Planning Makes Perfect

By Carol Nagy Jacklin and Sally Snipes

It's time for garden planning. Planning can make your garden a year-round joy. It can save you money, work and plants. Best of all, planning is fun. Go out into your garden and look around. Now when there aren't many flowers or trees blooming, it's easier to see the strengths and weaknesses of your garden. Decide what you'd like to change. Do you want to extend your vegetable garden? Do you want to add an herb or a flower garden? Do you want to replace some roses or add a mini orchard? Does your garden look beautiful in the spring but not in the summer or autumn? Make some rough sketches of new garden areas or lists of problems or wishes for your garden.

To help with the planning, here are two lists that we have developed over the years which have been helpful to us. The first gives approximate planting times in Julian for vegetables (and some flowers.) The second gives approximate blooming times of annuals, perennials, bulbs and shrubs. Depending on what you want to do in your garden this year, these lists may help in your planning.

Vegetable (and some flower) planting times in Julian

March

Lettuce (6-packs & seeds), Napa cabbage, spinach, radishes, green onions.

Mid May

6-packs, peppers, tomatoes, eggplants, Amaranth (seed or 6-pack).

After Memorial Day

Big Seeds: corn, beans, squash, To Mid June (frost tender annuals from seed or 6-pack).

June/July

Fill in with 6-packs or seeds (lettuce, broccoli, cauliflower) as you harvest early veggies.

August

Harvest and build your soil.

September

Harvest (plant early winter veggies in shade of summer veggies)

Late September, October cool season vegetables: (& Early November onion sets, spinach seeds or 6-packs, Chinese cabbage, broccoli, Brussels sprouts, lettuces, carrot seeds. Violets, snapdragons, stock, pinks, violas.

December

Kale.

January

Start seeds indoors, leeks, tomatoes.

February (Valentine's Day)

Sweet peas, Leeks (6-packs) - or your seedlings.

What's blooming in Julian?

January- berry shrubs, winter iris (I.unguicularis), crocus, violets, viola, early manzanita, stock.

February- snowdrops (Galanthus reginae-olgae and G. caucasiscus var.hiemalis), early daffodils and anemones, especially in warm spots, crocus, manzanita.

March- daffodils, early tulips, grape hyacinth, lunaria, painted daisies, California poppies.

April- daffodils, tulips, alliums, Siberian iris, lilacs, foxtail lilies, California poppies.

May- roses, alliums, peonies, bearded iris, coreopsis, yarrow, astilbies, clematis, spiraea (S. thunbergii best spring flowers and fall color).

June- alliums, lavender, shasta daisies, oriental poppy, lilies, daylilies, hollyhocks, baby's breath, yarrow, astilbies, roses.

July- lilies, black-eyed Susan (Rudbeckia), buddleia, chaste trees, rose of Sharon, daylilies, sunflowers, yarrow, some roses.

August- asters, lilies, buddleia, crape myrtle, caryopteris, daylilies, goldenrod, yarrow, sunflowers, boltonia, fall-blooming anemones, western or mountain spiraea.

September- asters. lilies, sunflowers (annual, New Mexican and Mexican), autumn clematis, chrysanthemum, boltonia, fall-blooming anemones

October- asters, autumn crocus, autumn clematis, sun camellias, chrysanthemum

November- latest aster (A. tradescantii same as A. pilosus var. demotus) sun camellias (C. sasanqua), early berry shrubs (such as beautyberry)

December- holly berries, pyracantha berries, winter iris, earliest crocus (C. laevigatus var. fontenayi) toyan

Of course, these aren't the only blossoms in Julian each month, but we hope they will be useful reminders. We haven't listed rosemary because it can be blooming all year depending on your location and microclimate. And if you have a spot protected from the winds, or live in the Wynola area, you can have the large flowered camellia (C. Japonica.) You might want to use this list and add other flowers you have in your garden by month of year.

You also might like to plan for garden succession. Succession is a gardener's term for having one type of plant finish its bloom as another comes into its own. We've had good luck under deciduous trees with daffodils followed by lunaria. Lunaria is a shade-loving biennial. The first year it is a small plant and the second year it shoots up and has lovely purple flowers followed by the moon-like seed pods it is named after. The timing seems perfect. As the daffodil leaves turn yellow the lunaria comes up and covers them. Once established, the lunaria will happily reseed itself. The daffodils also

get sun before the trees have leaves, but the lunaria gets the shade it needs after the trees leaf out.

Walk around your garden. Make some notes or do some sketches. Have fun planning and then shop for your plants. Remember that any plants brought up from a warmer climate need to be given a few days in a sheltered spot to harden up to our colder weather. Enjoy the planning and the planting. Without very much work, your garden will be a little closer to perfect.