The Winter Garden

Taken today. Orange blossoms getting ready to bloom. This is a navel orange that usually has fruit by now, but the fruit didn't set last year. So we shall see.















This is the garden in the winter. We have a long growing season here, but we still have times when the days are too cold and too short for plants to grow very well. We have a wild flower in the back of this front bed that is quite determined to flower, along with a yellow tomato and eggplant that haven't given up either. Tomatoes go in the bed to the left - it's lying "fallow" right now, as the farmers say. Tomatoes can't be planted until the danger of frost is well behind us--they need lots of sunlight and warmth to do well.

The apricot tree has lost most, but not all, of its leaves. I'm not sure what role, if any, climate change is playing in my garden today. It seems to me the apricot tree should not have any leaves at all at this point. Here's the climate data for this part of the San Fernando Valley, which tells you about growing season (the time between last frost and first frost), and average temperatures and precipitation for the area. That helps us figure out which varieties of plants will grow well here and which will not.

 http://www.plantmaps.com/91605