Why Not Plant Some Blooming Azaleas?
Spring bedding plants should be full flower, but you can fill any vacancies in the garden with plants already in bloom at the nursery. Or get an early start on summer bedding plants.
Camellias and azaleas are in full bloom, so it’s a good time to shop and plant. Amend the soil with organic matter, and plant so the top of the root ball is an inch higher than the surrounding ground. Fertilize existing camellias now.
As space opens up in the vegetable garden, you can plant a wide variety of cool-season and warm-season crops. Select from beet, cabbage, carrot, chayote, corn, endive, kale, leaf lettuce (and European salad greens such as arugula and the mix called mesclun), New Zealand spinach, onion, pea, potato, radish, sunflower, Swiss chard and the early varieties of tomato, such as ‘Early Girl’. Wait until April or even May to plant main-crop varieties of tomatoes.
Carefully guard new plantings from snails, which become more active as weather warms. Don’t wait a day to put down bait or deterrents around tender new plantings. And be ready for “rose slugs,” actually the slug-shaped larvae of sawflies, which pepper rose leaves with tiny holes. Caught early in the year, they are easily controlled with a spray of light horticultural oil (such as SunSpray).
Cymbidiums seldom need dividing and seem to do best when crowded into their pots, but if they didn’t do well this winter, now is the time to divide and repot them.
From the Los Angeles Times California Garden Calendar
Garden Calendar
* Native wildflowers of the Santa Monica Mountains and surrounding areas can be viewed Saturday and Sunday from 10 a.m. to 4 p.m. at Malibu Bluffs Park at 24250 W. Pacific Coast Highway at Malibu Canyon Road in Malibu, across from Pepperdine University. The free event, sponsored by the California Native Plant Society, includes a wildflower walk each day at 1 p.m. For information, call (310) 317-1364.
* The Long Beach City College Horticulture Club will hold its 30th annual Open House and Plant Sale Wednesday through Saturday from 9 a.m. to 6 p.m. each day at the Horticulture Gardens on the college’s Pacific Coast Campus, 1305 E. Pacific Coast Highway, Long Beach. Free. For information, call (562) 938-3092.
* Annual Wildflower Show, 10 a.m. to 4 p.m. Saturday and Sunday at Rancho Santa Ana Botanic Garden, 1500 N. College Ave. Claremont. Free. Please RSVP: (909) 625-8767, Ext. 224.
* Semi-annual native plant sale 9:30 a.m. to 12:30 p.m. Saturday at Soka University of America at 26800 W. Mulholland Highway. Free. For information, call (818) 878-3763.
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Send garden announcements to Garden Events, Los Angeles Times, 202 W. 1st St., Los Angeles, CA 90012, or e-mail to garden @latimes.com at least three weeks before the event.
