Plans for February Gardening

Repost from Febuary 2021: 

Location:  Vancouver, Washington   USDA Zone 8a

February Gardening Tips and Ideas
From Michael P. Garofalo

February Gardening Tips from Tsugawa Nursery

Here are my gardening chores for February:

Rake up fallen sticks and fir cones
Rake up all deciduous leaves
Fertilize plants and lawns
Add topsoil as needed
Add pea gravel and regular gravel as needed
Lower the level of the walking by east side of house
Scoop up all dogshit in walking areas
Keep work areas and supplies neat, covered, and out of sight
Make sure all garden pots drain properly
Water permanent indoor plants and over-wintering potted plants
Water any outdoor plants that need water
Browse seed racks in stores and catalogs
Plant shrubs when available
Look at outdoor furniture on display
Read gardening books
Add artistic touches to the garden
Repair and improve fencing
Secure the fence edge so my dog can't dig under and escape
Add level bricks and pavers for walkway paths in the garden


Here is where I shop in the Vancouver, Washington, area: 

Tsugawa Nursery, Woodland, Washington

Yard'n Garden Land, Salmon Creek, Highway 99 and 102nd Street, Vancouver, Washington

Shorty's Garden Center, Mill Plain Blvd., Vancouver, Washington

Lowes, 76 Street and 117th Ave (Lewisville Highway 503), N.E. Vancouver, Washington

Home Depot, Andresen and Paden Parkway, N.E. Vancouver, Washington

February Gardening Chores
Red Bluff, North Sacramento Valley, California, USA
USDA Zone 9

Typical Seasonal Weather for Our Area, USDA Zone 9 Normally, in February, we have high daytime temperatures of 59ºF, low nighttime temperatures of 40ºF, and get 3.4 inches of rain.

Red Bluff Gardening Notebooks of Karen and Mike Garofalo

Cloud Hands Blog Follow the seasons in the Northern California garden of Karen and Mike with their notes, links, resources, quotes, poems, and photos.

February Garden Activities and Chores in Red Bluff
USDA Zone 9

February: Quotes, Sayings, Poems.  Compiled by Mike Garofalo.  


February Gardening Chores

Browsing and ordering from seed and garden catalogs.
Pruning leafless trees and shrubs.
Weeding and tending the winter vegetable garden.
Relax and read books.  
The soil is usually too wet and cold for much digging.
Keeping cold sensitive potted plants in protected areas or indoors.
Make sure that the cuttings in protected areas do not dry out.
Repair fences.
Put straw mulch over fertilized vegetable garden areas not planted.
Distribute fertilizer and minerals.
Weed the sunny vegetable garden.  
Prune and mulch dormant perennials.
Planting bare root trees and shrubs.  
Remove dead trees, shrubs, branches, and twigs.
Enjoy the bulbs and rosemary in bloom.
Repair and sharpen tools.
Construct gardening boxes and flats.
Write a poem. Keep a gardening journal.
Fertilize with 20-9-9 or 15-15-15.
Trees without leaves need little or no watering.
Take a walk in your garden.
Sit and observe.
Turn the compost pile.  
Burn piles of gardening cuttings saved since last February.

Here are some photographs of our yard and gardens in February:

November Gardening Chores

Red Bluff, North Sacramento Valley, California, USA

USDA Zone 9

Typical Weather for Our Area

Red Bluff, California.  Natural History Studies at our Home and Gardens

The Spirit of Gardening

Removing dead and non-productive summer vegetable crops.
Turn in composted steer manure and compost into the cleared vegetable garden.
Ordering from seed and garden catalogs.
Planting potted trees and shrubs.
Putting winter crops in the ground and harvesting greens: onions, lettuce, radishes, garlic, beets, chard, cabbage.
Placing cold sensitive potted plants in protected areas or indoors.
Planting bulbs.
Prune and mulch dormant perennials.
Prune fruit trees.
Storing and repairing tools.
Cleaning, storing, repairing and removing gasoline from equipment.
Fertilize with 20-9-9 or 16-16-16.
Trees without leaves need little or no watering.
Reduce or eliminate watering, watering as needed, depending upon rainfall, normally 3.1 inches in November.
Picking pumpkins, squash, colored corn, and other crops for Thanksgiving decorations.
Pruning grape vines.
Picking and storing peppers.
Raking leaves and add to compost piles and mulch layers.
Lawn care: aerate soil and fertilize.
Digging holes and post holes in cooler weather.
Burning dead trees and shrubs in burn pile.
Watering potted plants.
Reading gardening books and catalogs. 

November: Quotes, Lore, Poems

Gardening Essentials


"As the biocentric view suggests, the garden prospers when control is balanced by equal measures of humility and benevolence. A balance is struck. Control, servitude, respect, imagination, pragmatism, an ecological conscience, compliance, and a certain measure of mysticism and altruism all meld together to provide nurturance. Try to separate the various aspects into their constituent parts - grant any one of them the status of fundamental gardening definition and one soon skews the entire process. Put them back together again in the service of the two-way street called nurturance, and we express the state of grace called gardening."
- Jim Nollman, Why We Garden: Cultivating a Sense of Place, 1994


"Why do plants have such a positive impact on us?
There are a number of reasons, including:
They have a predictable cycle of life that provides comfort in our time of rapid change.
They are responsive but non-threatening.
They form no opinions or judgments about their caregivers.
They soften our man-made environment.
They enable us to change or improve our environment.
They promote relaxation and tranquility."
- Gardening - Therapy for Mind, Body and Soul, Proxima Health System, Atlanta

July

Repost from July 2024:

We will  have hot weather today - over 93F (34C). This high temperature is infrequent in Vancouver, Washington. 

We did all our watering chores and gardening projects early in the morning.  Then, we rested in the shade in the afternoon and read, listened to music, and napped.

Listening to Adam Hurst on cello Obscura, and 2 albums by the chromatic harmonica virtuoso, Gianluca Littera.

Even a squirrel was lounging below the wisteria vine.

I set down pavers in the area below the back bedroom shower. It is a paved area, part of the back porch, and under total shade of the wisteria vines.

Karen worked in the vegetable garden and on potting various plants.

  

The Spirit of Gardening Website

Sunshine and Shadows - Quotations

"The eastern light our spires touch at morning,
The light that slants upon our western doors at evening,
The twilight over stagnant pools at batflight,
Moon light and star light, owl and moth light,
Glow-worm glowlight on a grassblade.
O Light Invisible, we worship Thee!"
-  T.S. Eliot

"Darkness is to space what silence is to sound, i.e., the interval."
-  Marshall McLuhan, Through the Vanishing Point

"What ideal, immutable Platonic cloud could equal the beauty and perfection of any ordinary everyday cloud floating over, say, Tuba City, Arizona, on a hot day in June?"
-  Edward Abbey 

Getting Ready for Springtime

 Repost from February 10, 2021

We have been working on our home gardens, as weather permits.  I've worked on the raised garden beds on the west side of our home.  The area is sloped: house above, shrubs and mostly grass for 40 feet to the street below.  

To expand, I covered the grass with cardboard, placed the concrete bricks, filled the bed with home garbage, composed steer manure, bags of raised bed topsoil, straw, leaves, organic materials, etc.  Leaves cover the active composting area.  Plenty of good growing soil in a sunny west facing location.

Photos taken on February 7, 2021, Vancouver, Washington

The Spirit of Gardening

December Gardening Chores

Our soil is still very damp from the recent rains.  I will need to put new blades on my John Deere lawn tractor, and do some mowing in the dry afternoon.  Also, pruning back the roses and taking cuttings are also on the agenda for this week.

Our home and property are now for sale.  

December Gardening Chores
Red Bluff, North Sacramento Valley, California, USA
USDA Zone 9

December: Quotes, Poetry, Sayings, Lore

Yule and Winter Solstice Celebrations: Quotes, Poetry, Sayings, Lore

Typical Weather for Our Area

Red Bluff, California.  Natural History Studies at our Home and Gardens

The Spirit of Gardening

Pruning leafless trees and shrubs.
Adding compost and fertilizer to the vegetable and flower gardens.
Planting bare root trees and shrubs.
Pruning back grape vines.
Cleaning, sharpening, and storing tools.
Start taking cuttings from dormant vines and shrubs.
Reading seed and gardening catalogs.
Digging trenches for underground plastic pipe.
Making sure drainage systems are working.
Pruning evergreens for shape.
Moving tender potted plants to protected areas.
Burning large piles of cuttings and weeds.
Protect tender plants (e.g., citrus) from frosts.
Protect valuable garden tools and equipment from the rain and fog.
Tending winter vegetables: cabbage, lettuce, peas, spinach, brocoli, etc.
Putting some bulbs in the ground.
Plant onion and garlic sets.
Watering potted plants as needed if rain is insufficient.
Pruning back flowering plants, like mums.
Prepare new strawberry and berry vine beds.
Spraying some fruit trees (e.g., peaches) to prevent leaf curl.
Dividing dormant herbs.
Raking and composting leaves.
Setting out some color plants, e.g., calendulas.  
Removing dead or dying branches or trees to burn pile.
Cutting Firewood
 

"How like a winter hath my absence been
 From thee, the pleasure of the fleeting year!
 What freezings have I felt, what dark days seen!
 What old December’s bareness every where!
 And yet this time remov’d was summer’s time;
 The teeming autumn, big with rich increase,
 Bearing the wanton burden of the prime,
 Like widow’d wombs after their lords’ decease:
 Yet this abundant issue seem’d to me
 But hope of orphans and unfather’d fruit;
 For summer and his pleasures wait on thee,
 And, thou away, the very birds are mute:
 Or, if they sing, ’tis with so dull a cheer,
 That leaves look pale, dreading the winter’s near."
 - William Shakespeare, How Like a Winter Hath my Absence Been (Sonnet 97)

Shoveling Up Some Dharma

 

The Fireplace Records, Chapter 47

Shoveling Up some Dharma

Caught on the Edges of the West: Highway 101

The Fireplace Records

Four Days in Grayland

Shoveling Up Some Dharma

Mixing up with water a 60 pound bag of Redi-Mix cement, by hand, using a flat metal mixing bin, water hose, a flat-nosed shovel, and shoveling work efforts by me.  We used the mixed concrete slush, "Mud", shovel by shovel full of "Mud" over and and over. The hand shoveled batch of concrete slush, carefully wetted for various building constrution projects, created over and over.

Repeated practice can improve one's skills, reduce workoad, and give to us the real life body-mind experences of working, 
ways of being-in-the-world, when making things, producing things, doing things.

This sort of workday construction shoveling efforts for eight hours of work a day, 
five days a week;
just think about it,
sink your analytical and feeling sharp teeth
into the feeling memories of when mixing concrete.
I never worked that hard.

[The back of my mind
was bounced around and hurt.]

My father bough two acres of a hillside property, with a clear wide view of the San Gabriel Valley, California, in 1957, in Hacienda Heights,  He lived and worked there at "the ranch" for forty years from 1957-1997. In 1997 my dad died at age 82, of complications from congestive heart failure, old age, diabetes, and strokes.  

In the 1960's I would do 8 to 12 hours of construction work at the ranch each week, attend Catholic High School, play high school team sports, and later attend college and work at the City of Commerce Public Library.

The land was in the Hacienda Heights, Puente Hills,
Turnbull Canyon, North Whittier Heights;
and Colima Road - Highway 30 Regions;
From Rolling Springs on High at the junction with the Angeles Crest Highway
south to Huntington Beach low tide,
85 miles, up to down, Snow to Surf, a scenic ride.

I'd take a bus from Hacienda Heights on Colima Road 30,
through the many southern cities,
Orange County Newer,
and ending at the Seashore at Huntington Beach CA.
I had cousins living in the Stanton suburban rectangles.
We lived within 25 miles of the Pacific Ocean at Huntington Beach.

I would walk a lot,
having all-weather awakenings.

Joining our summertime emblems:
kites and flapping canvas tens,
keeping wind and sand at bay;
Less clothing, showing more human flesh
and shape, feeling open in the sun;
Wet with Sea surf, boogie boarding or body surfing,
a cool satisfied wet body-mind,
seventeen and strong
[eighty now and fading on.]

Sitting huddled around a San Clemente State Beach campfire,
on a dark winter night, exploring youtful enjoyments.

Standing on wet piers, looking at the waves rocking below,
up and down, back and forth, steadily to the shore,

On some lost late autumn morning
long ago in the San Clemente Pier  in a parking lot,
people sorting pier fishing gear, bait, food, drink, raingear, chairs ...
The Pacific, always calling, draws the fishermen nearer.

The jetties drew me, the Bays and harbors drew me,
the hard relentless winter strorm seas smashing
into the Bandon Oregon Sea Stacks and rocky cliffs
all drew me, inticiced me, startled me, the rivers drew me;
seeing the tide lines that mark at the shore, 
living with these fluctuations, dying with these fluctuations,
doomed yet divine;
drawn to the Pacific, clinging to the Pacific
a lifeline, a sturdy vine, a factual mind
a poem, just hanging on, on a fisherman's line, sometimes rhymed.
1,000 Collaged Images of the Golden Gate Bridge in my brain.
Rolling in and out, past roadway signs
[Highway 101 at Port Angeles, Aberdeen, Astoria, Newport, Brookings,
Eureka, Redwoods, Santa Paula, San Francisco, San Jose,
Salinas, Santa Barbara, Ventura, San Pedro, San Diego .]

Sitting now on a rocky cliff at Bandon. Below us are massive sea stacks 
splattered with surf spray as huge waves come smashing into rock.
Powerful sights and sounds never forgotten.

The Colors of November

The autumn colors are very dramatic in Vancouver, Clark County, Washington.  The four maples in our back yard are quite colorful at present.

Autumn: Poetry, Sayings, Lore, Quotations

The Spirit of Gardening

"Then summer fades and passes and October comes. We'll smell smoke then, and feel an unexpected sharpness, a thrill of nervousness, swift elation, a sense of sadness and departure."
- Thomas Wolfe


"Lo! sweeten’d with the summer light,
The full-juiced apple, waxing over-mellow,
Drops in a silent autumn night.
All its allotted length of days
The flower ripens in its place,
Ripens and fades, and falls, and hath no toil,
Fast-rooted in the fruitful soil."
- Alfred Lord Tennyson, "The Lotus-Eaters"

I walk with my dog, Bruno, for 40 to 60 minutes in our neighborhood.  Here are a few photographs of our walking environment.  

A Cold Day in May

 

The Fireplace Records, Chapter 26

A Cold Day in May

Related Links, Resources, References

Koans: TFR 24

Refer to my Cloud Hands Blog Posts on the topic of Koans/Dialogues.

The Daodejing by Laozi  

Pulling Onions  Over 1,043 One-line Sayings by Mike Garofalo

Subject Index to 1,001 Zen Buddhist Koans

Chinese Chan Buddhist and Taoist Stories and Koans

Taoism

Buddhism

Fireplaces, Stoves, Campfires, Kitchens, Pots, Firewood

Chinese Art

Tai Chi Chuan and Qigong

Meditation Methods

Zen Koan Books I Use

Koan Database Project

Brief Spiritual Lessons Database Project: Subject Indexes

Sparks: Brief Spiritual Lessons and Stories

Matches to Start a Kindling of Insight
May the Light from Your Inner Fireplace Help All Beings
Taoist, Chan Buddhist, Zen Buddhist, Philosophers
Catching Phrases, Inspiring Verses, Koans, Meditations
Indexing, Bibliography, Quotations, Notes, Resources
Research by Michael P. Garofalo

The Fireplace Records
By Michael P. Garofalo

Subject Index to 1,001 Zen Buddhist Koans

September Gardening Chores

September Gardening Chores


In Red Bluff, California:

Watering daily when temperatures over 90F.  
Removing dead and non-productive vegetable crops. 
Apply manure and compost to clay soils.  
Planting crops for late autumn harvest:  cabbages, kale, radishes, peas, fennel, cauliflower, lettuce, swiss chard, onions, leeks, Chinese peas, and endive.
Drying peppers and squash.
Start new strawberry beds. 
Dig up and divide garlic, perennials, iris, daylilies,  bulbs and onions.
Keep watering properly even as the weather begins to cool. 
Clean up all dead fruit. 
Fruit trees fed and sprayed with tonics.
Seed lawns with rye grass for winter color. 
Remove any dead shrubs or trees and place in large burn pile. 
Dig holes for planting trees and shrubs; plant in ground starting November 1st.
Purchase potted trees and shrubs for planting in autumn. 
Continue to mulch trees and shrubs.
Raking fallen leaves and add to compost pile.
Purchase bulbs from nurseries. 
Feed lawn with slow release fertilizer.
Remove spent blooms from roses.
Weed vegetables and shrubs, mow lawns.
Start to prepare sheds, tools, and equipment for Winter weather.
Repair roofs.  

September: Quotes, Poems, Seasonal Sayings

Autumnal Equinox Celebration


"I don't wanna say goodbye for the summer
Knowing the love we'll miss
Oh let us make a pledge to meet in September
And seal it with a kiss
Guess it's gonna be a cold lonely summer
But I'll fill the emptiness
I'll send you all my love every day in a letter
Sealed with a kiss."
-  Bobby Vinton 

"Harvest home, harvest home!
We've plowed, we've sowed
We've reaped, we've mowed
And brought safe home
Every load."
-  Harvest Home Song    

May you enjoy your Labor Day in America!!   

Winter Gardening in Vancouver WA

 Gardening Chores in Vancouver, Washington

January – April

Washington State University in Vancouver
Master Gardener WSU Clark County
https://extension.wsu.edu/clark/gardening-tasks/#month

  

January

• Check stored bulbs and dahlia tubers. Discard the soft or rotted ones. Sprinkling with water will plump up shriveled tubers.
• Water overwintering geraniums and fuchsias just enough to keep them alive.
• Spray cherry trees for bacterial canker. Apply dormant spray to apples and pears.
• Apply a dormant spray of lime sulfur on roses.

February

• When soil becomes workable, prepare vegetable gardens for planting.
• Plant peas in well-drained soil.
• Prune fruit trees when the temperature is above freezing.
• On mild days, plant bare-root roses, berries, grapes, kiwis, and fruit trees.
• Pull mulch partly away from emerging bulbs and perennials. In mid-month, hunt hidden slugs.
• Start broccoli, cabbage and cauliflower indoors.

March

• Prune and fertilize summer blooming clematis.
• Divide perennials that will bloom after mid-June.
• Trim heather and heaths after blooming, just back to below the point where blooms form.
• Fertilize established roses when they begin to leaf out.
• Bring over-wintering fuchsias and geraniums out of dormancy.  If needed, put fuchsias in larger pots with fresh soil. Check for circling or damaged roots.
• Apply dormant spray on cane berries before or just after buds swell.
• Spray peaches and nectarines with lime sulfur to control peach leaf curl.
• Control slugs around newly planted seedlings.
• Fertilize blueberries, blackberries and raspberries with 5-10-10 fertilizer.

April

• Remove and destroy tent caterpillar larvae and nests.
• Knock aphids off roses with a stream of water.
• Set out transplants of hardy annuals such as primroses, dusty miller and pansies. Direct sow snapdragons, sweet alyssum, cornflower, clarkia, calendula, larkspur, and Shirley poppy.
• Plant dahlias, ranunculus, gladiolus, iris and cannas.
• Dispose of fallen camellia blossoms to control the spread of botrytis or petal blight.
• Control brown rot on nectarines, apricots, peaches and cherries.
• Control spittlebugs, aphids and slugs on strawberries.
• Protect dogwood trees from anthracnose.
• Use floating row covers to protect plants in the cabbage family from egg laying by cabbage root maggot flies.

 

 

November Garden Planning

Every year, from 1998-2017, in November, Karen and I would talk about what fruit and nut trees, shrubs, and ornamental trees we were going to plant that winter.  We would purchase bare root tree stock in December and January, and plant in our orchard.  We would also place potted plants in the ground in the winter season.  

We purchased most of our plants at nearby Kathy Goodin's Rock Garden Nursery near Flores Road and Highway 99W.  The photograph below was taken in late winter in part of our orchard in Red Bluff, California.  We both enjoyed this creative garden work.  I miss our five acre gardening playground.  

Path to the Faucet

I started this week on placing pavers to create a path to the only faucet on the south side of the house.  Weather permitting, I plan to make progress each day on this project. 

I intent to create a 16' x 8' patio made of pavers in our front yard.  This is the sunny side of our property with full southern exposure.

Garden Project: Greenhouse

As we transition into late autumn and winter, and the temperature drops, we need to protect frost sensitive plants.  Last winter we brought the frost sensitive plants (e.g., succulents, fuschias, lemon, avocado, etc.) indoors.  We had a snow once (12/17), and several times with winter nightime lows in the 30's F. 

We are now busy moving plants around and bringing some temporarily indoors. 

Here is a photo of the current Nursery area, and then a photo of the plants indoors. 



This year, we intend to add a greenhouse in the area of our backyard called the "Nursery." Here is a current photo of the area:

We selected the Palram Harmony 6 foot x 4 foot Polycarbonate Greenhouse from Home Depot.  This greenhouse arrived yesterday.  Here is what the greenhouse looks like:

Winter Gardens Started

Behind me is a veggie bed in the sunshine.  It contains two small grape vines, kale, Swiss chard, snow peas and onions.

Spirit of Gardening Website

A Gardener's Memories

The Spirit of Gardening

Months and Seasons

Our Gardens in Red Bluff, California, 1998-2017

Bare Root Planting Time in January and February

Red Bluff, California

Pulling Onions

February Gardening

February Gardening Chores
Red Bluff, North Sacramento Valley, California, USA
USDA Zone 9

Typical Seasonal Weather for Our Area, USDA Zone 9 Normally, in February, we have high daytime temperatures of 59ºF, low nighttime temperatures of 40ºF, and get 3.4 inches of rain.

Red Bluff Gardening Notebooks of Karen and Mike Garofalo

Cloud Hands Blog Follow the seasons in the Northern California garden of Karen and Mike with their notes, links, resources, quotes, poems, and photos.

February Garden Activities and Chores in Red Bluff
USDA Zone 9

February: Quotes, Sayings, Poems.  Compiled by Mike Garofalo.  


February Gardening Chores

Browsing and ordering from seed and garden catalogs.
Pruning leafless trees and shrubs.
Weeding and tending the winter vegetable garden.
Relax and read books.  
The soil is usually too wet and cold for much digging.
Keeping cold sensitive potted plants in protected areas or indoors.
Make sure that the cuttings in protected areas do not dry out.
Repair fences.
Put straw mulch over fertilized vegetable garden areas not planted.
Distribute fertilizer and minerals.
Weed the sunny vegetable garden.  
Prune and mulch dormant perennials.
Planting bare root trees and shrubs.  
Remove dead trees, shrubs, branches, and twigs.
Enjoy the bulbs and rosemary in bloom.
Repair and sharpen tools.
Construct gardening boxes and flats.
Write a poem. Keep a gardening journal.
Fertilize with 20-9-9 or 15-15-15.
Trees without leaves need little or no watering.
Take a walk in your garden.
Sit and observe.
Turn the compost pile.  
Burn piles of gardening cuttings saved since last February.


Here are some photographs of our yard and gardens in February: