August marks the beginning of the season for planting California natives and other low water-use plants. Yamagami's has just received a bevy of bloomers for the low water-use garden. The following three choices are frost-hardy, drought-hardy and easy to maintain.

A real garden pleaser is the snapdragon cousin, Monkey Flower (Mimulus bifidus) with attractive foliage and showy flowers in colors ranging from creamy to yellow to orange. A tidy plant, it grows to about 2 feet wide and tall. It enjoys sun to part shade and prefers good drainage.

'Cedros Island' verbena (Verbena lilacina 'De la Mina') is a native of Baja California. It is a long-flowering, mounding perennial featuring lilac blossoms with a sweet heliotrope-like fragrance. It grows to about 3 feet tall and wide in full sun. It tolerates clay soil as long as it is not over-watered. This plant is a butterfly magnet!

'Elizabeth' bush anemone (Carpenteria californica) is a beautiful native shrub that adapts well to the home garden. Late spring into summer 'Elizabeth' offers clusters of fragrant white flowers about 2" across. 'Elizabeth' is more compact and dense than the species and grows to 5 to 6 feet tall in sun to part shade. Along with the monkey flower, 'Elizabeth' is a good candidate for planting under oaks in dry shade.

Many gardeners give up on their roses in the summer, believing they produce quality flowers only in the spring. Rose blossoms do tend to be smaller in the summer and the colors not quite as vivid, because the summer heat forces the blooms to open before blossom size and color pigment have completely developed. But given the proper care, combined with a few simple pruning techniques, roses will rebloom every six weeks until the first frost.

There are two ways to prune roses during the growing season, and both will encourage new blooms to set. Most roses have leaflets (with three to seven leaves) every couple of inches along the stems. In order to produce blooms you need to prune down to at least just above the second five-leafed leaflet. (Pruning just above will eliminate nasty dead stems called "coat hangers.")

If you also want to prune for size control, you can go as far down as two leaflets above the previous cut. Pruning beyond the previous cut tells the rose you don't want it to bloom. Remember that hybrid tea and grandiflora rose stems tend to grow at least 18 inches after each pruning before blooming, so if you prune only the minimum amount you will have a very tall (and possibly leggy) rose by the end of summer.

Because roses are constantly growing, they are in constant need of food. Lorena, Yamagami's Rose expert, recommends Dr. Earth Rose and Flower Food every other month and a once-monthly foliar application of Maxsea Plant Food (16-16-16). Add a fresh layer of mulch and roses will continue to provide loads of blooms for you.

Teresa Lee, Jery Rosas and Patty Guzman have joined the Yamagami's team.

All three are bright and friendly cashiers. Be sure to welcome them on your next visit!

Loyal reader, Cathy Root, sent us this picture of her tomato plant in a Topsy Turvy hanging pot.

If you lack garden space, you can still grow your own!

Despite the lack of long hot summer days, The Great Kamuela is getting huge rapidly.

Godfather Alan is carefully tending him and has jumped right on the very beginning of a powdery mildew attack. He recommends using Serenade, an all-organic disease control that worked wonderfully for him last year. Alan suggests checking your own vines at home, as this disease spreads rapidly once it starts. All squashes, cucumbers, gourds and pumpkins are susceptible.

We'd love to see pictures of your pumpkin patch. Send them to infocenter@YamagamisNursery.com and let us know if we can share them.

Our long wet winter and short cool summer have conspired against local tomato crops. Customers keep coming in wondering why their tomatoes aren't ripening. It is just the lack of heat slowing them down. Unless things change, we'll be looking at recipes for fried green tomatoes, pickled green tomatoes and green tomato relish this fall.

We are also seeing a lot of blossom end rot (see image), especially on paste tomatoes (which are more susceptible). In our calcium-rich soil this is nearly always linked to over-watering. Tomatoes have needed watering less frequently because of the cool weather. Another symptom of over-watering is the curling of leaves upward (see image).

NOTE: Over-watering creates a vicious cycle of water addiction. Shallow watering stimulates weaker surface roots, which heat up (when there is heat), then don't send water efficiently to the top. The result is wilting, which causes many to go out and water even more frequently – a vicious cycle. Generally, for tomatoes in our clay soil, we recommend deep watering every 7 to 10 days. This year that recommendation can be stretched to every 2 weeks in heavy clay soil. The problem is, if you have watered frequently, you can't just quit "cold turkey." You need to gradually increase the time between waterings to encourage growth of deeper roots.

Another tomato woe is the tomato russet mite. This pest causes yellowing, then bronzing of the foliage and stems from the bottom of the plant up (see image). One way to check for this pest is to compare the stem color from the lower part of the plant to that of the new growth. If the new growth is a bright green and the lower growth bronzed in appearance, chances are the mite is there. We offer controls for it: Bonide Sulfur Dust (recommended by UC Davis IPM) or Green Light Neem.

Bring samples of any other tomato woes to the Info Center for diagnosis. Let our Nursery Pros help you succeed with your tomato harvest. If you are pulling out plants that haven't performed, there is still time to plant some cool season varieties for fall harvests.

September 17, 2010
St. Mary’s Event Center, SF
8 AM to 5 PM

Landscapers and Master Gardeners, register now for this day of workshops devoted to water conservation and sustainable landscaping. The keynote speaker is Brad Lancaster, author of Rainwater Harvesting for Drylands and Beyond. Bob Perry, author of the gorgeous new Landscape Plants for California Gardens, will be among the other featured speakers.

For complete details visit: www.bayfriendlycoalition.org/2010Conference.shtml