Hi Berkeley - We're south of you, more towards San Jose, but a similar climate. You'll be pleased to learn that you can grow just about anything during our mild Ca. winters, as evidenced by the laundry list in the previous post. Depending on where you are in Berkeley, though, your success may vary - are you in the hills? Are you on the flats closer to the bay? Generally temps don't dip much past 30 and even if they do it's only for a week or two. You should seriously consider planting peas and favas around Halloween time - they won't flower in the cold weather, but maaan do they grow - my sugar snap peas are usually 6' tall by late January, mid Feb. This means when the weather warms in March, I've got huge yields of peas almost immediately. I've also had luck growing chard and kale in the middle of winter, albeit slowly. And I highly highly recommend broccoli raabe in January or February. Two places you should talk to: Renee's Garden Seeds is in the Santa Cruz mtns, southwest of you. They have terrific seeds (wonderful varieties and high germination rates). Their staff answers email promptly and should be able to point you towards a good selection if you tell them where you are. And you are fortunate to be close to Annie's Annuals in Richmond. Their place is worth a field trip. Mostly non-edibles, but a huge variety of unusual plants that do well in your area, including lots of natives.

Bass...I've had mulberries in the yards of almost all the houses I've ever lived in. They are delicious, no discussion there (well the good ones are, I've got one that I wouldn't choose over eating grass if I was truly hungry). I am hoping my Illinois Everbearing gives me fruit this year. I am adding a Che this year, though I really don't know what to expect about the fruit. (one of those minor fruits whose descriptions do not seem to agree on flavor) ~Chills

Update on this post: The seedling flat I recommended proved to be to shallow in depth (I had a feeling this might happen, however I could not find a deeper flat - all the ones made are pretty much the uniform size). The seed tray I described above should really only be used for starting seeds if you're going to be using the accompanying humidity dome. If it's not that dry out where you live, i.e. not Chicago in the winter time, or any other very arid climate, then the humidity dome is unnecessary and the seedling flat is unnecessary, too. The main reason I used the seedling flat was that the dome was made to fit directly on top of it. Looking back I could've just used the dome and sewed the seeds in deeper containers and placed them under it. Problems that I encountered with the seedling flat were that after about two or two 1/2 months of growth growth slowed down significantly, as a result of the roots not having any more space to grow down, probably also because the deeper the roots grew, the closer they got to the heat mat and the hotter they got. If the flat had been deeper, I could've kept the heat mat on without worrying about it potentially harming the seedling roots. The seedling flat is just not deep enough. It's only about two or three inches deep. All I did to remedy this was move the seedlings. I mixed a bag of mycorrhizal root dip gel in a kitchen bowl, then removed the entire clump of soil that the seedlings were growing in by pushing up from the bottom of the seedling flat, placed the soil clump in the root dip gel, then gently separated the inter-twining roots and potted up each seedling separately. Next year I'm simply going to start the seeds in a deeper medium, maybe some sort of self-made flat but with a deeper bottom. Everything else worked great, the only bad decision on was using such a shallow seedling tray. Ah well, learning requires experience, after all.

I see this is an old thread! I'm in East/Central Oakland. I planted two Frederick plants in late spring of this year. One I got from Berkeley Horticulture in a gallon pot. It was their last one and looked terrible. The leaves were torn and the vine was sparse. They gave me a discount and said it would improve. The other I got at Oakland Ace Hardware on Grand. It was a 5 gal pot and looked great. The 1 gal pot I planted in some terrible looking dirt next to a chain link fence because it was the only pre-made support and full sun I had at the time. The 5 gal I planted in rich soil along a wooden fence on which I had created a trellis. Initially the 1 gal. did nothing. Any new leaves looked deformed and the plant barely grew. Th 5 gal. took right away and flowered shortly after planting. Within the first couple months a fruit appeared. Then nothing. I used fish emulsion on both. It was not until I dug up around the 1 gal, added some planting mix and bit of gypsum to the soil, and then added plant food, that it took off. Within a couple weeks it had grown by at least 30%. Then it started flowering. After helping it with sexy time (I helped pollinate the flowers), the small plant now has 3 fruits growing and several flowers. The 5 gal has produced many flowers, but other than the first fruit, all have fallen off. I don't know why it hasn't self-pollinated. This week I started helping the big plant to pollinate, so hopefully that does the trick. But the vine itself has also grown at least 30% if not more in the 3 months it's been up. Sorry for the long narrative! I just was out there working in my garden today and so it's all in my head.