According to Wikipedia, Eden Rose, also known as Pierre de Ronsard was created by Marie-Louise Meilland in France by Meilland International in 1985, as part of the the Renaissance Collection.

Bastide des Saveurs is Chef René Bérard's potager and location for cooking classes. For a treat, visit his website for more information on his quaint family-owned hotel, restaurant, spa, and cookery school,  Bérard Hostellerie.

Provence Morning Light and Eden Rose in Chef Bérard's Potager

Climbing Eden Rose in My Potager