Master gardener Lori Ann Asmus offers tips in video
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Lori Ann Asmus holds up her favorite tool for checking plant moisture: her finger.
(Screenshot from YouTube)
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Even though the temperatures have improved, the air is smoky and the conditions rather depressing now for gardening. But thanks to the Sacramento County master gardeners, you can spend your gardening time learning how to brighten your indoor world with houseplants.
Lori Ann Asmus, who is a master gardener and interior landscaper, presented a terrific webinar on houseplants during Virtual Harvest Day earlier this month. It was taped for later viewing on YouTube, and I highly recommend it. (Full disclosure: I'm a rookie when it comes to houseplants, so most of her session was new to me.)
There's one caveat on the YouTube videos: Instead of being broken up by topic, all of Harvest Day 2021 is on one big video -- 4.5 hours' worth. It's hard to search for an individual topic or webinar. But I know how to get you to the houseplant sequence:
Go to YouTube here: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=weLb6CTVZ9c
Then click on "Show More" under the brief description and the Farmer Fred link. (Fred's good, too, but we want houseplants today.)
Lori Ann Asmus is the second-to-last webinar listed. Click on her time and you'll pop into moderator Julie Oliver's introduction of Asmus.
Asmus conducted the entire webinar from the UCCE office, but she covers a lot of ground and has examples. The session runs about half an hour. Have a pen and paper handy to take notes!
And let's all hope they get the fires under control soon and we have better outdoor gardening conditions.
-- Kathy Morrison
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Food in My Back Yard Series
May 13: Your plants can tell you more than any calendar can
May 6: Maintain soil moisture with mulch for garden success
April 29: What's (already) wrong with my tomato plants?
April 22: Should you stock up on fertilizer? (Yes!)
April 15: Grow culinary herbs in containers
April 8: When to plant summer vegetables
April 1: Don't be fooled by these garden myths
March 25: Fertilizer tips: How to 'feed' your vegetables for healthy growth
March 18: Time to give vegetable seedlings some more space
March 11: Ways to win the fight against weeds
March 4: Potatoes from the garden
Feb. 25: Plant a fruit tree now -- for later
Feb. 18: How to squeeze more food into less space
Feb. 11: When to plant? Consider staggering your transplants
Feb. 4: Starting in seed starting
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Garden Checklist for week of May 18
Get outside early in the morning while temperatures are still cool – and get to work!
* Plant, plant, plant! It’s prime planting season in the Sacramento area. Time to set out those tomato transplants along with peppers and eggplants. Pinch off any flowers on new transplants to make them concentrate on establishing roots instead of setting premature fruit.
* Direct-seed melons, cucumbers, summer squash, corn, radishes, pumpkins and annual herbs such as basil.
* Harvest cabbage, lettuce, peas and green onions.
* In the flower garden, direct-seed sunflowers, cosmos, salvia, zinnias, marigolds, celosia and asters. Transplant seedlings for many of the same flowers.
* Plant dahlia tubers.
* Transplant petunias, marigolds and perennial flowers such as astilbe, columbine, coneflowers, coreopsis, dahlias, rudbeckia and verbena.
* Keep an eye out for slugs, snails, earwigs and aphids that want to dine on tender new growth.
* Feed summer bloomers with a balanced fertilizer.
* For continued bloom, cut off spent flowers on roses as well as other flowering plants.
* Are birds picking your fruit off trees before it’s ripe? Try hanging strips of aluminum foil on tree branches. The shiny, dangling strips help deter birds from making themselves at home.
* As spring-flowering shrubs finish blooming, give them a little pruning to shape them, removing old and dead wood. Lightly trim azaleas, fuchsias and marguerites for bushier plants.
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