Anybody in Southern California? (flowers, growing, ficus, Ferns)

[JerZ]

I love to grow things and am finding a lot of challenges in figuring out the southeastern climate for growing them. I've had a lot of failures, but more and more successes. Anybody in SoCal want to compare notes and help each other out?

I grow:

Apples...there is an apple tree in my yard...it yields practically all by itself but I do a few things to encourage larger apples, etc.

Pumpkins...this has been SO SO hard for me. I have very limited space but the hardest part is timing things so they grow as late as possible, so as not to have to store them for as long...BUT it's so incredibly hot in the summer time. Thinking of starting my 'kins in April this year...last year I started in July and the crop was a failure.

Flowers...different things. I have a lilac bush that flowers beautifully, and some little long-season flowering plants. I also have decorative grasses in pots which grow really well since I think they're native to the area.

Tomatoes...these grew reasonably well for me last year.

Cucumbers...this will be a new one and I'll be starting it I think in March.

Green and hot peppers...my green peppers are germinating now and I'll be getting hot pepper seeds in the mail any day now.

Thanks and I hope someone responds!

[integrity_first]

I'm in the IE (Moreno Valley), and I'll be planting a vegetable garden within the next few weeks.

Looking at zuchinni, yellow squash, green/red/yellow bell pepper, cucumber, banana peppers, and egg plant.

Last March we had a freak hail storm that destroyed our entire garden, literally decimated every plant. We replanted, but had a horrible tomato harvest the entire year. Don't really know why.

Hoping for a better season this time around. Good luck with yours.

[hcgCali]

I've got apple, peach, plum, orange, lemon and avocado trees. Last year I grew tomatoes, bell peppers, zuchinni, yellow squash, green onions, eggplant and pots of parsley and mint. I agree about starting earlier. It just gets so durn hot here. Flowers: Dahlias, foxglove, delphinium, geraniums, impatiens and roses all do very well here. And lots of potted plants under the patio cover where it's cooler; ferns, orchids, pothos, ficus.

My community has a Backyard Produce Exchange the first Saturday of each month in the summertime, where you bring whatever you have too much of and take home whatever you want.

[JerZ]

integrity_first, I nixed my zucchini idea because I'm just plain running out of room! I have some of my others popping up just now in their little peat pots (cucumber; bell peppers so far) so they'll probably go into the ground next month. I don't remember that hail storm...unless it didn't reach my area...I'm in the San Gabriel Valley.

hcg, We were thinking of planting a second fruit tree. But we just don't have the room. It must be wonderful having all those fruit trees. Thank you so much for the advice on flowers. I think I'll take your advice and invest in a couple of those little "step" planters (do you know the kind I mean?) for my front porch in the shadier part.

[Alter]

I am pretty close to the coast. Fruit trees do well (orange, peach, lemon, plum, orange). I haven't seen apples in this area, I didn't think it got cold enough?
Tomatoes, beans, and any sort of pepper do great. For the life of me I can't get cucumbers to grow. Summer squash are OK but I don't want to give up the real estate.
For the most part things either seem to do so great that they want take over everything or they die, few are in between.
Do your tomatoes just up and quit around August? My plants die the same time every year no matter when I plant. It isn't temp related so I wonder what the trigger is?

[JerZ]

Alter, you're probably asking integrity_first, but I figured I'd chime in with my experiences. I didn't plant tomatoes until the end of the summer last year. I think it might have been early August. (These were approx. 2-foot tall plants at the time.) Even so it was so ungodly hot that it wouldn't bear fruit.

Finally it did flower and then make fruit, but they stayed green for a long time...lycopene is sensitive to temperatures and your maters won't redden up if it's over 85 degrees F. So mine turned red probably...hmmm...thinking here...end of Sept/beginning of Oct-ish, during "cooler" days.

I know you said your issue isn't temperature related, but I think it might be, and as far as the tomatoes are concerned, it's also a question of how "old" the plant is. If they've already borne fruit previously (if you planted in Feb/March/April-ish), they probably will just give up and die when it gets really hot. If it weren't for the extreme heat, they would probably hang on at least as plants (without fruit) for quite some time...in fact I had to dig mine out last December. They had stopped producing fruit but they were nowhere near dying or even starting to (except for isolated branches that were "all done" producing, which is normal), and by then, considering the age they were when I bought them, they had to have been about six months old.

Sorry for all that good news! LOL.

[hcgCali]

Alter, my apple tree is an Anna Apple. It does well in hot weather. I have a second one in a pot on the patio that I started from a seed. I don't know if it will ever produce, but it did flower last year, and looked really pretty.

Jerz, maybe you can find a dwarf tree that will fit your space. My orange is a dwarf and it's no taller than me.

[hcgCali]

Have any of you seen the wild parrots? I love when they come, because they chase off the crows.

[Twinkle Toes]

We have lemon and grapefruit trees. I have three parrots - just got done cleaning their cage. They get really excited at cage cleaning time and I tell them they act like "wild animals"!

[JerZ]

I haven't seen any parrots at all in the four years I've lived here. I'm weird but I like the crows! They're sort of mysterious.