Hayward here (though now we're retired we spend a lot of time in Baja - no veggies there - just cactus!) First year garden at this location. I was late getting started because I had to till, bring in soil amendments, till, bring in sand and till some more - still not totally happy with the soil, but ran out of patience. First seedlings didn't get planted out until May 10th - but I ate my first squash yesterday (had to borrow a male flower from my neighbor to pollinate it)and will have bush beans and beet tops within a week. Tomatoes (17 varieties, 22 plants)are full of blossoms and seem to be setting fruit, as are the various cukes, peppers and eggplants. Snap peas are flowering, as are the potatoes (will pinch them off tomorrow), green onions are over a foot tall and Elephant garlic is similar. Have various lettuces growing in a Flowerhouse Seedhouse, along with some Chinese Cabbage. Multiple melons, mostly musk type, went in the ground today. Gonna try to train the little devils to climb - the cukes caught on quite quickly. Winter squash (Dumpling, Delicata, Spaghetti & Butternut) goes in tomorrow. So far the only 'dud' was the English Peas, they went in right before the 3 day heatwave last month and got crisped - got about 3 peas off each vine and they never got above 6 inches tall. Of course, since then we have had no heat at all and cold winds every day (which is why the melons only just graduated from the Seedhouse). From here on, it's just a daily battle between me and the multitude of bugs that want to beat me to the harvest and I am determined they will not win!

kawaiineko, you might also want to look at Plant Maps' Heat Zone map for California, which shows how many days per year are likely to be above 86 degrees: http://www.plantmaps.com/interactive-california-heat-zones-map.php When I was 12, we moved from Fremont to Menlo Park -- from about 4 miles east of the Bay to about 5 miles west of the Bay, and a total distance of about 14 miles -- and couldn't understand why the summer was so hot in Menlo Park. Now I see that we moved from Zone 1 (averaging no more than 1 day above 86* per year) to zone 5 (averaging between 31 and 45 days above 86* per year)! [You can also put in a zip code for somewhere in a different state and see a Heat Zone map for that state. Note the list of Plant Maps' other maps with different information in the right hand margin.] I'm under the impression that these Heat Zone maps are simply a non-copyrighted version of the American Horticultural Society's Plant Heat Zone Map, which is illegible online, but they will happily sell you a legible printed map. I assume both groups generated the maps from non-copyrighted government info. === USDA's Plant Hardiness Zone shows the average low temperature (within a 5* F. range) -- and that's all it indicates. USDA zone info is really only good for knowing what plants should survive winter cold. For instance, both San Francisco much of middle Florida are both 9b. 9b in San Francisco means mild summer weather (my dad swore June was the coldest month of the year and frequently took his coat to work), foggy, and extremely changeable. It's difficult to ripen tomatoes because sunlight and heat are both sometimes inadequate. 9b in Florida, on the other hand, is horribly hot and humid and includes some of the best commercial tomato-growing areas in the state -- but you can't really grow tomatoes outdoors in the summer in Florida, because it's too hot for successful pollination and fruitset, and the plant itself is overly stressed. http://planthardiness.ars.usda.gov/PHZMWeb/ === Sunset's system actually covers the entire U.S., not simply California. It gives a more detailed description of the type of weather year round -- but the degree of detail it gives varies from place to place. For some places it sounds very helpful. But when I look at the map, my zone 36 includes pretty much the entire Appalachian region between southern Pennsylvania and about 30 miles north of Atlanta (an area extending more than 400 miles). "Growing season: May to late Oct. Thanks to greater elevation, summers are cooler and less humid, winters colder (0 degrees to -20 degrees F/-18 degrees to -29 degrees C) than in adjacent, lower zones. Rain comes all year (heaviest in spring). Late frosts are common." It may be accurate, but it's too general -- and it won't tell you whether your new plants will freeze or not! http://www.sunset.com/garden/climate-zones/

Stan, Don't believe everything you see on television, especially with regard to average winter temps in Capetown and the Cape of Good Hope. They can and do get some frost there occasionally, as they have varied microclimates due to elevation and topography. wind is also much more a factor there, and weather is very inconsistent on a day to day basis as they do get cold fronts off the Antarctic as well as the Atlantic. From my observations of what is growing well in Capetown, I would say the climate is most similar to San Diego in general, but with more winter rains, and 80F is not a typical long term average daily high in winter there. I visited over a 6 week period in the Western Cape in August/September, and the weather was very much like what we get here in the SF Bay Area in mid to late spring. You needed a jacket on many days, there was typically driving windy days alternating with warmer ones, and there was snow on the mountains in back of Capetown above 5000 foot elevation, although it didn't last for more than a week at a time. Even the subtropical parts of coastal eastern South Africa can also get the occasional frost, and has, so don't believe that it never gets down to freezing along the coast from perhaps Port Elizabeth west to Capetown. As you get to Durban and points east/north, it is distinctly subtropical with no frost, unless you get inland and up into the mountains. Not really safe to generalize about South Africa unless you live there or look up the climate records... And Capetown does get their local equivalent of Santa Ana winds which result from compressed, heated air descending from the interior mountainous plateau when they get offshore wind conditions. The hot drying winds or the cold onshore winds can be really hard on gardens in Capetown, and large leafed tropicals that need lots of water fair poorly there in such events, and water is costly to provide.

I'm not finding the thread now where I wondered whether I should prune a particular branch on my 18-month-old Alphonso mango or not, just as a flush of growth was winding down during the summer--but I did prune it. I had pruned the rest of the tree awhile earlier and it was growing like crazy, a little too much so in this one spot--it was just one solitary branch going almost to the ground. And then it just sat there looking stumped. In October (!) the tree finally responded to that pruning with a flush of tender new growth, there and in one other random spot; slower than summer, but still, five new branches, and now there's budding. So cool. (Is it normal for it to be budding in November?) But why I most wanted to come back was to thank Stanofh for his help. For the advice that my Alphonso mango needed to be kept warmer than I'd been doing in order for it to bloom. This is a warmer fall than last year's, which helps, but I've been putting my two frost cover layers over the tree right at sundown rather than waiting for the temps to get down into the fifties--what I'd read previously was that it just had to stay above 40 for the inflorescence and that cold prompts it to start budding. That appears to have been incomplete information at best. And I reset the temp control attached to the incandescent Christmas lights to click on sooner. I went looking again for a book, any book, on how to grow them and found one by Lee Reich that had a short entry on mangoes. He said they have to stay above 55 consistently to flower. Which is pretty much what Stanofh had said. So I guess there's cold and there's its idea of what cold is supposed to mean. Stanofh, when I taste my first homegrown mango I will be thanking you for it.