I took the day to meet with potential clients, mostly to overhaul or install completely new irrigation systems.  A woeful state of affairs with all the warm, dry days that we have had and will be getting.  Irrigation irritation was not the only thing these hand-wringing folks had in common.

They all had dreams of converting areas, modest and massive, for the purpose of food production.  Fantastic!  To help prepare them for the weeks to come, we sorted out a few must haves for success with their crops. Simply put: a sunny spot with few weeds and good soil, water, and protection from pests.

A sunny spot.  That spot in your garden that gets sun most of the day will do perfectly.  If there are tall buildings or overhanging limbs that block the sun for more than half the day, pick a different spot.  If all else fails, you may be growing your vegetables and herbs in pots on your patio or deck.

Few weeds.  Never are weeds not an issue.  Sheetmulching has been our best practice for getting weeds under control and preparing an area for planting.  It not only smothers most weeds, but adding an inch of compost beneath the paper gives your soil an extra helping of nitrogen and a complex mix of microorganisms.  Unlike weed barriers and landscape fabrics (black plastic should be outlawed, Period), the paper breaks down over a couple rainy seasons and you plant in it by making x-shaped cuts with a small blade or shovel.  The key to keeping the weeds at bay is to keep top-dressing with plant appropriate mulch to maintain a depth of 3 inches, especially over disturbed soil.

!!! Please leave at least 20% of the ground free of mulch.  Pick areas beneath shrubs or similar areas that do not have foot traffic.  This is for native bees that are ground-nesters that you want, I swear you do, in your garden!!!

Good soil.  If you are amending soil to put your crops directly into the ground, start with an aged compost.  We use West Coast Chip Harvesters, American Soil & Stone Products, or LH Voss depending on where the job is.  Vegetable crops tend to be shallow-rooted, except for perennials such as rhubarb and artichokes.  With shallow-rooting in mind, less is more.  We usually get away with a mix of parent soil and compost in equal parts.  Parent soil around the SF Bay varies widely, so let us assume clay for parent soil in this instance.  We start by taking a 3-inch layer of parent soil from a 4 square-foot footprint and chopping it into 1 cubic foot of stinky compost.  We stop torturing the soil (and ourselves) when our mixture looks like soil marbles; bigger than peas but smaller than walnuts.  Spread the soil back over the original 4 square-foot spot.  Do not tamp.  If you want to add some protection against weeds, now is a good time for the sheet mulch and another inch or two of compost.  Water slowly but generously with a sprayer on the shower setting.

If you are planting in raised beds, disregard the previous paragraph.  Import organic soil, specific for vegetables, and tamp layers in 3 inches at time until you reach the appropriate height in the bed.  Do not worry about compost this first season, but top-dress with it in seasons to follow.

The area is ready to plant.

Keeping your thirsty plants hydrated is crucial.  It’s great to have an irrigation valve dedicated to your vegetables.  We have used both solenoid or hose bib timers with much success.  We prefer pressure-compensating bubblers for heavy water that can be moved around, increased or decreased, or closed down completely as needed.  We were in the habit of installing inline shut-offs on the PE lines, but they ended up being too macro for micro production.  Have an assortment of fittings, especially goof plugs, on hand so that leaks can be repaired quickly.  Yes, leaks.  You will get them, you will know or learn how to fix them.  It is just water.

Protection against pests… slugs, snails, white fly, your neighbor’s chicken that went rouge…  Good sanitation is key.  For ornamental areas we let the leaves fall where they may and decompose back into the soil.  We are more vigilant about removing dead, dying, or diseased plant material to a compost bin when dealing with veggies and herbs.  If you do not mind the look of straw, this is a light and airy top-dressing that houses very few pests. Straw is less likely to have weed seed than hay.  For slugs and snails, fresh copper strips are effective until they are not fresh and baiting a nearby groundcover draws the little buggers away from you crop.  Whitefly, as well as a whole mess of sucking and rasping insects can be sprayed off with a hose and the plant can be treated with our Neem oil concoction.  But your neighbor’s chicken, well it would go great with your vegetables chopped into a pot full of dumplings.  It’s true and you know it.

You spend weeks or months planning your garden project.  Putting together a budget, you try to balance what you want with what you can afford.  Then, you meet with a designer or architect.  Maybe you go straight to a landscape contractor.  Whatever your process, you end up investing a lot of time just to get your project started.

Whether you signed up for a little renovation or an entire do-over, chances are you peek into the work area more than you would like to admit.  Do they look busy?  Do they look like they know what they are doing?  Is the project manager or foreman on site?  Is this the answer to your prayers or the beginning of a mistake?  What do you do if you don’t like how your garden ends up looking?

For us, January is a good month to revisit some of our gardens.  Some of our best laid plans get washed away by an unforeseen drainage issue.  We have had dozens of plants wiped out by snails we had not anticipated.  And sometimes, an element of our grand design turned out to simply not work.  The worst part, we don’t always get a call letting us know we need to come back to remedy these hiccups.

For most of our contracts, we put in 3 follow-up visits to make adjustments or fix the little uglies that rear their heads.  Sometimes, the garden needs a year to show us where we got things right and where we got things not-so-right.  We try to send emails to clients to check-in.  Did they check the back-up battery to the irrigation controller?  Have they called the arborist to look at the suspicious black areas on their apple?  Are they still getting pooling below the garage door?   We have been known to send emails to clients from several years ago just to check-in.  It’s less creepy than our habit of doing unscheduled drive-bys.

Taking a moment to swing by a mature project is peace of mind for both the client and us.  I drove by a corner lot that we did back in 2003.  It was the first time I was able to use a Lyonothamnus floribundus.  It looked gorgeous, but the perennials that we installed beneath it were ready for the compost heap.  That was part of our plan for succession planting.  Too bad our clients had moved without letting the new owners in on our secret.  I sat in my truck for a few minutes wondering if I should knock, but decided just to drive by again in a few weeks.

Letting go of a garden can be difficult.  Our creations are born from brain and brawn.  Sometimes it feels like the genetic crossroads of inspiration and utility, other times perspiration and futility.  Going back and revisiting our work helps us learn how we have actually changed and hopefully improved how people see, feel, and connect with their little bit of outdoors.  Plus, it’s a good excuse to reconnect with folks that we had a great time working for!

Years ago, I was a greenhouse grower for a couple who also ran a floral shop.  Aside from the chaotic flow from holiday center pieces and romantic bouquets to  Mother’s Day (the flower holiday of the year), they had the constant flow of birthdays, anniversaries, and funerals.  I found out soon enough that no floral job ground things to a halt like a wedding.  All other work suffered, morale was tenuous at best, and the amount of overtime clocked in was staggering.  Even the greenhouse staff would get roped into making deliveries to ensure the flow of highly perishable flowers and greens to their destinations.

So, the idea of working as part of wedding preparations makes my shoulders tense up.

I got a call from a client that we have enjoyed working for since 2005.  Their neighbors across the street were getting married in a few months and wanted the garden to look nice as the whole shebang was happening there.  The couple was young, very modern, and had enough of the details worked out that talking about the concept for the garden was a piece of cake.

I proposed that instead of dumping a bunch of money on throw-away floral stuffs, we could stage the wedding with plants that would be reused in their garden installation.  I’m not going to claim we had 100% success with the concept.  We had to integrate a long-term plant palette with a palette of blooming plants that may not be so long-term.  Luckily, the couple had little preoccupation with the exact shade of pink or coral.  We were able to plan out most of the compositions with three to five types of plants and tie them together with a few ground covers.

Repeatedly disturbing the roots of plants is contraindicated to ease in transplant and acclimation.  To avoid this, we popped the plants out of their less-than-aesthetically- pleasing plastic pots and put them in peat pots.  The peat pots worked well with a mulch camouflage and made redistributing plants into their post-nuptial layout a cinch.  We did have a few hiccups with the drip irrigation wetting through the pots.  We spot-watered by hand and that revived all but select few little ones.  May they rest in peace.

I cannot claim that this idea of reusing plants was my great eureka! moment.  People have been planting their Christmas trees after the New Year for generations.  From Get-well plants, to pots of Easter lilies, it seems unconscionable to through away a living plant when one has a bare spot of earth outside their kitchen door.

Here are a few pages that can demystify how we understand soil (sand, silt, and clay) and some of the other materials present in and on our soil. Please note that these are local resources that can help you get started in you garden (add the pun) from the ground up!

Soil and Biodynamics Soil Foodweb Composting

O.K., so going native may be going green, but the color green is not always what you get.  The San Francisco Bay Area is one of the most diverse ecologies on the planet.  Our Mediterranean climate, with its many microclimates, supports just about anything that we try to grow here.  We have taken advantage of this while compromising the health of the plant and animal communities that have evolved here.  We can start respecting the soil and the life that it supports by understanding how going native in our gardens benefits all of us.  We can leave the roses in New York, the peaches in Georgia, and the bluegrass in Kentucky and start cultivate a love and appreciation for what California has to offer.  Here are a few places to start:

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