GARDENERS NEED TO LEARN ABOUT AREA'S MICROCLIMATES.

Byline: JANE GATES GARDENING

It's winter in Santa Clarita, and it's a great time for gardening. Unlike people in other parts of the country, we don't have to cocoon inside with a good book. Cooler days offer comfortable temperatures for building or planting projects. Warm spells gift us with delightful days to work or putter about with upkeep tasks or to soak up the sun. Rains pour life into plants and germinates seeds. Bad weather offers us the chance to do the research, planning and designing that can make the difference between a successful and an unsuccessful garden.

And if you are interested in California natives, this is a great time to plant them. Between rains, when the soil is dry enough not to be muddy, soil is easy to dig. Avoid working in muddy soil. Most locations here have a lot of clay in the soil that will not benefit from further compaction. It also tends to spoil the fun of gardening when you discover your feet are disappearing beneath what used to be your friendly garden.

There's still time to spread wildflower seeds on the hillsides for easy-care color come the spring. If you are broadcasting seed freely on uncultivated land, plan on seeding heavily because a good percentage of seed will go for feeding the wildlife. Some really showy annual wildflowers are Clarkia elegans, layia, Phacelia campanularia, mentzelia, and the faithful California poppy (eschscholzia). Try nemophila (five spot or baby blue eyes) for part or full shade. If they are happy, they will bloom prolifically and set seed for a new generation next year.

Now is a great time to save money by planting bare-root roses, edibles and trees available at nurseries and home centers. You may also still find a good selection of bulbs, tubers and corms to be planted for spring and summer show. Make sure you plant bulbs deep enough. A general rule of thumb is to make sure the bulb is about twice the depth of its size. If you plant dahlia tubers even deeper (four to eight inches), the plants will need less staking. If you stake tall plants at planting time, you'll avoid the danger of stabbing the growing tubers or corms later with the supports.

Since pocket gophers are ravenous in this area, it is best to line your gardens with hardware cloth or at least halnch to 1-inch chicken wire. If you cannot do that, then make a basin-shaped container of hardware cloth to surround your bulbs, corms and tubers when you plant them. Make sure the bottom is deep enough for the largest bulb and the sides come up to the soil surface so the gophers cannot get in. Gophers adore bulbs. They even chomped down my onions just as they reached full size. After lining my vegetable bed with wire, the onions went untouched, and I'm sure the gophers had sweeter breath!

Gardening in Santa Clarita is unique. The hungry soil is a mixture of rock, clay and pockets of sand. A plant cozy in Newhall may freeze in Saugus, while another, blooming merrily at the top of a Canyon Country hill, will languish at the bottom. Microclimates abound. Temperatures soar and plummet to the tune of howling winds.

It's about time we have our own advice column because gardening here is unlike gardening anywhere else.