From The Petaluma
ARGUS-COURIER
December 7, 2005
Christmas for
gardeners
by JUDY BRINKERHOFF
I always love coming up with ideas for gifts for gardeners. Many of us have new gardeners in our lives. Our kids may have just bought a house and dislike the landscaping. Or they've been hearing about habitat gardens; what are they? Or they need help on drought-tolerant gardening; they've never heard of it -- what's it all about?
Or we know someone who has moved to Sonoma County from some exotic place like Wisconsin or Kansas. They have no idea why everything's so green in December.
Here's a fine opportunity to help them out with ideas you've been learning in the last 10 or so years.
Start them out with the gardening bible -- Sunset's Western Garden book. Revised and updated, it has a whole section on plant selection by category -- planting for birds, planting around a pool, shade plants and so many more. The section in the back gives you all the basics of gardening. But the bulk of the book is about plants, arranged alphabetically mostly by genus, but cross referenced by common names. It's indispensable.
Then visit your favorite gardening shop or nursery. Pick up a couple of pairs of gloves, one of heavy-duty leather for tough jobs and one of cotton with rubberized palms. As is affordable, look at a good shovel, a spading fork, metal rake, long-handled pruners and short-handled clippers. Buy good strong tools; they're expensive, but worth it over time.
If your giftee loves bulbs, perhaps a bulb-planter and a big bag of assorted daffodils and narcissus. It's not too late to get them into the moist ground. If there's a suspicion of gophers, forget the tulips and other bulbs that will be gobbled by the underground tunnelers. I would put them in a raised box or a big container.
A sturdy wheelbarrow is wonderful to own. Fill it with several bags of good mulch, containing lots of mycorrhizae, perhaps the Whitney Farms brand. Mycorrhizae means fungus-root. They are soil fungi that penetrate the root tissue of plants and surround it, thus extending the root hairs into a much greater volume of soil. In other words, they help the root hairs make contact with the minerals in the soil.
They work in undamaged soil by themselves, but lots of new homes have highly damaged soil. It has been bulldozed, scraped away, compacted, filled with chemicals and so on. This dooms the natural soil organisms that normally feed our plants. The reason to add in lots of humus, mulch and good organic compost is to feed the soil, aerate it and help it return to a healthy state.
This brings another great gift to mind. How about a truckload of organic compost from Sonoma Compost or other mindful businesses?
A small garden cart or some type of carrier for smaller tools is really helpful. I carry mine in a strong little basket with a handle. I've tried lots of methods, but my favorite is this basket. I keep it by the front door and automatically pick it up as I leave to stroll the garden. It contains hand pruners, a roll of green garden tape for tying up falling plants, a light pair of gloves, a small trowel and a little hand rake. You could also throw in a pad of paper and the stub of a pencil. Those are the basics and I cannot wander through the yard without needing one of them.
A cute stocking gift might include a box or two of Whitney Farms' Smart Start Food Packets. They are like teabags, filled with pre-measured fertilizer and mycorrizhae -- just drop it in the planting hole. I believe the colorful little box contains 20 packets and retails for about $4.
Another inexpensive gift is a membership in the California Native Plant Society. Our local chapter, the Milo Baker Chapter, meets monthly and publishes a newsletter. Cost is only $20 to $45. Or a gift membership in the National Wildlife Federation, which sends a beautiful magazine monthly and creates the opportunity for the yard to become certified as a Wildlife Habitat. Good causes and helpful to the gardener.
(Judy Brinkerhoff has been studying native plants for 20 years. She is the author of two other Sonoma County gardening columns. E-mail her at joodbrink2@aol.com.)