Food Gardening

Fruit Trees - Bare Root

The joy of enjoying abundant, delicious fruit typically starts with selecting and planting a bare root fruit tree. January and February are the best months to do this.

When you visit your local nursery in January, you will find a wonderful but bewildering selection of very reasonably priced bare-root fruit trees. January and February are the best months for planting these trees. We suggest reading this excellent article from UCANR before making your selection: Selecting Fruit and Nut Trees. Also important to read is this article by Stephanie as well as this article by Gwen, both on planting bare root trees.

Fruit Trees - Pruning

Don't forget winter fruit tree pruning. If you don't feel confident, take a class, watch a video (part 1, part 2) or hire a credentialed arborist.

In the Garden

Is it Spring Yet?

Sonoma County's Mediterranean climate allows us, with careful planning, to garden twelve months of the year—especially with the number of cool-weather crops that overwinter here. But, in January, intermittent mild days tease us with a hint of Spring in the air. We can't help but turn our attention to fresh spring peas, tender lettuce and other greens, scallions, short-season varieties of broccoli and cauliflower, and many more crops to enjoy before our warm summer arrives. Read more.

Asparagus

If the soil is not too wet, you can plant asparagus crowns this month through March. A separate bed is a good choice as asparagus is long-lived, doesn't like competition and has spreading roots and specific cultural requirements. Growing asparagus is simple, but requires patience. You will not harvest the first year and the harvest will be light the second year. But you will be rewarded with up to 15 years of delicious produce.

Winter Weather

December 21 was the winter solstice. Be prepared for frost! Place stakes around your citrus and "hoops" over your half-hardy (tolerates light, brief frost) winter vegetables (e.g., lettuce, peas, many Asian greens, cauliflower, kohlrabi, chard, etc.). Have pre-cut/sized frost cloth, burlap or sheets ready to drape over these supports when frost is imminent as well as a method of securing them to the ground (irrigation staples work well if you don't mind putting a hole into the covering—or buy a hand-held grommet tool). Educate yourself about your own microclimate and what the various predictions from the weather service mean to your plants. Learn more.

Cold Frame Lettuce

Lettuces grown in cold frame

We have less tasks in the garden during the winter season. There is more time to tackle projects like building a cold frame so that you can get a jump start on spring food gardening. Master Gardener Sara Malone shares her experience with building a cold frame and growing lettuce.

Zoom with Us—Join the Food Gardening Specialists (FGS) for Free Zoom Events

Autumn veggies and fruit
Photo from the ANR repository

The FGS project is holding Zoom events every second Tuesday of the month from 12:30 – 1:30 p.m. The format includes two to three short presentations about sustainable food gardening activities for the current month followed by Q&A. While free, pre-registration is required. A week prior to each meeting, you will find a brief description of the presentations and the registration link by visiting our home page under Upcoming Events. You’ll also find a Food Gardening Resources page with handy links to many of the subjects discussed during the zoom events.

These monthly events are recorded and uploaded to the Sonoma County Master Gardener YouTube channel. Don’t forget to subscribe to our channel—and click on the bell icon to receive email notification when new videos are added.

We hope to “see” you soon!!

Food Garden Specialists

Food Garden Specialists (FGS) are volunteers in the UC Master Gardener Program of Sonoma County. They have a passion for and extra training in sustainable food gardening. In addition to offering food gardening workshops, they provide free advice and consultation services to community gardens throughout Sonoma County. Read more.

Food Garden Tips

January Food Garden Tasks and Tips

For what to plant this month, click here.

Plant bare-root fruit trees, strawberries, blueberries, raspberries, blackberries, rhubarb, and asparagus. Plant onion bulbs. Your nursery will have a great selection in early January. Our homepage lists articles on planting bare-root trees.
It is too early to plant most cool weather crops. Instead, enjoy a rainy day looking through seed catalogs to select crop varieties with “days of maturity” (DTM) that suit your microclimate. As always, err on the conservative side and consider drought-tolerant varieties and those with short DTM. Check the date stamped on the package of any seeds left over from last year. Many seeds are good for at least three years if stored properly, but some, such as onion, parsley and parsnip, lose viability after one year. You can check your seeds for viability: refer to the seed-viability test.
Prepare a garden plan that includes what to plant, where to plant and when to start seed indoors and/or set out transplants. Plan to place crops with similar water needs near each other. New gardeners should keep it simple: start with transplants unless it is a crop that is recommended for direct seeding in the garden. The experienced gardener will want to make the most of garden space by planting a succession garden which typically involves succession planting, companion planting and intercropping.
When planning your spring garden, implement water-wise practices. See the “Food Gardening with Less Water” page and video prepared by the Food Gardening Specialists.
Buy a calendar to record planting and, based on DTM, harvest dates. Make notes as to your successes/favorites and failures. If you kept a record last year, use it in your garden planning decisions.
If you only have space for a small vegetable bed, modify your garden plan to include edibles in your ornamental beds that you may have.
Plant bare root fruit trees.
Spray fruit trees with copper and dormant oil after pruning and before buds start to open.
Protect frost-tender plants on cold nights. If you use a tarp or sheet on evergreen plants, use stakes to make sure that covers do not touch the leaves. Remove plastic or heavy covers during the day; frost cloth may stay in place on cold days. If you use lights as a heat source, note that the new energy-saving LED light strings do not generate enough heat. Pull mulch away from the plant so that soil can absorb heat during sunny days. Potted plants can be moved under shelter. Finally, make sure that citrus is well-watered as the freezing temps will turn the water in the soil to ice, making some of it unavailable to the plants. Also, the temperature above moist soil is warmer than the temperature above dry soil.
Good soil = healthy plants. Top your soil with finished compost. This will improve soil nutrition and tilth and feed the beneficial microorganisms that help plants uptake nutrients in the soil. No need to work it in—let winter showers and soil “heaving” do that for you. In any event, do not work very wet soil. If you had serious problems in your food garden last year, a soil analysis may be helpful. Many local nurseries have kits for this purpose. The analysis will show levels of nitrogen (N) which encourages green growth, phosphorus (P) which stimulates root growth and potassium (K) which promotes flower bud and fruit growth. In addition to other nutrients, the test also measures pH (measure of acidity or alkalinity) which affects the availability of nutrients to plants.
Click here for ongoing monthly tasks.