Start turning garden dreams into reality with these January tasks – La Jolla Light

New years bring new opportunities in life and in the life of your garden. What will you do this year? Plant a vegetable garden? Add fruit trees? You can create the landscape of your dreams.

When theres rain, be sure your irrigation system is on pause. Theres no need to water when the soil is already saturated. Leave the water off until the soil is dry at least to your second knuckle when you stick your finger into the soil.

Treat newly planted water-wise gardens the same way. For established water-wise gardens, wait until the soil is dry about 4 inches deep.

If theres been no rain, continue irrigating on a reduced winter schedule.

In January, the new crop of bare root fruit trees, vines and shrubs arrives in the nursery. They look like scraggly sticks with a wad of roots at the base, but they are the best way to buy deciduous fruiting plants (the ones that drop their leaves for winter).

This is the best time to shop for:

Now is the ideal time to buy stone fruit trees, such as plum trees.

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How to select the best fruiting plant for your garden:

How to plant a bare root plant:

Prune and spray established fruit trees:

Harvest citrus:

All native and non-native drought-tolerant plants are best planted now in the cool (and maybe wet) weather.

Add beautiful flowering shrubs to your garden: Grevillea from Australia, conebush from South Africa, native Ceanothus (California lilac), native lemonade berry.

A honeybee collects pollen from blue Ceanothus flowers (California lilac).

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Heating houses dries out the air, and thats hard on many houseplants. So give your plants a spa day in the bathroom. Fill the tub with a few inches of water. Prop your houseplants on top of empty plant pots (upside down) or other props set in the tub. Allow the houseplants to enjoy the humidity but not sit in water. Leave them for a day or so.

Have your pothos vines grown very long and leggy? Encourage side branches by cutting back long stems to a branching point.

Check houseplants for aphids, mealy bugs or scale. Use a cotton swab dipped in alcohol to kill the critters.

Nan Sterman is a water-wise garden designer and writer and the host of A Growing Passion on KPBS television. More information is at AGrowingPassion.com and waterwisegardener.com.

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Start turning garden dreams into reality with these January tasks - La Jolla Light