California Gardens - The Year Round Gardening Site

January Garden Calendar

This January is a wet one, a good time to be careful about not compacting the soil in your planting beds until things have dried out for a few days. Weeding now is much easier than weeding later and the fresh scent of the rain is fabulous. Winter pruning of fruit trees and roses are best done now before the plants waste their Spring energy on flowers and shoots that will be cut away. A fresh dose of mulch helps keep the weed seeds from germinating. Filling in a small bit of erosion now can save the filling of a large ditch later. It is a great time to be in the garden dodging raindrops.

The kitchen garden finds me looking for Oregano, Marjoram, Cilantro and Sage. My lettuce bolts later, greens hold well in the garden now. I love the fancy lettuce varieties that never make it to the supermarket. They are just as easy to grow and taste much better, they just don't pack and store as well. I pick just as many leaves as I need. A cut head of lettuce will grow roots if you try to start it. The narcissus bulbs are blooming fabulously bringing a heady fragrance to the garden. I have multiple varieties planted to extend the season from Thanksgiving to Easter. There is nothing like snowpeas picked fresh, they lose their sweetness way too fast. Many of them never make it to the kitchen tempting the gardener long before they make it that far.

January Garden Calendar

Flowering Quince. High resolution photos are part of our garden image collection.

December Garden Calendar

My Narcissus, Freesias and other South African bulbs are hitting their season. Lenten Rose flowers smile out of their dry shady nook. High resolution photos are part of our garden image collection.

A walk through my garden taking time to smell the roses and watch a hummingbird and Gulf Fritillary pollenate Scabiosa Black Knight

Life history of a generation of Monarch Butterflies. High resolution videos are part of our garden image collection.

Tarantula Hawks, Carpenter Bees and Yellow Faced Bumblebees feeding on nectar from Asclepias eriocarpa, Woollypod Milkweed. Milkweeds are important to so much more wildlife beyond butterflies. High resolution videos are part of our garden image collection.

Mormon Metalmark Butterfly Flight

May Garden Calendar

Pretty cool watching Monarch Butterflies fly off into the garden one after another. The dark spots on the back wings are glands and indicate that this is a male Monarch butterfly. High resolution photos are part of our garden image collection.

May Garden Calendar

In butterfly houses set up to protect the Monarch caterpillars from the tachinid flies there are butterflies nearly ready to burst from their Chrysalis. High resolution photos are part of our garden image collection.