I got golden gate gardening by pam pierce, and it's not a bad book for the microclimate information, but I don't need to buy it now. It has a lot of you cannot do this and you cannot do that. For example being that IÂm in the fog zone, I cannot grow tomatoes or corn. When you have a problem like a blight she has a lot of can and can nots. I wish she offered more alternates to can situation with the pros and cons instead. I would rather Google the topic to get a number of different opinions, and then mull the situation over in my mind. It give me something to think about. I went to the Lnygso website and it's bad, they have a lot of stuff there, but they don't deliver. The "compost" in the photo looks like they kind they dye black, the color did not look natural. It's not a good as making a labor intense food scraps compost. I add star bucks coffee and osh redwood bark shredded, and it's the only compost I really need. They have seminars there. And there is a garden to view, but thatÂs not the kind of plants I like to grow, the lush ones, but Redwood city is quite a bit hotter than San Francisco in the summer. I still think Supersoil gave me good results when I used it in the past. It has sand, but the sand is a good type of grains of sand. The grains are not the kind of tiny grains that get all compact on you, like my sand which is bad sand, that hardens to a Caliche. When this happens the water wonÂt penetrate the soil, it just sits on top of the soil and evaporates. If you try to dig down you will see the plant roots are dry underneath. This encourages shallow rooting of plants. So, thatÂs good sand. Almost no one makes real compost anyway. Whole foods has some compost, but it was just some like pointed pieces of wood without any real deposed material. I would think with all the fruit they donÂt sell because itÂs priced too high, they could make a great compost. The other book on northern ca, has arrived and I have to pick it up an read it this weekend.

basically think of most all tulips as annuals. pre-chiil them in fridge for 6 weeks. I have seen some bulbs which rot or don't grow well, but I can't say this is limited to certain varieties, though the almost black tulips seem wimpy.. Tree Peony types can do OK here, most others do not get sufficient chill. There is a Peony nursery in San Jose, but it is high in mountains so is more like zone 8. If you want to know what stays around here search for zone 9/10 tulips. T. bakeri, chrysantha, wilsonii are some that I grow. Try some Daffs and amarylis 'naked Ladies', many Daffs do not need chill and are gopher proof, search for Bill the bulb Baron site. Try South African bulbs like Watsonia, Tritonia, Sparaxis, Freesia etc. Chad

I hadn't meant to be abusive of Joe's points, just a counterpoint. Just a note about Urban Farmer's services, they are a full service irrigation store, and sell all the materials to install a conventional spray irrigation system as well. I would like to counter one of Joe's points, about drip irrigation being cheaper to install. I don't find that to be the case, in the systems I design and install, there is more hand labor involved to get emitter line to individual plants, so I'd say that the different systems are probably about on par or even slightly more expensive for a drip irrigation when using higher quality/more reliable fittings and materials. Also, as to the point about needing pressure regulators for drip systems, what is your point? The pressure regulator is not some expensive or elaborate device prone to failure, and even a conventional spray irrigation system will often require a pressure regulator at the valves if the house or street pressures are too high. Where drip irrigation excels is the benefits of using it on difficult to water steep slopes where spray irrigation would cause run-off at the higher application rates, and is not as good at giving deeper watering. You can also get away with using less valves with a larger area of coverage in a typical garden setting, because the water flows required are less volume and pressure. As to maintenance and repairs, I often find that clients with dogs and conventional spray irrigation systems may have more need of regular inspections to repair broken irrigation heads, especially if they conflict with a large dog running along an open metal fence at the street. As well, pop-up spray irrigation heads are equally prone to damage from autos driving over them or lawn mower blades clipping them, and when broken and set to run overnight, the wasted water will be far more wasteful than it would be with a lower flow/lower pressure drip system. I would not waste my time trying to convince someone who has their mind made up about their preferences in irrigation systems, but it is not as black and white as Joe would make it appear. Everyone should irrigate in a way that makes sense for their particular situation. I simply believe that drip irrigation in combination with micro-spray drip can create superb results while also using less water overall. Joe's contention that drip irrigation does not permit deep rooting of plants is only germane for those who don't run their systems long enough to wet the soil deeply. This is also very much a concern with spray systems as well, as most gardeners simply don't know how long it can take to deeply water a clay soil. Most spray systems will cause run-off in clay soils if watered for more than 10 to 15 minutes on a sloping site, and this won't wet the soil much beyond the first inch or two. Not to mention the water lost to wind/over throw spray, and evaporated water lost to the hot sun in combination with winds. In any case, both spray and drip irrigation design have their pros and cons, and the majority of residential homeowners are more likely to be timing their irrigation by schedules rather than plant needs, nor do most adjust their watering schedules more than once or twice a year to reflect the weather and seasons. In specifying which type of system makes more sense for an individual homeowner/client, it helps to weigh all the factors that should influence such a decision. While working as a landscape architect for a large firm doing subdivision homes for a developer, I had occasion to design a subsurface system using Netafim for lawns in this development. I can tell you that it drove the new home buyers crazy, as too many didn't trust that it was working properly, and would reset their individual home's irrigation controllers to vastly overwater the lawns, as they couldn't see it working. While it may make sense to use such a system for a commons area landscape that isn't subject to the whims of different homeowners, I wouldn't recommend it again for the average garden. The one place I would always recommend a spray system over a drip system would be for a client who can't control their dog's digging and chewing of things in the garden. A drip system will be much more vulnerable to damage in such a garden. I've also found that the most common animal damage to drip irrigation systems in my experience has been with squirrels chewing off the hard plastic mister heads I use in gardens which may have subtropicals such as bromeliads mounted on fences or trees. I've learned that the misters should never be mounted on the top of branches, but always on the bottom of a horizontal branch, to make it more difficult for the squirrels to do damage.

Can I talk about Rosa 'Munstead Wood? Cultivated in a garden in zone 9b (winters with little intense and little persistent frost between -1º / -5ºC and very hot summers, with temperatures around 32 / 35ºC and even some days reaching almost 40ºC) I cultivate two specimens of this variety in my garden. Both are grafted. In my garden is very refloreciente. The roses are beautiful and have a strong aroma. However, I must emphasize his propensity for powdery mildew. Just formed the buds at the beginning of spring quickly appears the terrible white powder on them. It is true that then, in summer, when the temperatures rise a lot, the disease low in intensity and practically disappears. I do not apply chemicals. Sometimes I make a mixture of potassium soap with water or I make a tea of nettles. How much color is very changeable. The spring bloom is so dark. The typical dark purple color appears in autumn bloom. It is a rose-bush with many thorns. The leaves are beautiful when they are born. With a very beautiful dark border !! It is very refloreciente. The flowering continues well into the autumn. It is also true that little resemble the roses of spring and those of autumn. The roses that sprout in autumn are less full of petals and somewhat smaller. The color, as I say, much more obscure than those of spring. I write a blog about my garden and you can read if you are interested in many comments on the behavior of this rose in my climate. This is the link: Rosa 'Munstead Wood'