By Jim McCausland, Sunset senior garden writer

I once had a scrub jay named Boo who would collect and hide buttons, rings, bits of chewing gum foil, and just about any other shiny thing he could find around the house. Maybe he was mimicking my own compulsive collecting: my house plants have long shared space with feathers, beach rocks, a wren’s nest, and even a chunk of Las Vegas caliche whose hardness shames concrete.

But the best collector I ever met was a 14-year-old (then) naturalist named Saide Dupar. Sunset garden editor Kathy Brenzel wrote a compelling story about her family’s Decatur Island garden in the September, 2008 issue of Sunset. Saide got her early education in the island’s one-room schoolhouse, but it’s clear that the island itself was her classroom. The family’s cordwood house—a remarkably constructed log-round potting shed—is full of her treasures: skulls, nests, antlers, shells, geodes, wheat stalks, bird eggs, and more.

It is fitting that all this resides in the place where each year’s vegetable garden gets its start: as you’re sowing seed and nursing new life along, you have constant reminders of both the beauty of natural design and the transitory nature of life past and future. It makes for fairly rich planting experience. I recommend it, and I expect Saide Dupar does as well.

By Sharon Cohoon, Sunset senior garden writer

You don't need to live in a cold climate or have a property big enough for a large deciduous tree to enjoy fall color. Libertia ixioides ''Taupo Blaze' has the same gold, orange, and red colors we admire in fall leaves in its thin grassy blades.  But this perennial grows only 18 inches tall.  Its colors and handsome erect shape make it an outstanding container plant for autumn.  Place it where it will be backlit if you can for the most dazzling effect.

This New Zealand cultivar is believed to be more cold tolerant than L. peregrinans -- 0-10 degrees Farenheit vs. 10-15.  The plant flowers in the spring, but on stems shorter than the foliage, so not very conspicuously.  Its small, 3-petaled white flowers are followed by yellow-orange seed pods.

'Taupo Blaze' keeps its fall colors until summer when it turns yellow-green before darkening again in fall and winter. 

By Sharon Cohoon, Sunset senior garden writer

Did you know there's a name for that wonderful smell you get when the first raindrops hit earth that has been dry for some time?  Neither did I.  But it's such a wonderful scent, there should be a special name for it.  That name is petrichor.  And I can thank Scott Calhoun for passing it on.  I saw it on the bottom of one of his emails.

Learn more about the word petrichor and then casually drop it into conversation.  Dazzle your friends.

By Sharon Cohoon, Sunset senior garden writer

You've got to love blogs. You find such unexpected tidbits.  Who knew, for instance, that Felco pruners were the tool of choice for pot farmers?

I learned this on Cindy McNatt's blog for the Orange County Register.  To find out how she picked up this information, check out her story.

By Jim McCausland, Sunset senior garden writer

For decades the prevailing philosophy about rainwater was to catch it and route it into a storm drain. But eventually some parched soul (probably in New Mexico) questioned the point of sending your most treasured resource away as quickly as possible.

In most western states, you can legally capture the rainwater coming down your downspout and store it for use when you need it. The easiest capture is with a rain barrel. You have lots of options (see a few at the Gardener's Supply Company web site), including plastic and wooden versions. When wooden ones dry out (as old wine barrels do), the wood can shrink enough to open leaky seams in the sides, so if you use one of these, keep it damp so the wood stays swollen and the seams stay tight.

Most rain barrels hold between 50 and 100 gallons of water. They fill remarkably quickly, but you use up the contents fast. For that reason, their highest use is to capture rainwater for irrigating house plants. (If you want to use these for garden watering, buy a cistern that holds at least 1500 gallons; details to come in another blog.)

Rain barrel placement is critical. Put it high enough so that, if the tap is on the bottom, there's room to get a watering can under it. Also get a downspout diverter (Gardener's Supply has those too). When a storm blows in, let it rain for an hour before you divert what's coming down the downspout into your barrel. That give the rain time to wash away dust, pollen, and bird droppings before you start routing the water into the barrel.

By Sharon Cohoon, Sunset senior garden writer

Let's Talk Plants, the monthly newsletter of the San Diego Horticultural Society, has great tips and stories in it every month.  I've said it before and I'll say it again, consider subscribing even if you don't live anywhere close to San Diego.

Here's a few examples from the September issue:

.  To sprout seeds of carrots, parsley, and parsnips sprinkle them in prepared soil, pour a kettle of boiling water down the seed row, cover the seeds with potting soil, and pat the seeds down. This boiling water trick isn't for all kinds of seeds, just for carrots and their relation.

(Tip courtesy of that trusty old pro, garden writer Pat Welsh)

Other tips from Welsh:

.  The best gopher trap is the Black Hole brand.

.  Use worm castings to get rid of giant whiteflies.

.  Horse manure is the best fertilizer, and it is best used in fall.

***

Did you know hooded orioles love grape jelly?  And especially Welch's?  That's something else I learned from Let's Talk Plants this month.  Wild Birds Unlimited sells a bird feeder, shown here, that has little wells for the jelly.  According to SDHS member Linda Lawley, hummingbirds, goldfinces, sparrows, and house finches love the jelly, too.  Even bees.  She's having to replenish her feeders daily and buys the giant economy size from Brand X.  The birds don't seem to mind going generic, says Lawley.

***

And a quote I liked:

"The best way to garden is to put on a wide brimmed strawhat and some old clothes.  And, with a hoe in one hand and a cold drink in the other, tell your husband where to dig."

From Anderson's La Costa Nursery's monthly garden tips column.

***

If you got the newsletter, this month you could have also picked up a great new salsa recipe, read a book review of Barbara Kingsolver's new book, Animal, Vegetable, Miracle, discovered whether or not selenium is an essential nutrient for plants as well as animals, and and learned a lot about smart timers from a landscape contractor.

By Julie Chai, Sunset associate garden editor

If you live in the Bay Area, watch our October issue come to life tonight on "Eye on the Bay", airing on KPIX-CBS channel 5 at 7 p.m. (If you miss the show or live in another area, you can check it out online after it airs.)

Now's the time to plant natives—which is just one way to go green in your garden—so we've included a segment with local garden designer and native plant expert Alrie Middlebrook, owner of Middlebrook Gardens native plant nursery in San Jose.

We'll also highlight the new California Academy of Sciences, show inspiring ideas for decorating with pumpkins, and give you easy entertaining recipes that are perfect for the World Series or any sports party.

Hope you can tune in!

By Jim McCausland, Sunset senior garden writer

At both Sunset Celebration weekend in June and at the Carmel TomatoFest earlier this month, I fielded lots of tomato questions from lots of gardeners. Here are some whose answers might help you too.

Q: What’s an heirloom tomato?

A: Strictly speaking, it’s a tomato variety whose seed has been passed along from gardener to gardener, often for generations. For that to be possible, it has to come true from seed (the offspring have to look and taste like the tomato they came from). They can’t be hybrid tomatoes because hybrids don’t come true from seed: hybrid tomato offspring are usually quite different from their parents, and virtually never as good. There are also lots of modern “heirlooms”—new varieties of tomatoes that have been bred to come true from seed, and that are selected for superior flavor and color.

Q: How are tomatoes pollinated?

A: Tomatoes can and do cross pollinate, but most are buzz pollinated: that is, the buzzing of an insect (like a bumble bee, but not a honey bee) that lands on the flower vibrates it enough to shake pollen down onto the same flower’s stigma, effectively self-pollinating it. That’s why gardeners who grow tomatoes in greenhouses (where there are fewer insects) often shake the flowering vines by hand. Commercial greenhouses growers use electric vibration wands to do their own buzz pollination. Either way, the gardener becomes the pollinator.

Q: I’m growing some tomatoes in containers and some in open ground. The ones in open ground do better. Why?

A: Most potting soil mixes contain few or no nutrients. The person who asked me this question had never fertilized her potted plants, which were starving. Further, the relatively limited amount of soil in containers heats up, cools off, dries out, and becomes depleted of whatever nutrients it does have faster than soil in the ground, so you have to feed and water often, and choose thick-walled containers (wood, clay, foam, or double-walled plastic) to try to even out these exaggerated cycles. For the same reason, tomatoes are easier to manage in large containers than in small ones, since larger containers are less subject to all those fluctuations than smaller ones.

Q: Why do tomatoes split at the end of the season?

A: It’s partly genetic—some kinds just split easily—and partly cultural. If you get a heavy rain (or heavy irrigation) near harvest, the sudden uptake of water is more than many tomato fruits can handle, so they split open as a result.

Q: Can you just let tomatoes grow, unstaked, on the ground?

A: Yes, but you’ll have more high-quality fruit, less spoilage, and an easier-to-manage crop if you grow them up a stake, on a trellis, or in a cage. I like hog-wire cages, since I can get my hands through the 4-inch mesh easily. Buy the wire at a hardware store or farm supply store, bend it into a 30-inch-diameter cylinder, tie its ends together, and grow the tomato plant through it. But other kinds of cages work as well. One of my favorites, pictured at right, was built by artist Gail Dupar on Decatur Island, Washington. She bent rebar into open-sided cubes and painted them bright colors with rust-resistent outdoor paint (Rust-Oleum is one example).

To learn more about tomatoes, check out Sunset's One-Block Diet blog, which features mostly tomato-related items this week.

By Sharon Cohoon, Sunset senior garden writer

In addition to the cabbage and leafy winter crops my co-blogger Jim McCausland mentioned in a recent post, if you live in northern California zones 7-9 and 14-17, southern California zones 18-21 and 22-24, and Southwest zones 10-13 you can also start root vegetables from seed now.

Here's the root crop I plan to grow after tasting this carrot raw fresh out of Marilee Kuhlman and Leigh Curran's front yard veggie garden.

'Purple Haze' has the long, slim shape typical of an Imperator-type carrot and has a dark purple outside skin and a deep-orange center.  It is beautiful raw, especially sliced in rounds.  'Purple Haze' is not ultra-sweet but instead is rather earthy.  You know you're eating a root.  I liked that.  It doesn't lose its purple color when cooked, but it is not as intense.

(To see what 'Purple Haze' looks like sliced, see the photo on A Sonoma Garden's blog.)

Purple carrots, I've since discovered, are hardly new.  Carrots were purple, white, and yellow before they were orange.  Orange, the color we associate with carrots now, wasn't actually developed until the 16th century. (Dutch breeders bred the vegetable to grow in the colours of the House of Orange.)

If you like knowing this sort of thing, you can read all about it at the World Carrot Museum website. Isn't it great that there actually is such a place?

Seed sources for `Purple Haze'

Territorial Seed Company
Botanical Interests
Park Seed

'By Sharon Cohoon, Sunset senior garden writer

When I read 'Julia Child' took the top prize in the UCCE Master Gardeners of Orange County's annual tomato taste test last month, I got curious.  Having neither grown nor tasted this particular variety, I wondered where it came from.

Turns out it came from Gary Ibsen, the founder of the Carmel TomatoFest my co-blogger Jim reported about a few days ago.  Ibsen grows more than 600 varieties of certified organic heirloom tomato seeds, and since 2002 `Julia Child' has been one of them.

Every year Ibsen trials a few heirloom tomatoes whose names have been lost.  The seeds come to him, tucked into letters, from gardeners whose families have passed them on for generations.  In 2001 Ibsen planted four of his favorites from these un-named varieties.  And, at the end of the season, he chose the one he liked best to name for his good friend, Julia.

'Julia Child' is a tall plant, like its namesake, and has an appropriately robust flavor. 

To order 'Julia Child' seeds

To enjoy some of Ibsen's favorie moments with Julia

For more about tomatoes, visit our One Block Diet blog.  There will be new posts there about tomatoes all week.