Planting
Bedding plants/annuals are now available to replace any cool-season annuals that are just about done. Zinnia, ageratum, coleus, dahlia, marigold, nicotiana, phlox, petunia, salvia and many more have brightened up our garden center. Let them brighten up your gardens. Also, try some taller annuals such as cosmos, cleome, sunflowers, and foxgloves to add height and interest to the garden beds.

Roses, Roses, Roses. There's still time to plant roses. They are full of buds and blooms right now--and they are simply gorgeous

If you are a beneficial insect lover, flat-topped flowers like Shasta daisies, scabiosa, strawflowers, and yarrow are perfect additions to your garden for feeding them. Beneficial insects such as the almost microscopic parasitic wasps, ladybugs, etc., keep other insect pests away from your vegetable gardens by eating aphids, scale, and other annoying insect intruders! You can use beautiful flowers to tempt these garden friends into your garden. Try putting some of these flowers near to your rose garden for aphid control!

Time to plant dahlias, begonias and get in the gladiolus bulbs. Add some bone meal to the planting hole.

The narcissus and daffodils are blooming, as well as other spring blooming bulbs. However, as soon as the blooms are spent, you can deadhead--but don't remove the foliage! The bulb needs that green foliage to add nutrients back to the bulb for next year's flowers. Hide the clippers for a little while longer. Try an old-fashioned technique of braiding the leaves or if you must cut...leave at least half of the leaf length for the bulb. It will thank you with next year's bloom!

It's time to start warm season crops. Coastal areas can continue planting cool season crops like the leaf lettuces, radishes, and spinach for a while. Inland zones (not the high desert, though) can start the warm season vegetables such as beans, corn, squashes, cucumber, eggplant, tomatoes and peppers. We have them all and more.

Maintenance
Continue with fertilizing those areas of the garden you haven't gotten to yet. Once your azaleas and camellias have stopped blooming their hearts out, they will thank you if you feed them. This is a good time to prune back these spring bloomers. Once the flowering has ended and before the new growth begins, prune and shape to your desired shape and size.

Also, you may see some chlorosis on your acid-loving plants like the azalea or camellia and also on your citrus. This is yellowing of the leaves between the veins. It is a sign of iron deficiency for the plant.

Especially near the coast, this is the time we begin to see powdery mildew on our rose foliage (and other plants too). There are several different foliar fungicidal sprays to try.

Aphids will be back. Remember that you can first wash them off with water. Really, it does help. For more severe infestations, ask us to recommend something suitable for your particular plants.

Mulch, Mulch Mulch!
We will always tell you to mulch. This does not mean mound up the mulch to 5 feet. It means continue to replenish the mulch and maintain a 2-4 inch blanket over your soil. So when you hear us singing the MULCH song, you know just what we mean!

Above is a little background information for you about your garden variety azalea, the Azalea indica. Here is another tidbit: there are two categories of evergreen Azalea indica for our gardens, sun and shade. Now that just makes lots of sense, doesn't it? Not all azaleas need to be in the shade, but that is the favorite spot for the Belgian indica azaleas. Luckily, there are those that are sun lovers: the Southern indica azaleas.

There are many hybrids of both the Belgian and Southern indicas, too many to mention here. What that means to a gardener is a wide choice of flower color--solids or bicolor; and flower style--frilly and ruffled or simple and elegant. There is also a range in bloom times, bloom sizes, plant size and growth habit (which can be from 2-3 feet with dense, small foliage or up to 8 feet with an open, lacy growth habit). With a comprehensive selection, your garden could have azaleas blooming from late winter into late spring, in the sun and in the shade.

Azaleas love acid soil, good amendments, and fertilizers. When planting your azaleas, be sure to mix the native soil of your garden with an azalea (acid) planting amendment or with 40% peat moss and 40% pine bark. They like good drainage but do not like their roots to stay too wet or dry out. Plant them so that the root crown is about 1 inch above the soil line. Once they are planted, mulch, mulch, and mulch.

Peppers can be broken down into four major categories: bell peppers, sweet peppers, mild chile peppers and hot chile peppers.

Here's how to choose the best varieties for color, shape, and flavor:

Bell Peppers
Bell peppers have the thickest flesh of all peppers and a mild and fruity flavor. They come in a rainbow of colors including the traditional green, red, orange, yellow, and purple. The green and yellow tend to have the sweetest flavor, while the orange, red and purple have a zestier flavor. Most start out green and then turn color as they mature.

Sweet Peppers
These peppers pack a lot of flavor without a lot of heat. They are usually thin-walled and less juicy than other pepper types but exceptional for cooking. They vary in shape from elongated and pointed to heart-shaped or rounded. These include the apple, banana, carmen, cherry, Corno di Toro, Gypsy, Italian, Marconi, pepperoncini, pimento and Santa Fe.

Mild Chile Peppers
These peppers have a mildly hot and spicy flavor and can be used to spice up dishes where a little heat is needed. They can be dried or be eaten fresh or roasted and added to salads, salsas or dips. Varieties in this category include anaheim, ancho poblano (perfect for chiles rellenos), cascabel, española, 'Fooled You' (a no-heat jalapeño hybrid), mariachi, mulato and sandia.

Hot Chile Peppers
If you want some heat, then these are the peppers for you! These guys pack a punch and are not for the meek of heart. They're loaded with flavor and tend to be thin skinned and smaller in size than other peppers. We recommend handling these with gloves (it's hard to get pepper juice off your hands). If you aren't sure of a variety, remove the seeds and veins from them before cooking and eating; then do a lot of taste-testing. It's easier to add more heat to a dish than to take it out. These hotties include cayenne, chipotle, habanero, hot cherry, Hungarian yellow, jalapeño, pasilla, pequin, serrano, Scotch bonnet, tabasco and Thai dragon.

Soon many of us will be planting our tomatoes (some may have already started early tomatoes) and pole beans. These vegetables are tiny when we buy them or start them from seed, but will soon be in great need of some structural support. Those of us who have been growing vegetables for years have tried many different types of supports with varying success. Let's look at some of the old standbys and suggestions to make them work effectively for you.

But first, we want you to consider size control on your tomato plants. What do we mean? Left to their own, some tomato plants, or vines actually, will grow and grow to a size no structure can hold. Before that happens to you, consider one of the best ways to control the size.

As your tomato plant grows to a 2-3 foot height, look at its structure. You will notice that supplemental branching sprouts from leaf axial areas. You can control the size of your plant by removing some (or all of them, if you like) of this secondary branching. Some tomato growers highly recommend this technique, others suggest moderation, and we are simply suggesting that removing some of them will keep your plant size under control.

You don't have to remove all of them, but you can. You can also eventually "top" your tomato plant, too. Both techniques will offer size control. However, both techniques will also limit the degree of fruiting. On the plus side, this method will keep your tomato plant at a size manageable for you and your plant structures.

Tomato cages ...you know the kind that I mean. They are funnel shaped and made from thick wire. They come in several different sizes, starting with one that is only about two feet tall. Of course, tomato plants don't usually stop growing at that height. So this size will work with young plants that need early support, but they are not meant to last for the entire season, especially with indeterminate tomatoes that become exceptionally large.

Once that small tomato plant that you purchased in a 4-inch pot grows into a 2-foot plant, it is time to add the largest of the tomato cages, the one that is 4-5 feet tall. You don't even have to remove that first small cage, necessarily. But your growing plant will need this further support, that is for sure. If you have chosen to remove a portion of your tomato plant through thinning and/or topping, these cages should work just fine.

Trellis structures are great for tomatoes, not just the flowering vines in your perennial gardens. Yes, you can grow tomatoes by espalier. Not only will this be a sturdy structure, it is esthetically beautiful, too. As your tomato grows, offer support to the branches by tying them to the trellis. To minimize the weight of the plant, you may need to employ the "thinning" technique (removal of some of the axial branching). The trellis can be placed up against a wall for support. You can also take two trellises and form a trellis "A-frame." Plant the tomato in the middle and as it grows, you have trellis support on both sides of the plant.

Another structure can be used for both tomatoes and for pole beans. Pole beans are great because the crops are huge and produce for a long time. The story of Jack and the Bean Stalk has some truth in it: pole beans will grow and grow and grow! One of our favorite ways to support them is wooden or bamboo teepees.

You can take three 1x1 inch stakes (6 feet or longer) and drill one hole through all three at one end. Insert a large screw bolt through the three holes and tighten them together with a butterfly nut, but not too tightly. You want enough play to allow you to turn the stakes into position (then you can tighten). That's it! Simple. Equally elegant is tying together three 6'-8' bamboo stakes and forming the same type of teepee. Plant at least 3 bean plants at the base of each of the three teepee legs too, so there will be, at a minimum, 9 bean plants per teepee. You can also add a stake between two teepees, interconnecting them, to give the bean plants further growth support, once their height has exceeded the teepee stake heights.

Our wooden trellis structures will also work perfectly for the pole beans. Hammer a 5-6 foot 2x2 inch stake into the ground at one end of your trellis. Hammer a second one into the ground at the opposite end. This provides about a 5-6 foot long vertical trellis structure for your beans. This looks great, and is a fabulous way to grow beans as well. Leave space on both sides of this structure, so that you can access all the beans.

Off you go to purchase your supplies for this year's vegetable garden. Remember, attractive structures add interest to your garden. Oh yes, and they will keep your tomatoes, beans or any other sprawling veggies much neater looking , less tangled and still offer plentiful vegetable production. Good luck, and enjoy!

Earth Day was founded in 1970 by U.S. politician Gaylord Nelson as an environmental teach-in, and is celebrated in many countries each year on April 22. Senator Nelson first proposed the nationwide environmental protest to thrust the environment onto the national agenda.

On April 22, 1970, 20 million Americans took to the streets, parks, and auditoriums to demonstrate for a healthy, sustainable environment. Thousands of colleges and universities organized protests against the deterioration of the environment. Groups that had been fighting against oil spills, polluting factories and power plants, raw sewage, toxic dumps, pesticides, freeways, the loss of wilderness, and the extinction of wildlife suddenly realized they shared common values.

Each year, the April 22 Earth Day marks the anniversary of the birth of the modern environmental movement in 1970. Earth Day 2007 was one of the largest Earth Days ever, with an estimated billion people participating in activities in more than a 140 countries.