Forget your Valentine?

Forget your Valentine? Today is the day!
But does your Jolly Green Goddess have a solution to rescue you!
Cut flowers usually do the trick, but how about a blooming plant that will continue to bring joy to your special person? How about a plant for your mother or father or other relative, or just for a friend who could use some cheer?
Of course roses are traditional, partially fostered by the rose growers, but daffodils also bring bright yellow happiness.
Sonoma Mission Gardens (SMI) manager Lydia Constantini suggests daphne shrubs, “so sweet, yet so soft,” and great for a window box or near an outside door – to waft fragrance in with guests. And then there are azaleas and other flowering potted plants – great for planting or ornamental decoration.
Constantini also writes that SMI’s bare root fruit and ornamental trees, shrubs and roses are in and available – in many varieties.
The Sonoma Ecology Center presents a great hands-on “Introduction to Grafting” class at Sonoma Garden Park, at the ranch of the late Pauline Bond, on Saturday, Feb. 9, at 1 p.m.
Instructor Tommy Perot will show how and why grafting works, demonstrate grafting techniques, and explain when to graft. Attendees will even get to practice their new skills and take home new “scions” for use on existing fruit trees, if you want to.
Perot, a Sonoma Valley High School freshman, has been studying exotic and rare fruit growing for five years and is a member of the California Rare Fruit Growers Association. It’s worth going just to experience this young man’s enthusiasm and brilliance. $15-$20 (sliding scale) benefits Sonoma Garden Park, 19990 Seventh St. E., Sonoma. Call 707.996.0712, ext. 120 or email [email protected] for more information and registration.
Sonoma Garden Park will sponsor an interesting seminar called “Greenhouse Propagation for Vegetables” on Saturday, Feb. 23, presented by Paul Wirtz, a farmer at Oak Hill Farm, at his own farm on Arnold Drive across from Brocco’s Old Barn. Again the fee is $15-$20 (no one turned away), with proceeds benefiting Sonoma Garden Park. Call or email the same as above for reservations.
Occidental Arts & Ecology Center will lead a “Permaculture Site Tour” on Saturday, Feb. 23, 10 a.m.-1 p.m. According to OAEC, “Permaculture is a philosophy of living based on sustainable land use concepts and practices. Participants will be introduced to OAEC’s organic and bio-intensive gardens and heirloom seed saving program, their watershed and wildland restoration work, and natural building methods.” Brock Dolman will lead the tour. $10 suggested. Bring a water bottle and sturdy shoes and appropriate gear for the weather. For more information call 707.874.1557, ext. 201.
OAEC also has an experienced nursery worker position open if anyone holds a passionate interest in organic and sustainable growing and gardening. The job is an “hourly, non-residential work opportunity.”
The position “involves picking out thousands of seedlings into pots and six-packs, primarily tomatoes, peppers, basil and eggplant. Most of the work takes place at Santa Rosa Junior College’s Shone Farm facility in Forestville” where OAEC rents space. For more information call Doug Gosling at 707.874.1557, ext. 205.
In the garden:
Here we are in another weird year when so far, thankfully, we have more than average rain, scattered among sunny days and cold nights. Hence, my front-planter daffodils, which have their own microclimate, have almost finished blooming, while primroses have nearly reached a foot high, dark pink and red camellias in protected exposures have started to bloom, and geraniums are acting as if it’s spring. Oh, to be a plant in times like this in a paradise like Sonoma Valley!
There are a few things to do in the garden between rain spells. It’s time to purchase summer-blooming bulbs such as dahlias, gladiolus, tuberoses and lilies, and both Wedekind’s Garden Center and Sonoma Mission Gardens are well stocked in all of these.
Check out bare root fruit trees. This is the perfect time to plant them so that all the plant’s energy can go to developing the root systems underground since it’s not making leaves, blossoms and fruit during winter. If you want to replace a tree or plant a new one, consider one that makes fruit, also known as food.
You can still get some bare root roses, which means they are much less expensive now than when they start to bud out in a few weeks. Go for it!
If you already have roses, be sure to prune them if you haven’t already. Keep tweaking them, pinching off any leaf buds that point toward the center of the plant, or re-snip the branch to an outward-pointing bud. Nurseries advise spraying roses now to control insects such as aphids, mites and scale, although I don’t. As I have said before, I follow directions from our late Master Nurseryman Frank Wedekind who always said, “water is the best spray.”
Got lemons? If you can’t use them all, give them to a friend, to F.I.S.H. (Friends in Sonoma Helping) or Meals on Wheels.

“In fine weather the old gentleman is almost constantly in the garden; and when it is too wet to go into it, he will look out the window at it, by the hour together. He has always something to do there, and you will see him digging, and sweeping, and cutting, and planting, with manifest delight.” – Charles Dickens (1812-1870) from “Sketches by Boz.”

Get down! Get dirty!