Seeds in the City
By Karen Contreras

With holiday decorations yet to be tucked back into the attic and two hardened pieces of See’s

Candy still in the box, I begin to pore over seed catalogs for the new year. I keep thinking … “2009, man, what was THAT all about?” Right when I thought life couldn’t get any more complicated, it did. Repeatedly. But here we are, it’s 2010 or “Twenty-ten” if you like, and I feel like a renaissance is upon us.

When a neighbor asked me for advice on replacing her sickly-looking hedge and I suggested blueberry bushes, she gasped “we can’t

grow blueberries in San Diego, can we?” The answer is “yes, we can” and many of us already are. In Point Loma, Burlingame, North and South Park, fat, juicy blueberries are hiding in beautiful hedges, right in the yards of our neighbors! January is the month to plant bare-root blueberries.

There are three types of blueberry plants available to us, but the types that do best in San Diego are southern high bush blueberries. They come in early, mid, and late season varieties so you can plant a couple of each and have blueberries from spring through summer. A good rule of thumb is to plant two plants for each family member, and you can always freeze extra fruit if you want to plant more.

Select healthy plants from local nurseries, making sure that the bare roots appear strong and are not dried out. Once you have them home, plant them right away if you can, or you can keep them with their roots wrapped in the shade for day or two. Blueberries thrive in well-drained soil with a pH of 4.5 – 5.5 and they will need plenty of moisture. Prepare your soil by adding peat moss or an acidic soil mixture along with compost, then plant the root ball so the crown if the plant is slightly higher than the ground. Be sure to water deeply, then mulch.

Other bare root plants we can put in this month include roses, asparagus, artichokes, blackberries, raspberries and stone fruit trees such as peaches, apricots, plums and nectarines. Living near the coast it’s important that we choose “low-chill varieties.” A “chilling requirement” is the number of hours the temperature ranges between 45 F – 32 F, and in most of the coastal areas in San Diego we experience less than 200 chill hours during the season. Nice for us, not so nice for a 600-chill-hour peach tree.

Home orchard care is very important this month and tasks include tree pruning, insect and disease control by using dormant sprays, and fertilizing citrus. If you live in a coastal zone, fertilizing citrus now will help promote more blossoms in February and hopefully a bountiful crop of fruit later in the year. Use an organic fertilizer recommended for citrus and remember to mulch well.

We can still fill in our gardens with annual color as well as broccoli, cabbages, cauliflower, kales, parsley, peas, chard, beets and lettuce, although it’s

a bit chilly for seeds, plant seedlings when available.

Good gardening to you all, and let’s make this not just a “happy” new year, let?s make it an exceptional new year. Together, and it is up to us, let?s grow, let?s change our community and our country and this year, let’s see to it that our gardens will be better than ever before.

For answers to your gardening questions, you can e-mail Karen at [email protected].