Published July 7, 2005

Glad you found your way to the second edition of your Jolly Green Goddess, a column of gardening therapy and advice!

Summer appears finally to have arrived, bringing all sorts of annually surprising results in the garden, at least in mine.

As everyone knows, we have had a long spring this year. But I’m certainly not complaining. We learned to try not to complain about the weather while spending five years’ worth of winters in Canada, specifically Victoria, British Columbia, the so-called “sun belt” of Canada. The weather is generally terrible there by California standards, with “sunny breaks” most days and about two weeks of summer, at most. But nobody complains! As long as you wake up in the morning, it’s a beautiful day—a good lesson to learn.

Because of Victoria’s sort of five-month spring (May-September, followed by winter), it has some of the most beautiful gardens in the world. The Butchart Gardens north of downtown Victoria are world famous, and advertised as far south as Yreka, California. Horticulture students from all over Canada vie to work or intern there.

The Victoria Chamber of Commerce and Tourism Victoria sponsor an annual “Flower Count,” which means that everyone who even has one pot to plant in fills it with dirt and plops a geranium or pansies in it, and calls in the flower buds to the Chamber of Commerce during the appointed week.

In the elegant Oak Bay neighborhood, mansion owners’ hired gardeners silently compete to have the most beautiful display and greatest number of blooms each spring. Merchants build or install flower boxes in front of their shops, and the city government hangs flower baskets from light posts and waters them in the middle of the night. During the holiday season, pine boughs replace the hanging baskets, and white lights decorate tree-lined streets, and there are no commercial holiday banners.

As a result, Victoria is pretty at all times, with the flowers adding to the cheer and attraction of visiting the city.

Next winter, the Sonoma Valley Sun and KSVY 91.3 FM will begin to cosponsor a Sonoma Flower Count. More to come at the appropriate time, but start thinking about it.

So since we have real summers, sometimes, funny things happen in our gardens. The edges of roses are looking burnt, because they are. Little green tomatoes are showing up on our tomato plants, yellow blossoms on squash plants are appearing more frequently and turning into edibles quicker, and lettuce is acting oddly and growing straight up in the air too fast, all thanks to our sunlight and heat.

Lots of roses in Sonoma Valley have had more rust and black spots than we have seen in a long time, and many readers say theirs have been looking a bit frail but are beginning to recover. Jolly Green Goddess says: leave them alone, spray dead looking leaves off with hose water, pick up the leaves and discard, and let the roses dry out between soakings.

The late Master Nurseryman Frank Wedekind of Wedekind’s Nursery always used to say that “water is the best spray for roses,” and he was in the business of selling garden stuff. That’s why I don’t spray roses in the winter and deal with aphids, if they show up, by hosing them off. I truly believe that gardening this way signals birds that this garden is okay, and that the word gets around birdom that the Jolly Green Goddess’s garden is a safe and cool place to hang out.

They enjoy the bird bath, too. It is so much fun to watch them doing the hoochie goochie in the water, flapping their wings out of pure joy, and just sitting there all wet. We made the bird bath by buying a terra cotta Mexican outdoor stove pipe, turning it upside down for the base, and placing a large terra cotta plant pot saucer on top of the pipe. Eh voila! Bird heaven! But I do empty it every other day to get rid of any mosquito larvae and refill it back in place.

Due to our big rains last winter, everything is growing an abundance of stems and leaves this summer, from grape vines to tomato vines. If you walk through a vineyard, the gorgeous, somewhat virginal shoots are taller than ever. And some of my lucky 13 tomato plants are five feet tall, which does not mean we have more grapes and tomatoes than ever. The water seems to be filling the stems and leaves, and will have an unknown effect on the grapes and tomatoes, both of which are largely made up of water like most fruits and vegetables.

The lettuce I planted facing eastward and under trees is doing well, meaning it is surviving. In fact, the lettuce plants I cut above the first couple of leaves are, effectively, producing a second head of lettuce.

You don’t really save much money by planting lettuce “transplants” that you buy at the nursery, but you do have the knowledge, if you want it, that you are planting organic plants, and you know how you take care of them and what you do or do not add to your soil. Nothing tastes better than homegrown lettuce, except maybe homegrown tomatoes. By the way, tomatoes supposedly prefer drip systems to water by hose, but I have always watered by hand and hose, not having that extensive a drip system.

According to Sonoma Mission Gardens, we can still plant more lettuce in “dappled light,” which is a beautiful expression. It means either under trees that allow some sunlight to filter through, or, in this case, against an east-facing wall, where only the cooler morning sun will hit the lettuce—just enough in this heat.

Important gardening event tonight (Thursday) at Readers’ books: Tony Kienitz will talk about his new book “The Year I Ate My Yard” at 7:30. Kienitz calls himself “the master vegetablarian” and writes and talks about “creating gardens that cooperate with natural systems.” Basically Kienitz plants lettuce in garden borders, as does your humble Jolly Green Goddess, and focuses on planting edible gardens, combining “interaction…soil, light, and attitude.”

Kienitz suggests we plant parsley, lemon verbena or other herbs and scatter lettuce seeds around our existing landscape. His company, Vegetare, designs, sows, and tends organic edible landscapes, and he appears on many cable television shows. According to Lilla Weinberger at Readers’ Books, his work has been featured in the Los Angeles Times, Sunset magazine, Garden Design, and Los Angeles Magazine.

Question time:
Cassie: How did I kill my rosemary plant? I thought they were indestructible.
Jolly Green Goddess: No one knows the answer. Possible answers: too much water, bum plant, gophers gobbled the roots.

Karen from Glen Ellen Inn restaurant: We have one more row available to plant in our organic garden where we grow all sorts of vegetables for the restaurant. Is it too late to plant more veggies and what can we plant safely?
Jolly Green Goddess with the help of Sonoma Mission Gardens: For the next week or so you can still plant tomatoes successfully (40% off at Sonoma Mission Gardens right now), all kinds of beans, squashes, eggplant, and peppers, plus lettuce in “dappled sunlight.”
If you want to plant flowers now, SMG suggests annuals such as zinnias and marigolds, impatiens and begonias in shade, petunias, and sunflowers, and perennials hollyhock, verbena, and foxglove.

SMG has some terrific huge Benary’s Giant Carmine rose zinnias that attract butterflies and have a long vase life. In the hollyhock department, Chater’s Marion and Chater’s White grow 6-8 feet high and make a great barrier or fence liner.

Frida called and said her vines are just growing wildly and asked “What should I do?” Jolly Green Goddess: Enjoy their flowers if they have some and then cut them back. They will come back with even more flowers. My lavender trumpet vine is also going crazy, which is especially remarkable because it froze, supposedly to death, a few years ago. I just trim it so it doesn’t cast too much shadow on the roses below it. Be sure not to let vines creep onto your roof, between shingles, or between siding seams in your house. I saw an orange trumpet vine growing right through a brick chimney into the living room of an elegant house on Russian Hill in San Francisco. Attack of the trumpet vine!

We put coffee grounds throughout our garden, but they especially create rich colors in hydrangeas. Another trick we use is to scatter barbecue charcoal ashes around our roses.

As soon as we have ripe veggies in the garden, I will pass on recipes to use them. If you have garden questions or favorite recipes to use up your garden veggies, please send them to the Jolly Green Goddess at hilltopub@aol.com.

Next week we are back to “Cooking with Love.” See you then!

Kathleen Hill is co-author of Sonoma Valley-The Secret Wine Country and Napa Valley-Land of Golden Vines. Kathleen and Gerald Hill host two shows at 5:00 p.m. on KSVY- 91.3 FM Mondays and Thursdays.