Five things to do in the garden this week.
Fruits. In Southern California, you can grow mango trees anywhere except where it freezes, and even where it might freeze occasionally. I once saw an orchard of mango trees in Granada Hills, so anywhere south, east, or west of there should support mango growth. You can grow quality mangoes from the seeds of grocery-store fruit but it will take seven years for your seedlings to produce a crop. The mango is the most popular fruit from India to the Philippines. In the tropics, a mango tree can grow to a height and spread of 100 feet, produce thousands of fruit each year, and live for several centuries. In Southern California, however, mature mango trees may not grow taller than large shrubs due to our low rainfall and humidity and cold temperatures, especially at night, as compared to the prevailing climatic conditions in the tropics.
Vegetables. When growing zucchini squash, also known as courgettes, there is a temptation to just let them grow since they can reach gargantuan proportions; the largest zucchini on record eclipsed eight feet in length. However, zucchinis lose their flavor and tenderness with an increase in size. The most flavorful zucchinis are only three to four inches long. Another bonus of harvesting smaller fruit is that your plant will keep flowering and fruiting throughout the summer. Zucchini bread is a popular summer treat that consists of baking your favorite bread after grated zucchini, brown sugar, and cinnamon — together with chocolate chips, if you like — have been mixed into the dough.
Herbs. Drought-tolerant herbs include common culinary sage, thyme, marjoram, rosemary, and lavender. Those that will demand regular water include basil, parsley, and cilantro. In the case of basil and parsley, removal of flowers will promote the leafy growth for which they were planted. Cilantro, on the other hand, will bolt or go to seed as the weather warms, and there is not much you can do to stall this process. The bonus with cilantro is that the seeds it drops will reliably sprout in place, and parsley will sometimes do the same. Rosemary, meanwhile, is as drought-tolerant as any California native woody perennial — and then some.
Flowers. There are wide, tantalizing varieties of hollyhock (Alcea rosea), an old garden favorite. Flowers are seen in every color except blue and may have frilled or saw-toothed margins and multiple layers of blooms so that they resemble roses, carnations, geraniums, dianthus, or — in the case of the Chaters Double-Red variety — peonies, and may be six inches across. All varieties drop seeds that germinate in place, so that, once planted, you will have them in your garden forever. Most varieties grow five or six feet tall, some reach eight feet, but varieties less than four feet tall at maturity are also available.
Pest Control. I received an e-mail regarding non-lethal remedies for gopher control. The only proven practice in this regard is exclusion. This means burying hardware cloth, otherwise known as galvanized mesh, ½ inch size, around your beds. The mesh should be two feet deep with an “L” base, one foot in length at the bottom, bent outwards horizontally, to prevent tunneling. The only other way to keep them out is by building raised beds, meaning constructing a frame two or three feet tall in which you deposit your soil. Gophers cannot tunnel upwards.