It’s the last of the month, which means garden questions and
answers again! You may e-mail me questions at: ga********@jp*.net.
Or you can mail me questions in care of this newspaper. For a
faster, personal response, please include a self-addressed, stamped
envelope.
It’s the last of the month, which means garden questions and answers again! You may e-mail me questions at: ga********@jp*.net. Or you can mail me questions in care of this newspaper. For a faster, personal response, please include a self-addressed, stamped envelope.
Q. I look forward to your column each week. I planted an avocado seed six years ago. The tree is doing great and is about 15 feet high. It had many blossoms on it, but nothing came of it. My mother had two seedling trees she started in San Jose. After 15 years, it produced some tasty fruits. Do I need another tree or tree to be grafted in order to get fruit? — K.M, Gilroy, via e-mail.
A: Well, besides having initials that you can be proud of, I wish I had good news for you. The fact of the matter is, most avocados started by seedlings will never produce fruit because they do indeed either need to be grafted or have a different avocado variety growing nearby. Now I don’t know what happened to your mother’s seedling avocado, but you mentioned she started two different types. I can only guess this is why she has gotten fruit from those trees as they’ve pollinated each other. If you want to try, you can take a branch from one of your mother’s avocado tree and try grafting it onto your’s. Grafting is a somewhat involved process, and you’ll need to check out a book to learn more. It’s best to use some sort of sphagnum moss material and wrap the graft in plastic, but that’s just a simplistic explanation. Or you can make it easy on yourself and buy a grafted variety at the nursery. Varieties to choose from include Fuerte, Bacon and Hass. Finally, I must congratulate you for getting your seedling avocado to survive all these years. They aren’t the easiest trees to grow, especially in our climate, which is colder than they prefer.
I need some advice about gardening under a huge beautiful oak tree in my front yard. I live in the Central Valley outside of Modesto and ran across your column while visiting a friend in Morgan Hill. I don’t even know what USDA climate zone I’m in. The weather here in the summer is very hot (100 to 106 degrees) and my yard gets a moist tropical atmosphere because, I guess, from the oak tree. Can you help? – J.D., Modesto.
I’m afraid I don’t have any good news for you all the way in Modesto. Oak trees do not do well when there’s excavation beneath them or additional soil piled up underneath it. This pretty much rules out growing anything underneath it other than possibly lawn or some type of groundcover. Of course, you can grow anything underneath it if you grow in containers. Possibly placing a few containers with annual bedding plants, such as impatiens or pansies will suffice? As for your USDA climate zone, I prefer to use Sunset Western Garden Book’s Western Climate Zones because they get so much more specific for California. In your case, you are in either 8 or 9, both of which are the Cold-Air Basins of the Central Valley. Basically, you get quite a bit warmer than us in the summer and colder than us in the winter. Good luck.
Q. I’m in need of some sort of groundcover on the side of my house where it can tolerate dry conditions. I don’t have a sprinkler system on that side of the yard, so I would have to irrigate by hand. Is there a drought-tolerant groundcover that would fit the bill? — C.L., Hollister, via e-mail.
A: You might try one of the low-growing forms of cotoneaster or ceanothus. Both are easy-to-grow native plants that thrive on neglect once they are established. You will, however, need to irrigate the first season. Cotoneaster grow one to three feet tall and spread with a rather loose mat of arching branches. They have rather inconspicuous flowers that are followed by a multitude of colorful orange or red berries. Ceanothus are also known as wild lilac and offer the most beautiful, powder-blue flower clusters in spring. There are many tall varieties of ceanothus, but there are also groundcover types like Carmel creeper or Point Reyes that only get a foot or two high, but spread.
