Mario Bautista
For The San Diego Union-Tribune
October is a time of garden transition. Summer ends and fall begins. Toward the middle of the month, when the air cools and the soil is still warm, it’s time to plant!
Edible gardens
It’s garlic planting time! Shop your local nursery for soft or hard neck garlic, both sold as dormant bulbs this time of year, and sold as starts in spring. Soft neck garlic is slightly milder in flavor and best suited to our warm climate. Hard neck is more pungent, develops “scapes” (edible flower stalks), and is better suited for cold winter climates. Either way, garlic is a long season crop. Plant now for harvest in early summer.
Harvest melons, pumpkins and winter squash:
• Melons are ripe when tendrils nearest the melon turns brown. The underside of watermelons turn soft yellow.
• Leave pumpkins and winter squash until the stem connections are brown and dry. Use damaged fruits right away, before they start to rot. For the rest, rinse, dry well and store in a cool, dry, dark location.
Tomatoes, eggplants and squashes are slowing down. Even if plants look like they’ll keep going, they won’t be as healthy nor as productive next year. Pull them out by November.
As you pull out vegetable plants, put them in the greenwaste. By season’s end, most are infected by pests and diseases we don’t want to overwinter in our gardens.
What edibles to plant now?
• Plant seeds in the ground:
– Root vegetables like beets, turnips, carrots, parsnip, rutabaga, etc.
– Beans and peas
– Parsley, dill, cilantro
• Plant seeds in the ground or in containers:
– Leafy greens like kale, spinach, lettuce, arugula, sorrel, etc.
• Plant seeds in containers for transplant in a month or six weeks:
– Broccoli, Brussels sprouts, cauliflower, rapini, kohlrabi, cabbage, etc.
How to space plants:
Beets: 4 inches between plantsBroccoli: 18 to 24 inchesBush beans: 10 inchesCabbage: 24 to 36 inchesCarrots: 3 inchesCauliflower: 24 to 36 inchesHead lettuce: 12 inchesKale: 12 inchesKohlrabi: 6 inchesLeaf lettuce: 3 to 6 inchesPeas: 4 inches (plant in rows)Pole bean: 6 inchesSpinach: 6 inches
If you don’t intend to grow vegetables this winter, plant cover crops instead. Choose the cover crop (or mix of cover crops) to help your garden where it most needs it:
• Legumes like hairy vetch, to add nitrogen.• Grains like oats and rye, to add organic matter.• Buckwheat, to choke out weeds, build organic matter and suppress nematodes.
Fruit trees and shrubs
Enjoy pineapple guava, the “self-harvesting” fruits. When ripe, the oval green fruits fall onto the ground. Pick ‘em up, rinse ‘em, and enjoy. Pineapple guava (Acca sellowiana) are South American shrubs that grow to 12 feet by 12 feet and are great as screens or unpruned hedges. They are surprisingly drought tolerant, especially along the coast. Plant a pair to maximize production.
Unless you live within a few miles of the coast, plant subtropical fruiting trees and shrubs like banana, citrus, avocado, cherimoya or tropical guava.
Pomegranates are ripe when you see the first fruits begin to split. Harvest the split ones right away, before they mold and before birds notice the bright red berries. Pomegranate fruits keep for a very long time unless they are split. Have more than you need? Juice them to make jelly or pomegranate molasses, remove the seeds and freeze them to cook with later, and/or share fruits with friends.
If you plan to plant a pomegranate this year, taste different varieties now to find your favorite. Look for bare-root pomegranate plants in the nursery in January or try your hand at rooting new ones from cuttings in December (follow the basic directions here: bit.ly/twigstofigs).
Order bare-root deciduous fruit trees (peaches, pears, plums, almonds, etc.) from your local independent nursery. They’ll arrive in the nurseries in January.
Continue to water deciduous fruit trees (peaches, plums, apples, nectarine, pear, pluots, etc.) until all their leaves drop.
Prune fig trees as soon as they finish fruiting. Keep them low and wide so fruits are within easy reach. Cover the branch ends with drawstring mesh bags to keep the fig fruit fly from infecting developing figs.
If your orange, lemon and other citrus trees have curled and distorted leaves, don’t panic. The culprit is citrus leaf miner — a tiny critter that burrows between the layers of leaf cells. It looks ugly but doesn’t hurt the trees nor diminish production. Don’t cut those leaves off. Cutting off infected leaves causes the tree to make new leaves, which will also get infected with leaf miner. Sprays won’t help. Just leave it alone.
Citrus greening disease is spreading, unfortunately. The quarantine has just been expanded to include much of Fallbrook. No citrus fruits, wood or plants can be moved off any properties in that region. Find a map at citrusinsider.org.
Ornamental plants
Fall is our best planting time of year. Bring nature to your garden by planting natives:
Groundcovers: Hummingbird sage (Salvia spathacea) for dappled shade and red buckwheat (Eriogonum grande var. rubescens) for full sun.
Shrubs: San Diego mountain mahogany (Cercocarpus minutiflorus), whose curly seeds look like eyelashes when backlit by the sun, and Catalina currant (Ribes viburnifolium) whose intense red blooms support hummingbirds, bees and butterflies.
Trees: Catalina cherry (Prunus ilicifolia ssp lyonii) adored by birds for their red “cherries,” and Santa Cruz Island Ironwood (Lyonothamnus floribundus ssp aspleniifolis), a beauty with shreddy reddish bark and bright green, crenulated leaves.
Check your garden for emerging green spears of spring bulbs like bugle lily, baboon flower, Ranunculus and others. If you have bulbs you’ve been meaning to plant — do it now. They may not flower this spring, but they’ll bloom the following year.
Divide and plant iris including native iris and Pacific coast hybrids. Carefully separate their underground rhizomes at the “joints.” Use a sharp knife wiped clean with alcohol. Wipe the knife with alcohol again between plants so you don’t spread pests or diseases from plant to plant.
Early in the month, shorten branches of scented geraniums and Martha Washington geraniums by a couple of inches. Next month, cut the long branches to force plant to grow new shoots at the base.
Feed roses with liquid fertilizer at midmonth. Inspect leaves for mold, rust or black spot. Remove infected leaves and put them into the greenwaste bin rather than into your compost pile.
Garden prep and maintenance
Rake up leaves as they fall from fruit trees. Send the leaves to the greenwaste where they’ll be composted at a high temperature to kill viruses, bacteria, molds, etc.
Before you plant anything new, be sure your garden has a solid infrastructure:
• Establish an efficient irrigation system using inline drip irrigation (not individual emitters).
• Organize plants in “hydrozones,” zones of plants that have the same water needs. Irrigate them accordingly.
• As climate change advances, rainstorms will become fewer but more ferocious. Keep that water onsite by directing it away into planting beds or bioswales.
• Remedy heavy clay soil, hard packed subsoil, or fast-draining sand by layering on 4 inches (or more) of course, wood mulch or arborist chips that are 1 inch across or smaller. Do not use bark nuggets or bark chunks. Water mulch/chips, then let them sit four months or more.
• Clean drains and rain gutters before the winter storms.
• Use up remaining rain barrel water, and clean out mold or algae. Make sure your rain barrel seals to keep out mosquitoes. Check the valve from your downspout as you prepare to divert (rather than collect) the first of the year’s rainfall. That first rainfall is called the “first flush.”
• Install a cistern. For every square foot of roof, an inch of rain yields 0.62 gallons of water. Capturing an inch of rain water off 1000 square feet of roof gets you up to 620 gallons of water! Cisterns hold hundreds to thousands of gallons, making them far more useful than rain barrels, though more expensive to purchase and install.
• Do NOT till or rototill. Tilling was the standard for generations, but research has proven that rather than “fluffing” up soil, once it settles, tilled soil compacts more than before tilling. Tilling also destroys the critical soil microflora and disrupts earthworms and other important, tiny critters that live in the soil.
• Do NOT walk on or work in wet soil. Wet soil may seem soft and easy to dig or weed, but the weight of your standing on wet soil causes it to compact. And in the humid environment of the garden, you can unintentionally spread viruses, molds and bacteria from one plant to others.
How to plant
Perfect your planting technique:
• Water the plant in its pot and let it drain. Gently pull the plant out of its pot. Dig a hole as deep as the rootball is tall, and slightly wider. Make the hole square instead of round, and rough up the edges. Add a few handfuls of worm castings to the hole, but no other amendments. Fill the hole with water and let it drain.
• Carefully loosen the plant’s roots (except for Bougainvillea or Matilija poppy, Romneya coulteri). Set the plant’s rootball into the hole, just barely higher than the plant sat in the pot. Refill the hole with soil you dug out. As you refill the hole, wet the soil and tamp it down to eliminate air pockets.
• Water the plant in its pot and let it drain. Gently pull the plant out of its pot. Dig a hole as deep as the rootball is tall, and slightly wider. Make the hole square instead of round, and rough up the edges. Add a few handfuls of worm castings to the hole, but no other amendments. Fill the hole with water and let it drain.
• When the hole is full, make a shallow moat around the stem or trunk. Set your hose to trickle water into the moat until the soil is saturated. Layer 3 or 4 inches of mulch onto to the soil surface, starting at the outer edge of the moat. Continue the mulch to cover the entire planting bed.
Bougainvillea and Matilija poppy (Romneya coulteri) can die when their roots are roughed up at planting. To plant, then, complete step No. 1 above, then turn the pot on its side and gently cut out the bottom of the pot. Use your hand to support the bottom of the plant in its pot, and carefully move it into the prepared planting hole. Slice down two sides of the pot, then start to refill the hole. After a few inches, gently pull away the remaining portions of pot. Follow step No. 3 above to finish planting.
Irrigation
With the sun lower in the sky, plants need less water so adjust your irrigation clock to water just as long but less frequently. If you have a smart irrigation controller, check to make sure it is making the necessary adjustments. If your controller isn’t “smart,” set the water to run less often. Don’t change the run time.
“Smart” irrigation controllers adjust your irrigation seasonally, zone by zone, depending on the type of plants each zone waters, your garden’s location, type of soil, slope, sun, shade and so on.
When you plant natives and other Mediterranean climate plants, irrigate them with in-line drip irrigation. In-line drip has emitters embedded in the lines and delivers water directly to the soil where it penetrates down to the roots. The entire root zone gets evenly wetted just as rain wets the soil evenly. Natives do great with this kind of drip irrigation.
Replace individual emitter style drip irrigation with inline drip irrigation. Individual emitter systems are neither durable nor reliable.
How long should you water? Always water long enough to saturate the plant’s deep roots. Use your fingers or a soil probe to feel how deep the water has gone. Adjust your watering schedule so water reaches the deep roots every time. For drought tolerant plants, let the soil down several inches before deep watering again.
Mulch
Organic mulches act like a sponge to hold water. keep moisture in the soil and protect soil from erosion. As the mulch breaks down, it feeds the micro flora and fauna that help build healthy soils to supports plants. Research shows that mulch can protect plants from soil pathogens too.
Renew your garden’s mulch using organic mulch (made from leaves, bark, wood, etc.) for nonsucculent plants. Mulch succulents and cacti with rock or decomposed granite. Whichever you use, keep the mulch at 3 to 4 inches thick.
While mulch should cover the soil surfaces in your garden, leave several bare spots for native, ground dwelling bees — very important garden pollinators that rarely sting.
Want to know more? Find my latest webinars at waterwisegardener.com/shop. Recent webinars include “Pro Tips for Fall Planting,” “Fabulous Bulbs for California Gardens,” “Growing Your Own Herbs and Spices,” and more.
Sterman is a garden designer, journalist and the host of “A Growing Passion” on public television. She runs Nan Sterman’s Garden School at waterwisegardener.com.
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