By Jim McCausland, Sunset Magazine

I used to blame crows, mostly, for gaps in my garden database. They would steal plant labels before I recorded plant names elsewhere and I’d find myself with an interesting but unknown rose, sedge, or patch of tulips in the garden.

No more.

Now I keep track of things with a simple, home-made system anybody can use. It’s in two parts: a garden journal and some supplemental files on the computer.

 1) Three-ring binder with tabbed plastic pockets, one for each year. Whenever I scatter seeds or set out new plants, the label or empty packet goes into the current year’s plastic pocket, and a duplicate label (usually a name penciled onto a metal tag) goes into the garden for the crows to play with. When new plants come with an instruction sheet for planting or pruning, I put that in the binder too.

In addition, I make a few garden maps on lined paper each year. These aren’t as much work as it might seem. 

The first maps show each bed’s permanent plants. In most beds, this map doesn’t change much from year to year, and when changes are needed, they’re usually minor.

The second maps show the planting plan for vegetable beds. There’s a version for spring crops, one for warm-season crops, and one for fall/winter crops. These vegetable maps are especially important in helping me plan crop rotations.

The process of updating the tabs and maps at the end of each year gives me a chance to reflect on the general direction of the garden, its successes and failures, and motivates me to plan the coming year’s garden—perfect timing, since garden catalogs are coming in now.

2) Computer records. I love lists enough to creat my own. The most valuable of these are monthly notes about what’s going on in the garden. I use a FileMaker database for this, but any word processing software would work nearly as well. 

I make one record per month, January through December, divided into first, middle, and last thirds of the month. Throughout the year I enter first and peak bloom, leaf-out, harvest, and first fall color—whatever strikes me as significant, always tagged with the year I made the note. Over time it gives me a sense for whether events like bloom and harvest are early, late, or right on schedule. 

And because I love critters, I have a second set of monthly records for whatever flaps, runs, wiggles, or flutters through my garden. In it I record everything from the arrival of the season’s first swallows to periodic infestations of scale on the dogwood or webworms on the apple. This is truly a big-picture tool. It gave me my first hint that honeybees were in trouble when they vanished from my garden for two years (they’ve since returned); it charted a disease-related decline of pine siskins; and showed that west Nile virus probably wasn’t as virulent here as feared when crow numbers remained steady year after year (crows are said to be especially vulnerable to this disease). If you have naturalist leanings, this is indispensable.

Your own garden journal can be more or less complicated, but whatever form it takes, it will be a vast improvement over no journal at all—and label-stealing crows will never again leave you wondering about the name of that great heuchera in the perennial bed.

By Sharon Cohoon, Sunset senior garden writer

Don't trash that string of twinkle lights that just burned out.  Construct a wreath out of the strands instead and have a wreath ready to hang when you uncrate your holiday stuff next year.  This fun idea is from Portland interior designer Shannon Quimby and was published in The Oregonian recently.  For how-to details, click here.

(Our thanks to Portland garden writer Lisa Albert for bringing this amusing recycling idea to our attention.)

Maybe I'll attempt this wreath while my husband watches still another football game.

Sunset wrote about a much bigger recycling project of Quimby's in our October issue.  Shannon and husband Glenn bought a dilapidated bungalow and reused 100% of it in buildilng their new home.  "We didn't use a single dumpster," says Quimby proudly.

Read about Quimby's Reuse Everything Experiment here.

By Jim McCausland, Sunset Magazine

In my Pacific Northwest garden, two evergreen shrubs produce great December color: Camellia sasanqua 'Yuletide' (red with yellow center) and Mahonia x media 'Charity' (yellow, pictured above). I especially like the mahonia because it gives dependable color in less sun than the camellia, and my two 'Charity' plants grow underneath bigleaf maples without missing a beat (maple roots are tough competitors).

What are your favorites for early winter color?

By Sharon Cohoon, Sunset senior garden writer

As we've all been reading lately, food banks are really strapped this year.  You can help. Become a Citrus Supporter of the Inland Orange Conservancy and ask to have your subscriber's share of the fruit (two 5-lb. bags of citrus for every week of the season--typically 14 weeks.) contributed to a food bank instead of picking up the fruit yourself.

Do it before the end of the year and you'll get a tax break this year.

If you live near Redlands, Riverside, Rancho Cucamonga, San Bernardino or any of the Inland Orange Conservancy's distribution centers, though, strongly consider purchasing a subscription for yourself as well.  The groves the Inland Orange Conservancy is struggling to preserve produce some of the tastiest oranges in the world.

For more details about the IOC and Bob Knight, the man who started the organization, see Sunset magazine's story "Saving the Orange"

Or my previous blog about IOC.

By Jim McCausland, Sunset Magazine

By Sharon Cohoon, Sunset senior garden writer

I love it when Western gardeners decorate in a style that celebrates the West instead of trying to make their gardens look like somewhere else.  For instance:

By Jim McCausland, Sunset Magazine

 The Desert Botanical Garden in Phoenix's Papago Park has a legendary program for holiday evenings: You wander down paths lined with thousands of luminarias, stop to listen to a handbell choir, enjoy desert plants strung with lights, then warm yourself by the fire or grab a bite to eat. 

This year, add to that outdoor ice skating. (Well, it looks and feels like ice skating, but it's actually done on a synthetic surface called hybrid ice.)

Included in the $25 price for admission to Las Noches de las Luminarias, it gives you the chance to work on your toe loop, an axel jump here and there—or maybe just on keeping your ankles straight. It's all part of evening fun that runs through December 30th (but not on Christmas eve or Christmas night).

This is also the first year the garden has lit the new Berlin Agave Yucca Forest, where you can enjoy a glass of wine or cider and you stroll among these magnificent plants.

Buy tickets at the garden (note that the admissions office there closes at 8 p.m.) or online. Though most days are in the 70's in Phoenix this time of year, nights are around 50°, so dress for a bit of chill, and allow at least 2 hours for your visit.

By Sharon Cohoon, Sunset senior garden writer

I hope friends who have bought me plants as presents in the past will either not read this or forgive me.  But, please, don't buy your gardening friends any more plants.  (Orchids or temporary indoor ornamentals excepted.) 

Shopping for and finally selecting what to buy from the candy store of plant options available to us is the very best thing about being a gardener today.  So, please, don't deprive us.

But, yes, yes, yes, every greedy gardener I know--and we're all greedy-- would be absolutely thrilled to get a gift certificate to our favorite seed catalog or nursery.  Or yours.  We're always happy to explore new sources. There's always room to tuck in one more plant--we just want to be the one to pick it.

But, if you think that's too easy, tuck the gift certificate into a gift box instead of a holiday card.  And top it with a tillandsia instead of a bow.  Though tillandsias qualify as plants, they're really more like little pieces of sculpture.  Fun to sit on bathroom counters after they stop being bows.  Just as is or mixed in with a bowl of sea shells perhaps.

By Sharon Cohoon, Sunset senior garden writer

Here's the list:

Fruits

• Apples
• Cherries
• Imported Grapes
• Nectarines
• Peaches
• Pears
• Raspberries
• Strawberries
  

Vegetables

• Bell Peppers
• Celery
• Hot Peppers
• Potatoes
• Spinach

Want to know why they made the list?  For that you'll have to go to Fern's blog, Life on the Balcony.  That's where I found the list.

While you are there, also check out her three DIY garden gift ideas.

By Julie Chai, Sunset associate garden editor

Lead photo by Marcail McWilliams

I love these so much I'm really not quite sure where to start. They're essentially raised bed corners, called  M Braces, that you slip boards into to make instant raised beds (an empty bed is shown below.) Once you've got your boards, they literally take five minutes to set up—no tools needed.

Made from recycled metal, the braces will probably last long enough for you to pass on to your kids, and you can use them to make just about any size raised bed that you want, up to 12 feet on each size—so these work whether you have a big backyard or a tiny patio. They come in a range of designs, and one of the things I like best is that if you change your mind about the size of a bed,  simply slide the boards out and rearrange as you like. And if you move, you can take them with you to make new raised beds wherever you go.

They're available at a few Northern California retailers, and you can also order online for $165 a set plus shipping.