–Nan Sterman From Anza Borrego Desert to the beaches at La Jolla, this is San Diego County’s garden tour season. This time of year, gardeners open their gates and invite the public in to enjoy the fruits (sometimes literally) of their labors. If you love seeing what’s behi

March in the Garden Get Ready for Spring — Nan Sterman March is such a busy month for gardeners. There’s so much to see, so much to learn, and so much to do. Where to begin? Here’s my list for getting your garden ready for the months ahead. Edibles Start your home ve

— Nan Sterman With tomatoes ripening now, it’s a great time to taste test the many different types, learn their best uses, and  decide which to grow next summer. Here’s a tutorial. Tomato types Slicing (Beefsteak) tomatoes produce very large, often crenulated fruits,

  — Nan Sterman (Continued from last week’s blog) How to attract pollinators to your garden Water, habitat and food are the basics for attracting pollinators into your garden. Water Offer pollinators a constant drip or a shallow dish of water or water in a birdbath. A

— Nan Sterman Sex is complicated in the plant world. Flowers have male and female parts; some have both, some have one or the other. A male flower part is called a “stamen,” that’s where the pollen is. Pollen is the plant world equivalent of sperm. The female flower part is call

— Nan Sterman   Visit a beautiful waterwise garden and you’ll notice the amazing colors and textures, fabulous structures and gorgeous flowers. Birds and bees and butterflies flit through the garden. Lizards scurry about. Each garden is an oasis all of its own, as you’ll se

— Nan Sterman It’s emerald green. It’s soft underfoot. It smells great when it’s cut. It’s fun to play on. There are many reasons to like grass, but there are also reasons not to have a lawn in your garden. How grass lawns got here Lawns are new to California. They arrived durin

— Nan Sterman How often a gardener sends me a photo, asking me if the bug in the picture is a “good bug” or a “bad bug.” Most people assume  every bug is bad but the truth is, most of the insects in our gardens are “good,” or at least, they aren’t “bad.” In my garden, this is an

— Nan Sterman Take a deep breath in the garden. What do you smell? If you grow citrus, chances are you’re smelling one of the headiest, most intoxicating fragrances imaginable. This is the time of year when backyard citrus erupt in small, fragrant white flowers that will become

— by Nan Sterman Week before last, Southern Californians had our first taste of El Niño rains; four inches in three days – nearly half the rainfall we normally see in a year. Fortunately, we prepared ahead of time at our house. We had the plumber out to clear in-ground dra