The year was 1956, I was 8 years old and the family was on a vacation up the California coast.  We were traveling up Hwy 101 and came into the town of Capitola which is near Santa Cruz.  There along the side of the road was a nursery growing tuberous begonias and for this 8 year old kid it was love at first sight.  Fast forward 6 years to my first job at the Coronado nursery (I can’t believe they actually hired me at 14 years old) and one of my jobs was to pot up tuberous begonias.  I thought I had died and gone to heaven.  These shade loving plants come in both upright and hanging varieties and have colorful blooms that look like carnations on steroids.  Far superior to the “non-stop” varieties on the market these days, these American tuberous begonias are extremely hard to find but worth the effort to locate them.  With a little effort the tubers can be saved from year to year resulting in larger and larger plants each successive season.  I have seen tubers the size of dessert plates.

There is no shortage of chores for the month of May, just a shortage of time and perhaps a shortage of space to list them.  If you are feeling like a chicken with its head cut off then hopefully this will help you focus.  Here are the highlights for May...

When it comes to flowering shrubs there is nothing quite as spectacular as a rhodie in full bloom.  Anyone who has grown up in the northwest can attest to the glorious sight of a yard full of these incredible plants.  They come in many colors and sizes, are usually evergreen and for the most part are easy to grow.  With proper selection a person could actually have a rhodie blooming in their garden from February through June.  

Back in my hippy-dippy days of the late 60’s and early 70’s I was a devotee of the organic gardening movement with subscriptions to Rodale’s Organic Gardening Magazine along with Prevention and Mother Earth News.  My favorite cook book was Diet for a Small Planet and Adelle Davis’s Let’s Eat Right to Keep Fit.  I had a fabulous organic garden and a very large compost pile but my passion was far from mainstream.  Fast forward 40 years and I am pleased to say that organic gardening and eating healthy have indeed become the norm and it is very gratifying to see this happening.  Here is a quick overview of the essence of what organic gardening is all about.  Sign up for our class this coming Saturday at 10am and learn all the ins and outs of this gardening style.

April is a grand month to plant a tree and it is no coincidence that most states and our federal government celebrate Arbor Day during the month of April.  This week I would like to talk about three different groups of trees starting with Japanese Maples....

Last week we touched on roses, lawns, pruning and assessing winter damage and if you happened to miss it you can go to my website at www.sunnysidenursery.net where all of my columns are archived and searchable by various topics.   Now on to the rest of the list...

Yes, this month it will take two weeks to dispense all my gardening wisdom for the month of April.  There’s just too darn much to do to fit it into one column...

For all you hard core veggie gardeners out there you probably already know that March is a good time to get started on the veggie garden.  But first timers may not realize that there are really two seasons to plant veggies (and I suppose a third in the fall) and that we can’t just plant everything all at one time.

Let’s face it, for the most part the lawn is the man’s domain.  It is literally his “turf” and when left alone he can spend endless hours mowing, edging, aerating, dethatching, feeding, reseeding, watering and weeding not to mention the time it takes to keep his trusty John Deere steed in good running condition.  If this man is also a golfer then his passion for his lawn is even more intense.  Some would say it is obsessive but I would submit that the lawn is probably the safest place in the garden for the man to be (and all the wives say Amen)!  

Life can be stressful and the more we can do to relieve that stress the happier and healthy we can be.  Nothing causes me more stress than trying to adjust to Daylight Saving Time and while I would dearly love to use this space to rant about how much I loath it the fact is that this is a gardening column so I am going to instead tell you about how stress-relieving Bonsai can be for our sleep deprived souls.