~Written by Nan Sterman

This past October, I had the great fortune of spending a week in Tuscany. Many mornings I wandered through the countryside, breathing in the cool air, marveling at the orange and vermillion grape leaves, and admiring the centuries-old kitchen gardens. In Tuscany, people don’t grow gardens the way we think of gardens. While I saw potted geranium on windowsills and containers of succulents on door stoops, Italian gardening means growing things to eat. Grapes and olives line the hillsides, of course, while behind every home, there is a patch of robust tomatoes, shiny green peppers, pungent basil, and fountainy gray-leaved artichokes.

We grow all those delicious edibles here as well. The weather is too cool now to plant summer ripening annuals like peppers, basil, and tomatoes. But these mid-winter months are the perfect time to plant grapes, artichokes, and many other edibles that nurseries offer as “bare root.”

What is bare root? Bare roots are young, deciduous trees, perennials, vines and shrubs that wholesale growers dig out of the fields once the plants drop all their leaves in winter. Growers wash the soil from the roots then ship the naked, sleeping plants to your neighborhood nursery.

You’ll be surprised at the huge variety of edibles that are sold bare root. There are twiggy saplings of peach and nectarine, along with their relatives such as pluots, plums, and apricots. The pome triplets: apple, quince, and pear are there, as are the stick-like fig trees and pomegranates. You’ll find stringy grape vines (table, juice, raisin, and wine), cane vines such as raspberries and blackberries, shrubby blueberries, and round-leaved strawberry plants. Rhubarb and asparagus roots, seed potatoes, and onion sets complete the menu.
Since January is when nurseries receive their bare root shipments, shop now for the best selection. That said, try to buy bare root plants the day before or the day you plan to plant. Without soil to keep roots moist, bare roots can dry out in a snap, killing or severely damaging young plants.

If you can’t plant right away, bury roots temporarily in pots of damp sawdust, fine mulch or construction sand (not playground sand). Be sure the pots are large enough that you don’t have to bend plant roots to fit. Once roots are covered, place pots in a shady, cool location.

To plant bare roots, soak the roots in a tub of water for several hours first. Strawberries, rhubarb, and asparagus roots prefer rich, well-amended soils. Rather than amending each planting hole, create raised planting beds or broad mounds of amended soil. Try a mix of Black Gold® Garden Compost or Black Gold Compressed Planting Mix combined 50/50 with native soil.

Do the same for woody fruiting plants, except figs, pomegranates, and grapes. These Middle-eastern natives, along with artichokes, do best in lean soils.

While roots soak, dig planting holes slightly deeper and about twice as wide as the root mass. Toss in a few handfuls of earthworm castings to jumpstart the beneficial microbes and some Black Gold® Starter and Transplant. Organic products like these promote healthy plants by releasing their nutrients slowly as roots develop.

Set the roots in the hole and refill, taking care not to bury the crown (where the roots meet the stem). Firm the soil in place, dig a watering moat, then fill it gently with water. Let it drain, then water again so the soil saturates down past the roots.

Congratulations, you will soon be enjoying the fruits – literally – of your labor!

About Nan Sterman

I am delighted to be contributing to Sungro’s website! Writing about plants and gardens, talking about them, teaching about them, creating gardens are my absolutely most favorite things to do. Fortunately for me, that’s my profession!

I grew up gardening. Among my earliest memories is the sweet scent of sweet pea flowers that surrounded my childhood home in Los Angeles. Equally memorable was the musty tomato forest my grandfather planted each spring behind the garage. As a college student in the 1970s, I was in the first wave of the sustainability movement that arose from the birth of Earthday. That was the first world-wide wake-up call about the limits of our natural resources.

Outdoors, I was in charge of the edible landscape, the vegetable garden, the chickens, rabbits, and compost. Many lessons from those days became permanent features in my life. I’ve made a vegetable garden in every place I’ve lived. I composting and recycle everything. I am notoriously frugal when it comes to using energy and even more so about water. In fact, my specialty is low water gardens, but I’ll get to that in a moment.

After my botany degree, I earned a Masters in marine biology at UC Santa Barbara and another in educational design at San Diego State University. For a decade I worked as an education and training consultant for companies like Union Bank and Century 21 Real Estate and organizations like the San Diego Zoo and Scripps Aquarium. In the early dot.com years, I designed educational software.

When I started testing the first generation of garden design software, the editor of National Gardening Magazine (yes, it was a magazine once) invited me to write up my findings. Soon, I was garden editor of San Diego Home/Garden Lifestyles Magazine. It was the end of one career and the beginning of the next. Today, I write for Sunset, the Los Angeles Times, San Diego Union Tribune, Organic Gardening, and etc.

My first solo book, California Gardener’s Guide vII was published in 2007 and in early 2010, Waterwise Plants for Southwest Gardens will be released. I have a TV show called A Growing Passion and am a regular guest on the morning talk show on San Diego’s Public Radio station. I speak, teach, and lecture to garden clubs and at garden shows from Albuquerque to Seattle, though most of my work is in Southern California. At the same time, I consult with water districts, public agencies, and the Water Conservation Garden at Cuyamaca College in southeast San Diego County.

While many people promote low water gardening as a way to save water, I take a broader perspective. Low water plants are sustainable plants. Why? In addition to being low water, they need little if any fertilizers and have few pests so they don’t need to be sprayed or treated. Because they grow slowly, they seldom need pruning. Therefore, they contribute very little to the mountains of yard waste that are trucked and processed with fossil fuels while releasing greenhouse gasses into the atmosphere. How much “greener” can you get?

Somewhere along the way, I started designing gardens. I love to dig in other people’s dirt! My own garden is “slightly controlled chaos.” My 2/3-acre property includes beds of gorgeous perennials, shrubs, trees, and succulents, all adapted to growing with little water. I have a large vegetable garden, more than 20 fruiting trees and shrubs, an herb garden (couldn’t live without fresh herbs!) a brand new meadow, and a corner devoted entirely to California natives.

My goal with this column is to write about things that interest you. Please, email me your questions, comments, and photos of your garden. Let’s see what we can discover about gardening, together!

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