By Sharon Cohoon and Jim McCausland, Sunset Magazine

The two of us have been sharing our garden discoveries, observations, enthusiasms, and occasional peeves with you, our dear readers, via Fresh Dirt now for nearly four years. Johanna and Julie, too, on occasion. And we want you to know we appreciate your taking the time to check in and leave your comments.  Writing for you has been a delight. Since we can't thank you in person we want to extend our appreciation through this virtual bouquet.

If this sound like a goodbye, it is. This is the last post from Fresh Dirt. But something even better will take its place. Instead of having to click on several blogs to see what Sunset is up to re travel, food, home, and garden discoveries, you'll only have to come to one place, Westphoria, our multi-department blog celebrating all things Western. Fresh Dirt's pages will remain active for a couple of more months, after which the site will be taken down.

Westphoria will go live in early 2012. Please check sunset.com in the new year to find us!

By Jim McCausland, Sunset Magazine

Every year, the weekend after Thanksgiving, my wife and I set up our Christmas tree. The trick is to keep it fresh from Thanksgiving to Christmas, which is a week longer than what is usually recommended. Here's how we do it.

To make sure it's absolutely fresh, we cut our own tree at a local Christmas tree farm. In our area, cost is about the same as the price of a parking-lot tree. This year we chose a 'Friesenberg' noble fir (Abies procera). That variety was originally selected at Mt. St. Helens for form and color by Danish horticulturists.

As soon as we got it home we cut another 1/2 inch off the bottom of the trunk and set the tree in a stand that we filled with water. It's essential that the time between the last cut and contact with water is very brief—I shoot for five minutes, max—so the cut bottom won't develop a callus that interferes with water uptake.

Once the tree is in place the main job is watering, even with a large reservoir. For example, the water level in our stand dropped an inch in the first two hours after we set up our 'Friesenberg'. We simply have to keep topping it off every few hours for the first few days (and the first couple of nights) after bringing it home. Then water uptake naturally slows down. Attentive hydration is your best protection against a Christmas tree fire—a frighteningly fast and fearsome thing. If the water supply drops below the bottom of the trunk even once, the cut surface will callus, and the only remedy is taking the tree out, recutting the bottom, and putting in back in place. Do that once when ornaments are in place and you'll never miss a watering again.

Not all trees suck up water at the same rate. Ask somebody who knows trees before you cut. Grand firs are the most thirsty, but the most fragrant trees as well. And, like Douglas firs, grand firs are very often sheared when you buy them, so they're very dense (and more needles mean more transpiration). I favor the other true firs because I like their unsheared shapes and colors better.

Most big Christmas tree farms have bailers (below) that wrap trees in string to you can fit them into the trunk of your car or on the roof. I paid a couple of dollars extra for bailing, and it's worth it if you don't have a truck.

In the past, we've used a beautiful subalpine fir (Abies lasiocarpa) as a live tree, and loved it during the five years we had it. But the down side is that live trees are very heavy to move, keep growing bigger and heavier every year, and bring spiders and slugs inside. If you buy one of these, hose it down well the day before you bring it in, make sure you have waterproof floor protection under it, and precheck the bottom of the container for creepy crawlies.

By Jim McCausland, Sunset Magazine

Photos by Joni Shimabukuro

Floral designer Françoise Weeks has wanted to make botanical shoes for a couple of years. Thanks heaven she finally got around to it: the results are wonderful. 

But what do you do with them before they wilt? Well, Françoise had her friend Joni Shimabukuro photograph them, and the pair turned them into note cards that should delight anybody, either with or as a gift.

You can order for $15 per box (eight cards, two copies of each design) here.

If you like this sort of thing, Carolyn Schmitz puts a Southwestern spin on the same subject (not shown) in acrylics in cactus. Sharon Cohoon blogged it a couple of years ago.

By Jim McCausland, Sunset Magazine

If you've ever thought about growing your own winter tomatoes indoors (a book like Tomatoland will give you reason), now there are free plans that make it easy. Developed by a Silicon Valley semiconductor exec named Ray Newstead, the InnTainer is a non-commercial hydroponic growing system that you make yourself.

An offshoot of Newstead's EarthTainer system, the InnTainers go together in a Saturday afternoon. If you don't have a sunroom or an unobstructed south window (or if you live too far north), you can add artificial lights to make your tomatoes thrive.

To direct you to tomato varieties that grow well in containers, Gary Ibsen at TomatoFest.com has set up links offering seed that grows particularly well in containers. Check out his Indoor Container Collection #1 and Indoor Container Collection #2.

By Jim McCausland, Sunset Magazine

Several years ago I bought a house with freeze-proof hose bibs. They look like regular hose bibs, but their water shutoff valves are recessed into the house wall, where hard freezes can't reach them.

I thought these would protect my water lines, but got a nasty surprise when I turned on the hose after our first winter in the house. Water poured through a ruptured pipe and into the house wall. It took a lot of work to fix.

So what did I do wrong?

I left the hose attached all winter. Never do this.

When a really hard freeze settles in, the water inside the hose freezes solid, so the still-unfrozen water on the house side of the ice plug can't escape. But gradually that water freezes too, expanding as it turns to ice and eventually bursting the pipe inside the wall. You won't know it until you turn on the water in spring, because the break is on the hose side of the valve; water doesn't leak through it until you turn the water on.

Older and wiser now, I disconnect my hoses and drain my sprinkler system as soon as the first fall frost whitens the lawn. Then I'm safe for another year.

By Jim McCausland, Sunset Magazine

As surely as the gardener's focus shifts from fall to winter, it shifts from outdoors to indoors. One of my favorite-ever ornamental pot plants is Begonia 'Escargot', which grows as easily for me indoors as (in summer shade) out. The one pictured has been perfectly happy in a corner of our kitchen. Try it, gift it—and keep it away from its namesake.

By Jim McCausland, Sunset Magazine

Illustrations courtesy Lowry-James Rare Prints & Books, ABAA 

Botanical prints are an endless delight—especially the old ones. Many are hand-colored lithographs or engravings made not long after subject plants became known, or when there were big enough collections of plants like roses to merit a pictorial catalog.

All make wonderful holiday gifts, when you can find them. Lowry-James Rare Prints and Books is a Northwest source I've recently learned about. Operated by Priscilla Lowry-Gregor and based on Whidbey Island, the business has about 100,000 images, so what you see online represents just  the tip of the iceberg. Nearly all were made during the Age of Discovery (1500–1900). You can get a wide selection of illustrations, matted, for $150 or so, but prices run into the thousands.

I asked Priscilla to name some of her favorite pieces, and she gave me some links you might enjoy following:

Sir Joseph Paxton's Magazine of Botany London 1836-45
Van Houtte's Flore des Serres; Ghent, 1845–1888
Miss Giraud's Flowers of Shakespeare; London, 1845
Miss Giraud's Flowers of Milton; London, 1846
Fruits of New York State; Albany, 1851
George Brookshaw's Pomona Britannica; London, 1817

She also offers a collection of botanical books.

By Jim McCausland, Sunset Magazine

Fall is my favorite time of year, in part because I love the variety and colors of autumn leaves that color up almost every garden. But I want them to color up the indoors too, so I press them.

My technique is simple: I just put dry leaves in a flower press like the one pictured at right and let them dry still further and flatten out before I arrange them. If you don't have a press, put leaves between the pages of an old book (do they make phone books any more?), or even between layers of newspaper with a book on top.

I've put leaves in a shadow box and framed them to hang on a wall, but one of my favorite designs, which was assembled by April and Annette Shelton, is on a round mirror covered with cut-to-size glass that holds the leaves in place. A candle goes on top, where it makes a perfect seasonal tabletop decoration.

By Jim McCausland, Sunset Magazine

The forest edges in Japan, southwest coastal Korea, and along the east coast of China are full of Japanese maples that produce wonderful fall pyrotechnics in yellow, orange, red, gold, and deep burgundy. From these, hundreds of named varieties have been selected, named, and marketed over the years. But my favorite is still an old one, Acer palmatum 'Osakazuki', which was introduced in the mid 1800's. Every year it give unfailingly pure autumn color.

Maple expert J. D. Vertrees describes 'Osakazuki' as the "most brilliant of all cultivars for fall color," adding that many people consider this the most intensely colored of all maples. The best color description I've heard for it is "furnace red," which absolutely nails it in certain light. At any time the tree colors up pretty much all at once, and has clean, even pigmentation.

Mine is about 10 years old, and only a dozen feet high. Maximum size at full maturity should be about 25 ft. high and wide.

Vertrees has one more comment that sounds enticing, though I can't vouch for it myself. He says that a Japanese maple called 'Ichigyogi' is as intensely yellow-gold as 'Osakazuki' is red. The two planted together must be stunning. Now is the time to buy these, when you can see the color for yourself.

P.S. 'Osakazuki' has a pretty wide growing range—Sunset climate zones A3, 2-10, 12, 14-24 (in the West, that's everywhere except desert and the coldest mountain zones)—but it is susceptible to sun scorch. Where the sun gets hot, plant it in shade.

By Jim McCausland, Sunset Magazine

I love word play, and this is the best I've seen in awhile. Go to Reuben Munoz's Rancho Reubidoux blog to learn, step by step, how to create such a beautiful entry greeting.

By Jim McCausland, Sunset Magazine

I've been fighting pomegranates since I was 5 years old. They usually cover me with their own blood, and give up fewer seeds for the effort than it's worth. But after watching the following video from POM Wonderful, things between me and pomegranates are good. And even better, I can use all those perfect pomegranate seeds in this fall nut and pomegranate salad.

How to Open a Pomegranate in Six Movements from POM Wonderful on Vimeo.

By Jim McCausland, Sunset Magazine

Thanks to a tip from Sharon Cohoon, we found these ghostly dancing dresses on Cindy McNatt's wonderful Dirt Du Jour blog. These seem to be made from bent chicken wire "fabric" cut and formed to dress shape, then spray-painted white. As always, your success will depend upon your own artfulness. Good luck: it's a perfect Halloween-weekend project.

By Jim McCausland, Sunset Magazine

There are, around the West, a sprinkling of wonderful horticultural libraries that can take you places you never dreamed of going. Last week, for example, I took my friend Rich Quarles (that's him at right) to the library at Bloedel Reserve on Bainbridge Island, WA. It's the perfect place to spend a rainy afternoon reading works old and new. Rich was fascinated with a book that described a sundial that set off a cannon at the same time every day so plantation workers would know when to break (it was done with a magnifying glass). I was more drawn to W. J. Bean's Trees and Shrubs Hardy in the British Isles, which is authoritative and opinionated in a way that only Michael Dirr approaches in Dirr's Manual of Woody Landscape Plants.

Here are some western botanical garden libraries that I love. Many have admission fees: check the online links.

Bloedel Reserve is on Bainbridge Island, Washington. Their library is open 1 to 4 Mondays, and 10 to 4 every other day. It is located in a room in a chateau-style building that looks north across Puget Sound. The library is intimate, with just under 1400 books, but all are cataloged online at LibraryThing. Surrounding forest and gardens cover 150 acres.

The Helen Crocker Russell Library of Horticulture at San Francisco Botanical Garden has 27,000 volumes and 450 periodicals, plus a 1600-volume children's horticultural library. It's open Wednesday to Saturday, 10 to 4. San Francisco Botanical Garden (formerly Strybing Arboretum) has 50,000 plants on 55 acres.

The Helen Fowler Library at Denver Botanic Gardens is another gem, with huge numbers of books, antique nursery catalogs, and digital resources. Members of Denver Botanic Gardens can check out books. Hours are Saturday through Thursday, 10–5.

The Huntington Library, Art Collections and Botanical Gardens in San Marino, CA, has to be mentioned because the gardens are splendid and the library gargantuan. But alas, the library is open only to serious researchers; if you're working on your PhD, you're in.

The Los Angeles County Arboretum and Botanic Garden's library houses 30,000 books, with about 18,000 in open stacks. Most are listed in their online catalog. Their strong suit is in plants of Mediterranean and subtropical gardening. The arboretum itself covers 127 acres. Library hours are listed on their web page.

The Schilling Library at Desert Botanical Garden in Phoenix has 7500 books focused on desert plants, plus periodicals and an online browser. Open weekdays, noon to 4.

Sherman Library and Gardens in Corona del Mar, CA, is another small one (the gardens cover just 2.2 acres), but it has 25,000 books and hundreds of thousands of papers and documents. The focus here is on Southwest History, and while this library is also set up for researchers, they cast a broad net with that term: a kid writing a paper for elementary school qualifies. Open Tuesday, Wednesday, & Thursday, 9 to 4:30.

The Elisabeth C. Miller Library, at the University of Washington's Center for Urban Horiculture in Seattle, is open to the public and lends books. Surrounded by its own very interesting gardens that are part of the broader University of Washington Botanic Gardens, this library has 15,000 garden-related books and hundreds of periodicals. Hours are posted online.

By Jim McCausland, Sunset Magazine

Susan Calhoun packs her garden with plants, not because she's a plant geek (though she'd probably admit to a bit of that), but because she's a designer who only specifies plants that she's grown herself. The results are surprisingly pleasing, given the potential for conflict among so many kinds of plants.

To make this work, she starts with generous soil amendment at planting time, then a good mulch to keep weeds down, conserve water, and nourish plants. Apart from that, she never fertilizes—and after four years, the garden still looks great.

All-weather paths made with packed, quarter-minus gravel provide easy garden access all year long, and a beautiful stone staircase transforms one problematic, steep slope into an asset. Apart from some terracing, the garden's other most visible use of stone is around her koi pond, which has a bluestone entry path and surrounding deck.

A big fan of purple foliage, orange flowers, and every shade of green, Calhoun uses a remarkably large palette of plants that go well together.

Her garden is also constantly changing: when she sees an interesting new plant, she replaces or moves existing garden plants to make room for more experimentation.

The garden also has a gazebo at its lower end and a sitting area at the top, so there's plenty of room for relaxing, studying plants, and getting inspiration for her next great design.

Calhoun owns Plantswoman Design, based on Bainbridge Island, Washington (206 842-2453).

By Jim McCausland, Sunset Magazine

In the course of a garden remodel for Sherry Burke of Bainbridge Island, WA, designer Susan Calhoun (Plantswoman Design) built a wonderful vegetable-cleaning station that keeps dirt in the garden and out of the house.

It comes in two parts.

The heart of the system is a cleaning table complete with sink and cold-water supply. The sink was a freebee Sherry picked up by the road (and Kohler, no less). Susan made an opening in the tabletop for the sink and installed a rudimentary drain pipe that channels rinse water back into the garden.

Clean water comes through a self-coiling hose that's fed by a ground-level hose bib under the table. Sherry uses the shower setting on an adjustable hose nozzle for the rinse, and lets washed veggies drain in a collander before she takes them indoors for the table. When she's done, she hangs the hose hang from a hook next to the sink.

The small compost bin on the left side of the table holds the wilted leaves, split fruit, and carrot tops that inevitably come with the harvest.

The vegetable garden itself grows in galvanized stock tanks (below) that keep the crops elevated, where they're easy to plant, tend and harvest. Herbs grow in the ground around the stock tanks.

By Jim McCausland, Sunset Magazine

Beautiful peeling bark draws most people to paperbark maple (Acer griseum), but there are more reasons than that to grow it. For starters, this 30-foot tree fits well into even small gardens, and can be kept narrow (to about 15 ft. at maturity) or allowed to spread to 30 ft. if you have the space. Both its open pattern and its peeling bark remind me a little of eucalyptus.

The red-orange fall leaf color (right) makes it an autumn standout, though the leaves are trifoliate (three toothed leaflets) instead of lobed like most other maples, so the tree doesn't really have a maple-like feel.

Native to central China, it was brought to the west in 1901 by Chinese Wilson, and has made a place for itself as a wonderful small specimen tree. Now, when leaves are colored up, is a good time to buy and plant this.

By Jim McCausland, Sunset Magazine

There's nothing like a collection fiery dahlias to bring life to an autumn border. The hillside landscape pictured here is in Sherry and Bob Burke's garden on Bainbridge Island, Washington. Designed by Susan Calhoun of Plantswoman Design, also of Bainbridge Island, this part of the Burkes' mixed border is flanked by a silver-leaved eucalyptus (species unknown) on one side, and a red-leafed Japanese maple on the other.

By Jim McCausland, Sunset Magazine

Authored by award-winning food writer Barry Estabrook, Tomatoland (Andrews McMeel Publishing, Kansas City, 2011; $19.99) offers a  riveting overview of our most-loved vegetable, from its humble origins on the west coast of South America to its place as a $5 billion-per-year fresh market crop.

While the book does expose commercial excesses in Florida tomato production, its subtitle—How Modern Industrial Agriculture Destroyed our Most Alluring Fruit—is more provocative than accurate.

•Estabrook shows how and why the flavor was bred out of commercial fresh tomatoes, but he also shows how market forces are bringing tastier varieties back into the market.

•He documents the contemporary American slave trade (take that literally) that supports part of the industry—but he also shows how it's being addressed by both exploited farmworkers on the ground and by law enforcement agencies.

•The book covers the horrific birth defects caused by exposure of farm laborers to tomato pesticides—but it also introduces us to an unlikely alliance of illiterate illegal aliens and socially conscious lawyers who team up to force the kinds of change that have already improved conditions for workers in the fields.

Though most of the book it set in Florida, Estabrook also takes us on hunts for wild tomatoes in the deserts of Chile and Peru, and touches briefly on tomato researchers and the industry they support in California.

Written in the spirit of Michael Pollan's ag books, Tomatoland will change the way you think about tomatoes, and probably convince you to grow more of your own. It also reinforces a notion I've had for a long time: eat fresh, locally grown food in season and you'll be healthier and happier for it.

By Sharon Cohoon, Sunset senior garden writer

I try not to look at Dirt Couture, the retail portion of Cindy McNatt's garden blog, Dirt Du Jour, because--between Coldwater Creek and Chico on-line sales--I have enough temptations as it is.

But, visiting her garden recently and seeing some of her products first hand, I got curious about what her best sellers might be.

Turns out Hose Clothes, which you might describe as tights for the common garden hose and which turn a utilitarian item into garden decor, are her top seller.  Especially in this leopard version.

Guess gals just can't get enough of animal prints.

And her best customers?  Germans.  Not sure why that surprises and tickles me but it does.

Air Head, a foliar feeder designed for tillandsia, is another customer favorite.

Tillandsias are such easy plants, says, McNatt, people forget they do need some care.  Soak them in water at least once a month, mist once a week and feed them with this mist-form fertilizer every other week, and they'll stay healthy and happy, she promises.

Here's another best seller.  When a friend complained about having to buy a 50-lb. bag of cement just to make one  hypertufa trough, McNatt saw a marketing opportunity.

Premix the hypertufa ingredients and sell in a size just right for one larger container or a couple of small ones.  Just add water and you're ready to sculpt.

Her mix also includes some colorant, which is a nice touch.

And the artisan-made concrete bowl below?  A little too pricey to be one of her best sellers most likely. But, maybe, why I've been wise to stay off Dirt Couture until now.  Tempting, very tempting.

By Jim McCausland, Sunset Magazine

For 30 years I've been walking through the forest behind my house, which is a mile from Puget Sound in Western Washington. In those walks I see a second forest of invasive garden plants taking root. English laurel, English holly, English ivy, spurge laurel, European mountain ash, myrobalan plum, Himalayan blackberry, and Scotch broom are the principle offenders. I used to pull or cut as many as I could, but it's beyond my power to make much difference now: there are just too many woody weeds back there.

English holly provides a good example of an invasive run amok, so I was surprised to read on the Northwest Holly Growers Association q&a page that "While English holly (Ilex aquifolium) is non-native to North America, it is not clear that it causes any harm to the environment," and that "Holly cannot thrive in our native forests because it is shade intolerant and cannot compete in a dense forest environment."

These assurances don't square with what I see.

On the first point, "it is not clear that it causes any harm to the environment," it is clear that where holly grows, something else doesn't grow. Maybe the holly supplants a western yew, or a red-flowering currant, or a vine maple. Or maybe its shade is too dense to allow trillium or Pacific dewberry to grow underneath. But for every holly, some group of  native plants gets displaced, and I would call that "harm to the environment."

On the second point, "Holly cannot thrive in our native forests because it is shade intolerant and cannot compete in a dense forest environment," I can only say that this was clearly written by somebody who hasn't walked in my woods (see bottom photo). Holly grows perfectly well in both hardwood (maple and alder) parts of the forest, and under mixed conifers (hemlock, western red cedar, Douglas fir, Pacific yew).

After reading the same q&a page, Sunset's garden editor, Kathy Brenzel, asked me whether any other holly besides English holly was invasive. I had to say that I don't know—all I see is English holly—but I thought Fresh Dirt's eagle-eyed readers might shed light on this subject.

If you've personally seen other hollies going feral, please post your observation and your location in the comments that follow this blog.