• Group plants by water use: This allows you to spend valuable water (and the money it costs) only on the plants that really need it and helps prevent over-watering
• Amend the soil with compost: The more organic matter in the soil, the better it retains water.
• Mulch: Mulching helps prevent evaporation and keeps the soil cooler in hot weather.
• Choose your plants wisely: Don’t waste money and water on edibles that end up rotting on the vine. Plant only what you will harvest and eat or share. My tip: Consider choosing smaller, less heavy producers or fewer plants if you can’t keep up with the harvest on something you really love.
• And the last one for my fellow temperate climate gardeners: Take advantage of the rainy season by planting, for example, California spring veggies or bareroot trees in February so nature will do the watering for you for several months allowing your plants grow strong roots and first leaves.

In the addition to the great ideas she provides, she also brought a basket full of fruits, veggies, edible flowers and herbs she’d just collected or taken from storage including chard, salad greens, nasturtiums, oca, apples and Bolivian sun root (she even shared the last two). It’s amazing how much food even the smallest garden can provide year-round with the right choices, a little planning and some good storage. And if you live in the San Francisco Bay Area, pick up an updated copy of her amazing book. She has made significant revisions including new zone planting guides for San Jose/Santa Clara and Walnut Creek/Contra Costa and a ton more information on sustainable gardening practices.

In case you’re interested, the event was sponsored by the Ruth Bancroft Garden in Walnut Creek, CA — a gorgeous dry garden planted on 4.5 acres of a former walnut farm. Planted mostly with succulents, cacti and South American and Australian natives, the garden is stunningly architectural and features a number of endangered and seriously endangered plants including a bristlecone pine. The garden is now protected by a conservancy and serves as an educational institution as well. If you’re ever in the area, it’s definitely worth checking out.

1. Find inspiration: Spring’s fall seed and plant catalogs have already hit mailboxes and online catalogs have updated their websites. Not only will thumbing (or clicking) through their colorful pages chase away the winter day’s gray, it will give you a ton of great ideas for next seasons’ plantings.

2. Start a garden journal or inspiration file: If you don’t already have a place to jot ideas and store inspiring images, now is the perfect time to set one up. Whether you buy a journal designed just for gardeners, a spiral-bound notebook, an accordion file to stash torn-out catalog pages doesn’t matter. Use whatever works best for you.

3. Review last year: Now that you have a place to make notes, take a look at what worked — and what flopped — last year. Did your row of heirloom tomatoes have you swimming in more pasta sauce than you could ever give away? Has your prize apricot succumbed to fireblight? And what about that obscure variety of pumpkin that didn’t set a single fruit? Decide what stays and what goes.

4. Make a plan: Start with a list of all the plants you hope to grow, including any that may already be in the space (including perennials, shrubs, and trees). Next, graph it out using mature plant sizes to make sure you have the spacing right. It helps to do the diagram of the available space and any plants that need to stay put in pen (don’t forget containers), then pencil in the rest. That way you won’t have to redraw every time you want to change things up. There are also a number of garden-planning software programs that help take the guesswork out of design. Don’t forget to rotate what you plant where to avoid plant disease.

5. Place your orders: Make sure you don’t miss out on your favorites, especially if you are buying heirloom seeds which often sell out fast. Many plant catalogs offer great discounts, coupons, and other specials if you order early enough. Want to save even more? Talk to fellow gardeners about sharing seeds. They may even have saved seeds or cuttings they’d be willing to give or swap.

Still longing for a little green in your life? A few well-chosen indoor plants or start a kitchen garden with your kids.

Using language as rich as the gardens she describes, the author gives us a glimpse into the work and inspiration behind fifteen gardens that teach, nourish, unite, inspire and heal. From a memory garden designed to help Alzheimer’s caregivers reunite with their loved ones, to a juvenile detention center that uses gardening to help lost kids rebuild self esteem and learn practical skills, from a wetlands reclamation helmed by young students in the middle of a dessert to a lush family farm populated with food, family, livestock and art, you can’t help but be inspired by these giving gardeners and their stories.

For those who are inspired enough to learn and do more, she even provided a detailed resource list at the end of the book, including links to Will Allen’s Growing Power.

Ripe red raspberries are dark pink to deep red. Raspberries also come in a variety of other colors including black, purple, and yellow/gold. Color when ripe will depend on which type you plant.

To harvest, grip the berry very lightly with two fingers (they are easily crushed) and pull gently. If they are ready they will pretty much fall off in your hand. If they don’t, leave them for another day.

Although most raspberry bushes have thorns, I don’t recommend wearing gloves because the berries are so fragile. Long sleeves, however can help protect your arms from scratches.

Unlike blackberries, raspberries leave their hard, white center on the plant so all you get is rich, juicy sweetness.

It’s June and in Northern California, that means the start of raspberry season. The local berry farms have opened for picking and the stores are full of ripe, red beauties.

This past weekend I did my first ever raspberry picking from a friend’s raspberry patch. There are few things more sweetly satisfying than fresh berries straight from the vine. And the good news is, it isn’t that hard to grow your own. Check out the stats below to see if raspberries might be a good fit for your garden.

Common name: Raspberry
Scientific name: Rubus idaeus
Family: Rosaceae
Origin: Eurasia
Type: Shrub
Exposure: Full sun (may also fruit in light shade in hottest areas)
Height: 4-6′
Width: 3-5′
Growth rate: Fast
Water: Regular
Zones: 3-8
Foliage color: Green
Flower color: White
Edible: Berries
Harvest: Summer-bearing raspberries, throughout the summer; fall-bearing varieties, in fall and summer the following year — consider planting summer and fall-bearing varieties together to extend your season
Propagation: Greenwood cuttings, division
WARNING: Most raspberry bushes have thorns. Try a thornless variety for easier harvest.

A few other quick notes on raspberries:

• Raspberries do require room to spread, so they are probably not the best choice for small space container gardening.  (I did manage a thornless boysenberry in a pot once, but got very little fruit.)
• Raspberries do require annual pruning to maintain size and to ensure the most bountiful harvest. The timing and type of pruning varies for summer and fall-bearing varieties (more on that in a separate article).
• To keep bushes neat, minimize disease and make havesting easier, build a berry trellis.

Learn more about raspberries.

If you’re planting for a person:
- Plant their favorite fruit or vegetable; if you have the space, try a dwarf fruit tree which can give you decades of memories
- Make a mini-garden of ingredients from their favorite type of cuisine
- Plant their favorite flower
- Choose another flower or plant that has meaning — lilies for your Aunt Lily, a palm tree for the grandfather who loved the tropics, a World War II Memorial rose for a veteran of that war

If you’re remembering a special event, consider the following questions to help you decide what to plant:
- Were there flowers or other foliage used as backdrop or decoration? If so, you can plant one of those.
- Did the event take place in a special or unique location? Plant something either related to or from that place.
-Was there a special meal associated with the event? Plant an ingredient.

Whenever possible, try to plant evergreen or perennial plants. Unless you want to create an annual memorial planting tradition, you’ll want something that will come back year after year to keep the memories alive.

View it online.

Water

Check moisture levels daily, maybe even more often for container plants. When the mercury starts cruising up over 85… 95… 105 water evaporates in a flash. And when your plants are young, their tender root systems can be irreparably damaged before you know it.

Water first thing in the morning before the sun gets too high and the day gets too hot. This helps in two ways. First, plants draw up water through the roots as the temperature rises. If the soil is dry they will draw up only air. Secondly, any water dripped on the leaves can turn into tiny magnifying glasses burning the leaves with the sun’s heat.

Mulch

When it’s hot out, you’ll need to do more than water regularly, you’ll need to preserve as much of that water as you can. Adding a good, thick layer of mulch around your plants can help keep the moisture in the soil. As an added bonus it will also help keep your plants’ roots cool.

Shade

Sometimes, the only way to keep your plants from whithering under the sun, is to move them to the shade until the worst of the heat passes. If you plant in containers, all you need to do is pull them to a shadier spot. If you plant in the ground however, you can still protect them by putting up a temporary shade cloth. A few bamboo poles and an old sheet is an inexpensive and simple solution.

Keep a close eye out for the signs your plants might be suffering from the heat including wilting, brown edges and scorch marks. If you notice any of these signs, act quickly and your precious plants can live to fruit another day.

We used:

• Cement blocks (24)
• Half blocks (4)
• Cap stones (13)
• Sand (10 - 60 lb. bags)
• Rebar (30 - 24″ bars)
• Concrete adhesive

Tools:

• Level
• Rubber mallet
• Sledge hammer
• Stakes and string

Begin by deciding where you’d like to place your raised bed and how big you’d like it to be. Measure carefully then use those measurements to calculate how many blocks, half-blocks and cap-stones you will need. We used approximately 1 60 lb. bag of sand for every 3 blocks. Rebar should be at least 6″ longer than the height of your wall. The longer it is, the more sturdy it will be. Make sure there are no pipes or drains directly below where your wall will be so you don’t risk damaging them when you install the rebar.

Once you’ve done the math and picked up your supplies, you can get to work. First, clear away all weeds and debris. It also helps to loosen the soil approximately 6 inches below the surface. Once that’s done, level the bed — especially the area where you will be building your walls. The more level you can get it now, the quicker the wall building will go later.

If you are building your bed against a wall or fence, you will need to install some sort of water barrier to protect the structure from rot and/or pests (dirt against exposed wood is a termite’s dream). For easiest installation, use a water barrier with an adhesive on one side. It costs a little more, but the time savings and ease of installation are worth it.

If weeds are a problem in your garden-to-be, cover the bed with weed blocking fabric. Newspaper is another way to suppress weeds, but because it breaks down over time you may want to use something more permanent under the wall itself. If you are growing vegetables with deep root systems, leave the center of the bed free of weed block so the roots can pass freely. This is especially important for root vegetables.

Once the fabric is down, pour a layer of sand on top of it. This will make it easier to level the blocks as you install them. Install one block at a time working from one corner to another, leveling as you go. Tapping the blocks with a rubber mallet can help. For best results, tie a string between two stakes as a guide to keep the wall straight.

Fill holes in cement blocks with sand to help stabilize them. Insert rebar (rebar should be at least 6 inches longer than the height of your wall) into the outside corners of each hole along the side closest to where the dirt will be. This will help support the weight of the dirt and make sure the wall does get pushed outward over time.

Hammer rebar down into the blocks using a sledge or other heavy hammer. Note that the rebar may stop when it hits the weed cloth, but another hit or two should push it through. If that doesn’t work, you may have hit a rock. Reposition the rebar and try again. For maximum strength, make sure you always place the rebar along the side of the block that will be supporting the dirt.

Once the wall is complete, and the blocks are filled, wet the sand thoroughly. This will help the sand settle down into the blocks and stabilize the wall. When it dries, add cement cap-stones to the top the wall using a cement adhesive to keep them in place. Once the wall is complete, cement blocks can be painted or brushed with white-wash for a more professional (or more colorful) look.

Once your walls are finished, just add soil and plant. The number of blocks and quantity of other materials you’ll need will depend on the size and height of your bed and the materials you choose. Be sure to do the math ahead of time to avoid installation problems and multiple trips to the store.

Common name: Rhubarb
Scientific name: Rheum x hybridium
Family: Polygonaceae
Origin: Asia
Type: Perennial, can be grown as annuals in mild-winter areas
Exposure: Full sun (light shade in hottest areas)
Height: 24-36″
Width: 24-48″
Growth rate: Fast
Water: Regular
Zones: 3-8
Foliage color: Dark green
Flower color: Pink/burgundy
Edible: Stalks only
Harvest: Varies, usually late spring and early fall in North America
Propagation: Rhizomes, division
WARNING: ALL parts of the plant except the stalk are poisonous. Be sure to trim all leaf parts from the stalks before cooking.

Looking for fun ways to use all those rosy stalks? Check out these online recipes:

• Epicurious
• Food Network
• BakeSpace

Still can’t get enough? Try one of these rhubarb-focused cookbooks: