< The Latest 2025-05-30T14:07:13+0000
The Pasadena Star-News | Fri 05/30 07:06am PST | Joshua Siskin
Five things to do in the garden this week:
Fruit. Growing a papaya tree is a simple matter. If you plant papaya seeds now from store-bought fruit, you will probably see a crop within a year. Papaya trees die in a frost, but they may be grown successfully from Granada Hills to San Bernardino and everywhere south of the line between those two points. After removing the aril (fluid bubble) around the seeds, allow them to dry out, and then immediately plant them barely beneath the soil surface. The recommended planting procedure is to sow seeds where you want your trees to grow, since they resist transplanting from containers. Plants are male, female, or hermaphrodite, but you will not know what you have until they flower. Male flowers are produced on long flower stalks, with multiple flowers per stalk, whereas female flowers are produced individually close to the trunk. You will need only one male to pollinate ten female trees. If your tree is a hermaphrodite, it may pollinate itself, although the fruit it produces will be smaller than that on female trees.
Vegetables. Plant tomato seedlings deep so that the bottom leaves are just above the soil line; roots will sprout from the buried stem and give the plant a wider network of roots for absorbing water and minerals. Give your plants room to grow. Five feet between plants is the recommended distance. Mulch is an absolute necessity when it comes to growing tomatoes. Many tomato problems, especially when a crop is disfigured, cracked, or infected by fungus, may be traced to irregular soil moisture. Mulch keeps soil evenly moist and roots cool, allowing you to increase the intervals between irrigations. “The Heirloom Tomato: From Garden to Table,” by Amy Goldman, is a must-read for the tomato connoisseur. The author mentions heirloom varieties so sweet you can eat them with ice cream. “Tomato” combines two Nuahatl words: “tom” means swollen or fat and “atl” means water, a reference to the plump appearance and juiciness of the crop.
Herbs. The most pleasant foliar fragrance my nose has ever encountered was that of cardamom (Elettaria cardamomum), a relative of ginger. It is spicily aromatic, a mixture of camphor, lemon, and mint. Cardamom grows as a two- to three-foot-tall ground cover for shady areas in frost-free zones. All gingers have stout rhizomes that allow them to spread so that you will soon have a considerable stand of them and can happily dig up pieces to give to friends. Tropical in origin, it does need regular water, and it will never flower here since our nighttime temperatures are not warm enough for that to happen. This lack of flowering capacity is true of other members of the ginger family, such as shell ginger (Alpinia zerumbet), a popular ornamental ground cover. You won’t mind that shell ginger’s variegated cultivar is without flowers because it has stunning gold and green foliage. Kahili ginger (Hedychium spp.) grows six feet tall and shows off fat, fragrant inflorescences up to a foot long. Culinary ginger (Zingiber officinale) may also be grown here and its live rhizomes may be found in most grocery stores.
Perennials. Mexican evening primrose (Oenoethera speciosa/berlandieri) is a well-known ground cover. Although it starts to flower in May, it blooms better the hotter it gets. Flowers are pink and goblet-shaped. This primrose is the ideal ground cover for out-of-the-way marginal areas where color is desired without excessive watering or maintenance. Keep in mind that all evening primroses disappear during the winter, only to re-emerge in the first warm days of spring. Although considered invasive by some, due to rapid growth facilitated by its rhizomes and self-sowing capacity, Mexican evening primrose serves admirably as a pink carpet under your Iceberg or other white roses. Its roots are shallow, so keeping it away from the base of roses and other staunch woody perennials is not a big deal. By the same token, it could quickly smother annuals or slow-growing perennials, so when grown in close proximity to such plants, it must be cut back frequently to be kept in bounds.
Dogs and cats in the garden: A reader recommended that I indicate whether plants discussed here are safe for dogs. Although lists of plants toxic and non-toxic to dogs exist, they are missing the point, in my humble opinion, since all plants are potentially toxic to pets. As the ASPCA notes on their website: “Be advised that the consumption of any plant material may cause vomiting and gastrointestinal upset for dogs and cats.” Moreover, even plants on the non-toxic list could be a problem for particular pets that happen to be allergic to them. Knowing that dogs and cats are carnivorous creatures, it makes sense that plant matter of any kind could create problems for them. So if you notice your cat or dog chewing on any part of any plant, it would be advisable to remove it before it can be swallowed.