I am a little south of you in north county San Diego. Last year was my first year with container vegetables. I have full sun and lots of drying wind all day long. I had excellent results with summer squash. No matter what I do in the garden, squash wilts mid day. In the container garden there was no wilting and high production. Very good success with basil and broccoli. Bell peppers were good but some of the garden peppers did better. Same for tomatoes. Bigger pots do better as they hold more water. i water about once a day. The squash was in 20 gal pots which seems adequate. Some squash in #15 (12 gal) did ok. #15 for tomatoes seemed too small. 25 gal for tomatoes was ok but I want bigger. For smaller plants it is ok but I am trying 40 gal for bigger plants this year. Basil did fine in 5 gal pots. However You can't leave for a day or two unwatered so bigger is better. This year I am going to get saucers for watering if I have to leave them for a couple of days. Saucers for the 20 gal and up is more difficult I may try to make my own with concrete. I like the Earth Gro ground cover bark at Home Depot. Batches vary a lot. Sometimes it is good, sometimes not so good. My biggest mistake last year was not enough nitrogen. The bark eats it up. I mix about eight parts bark, one peat, one Kellogs Amend (composted poultry manure, rice hulls, gypsum and etc.) and one part calcined clay (kitty litter) I add Vigoro citrus and avocado fert (has some micros and slow release nitrogen), gypsum,epsom salt and dolomite lime and a little Am nitrate to the upper half of the containers. I use black nursery pots because they are the cheapest pots I can find. Twelve bucks for 25 gal and 22 bucks for a forty. Zeuspaul

I usually tell people to go for a more open style bin (like a pallet bin or bin using fencing or hardware cloth.) It isn't that the plastic one won't work but it can be trickier to manage in such a container. Here is my advice for a beginning composter. To start you may want two containers or bins (in the future you may want to go to three.) One bin is going to be the active composting bin and the other is for storage of cover materials since you will want a stockpile of that. Cover materials are what many people call "browns" or high carbon material like leaves, straw, paper, cardboard, sawdust, etc. In the composting bin, make a nice thick layer of the cover material in the bottom. Now you can start adding your kitchen wastes. Most beginners should start out putting mainly veggie and fruit type waste in the compost. The waste is what most people count as a "green" or high nitrogen material. If you get grass clippings, they are a green. All greens should be covered by a layer of cover material in the bin. This is what helps control odor. Anything likely to get stinky should get covered with cover material. Anyway, that is about it. When you add waste or stinky stuff to the pile, you should then cover with cover material. At least that is the basic method. If you want to do simple lazy compost, just keep adding to the bin till it is full. If it ever smells, you need more cover material. Once the bin is full, you start using that third bin I mentioned and leave the full one for a year (or until the third bin gets full) to age. Use the compost from the first bin when the third bin gets full so you can flip flop the process and let the third bin age. The second bin remains as the cover material storage bin. Turning in not necessary if you are patient. It can help speed things up though. Getting the exact right ratios of stuff is not necessary but if you want hot fast compost you might look into it. Compost should only be as moist as a wrung out sponge. If it is too wet, it might tend to smell or it could cool it off and slow things down. If it is too dry, the composting process might get slowed way down. If you are in a dry climate, cardboard around the outside of an open bin can help reduce moisture loss. In a wet climate, some heavy cardboard over the top of the pile can help the pile shed excess water yet still allow the compost to breath. Plastic can be used but sometimes causes smell issues due to lack of aeration. Anyway, you can probably make composting as simple or as complex as you want. Getting really hot compost can be fun the first time you see steam comming off the pile. Then again, if you don't have lots of material to compost and are not interested in composting urine or humanure, then who needs a hot pile. As long as you aren't composting any of the so called compost "no-nos" then you don't actually need a hot pile, just some patients as cool composting takes longer. To get really hot compost consistently, I usually tell people to pee in the compost. Some people don't like the idea. If you want to compost the "no-nos" like meat, cooking grease/oil, dairy, humanure, cat/dog manure, dead critters, fish heads/guts, weeds with seeds, etc, then you want hot compost. Turning is not required for compost so if you don't have a strong back and desire to fork over compost piles regularly, then don't worry about it, you just need extra patients. One saying I like is "the most important ingredient in compost is two years" Fill the bin of a year and let it age for a year, there is your compost. Here is a link that might be useful: My Compost

aimeekitty, your two biggest issues are going to be the drainage, which is a given. You're in a newer area where, by law, they must compact the soil up to a 98% compaction so seismic waves pass through it quickly, producing less shaking. It's a trade-off. Good drainage and shaking, or bad with less movement. The other is going to be hard frosts. Being at the foot of that slope, and where you are in general, cold air is going to flow into your back yard and pool around the house. Any outlet you can provide for it to flow through the yard and not get trapped there will increase your chances with most plants. Those we've mentioned and not alerted you to cold issues should be fine. Duranta can have thorns so make sure any you buy are thornless. They CAN freeze badly there, so put them where there is good air drainage and reflected heat from hardscape. I use it on a south facing wall in Stevenson Ranch where it is happier than the Hybrid Perpetual the lady who installed the garden used. Solid green foliage is much more durable up there than the variegated types. Spring Bouquet has the more durable foliage of the Viburnum there and it is evergreen. I grow a Pink Snowball which is deciduous and the foliage shows burn half way through summer partly due to heat, aridity, alkalinity and its deciduous nature. If your Mom's spirea is doing OK, consider rooting more if you want more, from her plant instead of buying them. That way, should one not make it, there is still a starter plant to go to for more. Repeat flowering iris and daylilies aren't as vigorous as once flowering, so they don't take over and naturalize like the once flowering. In smaller gardens where everything has to carry its weight and provide some sort of interest, they are a much more reliable and pleasing choice for most people. Like the OGRs, if you had an acre where they can be hidden when "off", they're wonderful, but when they are in your face as soon as you walk out the door, they'd better look great and provide interest all the time or you will soon resent them. I forgot I wanted to also suggest Germander for your garden. Beautiful color in both foliage and flower and being fuzzy, the rabbits won't like it. Teucrium chamaedrys makes a lovely edging or filler plant. Teucrium fruticans http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Teucrium_fruticans is the silvery, fuzzy one which flowers later in summer with blue violet flowers. Both have grown quite well there and regain their early beauty by being whacked to the ground should they out grow their welcome. If lavenders aren't happy in your back yard, I agree, it's very likely the drainage. You might try digging enormous holes, much larger than needed, use something better composted than green to amend, then plant the crown of the plant higher as is suggested for Camellia and Azalea so when the water level is higher, the crown is up out of the muck. Yes, they will eventually settle down lower, but it has seemed to allow them to mature into more durable plants by the time they settle. You should also look at Santolina, either the green or silver, or both. They should be whacked back severely to renew themselves each spring. NOTHING eats them. They are highly scented. If you can determine where the rabbits enter your yard and concentrate the highly scented plants in that area, you'll "jam their radar", creating a zone they won't enter as the plants keep them from being able to smell predators. It is actually very effective. Anything you can stand that is highly scented (foliage, rather than flower) works well for this. While I can understand the comment about wishing more green shrubs were planted earlier in the garden, please keep in mind with your drainage, plants aren't going to grow as quickly, perhaps eventually not as large, because instead of growing down into the soil, roots have to grow closer to the surface, usually just under the sod, but they will eventually get larger. I know how frustrating it can be to keep seeing bare spaces between the plants, but if you're planning on living with that garden for a number of years, putting less permanent things in where the existing plants are expect to grow into, will make for many fewer headaches later on. Everything mentioned so far not only can be pruned, with few exceptions, they SHOULD be pruned to maintain them and make them grow more densely. If you drive along Soledad Canyon and notice the Leucophyllum along the bike path from Rainbow Glenn east, you'll see how rangy they are from no pruning. Contrast that with how wonderful they look in nursery cans at Green Thumb. Not only water, but PRUNING. All of the shrubs can get rangy unless kept sheared to maintain their density and that dense canopy creates many more flowering shoots, concentrating the blooms and fruit more densely for prettier effects in smaller spaces. Diosma can be pruned, it's just that it has such a nicely pleasing shape and habit, they're prettier if unpruned. The truth is they will probably require some pruning over time. I prefer simply cutting them half or more straight across the top. They grow upright with a fairly flattened surface, punctuated with flowering shoots. If you just cut it all off straight, it will respond by shooting up new flowering shoots and filling in, only shorter. That's what they do with the nursery plants before putting them out in flower. Why can't you? They just aren't that pretty if kept sheared as the mow/blow/go manicurists do to everything green. You'll see many Pittosporum Wheeler's Dwarf and Nandina domestica nana all over and they work well, remaining smaller and more ground cover. The Nandina also adds beautiful spots of red in cool weather. The City has them planted everywhere because they live forever, add color and require virtually nothing. Taller types can get fairly rangy pretty quickly and benefit from being whacked low. I'm not personally attracted to the Pittosporum and usually warn to keep all of them away from the house as they contain an oil which burns rather hot if the house burns. You don't need fuel as there is plenty already. The Nandina nana can be quite beautiful. I use it along a sidewalk in a very narrow strip with Santolina and lavenders in Old Orchard. It gets hacked when it grows on the walk and in spring, otherwise, they just do their thing and look pretty. Lantana can be a very effective ground cover there except when hard freezes hit. It loves the heat, is quite drought tolerant, stinks so the vermin usually avoid it and will flower any time it's hot. The low growing white and lavender are very effective and benefit from being cut low when needed. Santa Barbara Daisy is another "weed" which will grow with wild abandon there and can cover a lot of open ground. It will reseed itself and can easily be pulled and needs scraping off at the ground annually. It will fill a LOT of holes! You may want to check the free ads there for a source of horse manure. Don't worry about weeds as there are PLENTY of seeds there already; they blow in on the wind; come in on your gardener's tools and feet; on the rabbits that visit and even on your shoes when you walk around. The bacterial action of the digesting manure releases Humic Acid which helps to condition the soil, and the earthworms which will crawl across flaming asphalt to get to it will churn things up greatly. Keep it around the drip zone of the plants and between them, not against the trunks and crowns and keep it damp. In this heat, you can digest an inch of the stuff with regular moisture, to a thin layer of earthworm castings in about three months. I did it for years in Scenic Hills. You might also consider picking up Grow Power Plus and Grow More Organic All Purpose at Green Thumb, mix the two together so it's 15# of Grow More and 20# of Grow Power Plus, broadcast it everywhere by hand, then rinse it all off the foliage on top of the mulch. Not enough nitrogen to hurt anything, yet enough to feed the soil bacteria and get things cooking. It helped break up the red clay in Northbridge in a season, permitting things to grow which hadn't gotten bigger in years. All of it will help with your drainage over time and keep things growing healthily until then. If you have dogs, they will LOVE eating the organics. There is no difference to them between blood and bone meal and dog food. Neither product has insecticides or fungicides in them. I've used them in my gardens there for years. In all my years of gardening there, the only white fly problems have been in sheltered situations which promoted their growth. Bacopa in a nook where they dryer vents, sheltered by the garage in Old Orchard and in a walled back garden in Northbridge where no direct sun or wind hit it on Begonia were the only spots. Generally, if it is windy, hot, exposed, you aren't going to have many insects other than possibly spider mite because of the aridity. Scale can also be a problem there and it is a witch to get rid of. Florida Scale can attack Pandorea there. Systemic rose and flower food has seemed to work on it. Don't worry about the white flies on hibiscus, you won't have them due to the climate, and the hibiscus will likely freeze out before it's an issue anyway. Lavatera don't seem bothered by them there, nor here and they do provide enough color and fill. I grow Kew Rose out front in the upper terrace behind Mary Rose and they are similar in color. As is their habit, it gets quite rangy and requires hacking back to the nubs each year. It went from a one gallon to over seven feet in each direction in one year. The drainage is very good and it's protected from the wind by a six foot wall. Dwarf myrtle is the one you want. You can keep it six inches tall seemingly forever or allow it to get huge like the six foot tall one out back here which is the lone survivor of the sixty year old hedge of it. The stuff roots very easily so you can make more if you want and it will self seed easily in mulch. It germinates at a client's house up there from plants in the neighbor's yard. It is EXTREMELY difficult to give you accurate ideas of what to expect these things to mature to due to drainage alone. What grows feet each week in Old Orchard with the sandy soil and excellent drainage, grows inches in the same time in her daughter's garden in Stevenson Ranch. The climate is a bit more severe there and the soil is highly compacted making things struggle more. If you get some mulch down, preferably horse manure, use the fertilizer combination suggested above and keep it all moist, things will begin responding much more quickly and mature to larger sizes than they would otherwise. You'll also make the soil conditions more favorable for the things you've had difficulties with already, permitting you to expand what you plant where, with time. The Chinese Snowball can grow there with afternoon sun protection to prevent foliage burn, but it may not be happy. The best two I've seen in gardens here in Southern California were the one in The Homestead Acre in Chatsworth Park South planted on the north side of large trees so it received dappled sun, and the one Laurie Chaffin grew at Pixie Treasures in Yorba Linda, which also had protection from the hottest sun. Both enjoyed excellent drainage. I've actually had very good luck with Hydrangea quercifolia Pee Wee in Old Orchard where it gets shielded from the brunt of the hot sun by the block wall and the drainage is excellent. http://www.mobot.org/gardeninghelp/plantfinder/plant.asp?code=Z460 It flowers nearly all year and gets a bit of autumn color, though never goes fully deciduous. The warning about Hebe and drainage is right on. They hate soggy soil. Kim

Hi Jim, from experience, Duchesse de Brabant around here is a lot of plant with little bloom. I grew Silvermoon in my old garden and adore it. It has a strong family meaning, but it is mostly once flowering. In Newhall, it was allowed to grow to an enormous size and it often gave a second flowering, but it wasn't guaranteed. Fortune's Double Yellow is wonderful when in flower, but, again, it is once flowering and can get large in our climate. It grew in the Study Plot at The Huntington Library, where the once flowering OGRs and found roses were grown. It ate an oak tree and was spectacular in late spring to early summer. The rest of the time, it was just green and huge. You may be able to find five gallon plants of Mutabilis and Sombreuil, or what is in commerce as Sombreuil, around here. Mutabilis is sometimes available as a one gallon plant from Otto & Sons out in Fillmore. They are retail and wholesale growers, about forty miles west of the Santa Clarita Valley. The SCV is a few miles north of Hollywood. The others, you're probably going to need to purchase online from one of the marvelous sources listed in other threads. If you'd be interested, I may be able to obtain cuttings of Silvermoon for you. It's a Wichurana rambler and roots quite easily. I had friends who used to use in as root stock. I had many self layered plants in my horse manure mulch which I potted and gave to the HOA where my old garden was. They planted them on chain link fences, with pyracantha, to keep the middle school kids from climbing the shared fences. The plant they rooted from was an import through Greenmantle Nursery, up in Garberville, CA. A very good nursery with a very esoteric selection. Marissa Fishman does the roses. Ram, her husband, specializes in custom propagated rare and heirloom fruit. Very neat people and nursery!