Published March 16, 2006

Pruning roses at Sebastiani Winery.
Photographed by Rebecca Gosselin

Garden Snippets:
Master Gardener Patty Ekenberg will lead a free workshop on “Summer Vegetable Gardening” on Saturday, March 18 from 10 a.m. until 12 noon at the Sonoma Valley Regional Library, 755 West Napa Street. At the free workshop, which is part of the Master Gardeners’ series, Ekenberg will show how to choose the best site for your veggie garden, how to prepare vegetable beds, and how to choose the right plants for your climate. For more info or to get a free “Bay Area Planting Guide,” call the Sonoma Master Gardener offices at (707) 938-0127 or visit http://mgsonoma.ucdavis.edu.

Wildwood Farm Nursery & Sculpture Garden in Kenwood will present a pruning workshop on Sunday, March 26 at 11 a.m. for $20. Nursery co-owner Ricardo Monte will lead the class, passing on his knowledge gained in 35 years of tree shaping experience, and will provide a hands-on demonstration working with Japanese maples, beech trees, and other plants. “There will be a Japanese maple for each participant. Please bring your own clippers.” 10300 Sonoma Highway, Kenwood. (707) 833-1161 or (888) 833-4181; email opengate@wildwoodmaples.com.

The Occidental Arts and Ecology Center has announced its Spring garden tours and plant sales. The next tour is at 1 p.m. on March 26, with additional tours offered during the plant sales April 8-9 and May 6-7, where they sell Certified Organic open-pollinated and heirloom plants, with light refreshments available for sale. OAEC also has positions available for an Administrative Intern and a Maintenance Intern. For more information, contact the center directly at 15290 Coleman Valley Road, Occidental 95465; (707) 874-1557, ext. 201, email oaec@oaec.org, or visit www.oaec.org.

On my early morning walk, it dawned on Jolly Green Goddess one day in February that Sebastiani Winery & Vineyards was a bit late in pruning their roses, which are lovely but could be even better with a little more tender proper care. If one is unsure whether it is time to prune roses, just check the ones in front of Sonoma City Hall.

So JGG contacted Sebastiani public relations maven Kelley Conrad and offered to drop by and tweak the rose-pruning job after grounds workers made a first pass, at the roses that is. That offer led to actually helping some of “the guys” learn more rose pruning skills, and accepting the assignment from Antonio to prune the “black ones” along the western stone wall of the Sebastiani Visitor Center, as well as those in front of the Spain Street house where Mary Ann Sebastiani Cuneo works as President and Chief Executive Officer of Sebastiani Vineyards & Winery.

Mary Ann Sebastiani Cuneo’s mother, Sylvia Sebastiani, led the winery after her husband August’s death. On my morning walks, I used to stop and chat with Mrs. Sebastiani as she primped and tended her roses. While most of her roses have been replaced, JGG learned at least half of what she knows about roses from Mrs. Sebastiani. (The other half comes from the late Master Nurseryman Frank Wedekind.

Mrs. Sebastiani used to stop off at the roses at the Fourth Street East winery, parking her Lincoln on the wrong side of the street, just to trim a rose or run into the winery offices, often in her usual country elegant lady-like style with dresses and short heels. Eventually she would stroll down from her home up the hill, and I would happen upon her watering her roses and yellow lilies in the early morning, the best time to water. And on more casual days, she would sneak down the hill even in her slippers to give her roses her early morning dose of love before she thought anyone else was up.

As time went on, Mrs. Sebastiani began to drive down to the roses, relating to me occasionally how “gardening was what my husband and I loved to do on weekends. It was our recreation.”

As I told Mary Ann and her son, Marc Cuneo, Director of Grower Relations with many national responsibilities as well at Sebastiani, I feel a sort of duty to carry the roses on for Mrs. Sebastiani and for all the people who live here and either pass by or visit the winery. The same with those of a neighbor down the street whose roses are along Nathanson Creek and are enjoyed by hundreds of people daily. It gives JGG pleasure to give others pleasure through the joyful colors of the garden, which is partly why I find it excruciating to cut flowers to bring inside.

Nursery folks are practically jumping up and down these days as the exciting and optimistic part of their year approaches, if slowly.
You think you’re confused by the weather: rain, hail, sun, snow, and floods, and that’s just March! Try being a plant! Which is why we have magnolia and cherry trees, azaleas, daffodils, geraniums and snapdragons blooming all at once.
Sonoma Mission Gardens (851 Craig Avenue at Arnold Drive, Sonoma) manager Lydia Constantini, a former professional chef, is vibrantly passionate about plants and flowers and organic growing, as well as helping people who need gentle advice.

Constantini has several recommendations if the planting itch is only curable by actually doing it — planting that is. Avoid the temptation to plunk tomatoes into the ground, along with several other veggies. We can still have frost up to the couple of weeks between April 15 and May 1, so control yourselves if you can.
Camellias, which are blooming now and bloom every year — a real advantage — are in and ready to go home.

At Sonoma Mission Gardens, you can get a bargain on brightly colored begonias, and gladiolas and dahlias are safe to plant now as well. Other plants from which you can get instant flower gratifications now are Clematis Armandii, ranunculas, and manzanita, the latter in a wide range of choices, from groundcover to trees.
Among native plants, some you can plant now are those manzanitas, various decorative grasses, many varieties of ceanothus (which produces purple-bluish or white flowers and occasionally attracts bees, which means it is feeding bees, which make valuable honey), and redwood and oak trees. While many of us claim Monterey pines as locally native, they really only live naturally near Cambria on the San Luis Obispo County coast south of San Simeon and on the Monterey Peninsula.

Speaking of native plants, Jolly Green Goddess found an exquisite newish (2005) book called “California Native Plants for the Garden,” by Carol Bornstein, David Fross, and Bart O’Brien, published by Cachuma Press of Los Olivos ($27.95 paper cover). Bornstein is Director of Living Collections and Nursery at the Santa Barbara Botanic Garden, which focuses on native plants.
Before “going native,” read climate, soil, and exposure fine print carefully. It would be nice to restore plants that have been scraped away by development.
Back to what we might plant when the weather clears. It’s a great time to prepare potatoes for planting, including Yellow Fin, Chieftan, All Blue, and Kennebec, all available at Sonoma Mission Gardens along with a handy dandy “Potato Planting Guide” instruction sheet, which is a must for success. On the other hand, I have accidentally grown lots of tasty but sometimes odd-looking potatoes by throwing kitchen scrap spuds out into the garden — a gift that just keeps on giving.

Garlic and onions are hot to dive into the soil, and SMI is loaded with six-packs that hold oodles of Walla Walla, Purplette, Torpedo Red, Green Bunching and Stockton Red onions.
Lettuces are always good, but plant now in areas that won’t get too hot too fast as the weather warms up—meaning “dappled shade” after the leaves come back on your trees, or east- or north-facing exposures. Hotter spots will make it grow too fast and tall with small leaves.

SMI has some intriguing salad making “transplants,” meaning little plants in six-packs, such as Très Fines, Maraichère Frisée, Nancy, Bibb, Magenta, Eruption (a Bibb and Romaine cross), Merveille de Quatres (a red Bibb), and Bernice (an oak and butter lettuce combo). Current Wedekind’s (21095 Broadway, Sonoma) owner Janet Rude has Red Sails, a mild Mesclun mix, Butter Crunch, Grand Rapids and several chards.

Plant peas please now as well including climbers, which have to be tied up, such as Sugar Snaps, Caseload Shelling, Sugar and Snow peas, and bush beans like Oregon Giant and Petit Pois. Wedekind’s currently stocks some other pea varieties, including Sweet Pea Knee Hi Mix and Early Gigantea.

Both Sonoma Valley nurseries caution that this might be the last weekend to pick up bareroot plants, with Wedekind’s still offering bareroot roses. Sonoma Mission Gardens still has loads of bareroot fruits and fruit trees, such as raspberries, gooseberries, loganberries, Marion blackberries, loganberries, thornless boysenberries, three kinds of strawberries. Fans of rhubarb, asparagus, and horseradish can still pick them up in their woody form, with asparagus running ten for only $5.95. Wedekind’s adds Olalli Blackberries to the list, plus a bareroot wine grape called “Pinot Chardonnay” and Thompson Seedless, Flame, and Perlette table grapes.

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