Don't feel embarassed! I'm new to GardenWeb, but not quite as new to gardening as you are. I wish I found this years ago, because gardeners are such gosh-darn nice people, it seems. I live in a totally different climate over here in frigid New Hampshire, but I spent 6 years in Oakland, CA, so I know a little bit about California climates. That's when I was a novice gardener, too. The Sunset magazine gardening books are a must - they'll teach you so much. I got so attached to mine, it's still on my gardening shelf, much to my NH friends' amusement. The "Western Garden Book" is the basic bible. I don't know if there's one about veggies, but if there is, I'm sure it's fantastic. Another book that might be helpful is the "Square Foot Garden," which is about squishing as much as reasonably possible into small gardens. It'll help you get the spacing right on your pots & raised beds. The Rosemary will get there. My husband and I still talk longingly about the rosemary in our front yard in the last house we lived in in Oakland. It was 4 1/2 ft tall & slightly more wide. Gorgeous, too. Rosemary won't over-winter in NH, though I did find a variety this year that might (Arp), and ordered two. Things grown in good soil will perform better - you'll get more of a crop. But perennials won't necessarily die if the soil is poor, and they often produce something even if it's not a lot. You definitely can work in lots of stuff on top and build the soil like that. Anything organic works - manure, leaves (guess you don't get huge amounts of deciduous leaves though, duh), etc. The worms & soil bacteria take over from there, and over time, you end up with good soil. In your climate, it could actually be pretty quick - I count on a couple years to get a new bed well established, but that's because everything sleeps several months a year, then takes a while to wake up, work for a few months, then starts to wind down. The soil bacteria in your soil should make fast work of things! Also don't discount your soil totally - you never know. Only a soil test can tell you how it's doing in terms of nutrients. You can send your soil out to get tested - most folks use the local Cooperative Extension (found in all states - just google it). Or, for a less expensive and not nearly as comprehensive a test, get a soil test kit from a local nursery. Even the big box stores have them. It's not hard, and so helpful. Good luck & enjoy!

Purlisa: I no longer post for the pubic, but I make exceptions when people ask for me specifically. I respect & learn from honest folks like you who share about their garden. I learn more from honest folks who talk about problems in their garden, than gorgeous pics. of roses (with zero details as to type of soil & pH-level & climate & annual rainfall). That's my pet-peeve in HMF, folks just post pics, without specifying if it's own-root or grafted, zero info. on planting zone & type of soil & climate. If you click on my Houzz profile-picture , I updated to include tips on how to tell which own-roots are appropriate for which soil pH, type of soil & climate, just by looking at the leaves. https://www.houzz.com/user/strawchicago I received 8 roses yesterday 6/15 from RU summer sale, they are BIG, and some are over 2 feet tall & with buds & blooms .. very healthy. These roses are bigger & more blooms that the 7 roses I bought full-price early May. My last house was acidic clay: soft & easy to dig, with blue hydrangeas & deep-colors roses. My current house is alkaline clay: rock-hard, need a pick-ax to dig, pink hydrangeas, and roses have faded colors. Roses are much healthier in alkaline clay. My purpose of posting is to help foiks NOT to make the same mistakes like I did in my 30+ years of growing roses, and 110 own-root varieties. My B.S. is in Computer Science, minor in Chemistry, so I want to use my background to help folks. If you have sticky & dense clay, skip the Epsom salt (magnesium sulfate), since it hardens clay further. MAGNESIUM DEFICIENCY IS RARE, EXCEPT IN SANDY SOIL (this is from the booklet when I got my soil tested by EarthCo.) My sticky clay soil was tested exceedingly high in magnesium. Skip the molasses, I tested for many years and it attracts rose-slugs, plus sugarly stuff LOWERS soil pH, sugar sours things fast. Azomite is similar to dolomitic lime (both have pH 9), but Azomite works faster. Digging deep, and remove the dense & icky clay & rocks at bottom helps with drainage, so acidic rain water don't sit at the bottom to rot roots. If your clay soil is acidic, COARSE sand (paver's sand) is good on top. BAGGED SAND AT STORES IS VERY ALKALINE, so it will neutralize the acidity of rain. Niels in Denmark, with hundreds of roses, put sand on top of his acidic clay. Skip the alfalfa, it becomes VERY ACIDIC like Kimchi if decays in acidic rain water. Many folks report roses breaking out in blackspots after "sour alfalfa tea", it's like watering roses with sauerkraut or Kimchi-water. At least Kimchi or sauerkraut has salt to control the acidity, but I already tested acidic-alfalfa-tea and it made leaves thinner, thanks to its acidity. Since my clay is rock-hard alkaline at pH near 8, I use acidic pine bark (pH 4) to fix my clay. People root roses in sand. I read a book by a CA rose-grower on the coast (mild temperate climate), he bought a land filled with sand and converted into a rose nursery, to sell cut-flowers !! Here's an excerpt from Houzz when I googled on clay .. folks in CA have heavy abode clay, while I have dolomitic clay. But both are mineral-rich clay. Kittymoonbeam have over 100+ roses in Southern CA, wrote this in Houzz .. from my experience I agree with her 100% .. I killed plenty of roses with acidic organic matter in the planting hole. And Roses Unlimited's tip of 1 cup of alfalfa meal mix-in WORKS ONLY FOR THEIR ALKALINE-TAP WATER inside nursery, but NOT FOR OUTDOOR ACIDIC RAIN, with pH 4.5 in my Chicagoland, and even more acidic rain on the East Coast. Kittymoonbeam - "I just came from a soils class by a local nurseryman. He said DON'T add organic amendment into the soil. The plants only tolerate it, not prosper in it. The short of it is that eventually it breaks down and rots causing oxygen problems in the root zone. A NASA guy said NO terrestrial plant wants to live in ground up dead tree. So most potting soils are only good for maybe 5 months, then they start harming plants. The growers know the plants can only survive a short period before they decline in that mix. Potting up in non amended soil causes no harm. You can grow in 100 percent sand as long as you water and feed often enough. Strawberry leaves from plants grown in sand were twice the size of those in the premium potting mix! There are no overwatering issues. Why the change from propagation in soil to wood products is a long story. However, we've all been taught to do it. But no one ever used to in the old days. Disneyland removed their riverbed soil and replaced with amended soil. After a few years, they took it all out and purchased new riverbed sandy loam and now they only mulch on top. This is all new to me but that's the way it was for millions of years. The organic stuff stays on top where it breaks down and travels to the roots below. Roots want a purely mineral soil with as much oxygen as they can get and still be moist." Kittymoonbeam. Lauren (Los Angeles, 10a, Sunset Zone 19) - kittymoonbeam, that does seem to make sense. Limited personal experience has also showed me that top dressing compost with shredded leaves/mulch produced better results than than simply mixing some compost into the surrounding soil" Lauren

I could be wrong about the zone - on a zip code lookup map it tells me 9-10. I am near the coast, and the weather here tends to be much more mild. Those "zones" are pretty broad classifications. Here's a fairly accurate description of where I live: "Salinas, CA climate is mild during summer when temperatures tend to be in the 60's and cool during winter when temperatures tend to be in the 50's. The warmest month of the year is September with an average maximum temperature of 74.60 degrees Fahrenheit, while the coldest month of the year is December with an average minimum temperature of 39.40 degrees Fahrenheit. Temperature variations between night and day tend to be fairly limited during summer with a difference that can reach 19 degrees Fahrenheit, and moderate during winter with an average difference of 22 degrees Fahrenheit. The annual average precipitation at Salinas is 15.12 Inches. Rainfall in is fairly evenly distributed throughout the year. The wettest month of the year is January with an average rainfall of 3.00 Inches." We do get some 90 degree days, but only a handful. I had read the FAQ about blossom drop. . .I don't think too hot is going to be my biggest problem. My neighbor (who's in something like his 60th year of planting tomatoes in his backyard across the street - he's 92) said he usually doesn't even plant until around May 1 because it's not warm enough to really get 'em growing; in his words, "they just sit there and look at ya." Maybe I'm misunderstanding the term "frost date." Is it a technical term, or just the last time that you wake up to frozen stuff around you? Stupid question, I know, but I have a feeling I'm not communicating something correctly. Yes, the plants get direct sun for at least 6-8 hours a day (I need to be a little more scientific about it), but it's been a cold spring - it's been in the 50's all this last week with a high of 63 projected for the next week. On the few hot days we have had, the plants have practically grown before my eyes, but they don't grow much during these chilly times. So. . .I can put in a stake without messing up their little root systems? Thanks, Christopher

Well you are right that it did need some fertilizer since you can't grow in pots without some supplemental fertilizers. Just not so much. :) While it does show a great deal of nitrogen burn on the leaves in the photos it can recover as you can easily flush a lot of the excess fertilizer out of the container with plain water. You'll lose a lot of the severely damaged leaves but you should see some new growth in 7-10 days and hopefully get some fruit from your second bloom period (the first blooms will mostly be dropped). So i'd recommend 1 good flushing of water until it runs out the bottom of the pot. Then normal watering as needed for the next 2 weeks and no more fertilizer until after new leaf growth begins to develop well. Then dilute the MG and use it once every 7-10 days max. How much you need to dilute it depends on size of the container and, since MG comes in several different rated formulations, the N-P-K rating on your box? 1/4 strength is safe and you might get away with 1/2 strength depending on which product you have. The instructions on the box apply to in-ground plants, not containers. Hope this helps. Dave