5 things to do in the garden this week:
1. Fruit trees. Plant a Chinese date tree (Zizyphus jujube). It does fine when planted this time of year. Chinese date is an extremely drought-tolerant tree, more so than any other locally grown fruit tree, and possesses two distinctive qualities that set it apart from other fruit trees. It has shiny green foliage and a columnar growth habit. It does have thorns but these are small and easily forgotten when you taste the fruit. Unlike the familiar dates which grow on a palm tree and must be picked before they dry and sweeten, Chinese dates dry on the tree, which grows fairly rapidly to a mature height, in our climate, of around 30 feet. It is briefly deciduous in the winter but does not require any winter chill to flower and fruit. Fruit begins to ripen this month and will continue ripening until October. Plant it as an exotic hedge in front of a block wall or along a property line.
2. Vegetables. You can still plant tomatoes, but they may not be as fruitful as if you had planted them a month ago or earlier. Still, you never know. It depends on how warm the temperature is over the next 2-3 months. Cherry tomato production is famous for persisting until the first of the new year if not beyond. And it would be advisable at this late date to plant cherry tomatoes since they ripen more quickly than large tomato varieties.
3. Herbs. Most Artemisia species or wormwoods are known for their bitter scent but annual mugwort or sweet wormwood (Artemisia annua) is the exception. Its foliar fragrance suggests camphor, chamomile, mint, and thyme. Foliage is soft and lacy and flowers appear in early fall. All parts of the plant are medicinal. A Chinese scientist named Tu Youyou extracted a phytochemical called artemisinin from the leaves and devised a means of using it as an anti-malarial drug, a discovery for which she was awarded the Nobel Prize in medicine. Sweet wormwood is probably the easiest herb to grow. You simply scatter the seeds, which are widely available from online vendors, over the soil surface and water. Within a week or two, plants will begin to grow. They will also self-sow with ease so you can distribute seedlings that sprout from your mother plant to neighbors and friends.
4. Ornamentals. In the 1936 Armstrong plant catalog, an ornamental by the name of Mexican abelia (Abelia floribunda), growing 3-4 feet tall, was described as follows: “It has handsome glossy foliage, and breaks out in late spring with a profusion of pendulous, tubular, reddish-purple flowers, much larger and more brilliant than the other Abelias. If pruned back a little, it will produce another crop in late summer. It is creating quite a furor among those who know the finest flowering shrubs.” I have never seen this shrub anywhere but stunning pictures of it abound on the Internet and it is available through online vendors.
5. Low-cost garden. If you want to install one, it is easy enough to do so with a drip irrigation line and cuttings of succulent plants. Simply lay the drip line wherever you wish your succulent garden to be and take cuttings from the plants of family, friends, and neighbors (upon getting their propagation permission), removing cuttings’ bottom leaves. After letting the cut ends callus over for a few days or sooner, when they no longer appear moist, insert stems next to wherever a drip emitter in the line is found. Within a year or so, you will see your cuttings begin to look like the plants they are meant to be.
Send your questions, comments, successes and gardening predicaments to joshua@perfectplants.com.
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