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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Garden Checklist for week of Jan. 12
Once the winds die down, it’s good winter gardening weather with plenty to do:
* Prune, prune, prune. Now is the time to cut back most deciduous trees and shrubs. The exceptions are spring-flowering shrubs such as lilacs.
* Now is the time to prune fruit trees. (The exceptions are apricot and cherry trees, which are susceptible to a fungus that causes dieback. Save them until summer.) Clean up leaves and debris around the trees to prevent the spread of disease.
* Prune roses, even if they’re still trying to bloom. Strip off any remaining leaves, so the bush will be able to put out new growth in early spring.
* Clean up leaves and debris around your newly pruned roses and shrubs. Put down fresh mulch or bark to keep roots cozy.
* After the wind stops, apply horticultural oil to fruit trees to control scale, mites and aphids. Oils need 24 hours of dry weather after application to be effective.
* This is also the time to spray a copper-based fungicide to peach and nectarine trees to fight leaf curl. (The safest effective fungicides available for backyard trees are copper soap -- aka copper octanoate -- or copper ammonium, a fixed copper fungicide. Apply either of these copper products with 1% horticultural oil to increase effectiveness.)
* When forced bulbs sprout, move them to a cool, bright window. Give them a quarter turn each day so the stems will grow straight.
* Browse through seed catalogs and start making plans for spring and summer.
* Divide daylilies, Shasta daisies and other perennials.
* Cut back and divide chrysanthemums.
* Plant bare-root roses, trees and shrubs.
* Transplant pansies, violas, calendulas, English daisies, snapdragons and fairy primroses.
* In the vegetable garden, plant fava beans, head lettuce, mustard, onion sets, radicchio and radishes.
* Plant bare-root asparagus and root divisions of rhubarb.
* In the bulb department, plant callas, anemones, ranunculus and gladioli for bloom from late spring into summer.
* Plant blooming azaleas, camellias and rhododendrons. If you’re shopping for these beautiful landscape plants, you can now find them in full flower at local nurseries.
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