CALLING ALL GREEN THUMBS.

Byline: JANE GATES Gardening

SANTA CLARITA - We are entering the exciting part of the gardening year.

Hopefully, you have done your planning, repairs, new construction, seed ordering, winter planting and other preparations earlier so you can spend most of the upcoming planting season having fun and enjoying the fruits of your labors.

Fruit trees, wildflowers, and early season plants are all blooming or coming into bloom. The weather has not become deathly hot yet and the soil is still cool and fresh with winter rains. So check out the new material in nurseries and home stores and step out to enjoy gardening in the still reasonably cool weather.

This is a good time to plant vines. Covering multiple sins, vines can color up boring fences, hide ugly tree stumps and fill in privacy holes. There are even a number of wonderful edibles that grow on vines such as berries like raspberries, blackberries and loganberries. Grapes are vines, as are kiwis.

I don't recommend growing fruits against your house on trellises or porches since the sweet flowers and fruit often attract ants. From that point the ants consider they are welcome into the rest of your house.

Vines can be polite and well-behaved like the twining hardenbergia with its delicate tassels of purple or the dense silver lace vine with its big drooping plumes of tiny white flowers. Or they can be rampant like the Japanese honeysuckle, Cape honeysuckle and the potato vine.

Some start out quietly and can form a big tangle if not pruned judiciously. Some jasmines and many of the trumpet vines can fit into this category. The Carolina jasmine is a lovely yellow with a heavenly perfume. But be aware, it is toxic; don't let children or pets munch on it.

For greens, the tiny leafed climbing ficus glues itself to walls in a lovely tracery - until it matures when its leaves blow out to a much larger and coarser size. Some folks love ivies. I'm not a big fan due to the pests they attract, but they do have a certain charm.

For autumn color, try the Virginia creeper on a wall. This one looks rather ivy-like, but doesn't harbor rodents like ivy and turns brilliant colors before losing its foliage in the winter. Then there is the grand queen of vines: the wisteria. This dramatic plant produces a spectacle of monster blooms in spring in whites or purples. It can be grown, supported on a single trunk like a small tree, or - better with our winds - twined around stout poles. The twining trunk will snap anything smaller than a 4x4 post, so don't try supporting it with stakes.

There are many more wonderful vines to grow in this area, but this list will give you a start. Anyway, there are plenty of great things to do now that the spring gardening season is starting, and vines are only one area in which we can spend lots of time!