Hello fellow Californians....let's introduce ourselves!

Hi Plantmum and Teresal - I'm waaayyyy down south of you. Welcome and I hope you enjoy DG. Try to attend a roundup -- you'll really enjoy meeting everyone in person.

Kathleen

bump

I noticed new CA gardeners joining and don't want them to miss this.
Linda

I was a DG member a few years ago and had to quit because it was such an addiction! This time of year I particularly love this site because it's like virtual gardening when the whether doesn't allow any ACTUAL gardening.

Unfortunately, my lot is only 5000 square feet and that includes the house. And I have a huge old oak tree (with which I have a love-hate relationship) that shades most of the back yard, further limiting gardening opportunities. But I make do.

We're in Sunset zone 16 or 17. The book says one thing, reality is the other.

My biggest pest challenges are squirrels and tobacco budworms. This past year I have discovered hundreds of white grubs in my new raised planters, but I haven't decided yet how much damage they do. I toss them out as I work the soil (got a couple of hundred on New Year's Day. That can't be good). My lab, Kelly, can also be a pest. She likes to lie in sun-warmed dirt and pees wherever she chooses (at least outside). She also likes to snack on abutillon.

I love my little gardens, though. The front is my sunny bit (I'll attempt to post a photo of that). About a third of the back is what I call my woodland garden; it's dominated by that oak so it's very shady. Another third is a dry-laid flagstone patio my DH and I installed last year, surrounded by raised planters built by that handy DH. I'm still working on the plantings for most of the planters. Last year I tried veggies in one, but reluctantly concluded that 4 hours or so of sun is just not enough.

Any ideas for an evergreen flowering plant about 1-1-1/2 feet high with a long bloom time that can deal with sun for only about 4 hours in the middle of the day? It rarely gets above 80 degrees here, and we get freezes a few times every winter. I don't want pastels there, but any other flower color is an option as the rest of the plants around it either are foliage plants or have white flowers. A pleasant fragrance would be a plus, as this will be in a large planter right on the edge of the patio.

Gardening is my therapy, as I have a pretty stressful job - not to mention one 15-year-old and one 12-year-old girl. Plants are grateful for whatever you give them and don't talk back!

Jill

Jill - just beautiful ! Your lillies look great, I was wondering if I should dig up my favs before moving to CA, and the answer is definitely YES.

Hi Everyone,

I guess I'm a little late in posting to this forum, but better late than never right? I'm in Merced and am excited to see some fellow Central Valley residents here. (Though I'm very jealous of the cool summer breezes the rest of you all get to enjoy along the coast!)

We just bought a new house this past fall and have finished pulling out all the VERY overgrown or dead landscaping we inherited. Our yard is looking a little bare right now, but its been fun having a clean slate to work with. We've definitely got our work cut out for us, but its coming along a little at a time. Meanwhile, I have an excuse to spend lots of time in the garden!! :)

Welcome, Sarah! I have family in Mariposa, so I know where you are. Have fun with that clean slate. I'm sure you will get lots of help if needed from the DGers up in your neck of the woods.

Merced...mmmmm. Main Street Cafe. I like to drop in there on my way to my Dad's in Ceres. Grab a San Joaquin Turkey sandwich and a loaf of Raymond's Dutch Crunch Sourdough with lots of butter to take along. I've been missing it lately 'cause the traffic is sooo horrendous on 99 and I've jumped over to 5. I sure do miss my sandwiches and their bread and their cookies. Lucky you.....

now I'm going to be thinking about a good sandwich all day, wow that sounds yummy!

Greeting neighbors...I live in Wildomar, north of Temecula, my husband and I just put a house on 2.5 acres 3 years ago, and we have been working our behinds off getting it all together. We are doing all the work ourselves. My garden has gone thru 3 stages...at first I was waiting for him to build raised beds (like the picture in Better Homes & Gardens), but I soon realized it wasn't going to happen, so I started digging in the dirt, and now.....well....my garden is over 5000 sq ft, it now has a cute white fence around it, and a shed. I grow mostly veggies, and this year I've got a few roses, and carnations (?) I don't know why, but they are very cheery.....last year I had 600 tomato plants, I put them under a 70% shade cover (I thought it would protect them from 100+ temps) and although I did get enough to can, the production was poor. This year....I've got 50 holes waiting, and I have a new theory....treat tomatoes like the weeds they are!....So we'll have to see how they do.
I'm looking forward to the roundup - it's my first. It sure would be nice to meet folks that are as nutty about gardening as me!

We drove through Wildomar several weeks ago on our way to a DG get together (DH likes to take the road less traveled!). Nice area. You'll love the roundup and we love to have new people, too. See you there, LisaLu.

Welcome Lisalu! Look forward to meeting you at the RU!
Wildomar is somewhere I need to stop and visit on my way down the 15. Always wanted just to exit somewhere there and get lost!

LisaLu, you for sure don't want to miss the RU. Tomatoes grow well in the San Joaquin Valley in the hot sun....shouldn't bother them here. After our really hot week last summer here, up to 107 which is very unusual for our place, I've been planting a lot in whatever partial shade I can find. Makes me see things differently. What in the world do you do with 600 tomato plants? Are you going to be market gardening?
Nutty about gardening? Yes......

Greetings!
My husband and I bought our first home here in San Diego in November. I'm finally able to exercise my passion for everything green! I am new to gardening and to DG, but boy, am I already hooked! I'm absorbing gardening wisdom like a sponge, thanks to our fellow experienced DG friends…
I grew up in Brazil so I am really passionate about tropical plants. After a hiking trip at Washington state I found out I also really love woodlands, so now my plan is: woodland in the front (yard), tropical in the back (yard)! Mud under my fingernails and shovel in hand, that's the life I've always wished for!!!
Glad to meet you all!
Roberta : )

Roberta, are you Portuguese?

There are indeed many Portuguese in SD, but no, I'm Brazilian. : )

The last name and growing up in Brazil made me think you might be, Just wondered!

Anytime y'all are passing through Wildomar, you'll have to stop by and see my garden. This year will be the best yet.....I'm so excited....It's mostly clean dirt right now, but in the next few months.......oh I cant wait! My artichokes are 5' tall and loaded, there must be over a hundred buds, my strawberries are just starting to ripen, just enough to tease my taste buds when watering, and the boysenberries are growing over an arch, 9' tall, and are white with blooms, and raspberries are popping up everwhere....I worked all weekend and planted the following:
white corn, yellow corn, watermelon (yellow, pink, orange, red), cantelope, honeydew, 5 kinds of squash, beans, peas, spinach, 4 types of lettuce, onions, peppers, cucumbers, tomatoes, herbs, and my latest experiment......canary date palms! We have a huge tree we planted last year, and when it produced seed....well....of coarse I had to dry some, and planted them....now I have apx 50 trees about 6" tall! I told my stepson it was his inheiritance! We joke when we're out there weeding, he refers to each plant as his corvette, his summer home, his recording studio, his private jet........I refer to them as his next meal ticket, new shoes, and payment for the old folks home......ha, ha, ha.....
I look forward to meeting all of you at the RU!

Wow, LisaLu, that's a bunch of stuff!! Sounds like you have a good stepson there, too. I am also blessed with a good one too, though we don't see him as much as we like since he lives in England. We'll have him for two weeks this Christmas, though. Next time we're coming up that way I will D-mail you so we can take the tour!

K: Please keep me in mind when you're in the area. Love to share the "garden", although it might classify as a farm! My husband is going to build me a chicken coop so we can have fresh eggs for breakfast! Yummy!
And yes, my dear stepson Kohl is truely a blessing, just like his daddy! We'll be celebrating his 13th bday this Sunday! He's getting his first guitar, he wants to be a recording artist! Last week he wanted to be a wildlife photographer, and live in Austraila. They are such a kick in the pants at this age!

Hello. I'm not a California girl yet, but it looks like I might become one! I am being considered for a job there.

I would have to live near Roseville, which is near Sacramento. I am coming from beautiful Chesapeake, VA (near Norfolk and Virginia Beach).

What can I expect? I looked at the climate map and it made me even more confused - it looks like you could cross the street and be in a different climate zone. Gee, Virginia is almost monochromic compared to northern California on the climate map!

I get that it will be 110 in daytime and cold at night in summer, and cold and miserable in winter. Is there anything else that I should know particularly?

I miss my plants already. I guess I can't bring them.

I will be exploring the info in this forum and learn all I can.

This message was edited May 18, 2008 10:02 PM

Well, you'll be moving to a place far from me, but I wanted to welcome you. There are lots of members up north who can steer you right, though. Enjoy your adventure!

Compared to Virginia I don't think you'll find the winters cold and miserable, they should be better than what you have now. Sacramento's in zone 9a, maybe borderline 8b, unless you start to get too far into the Sierra foothills then it's colder. But I'm pretty sure Roseville's not very high up yet. Here's a link that shows you avg highs, lows, and rainfall for each month so you can get a better sense of the weather. http://weather.yahoo.com/climo/USCA0957_f.html The weather will be hot much of the time in the summer, but it will cool off at night, and the heat probably won't feel as bad as it would in VA because we don't have humidity. You'll also have to get used to having no rain at all in the summer...it's nice if you're planning outdoor activities because you don't have to worry about the weather being bad, but it makes it a lot harder (and more expensive) to keep things like a lawn alive. As soon as you get out here, I'd highly recommend picking up a copy of the Sunset Western Garden book, they have developed climate zones that are much more useful than the USDA's zones for figuring out what will do well for you or not, it's one of those "must have" books for gardening out here.

ecrane3, even here in Virginia I'm pretty much a grass-hater. I think I will have an "Arizona lawn", so dubbed from the "lawns" I saw in Scottsdale.

A rock lawn, in other words, with container gardening.

Well, since I don't know where I will be living exactly, I don't know if I will have a yard at all. For awhile, I imagine I'll be living out of a suitcase. But eventually, I hope to settle down...

I don't think I can do without gardening for long. Maybe I can find a botanical garden that I could volunteer at to get my gardening jollies...

UC Davis has a nice arboretum, it's on the other side of Sacramento from Roseville. Probably not somewhere you'd want to drive during weekday traffic, but on weekends it would probably be fine. There are probably other ones up there too, that's just the one I'm aware of. I want to say there's some sort of botanical garden up around Redding somewhere too, that's a bit north of Sacramento.

If you end up eventually getting a place with a yard, you're not stuck with only containers, there are plenty of drought tolerant plants that you can put in the ground and they'll get by just fine on not too much water. California has some wonderful native plants, and we can also grow Mediterranean plants like lavender, and I also grow a ton of Australian/South African natives which also do great here. Rock lawns are great, when I bought this place I had the grass lawn ripped out and replaced with gravel and garden beds, much better in my opinion!

Well, I never saw that grass lawns did any good unless you had sheep or cattle.

ecrane, I visited a website related to the Sunset thing, and this is what it said:

Zone 9. While cool air flows downward into the valley, where it gets trapped, the surrounding low-elevation foothills are warmer. This is Zone 9. Zone 9 is safest for heat-loving plants like citrus, hibiscus, melaleuca, and pittosporum. The weather can be cold in the winter, including long periods with thick tule, or ground, fog. During extremely cold periods, air blowers are needed to keep the temperature from dropping too low and killing the citrus crop.

I can grow oranges there?

Also, are there rules about what kind of plants can enter California? I know they have to protect the orange crop.

I'm still trying to figure out how I can "import" the plants from my garden and greenhouse. Who says you can't take it with you? Maybe the California state laws...

KaperC, thank you for your kind welcome.

And, thanks for the info, ecrane!

Try this link for info on bringing plants into CA

http://www.cdfa.ca.gov/phpps/PE/InteriorExclusion/ext_summary.html

There's an email link at the top of that page if you have specific questions. Houseplants are generally a little easier to bring in as long as they don't have obvious signs of pests, but they're pickier about plants that have been grown outdoors. If your plants fit any of the criteria on the page that Kathleen linked to then I wouldn't even try to bring them, but for your others, I'd email them and find out what's the best thing to do to maximize the chances that your plants won't get confiscated at the border.

Well, let's see...
One of the forbidden entries, for Burrowing and Reniform Nematode, is "All earth, plants and plant parts with roots; all parts of plants produced below ground or soil level and all plant cuttings for propagation."

Another, for the West Indian Sugarcane Root Borer, is "Soil, sand, gravel and all plants and plant parts capable of propagation."

I interpret that to mean none of my Virginia soil is acceptable because of Japanese beetles, which I can understand. I just realized that I only see Japanese beetle larvae in my garden dirt, but never in the dirt of a potted plant. I wonder why. You would think that after nearly half a century of gardening I would have found one by now.

It sounds like most of my plants could come, minus the dirt. I don't know how many of my plants I can carry with me, but I'll make a list and check it out with the authorities. The way it looks right now is that it will have to be just houseplants or their cuttings, out of my beloved Virginia dirt, because of the lack of yard.

I think I will have to make arrangements for someone to care for my plants for a month or so if I get the job. After that, I should know if I'm going to make California my permanent or semi-permanent home.

I hope I can find reasonable housing, with a yard!

This message was edited Apr 17, 2008 9:19 AM

This message was edited Apr 17, 2008 9:20 AM

Thank you, ecrane3 and KaperC. It would be nice if I could make it to the RU, wouldn't it?

The other thing if there are plants that you REALLY want to bring in is you could see if you can get an inspection and phytosanitary certificate for them. Nurseries always have these so that they can ship plants into CA. I don't know how much it would cost, but it may be worth it if you have some things that really mean a lot to you. I'd make sure and dig the plants up and get rid of all the garden soil on the roots and put them in containers with potting mix though, that will be more acceptable than things in garden soil.

Some plants like citrus it doesn't matter what you do you'll never be allowed to bring them in, and there are some states where you're required to bare root everything before sending it to CA, but I've ordered stuff a number of times from Lazy S nursery which I believe is in VA and the plants always come in container mix, so there are mechanisms for getting potted outdoor plants from VA into CA. Whether it's a viable option for an individual person vs a nursery is another question though!

Im not sure the nursery could help you. Contact the local agriculture commision of the county you are moving to. They will be looking for different things depending on where you are coming from and what plants you are bringing too (hosts). They may ask you to take your plants to your local VA. office before the move and have them looked at and/or call them upon arrival here and have them looked at. I think in general states back east are more worried about getting our bugs than vice versa. When we get plants from southern California its the sharpshooter they are mainly looking for (since the apple moth is now everywhere) and shipments from Oregon are inspected for Phytothera.

Welcome!

Brightstar,
Welcome to Ca. I live a couple of hours south of Roseville in the SF east bay, Roseville, is a lovely community.
If you can't bring your plants with you, put the word out for what your looking for maybe we can help you out.
Linda

Sorry if my post was misunderstood, I wasn't suggesting that the nursery could help, just using that as an example that since they're in VA and ship plants here in pots with potting mix, therefore all plants from VA in potting mix are not automatically banned from California, there is a way to get them in. The ag dept. is still the right place to go to find out if there's a way for individuals to get their plants allowed or if it's something that's only feasible for nurseries to do.

Oh sorry ecrane! I thought you meant that he could get the certificate from the nursery.
Basically it is the certificate that comes with the plants (sharpshooter hosts) saying "This plant has been thoroughly coated with toxic substances no more than 24 hours before going into the truck." I am really curious what the residual levels are on these plants as we unload them.
Its serious here in Napa...All Hail The Mighty Wine Grape (dollar)!

Great picture! They are a bit over-protective of those grapes aren't they!

lol! I love the pix! :o)

I guess where I live, my zone and all will show up right?
Any how, I am Norma and I live in between Fresno and Lemoore and for years I have
been trying to improve my front yard and do something with that back yard.
But all I seem to be able to do is purchase 1000's of dollars in flowers (I love perennials and fragrance)
then watch them all die. I need serious help. Now I have to do it on a serious cheap budget
to no budget at all. Can you do that? There are so many problems with these yards I don't know
where to begin. I drive around and just love looking at peoples yards and I love, love, love
seeing what you guys and gals have done. I am so jealous. Keep it up. I hope one day
to enjoy and reap the rewards I know so many of you are.


If nothing show up my zone is 8a according to National Gardening Association.
Hugs and Kisses,
Norma

Hi Norma! Welcome to DG & the California forum! If you want to start a new thread to get some more specific advice I'm sure lots of people will jump in and help you out. Do you own a copy of the Sunset Western Garden Book? It's a great reference, they've made climate zones that are much better than the USDA ones since they take into account summer temps, rainfall, etc as well as just winter lows. You have a challenging climate, but the book can help you figure out which plants ought to do well in your climate (there are some, don't worry!). My guess is the things you've been planting may not have been ideal for your tough climate, so you may have to rethink some of the things you're trying. And planting them at the right time of year can really help too--if you were planting things too late in the spring when the weather was already starting to get hot, that really doesn't give your plants a good chance to get established before the sun fries them, but if you plant in the fall or really early in the spring that gives them a better chance.

Definitely check out the threads on the Roundup that's coming up in June--if you're able to go to that it'll be a great chance to meet some other DG'ers and also probably come home with some cuttings & seeds of things that may do well in your climate.