Poinsettias, America’s most popular potted flowering plant, are revered holiday guests. They produce a festive show during their annual visit, then pass on to that Great Heavenly Garden shortly after New Year’s Day.
The descent on nurseries, florist shops, supermarkets and box stores in search of poinsettias begins around Thanksgiving. Poinsettia mania breaks out and so begins the challenge of keeping them alive and beautiful for 4–8 weeks.
About 70 million are sold each year during the holiday season. Why are we infatuated with poinsettias?
Challenging weather patterns amplified the wailing and woes heard during my UC Master Gardener stints at the California State Fair and Harvest Day at the Fair Oaks Horticulture Center.
Ailing perennials, struggling annuals, disappointing veggie yields and low morale affected many Sacramento gardeners this summer.
Among the most common lament was, “What’s wrong with my tomatoes?”
I can relate. This was the first year my annual planting of the heirloom tomato Cherokee Purple didn’t produce a single tomato. Each morning, I inspected the plant with hopes of discovering a tiny green orb.
Abandoned last fall when its blueberry bush was transplanted into a more spacious container, the pot needed new tenants. Life intervened, I gave it scant thought, and the pot sat empty and forgotten.
After much procrastination, the pot was reborn in spring with one of my favorite plant families: herbs. Tarragon, sage and thyme now thrive in that old pot.
Every gardener should welcome herbs. Lavender and rosemary are not uncommon in Sacramento gardens. I grow four different lavenders and both upright and trailing varieties of rosemary.
Brown Thumb Mama is a mother of two, garden writer and corporate world escapee who wields her superpowers from a suburban Sacramento home.
With her Brown Thumb Mama website (brownthumbmama.com), weekly newsletter, social media sites, videos and TV appearances, Pam Farley recently exceeded a website milestone—more than 1 million annual readers.
Water Wise ‘Stress lawns, save trees’ in today’s drought By Dan Vierria July 2022 Welcome to the third year of extreme drought. As survivors of water restrictions and veterans of nurturing landscapes through heat, smoke and ash, we get rewarded with an extra serving...
Psst. Want to know a secret? Snuggled between J Street and a parking garage is the University Arboretum and Botanic Garden. Yup, a petite parcel of trees, shrubs and herbaceous perennials on the Sacramento State campus.
Easy to miss, the arboretum is a surprisingly tranquil retreat from modern mayhem. The Sacramento Tree Foundation, which awarded the arboretum its “Legacy Award,” says schoolchildren call it the “Forest in the City.”
