Garlic

We're expecting temps of 90+degrees this weekend so the garlic needs to be pulled to make way for the final 1o tomato plants.

The heads will go onto drying racks (old refrigerator shelves:) and sit out for a week or so before storing in the cellar. I'll be back later today to post pics of the haul!

ps. The poppies were volunteers from the compost we added to the soil.

Transition Time in the Garden

Trying to get double duty out of some of the beds in the garden. Here is our tomato/lettuce seed-saving bed. We just tucked the tomatoes between the lettuce plants that we'll be collecting seeds from next month. They are just starting to flower and the process takes a good couple of weeks before we get viable seed. This bed was actually planted with seed saved from last winters crop. It's an easy one to save but because of the time involved I've learned to keep the plants that are going to seed on the outside of the bed (mostly :) so we can plant our summer crops while we're waiting.

ps. the onions on the left side of the bed will be replaced with jalapeno peppers next week.

His Empire of Dirt

I found this by reading a magazine, which led me to a book, which I Googled on the web and found the New York Magazine article and this video. Maybe we should be more enterprising and get ourselves published in New York.



The article spells out more of the travails.

What's New and Happenin'

I don't write much about the garden. I tend to let Maureen because she does a better job and I like to think of myself as the brute strength of this operation, emphasis on brute. Here are some crude pictures of what is happening in the last few weeks.


This is one of the new wine bottle herb beds. The bottles are filled with sand and buried upside down to form a bed. They are at the end of the wooden formed beds and set off the garden. 'Tis also fun to create more empty bottles for more beds.

This is one of the older beds with a winter crop.



These are the new beds that have been created in the last two weekends. Besides tidying up the place a bit, we now have more places to grow.

More fun than a barrel of monkeys in store for us.

Onions

....sort of :(

This year we are once again seeing our multitude of onions go to seed and fail to grow into decent bulbs....eek!

As I found out last year Onions are very weather dependent and our fluctuating winter temperatures confuse them into thinking it has been 2 seasons so they flower in order to propagate.

The plants never develop a sizable bulb and most of that is an inedible core.

Tho this is actually a leek (also going to seed) the idea is the same. A very hard inner core with only a few usable outer layers. I used 20 white onions in a pot of spaghetti sauce just to get enough actual onion. ....sigh.

The only ones that seem to be avoiding this fate are the red onions (planted as transplants vs. the sets used in the other bed). Of course I didn't plant very many of those....sigh.

From the Plant Answers Website---
Most folks want to grow onion bulbs NOT onion flowers! What causes bulb onions to send up flower stalks? Flowering of onions can be caused by several things but usually the most prevalent is temperature fluctuation. An onion is classed as a biennial which means it normally takes 2 years to go from seed to seed. Temperature is the controlling or triggering factor in this process. If an onion plant is exposed to alternating cold and warm temperatures resulting in the onion plant going dormant, resuming growth, going dormant and then resuming growth again, the onion bulbs prematurely flower or bolt. The onion is deceived into believing it has completed two growth cycles or years of growth in its biennial life cycle so it finalizes the cycle by blooming. Flowering can be controlled by planting the right variety at the right time.

So for all of you who live in HOT summer areas, when do you plant your onions and what kinds do you have the most success with?

Beans

The beans are up...Yippee Yahoo!

Provider green beans were a HUGE success for us last year, we still have bags in the freezer and cans in the pantry. This year we are even dedicating one bed just to save seed, if we get too many we can always use them as soup beans (very versatile bean, this one :)

Tomatoes

We've had such warm weather that we decided to go ahead and get a few of our 'first time ever growing tomatoes from seed' tomatoes into the ground. We have never planted outside this early and have already been informed that another storm is on it's way, but the freezing weather should be over at this point and I think/hope these little guys can withstand what's coming.

The bulk of seedlings are still in little pots in our back yard.

We planted 10 and have 100 (I kid you not) left....what was I thinking...eek!

Provider green beans went into the ground also,

but a box of dirt does not make for a good photo :)

Kale

....flowers :)

We grew kale for the first time this year, but still haven't actually eaten any. We grew it for the chickens, who BTW....LOVE it!

Spring

Transplanting tomatoes and peppers over at our other blog.....go take a look!

Why it's OK to be Lazy....

....occasionally.

Letting the broccoli bloom attracts bees!

Broccoli

....in all it's glory!

We have the better-looking than anything in the grocery store speciman...

...the going to seed even tho it hasn't been above 70 degrees plant...

....and lastly, the barely 6 inches tall what the heck ?!?

They were all planted in the same soil, the same day.....heck they all came from the same six-pack.....sigh.

Garlic

We planted a 4x8 bed full of garlic (foreground).....and it all came up....eek! We really weren't too sure what would happen here. I was less than the purist on this one, bought garlic bulbs at the grocery store for 5/$1....considerably less than the organic at $3/bulb. We'll see how they compare when we start pulling them up.

We don't do anything special with our garlic, other than amending with homemade compost. Because our winters are fairly mild (freezes occasionally, but no snow) we don't even have to cover them. Tho we did put another hefty helping of compost on top after the cloves went into the ground. The brown tubing is part of our drip irrigation system, but during the winter we don't use it at all. Even in a drought year we get just enough rain to not have to water our winter gardens except when the plants first go into the ground and maybe a little in the spring as it starts to warm up. This year we've been happily drenched by storms and tho I hesitate to say the drought is over, I'd like to think we're at least on our way! These were planted at the end of November and we hope to harvest in May, if only so the summer crops can get started :)

Potatoes

I am alive.....just lazy. If it makes a difference,

I've been neglecting the garden as well as the blog :)

So, this week I will do a little garden tour to kind of catch up on what's been going on here in our California zone 9 garden....starting with the potatoes.

The furrows were pretty weedie, but the plants were big enough to start covering the lower parts...or hilling up. This is done to prevent growing potatoes from peeking out from under the dirt and turning green and toxic. Potatoes grow up from the original tuber and by hilling up around the plants, you give them more dirt to grow in (make sense?)

Guess I should've brought a ruler to show scale:)

Not sure why there is such a difference in the size of the plants.

As I was weeding I did unearth a marble size potato on one of the smallest plants (still attached, which is why I covered it back up and didn't get a photo) so I know they are growing down there.

The joy of potatoes is when you dig them up in the spring, obviously; we all know that harvesting veggies is the fun part. But with potatoes there's that element of surprise as well. There's just something magical about finding these edible goodies underneath all that greenery.

Brocolli

We are almost ready to harvest some of our broccoli....yea! These went in ground on October first (as nursery seedlings....next year we plan on trying more from seed).

Tho their growth rates are a bit inconsistent, we are happy that most (not all) actually look like they will produce our favorite veggie. I didn't get a photo, but some of the seedlings still look like....seedlings. They are alive but seem to be in a state of suspended animation. Not sure what's going on there; good thing we planted plenty. And looking on the bright side, if those don't make it they will be the first beds planted in the Spring.

On a side note we are getting our FIFTH rain storm today.....the drought may actually be ending....yippee yahoo. Still plan on conserving water as much as possible, but it sure is nice to see the rain barrels filling up!

Planting Potatoes

These went in the ground about a week ago....

This is actually after planting...the potatoes went in about 6 inches from the top of the boards, then were covered with just a couple inches of soil. As the plants grow we'll hill up around them with the excess dirt.

I ordered quite a few seed potatoes from an organic source but also planted a couple of regular spuds that we bought from the grocery store....we'll see if there is any measureable difference.