California's climate is generally called "Mediterranean."  Yet it ranges across the state from the hot deserts, as in the case of Death Valley, to the sub-artic, dry, mountain regions of Western California.  

But what does a Mediterranean climate consist of and why is it harder to garden in California than in other parts of the United States?

A Mediterranean climate is characterized by dry summers and wet winters. These particular climates can be found on

• coasts that have a large body of water to their west and
• are found in latitudes between 30-45 degrees North and South of the equator

Examples of these aside from California are obviously, the Mediterranean coasts, South Africa, Chile and the Western part of Australia. In permaculture and ecology, all these different places with similar climates are called "climate analogues." It's handy to learn what might grow in your area by comparing it to existing climate analogs around the world. 

Weather And Mediterranean Climate - Silicon Valley Seeds throughout California Map Of Koppen Climate Classification - Map of USA District

We often hear, "It never rains in Southern California. " But the truth is that it never rains in Southern California during the summer.

California's climate is characterized by the presence of South Pacific High-Pressure Zone. And that is primarily due to the North Pacific Subtropical High-Pressure System (pictured below), which I'll refer to from now on as the North Pacific High.

The North Pacific High is a semi-permanent high-pressure system which buffers or thwarts all potential storms that come in its way. Because of this, Southern California experiences dry summers and falls. During the wintertime, however, it moves and is displaced by the 'Aleutian Low.' So it does rain (and sometimes snow) in California during the winter.

Given this backdrop of the California climate, it is interesting to note that California gardens on a mere 10% of its total land area but uses a whopping 80% of its water! That's down from its state-water use in the 1960s which was at 90%.

• • Capture the water especially during the wintertime

Prepare to capture rain during late fall through spring. And when it does rain, make sure to channel that water to your growing spaces

• • Capture water passively

Brad Lancaster, author of Rainwater Harvesting for Drylands is famous for promoting passive water capture in arid climates such as his hometown of Arizona. In the following video, he shows us how he has retrofitted his house using low-tech solutions. He passively captures greywater and water from his roof into vegetative systems around his homestead and teaches others to do the same on their properties.

Mulching is essential, especially in drylands. Never leave your soil exposed so that it loses what little moisture it receives. Mulching reduces the need for watering by 25%. For gardens in California, you can mulch in a variety of ways. Here are some methods:

A dynamic accumulator is a plant that will absorb and retain, in the leaf, at least one nutrient at levels that are at least many times higher than the average plant. (From Garden Myths)

Some plants will bring up huge amounts of specific nutrients. For instance, wherever you find lambsquarters, you are sure to have a lot of potassium available. Pigweed specializes in calcium. Yet other plants such as dandelion, and comfrey act as generalists and draw up a broader range of smaller amounts of all the micro and macronutrients available in the soil and store them in their leaves and bodies. 

When you chop and drop the leaves from these particular plants, you are sure to fertilize the soil around them.

To find out which plant brings up what kind of nutrient, Dr. James Duke, a botanist from the USDA put together this extensive list of accumulators which you can use for your own soil amendment needs. 

Note that "chopping and dropping" does not pertain to the weeds that you want to eliminate from your garden. You want to make sure that when you pull out these unwanted weeds, you do so from the root and do not introduce them back into your garden bed by "dropping" them as mulch there. You probably should put them in a compost pile where they can degenerate and turn into rich organic soil. More on composting below.

You can mulch with dried clippings, straw, or leaves. As mentioned above, remember to compost those weeds! We hope that after time and weathering, these organic materials will decompose and "build up" the nutrient profile of your soil.

Growing something on bare soil is also another form of "mulching." These living mulches not only hold the soil in place through their roots but cover the soil over a longer amount of time as they do not decompose at once.

If you can choose perennial ground covers such as "creeping thyme," strawberries or even sedum this can lessen your need to cover the soil.
Some farmers will choose to use "cover crops" during a fallow season on the soil that they are trying to rejuvenate. These cover crops (mainly legume types) can also be a good choice for living mulch.

Clover can be used as a cover crop because it is leguminous

Not only do "cover crops" such as alfalfa, clover, buckwheat and peas hold the soil in place, keep the moisture in the ground and lessen evaporation, they are also nitrogen-fixers that reintroduce plant-soluble forms of nitrogen back into soil that may have been depleted by growing "heavy-feeding" crops such as tomatoes and corn. This leads us into the next main thing that's required for successful gardening in California and that is "Building the Soil"

If you are just starting to grow your food and want to build a garden bed you can ensure that the soil building process occurs over time, you can do "lasagna gardening." soil by building your gardens in layers. These layers break down over time and increase the natural fertility of your soil while keeping the weeds at bay.

You can mulch with dried clippings, straw, or leaves. As mentioned above, remember to compost those weeds! We hope that after time and weathering, these organic materials will decompose and "build up" the nutrient profile of your soil.

A beautifully finished compost pile

Composting is so important for any garden. We have written about composting in the past, and plan to deal with it more extensively in the future. There are refinements to how good compost is created but in general, make sure to: 

The required composting ratio is 25-30 (Carbon):1(Nitrogen).

One personal mistake I've made in the past is that because our family generates a lot of food scraps, I tend to put vegetable scraps in the compost, without adding (3) three to (4) four times the amount of carbon for every kitchen scrap I add.

Carbon-rich materials are often found in leaves from trees dropped during the fall, straw or hay cut after it has gone to seed. When I don't have this carbon, I often have enough scratch paper that my children have used around the house or in school. I shred these and some paper junk mail (with the exception of glossy ads) and have the kids add those to the compost bin outside to increase the carbon content of my pile.