Zone 10!?!?

Yes, fellow gardeners, I am now one of the few gardeners that actually lives in Zone 10!  And I have the added bonus of cool summers and salty fog.  And snails.  And slugs.  And gophers or moles or whatever they are that literally eat the plants right out of the ground.  My favorite story so far is this one.  I happened to glance out the window one evening and noticed one of the rose bushes in the front flower bed moving.  I went out to take a peek, and the poor rose bush was nibbled off to the ground.  One of the last branches was sticking out of a gopher hole and wiggling.  I gave it a yank and something yanked back.  After engaging in a bit of tug of war, I was left holding a 2 ft. long rose bush branch (with thorns!) with a big gnaw mark at the end.  Ack!

I'm thinking containers and lots of them!  There is gopher mesh under all the grass here, not that it really stops them.  They just come up where ever the gopher mesh ends and try to burrow down into the grass from the top.  And what exactly is gopher mesh?  Think small chicken wire that you put down under the dirt or grass.  There is a flowerbed that runs the length of the back fence that is all mine to play in, but there is no gopher mesh under it.  So, I have two choices.  I either dig the dirt out, put the mesh down, and put the dirt back, or I take myself to ACE Hardware and buy these nifty gopher mesh baskets that you line the hole you are planting in with.  And plant as much as I can in containers.  Also good, since this is a rental and I would like to take my plants with me when we move. 

So, here is what I have:

One long skinny backyard!

And from the other end!

See that raised bed along the back fence?  That is my spot to play!  It actually gets direct sunlight for most of the day, while the yard itself is shaded by the house.  It is currently home to a Wisteria, a huge pink rose bush, a lemon tree, and a very small, much munched upon rose bush that is absolutely gorgeous when it blooms.  The trees are a purple leaf, flowering plum.  Personally, I wouldn't have planted them there, but they are kind of pretty.  One end of the flower bed is full of gravel and junk, which my landlord says he plans to clean out and replace with new dirt in the spring, you know around December or January!  I kid you not, that is what he said! 

My currently plan is to plant something to grow up the ramshackle fence between us and our neighbors.  The sod doesn't go all the way to the fence so I plan to take that over too.  The landlords have been pretty cool about whatever I want to do.  I think as long as it improves the yard they are fine with it. 

There is a convenient hole between the Wisteria and the big rose bush that really needs an orange tree planted in it.  I plan to keep that in a pot so I can take it along and not fight the gophers for it.  I will just plop a nice big pot down right in the flowerbed and go from there.  I did a little research and an orange tree will do just fine in a pot. 

The two other things that I really want to grow are tomatoes and rhubarb.  I did some sleuthing tonight and found out that rhubarb will grow just fine here.  I guess it just doesn't die back in the winter?  Woohoo!  More rhubarb for me!  Burpee will ship that here if I can't find it locally.  The tomatoes will take a little more doing.  I had been told that you can't grow big tomatoes here since it doesn't get that warm in the summer.  Little tomatoes do just fine I guess, but the big ones don't ripen well.  I did some poking around and found out that you can grow tomatoes here, it just takes some special treatment and planning.  I have a great south facing deck on the front of the house that gets lots of sun which I am going to transform into a tomato paradise!  Planting them in containers will help the soil temperature and it gets a little toasty out there in the summer.  Plus there are certain varieties that do better than others.  I guess the early producing tomato plants do better in the cooler temperatures.  It will be a challenge, but I'm up for it if it means fresh tomatoes!

Tons of room for tomatoes on the left

I also have a nice stretch of concrete along the side of the house that gets quite a bit of sun too. 

Enough room for a row of pots along the house

It seems a bit odd to be thinking about all this stuff now, at the end of November, right?  Our last "frost" free date is Feb. 15 and you can grow stuff like lettuce and other cool weather crops year round here!  In the winter you do have to start seeds inside, but once they get going you can toss them outside and away they go!   I've never been very good at getting seeds started, but here they can go outside during the day and come in at night, so that should help. 

I guess you can say I am pretty excited to get started here.  In addition to all the veggies I plan to grow, there is a whole new realm of decorative plants to explore.  The yards here are amazing.  Mine is bare by comparison.  There is a nursery along Hwy 92 that I can't wait to go check out.  It is huge and has tons and tons of really cool plants.  I have been waiting for the traffic to relax a little on the week-ends so it doesn't take me forever to get over there.  After Christmas it is supposed to settle down.  It is insane in the fall because of all the pumpkin patches along the highway, then there is a huge Christmas farm once the pumpkins are done.  I'll make it over there eventually.  Happy gardening thoughts until then!