Garden Updates: May 10th, 2012

Our Tomato seedlings have matured and are almost ready to transplant to the beds.

A little late, but since I was out of town, I didn't get to start the Cucurbits until this week.

This year we are growing "Kabocha" pumpkins, "Black Eel" zucchini, an unknown cantelope (seed saved from the farmer's market), "Thai Catchai" watermelon, "Japanese pickling" cucumbers, "Double Yield"cukes, Bitter Melon, yellow and green Pattypan squashes, Luffa, and Butternut Squash.

 Here on the left, we have the "British Wonder" shelling peas coming to the end of it's season. On the right, we have "Japanese Nappa/Hakusai" cabbage going to seed. Most of it were eaten by the birds. (Share with nature!) but we save some under a veil and hope that next year's crop is a good one.

We are saving lots of seeds.

 These are parsley seeds forming

 Chayote starting to grow very vigorously

 bulb onions after I've harvested all the carrots. There's one Lettuce left (front). These onions seemed to be doing nothing so far in terms of bulbing...sigh. The garlics are done and out they came out the next bed.

This year we have 3 varieties of sweet potatoes. The typical "Garnet Yam", the "Okinawan purple"(pictured here on the left), and a mysterious purple sweet potato with purple leaves which we just got from the swap this past Sunday. The purple one just "perked" up today. Sweet potato slips amaze me at their hardiness. I just planted it 3 days ago. It had no roots, and it was wilted when I planted it. Now it's not droopy anymore. The Okinawan was planted 5 days ago and it's already started growing!

 The path that encircles the back of our fig tree. Here you see the cloud of orange Calendulas, some common sage, "African Blue" basil and in the foreground some camomile.

 The fig tree has started growing it's fruit-buds. This is the normal cycle, but we've had some "out of season" fruiting these past 2 years.

 These are the "out of season" figs. At this rate, they may mature by June. Normally, our figs ripen in August.

 "Russian Black Plum Paste" tomatoes are growing!

 In the "pond" area, Amaranth has decidedly won out in the competition between it and sesame. The sesame seedlings were voraciously eaten by snails. We thin out the Amaranth and eat them.

 Next to the Amaranth we have Gobo(Edible Burdock). We're hoping to collect seeds this year.

 Canna Edulis/Achira

 Only one graft was successful on the peach tree in the back.

The "Goldmine" nectarine graft is growing well.

  It turns out, the peach tree in the back is actually a nectarine tree. This is the fruit of the parent tree.

These loquats are pretty big! 

 Our mania. Rooting cuttings

 This is our "Hugelkultur" test bed. We piled in lots of old rotting logs, layering them with manure, and covering it with soil and seeded it with vetch. We will try growing corn here first.

 We're covering our Cabbage crop in the heat so they don't bolt

The peppers have flowers! The leaves are a bit yellow, and I did add some extra compost and worm tea, but maybe it needs something else?

 Onto the front garden: The Haas avocados are growing steady

 Lupini beans under the rosebush

 "Alauria" our front yard peach tree has fruits!!!

 "Kyohou" grapes are forming

Please excuse us, we're experiencing technical difficulties

I'll try to figure out this bug soon! Thanks for being patient.  Eric asked about good books to start with when trying to grow our own veggies and fruits.  I have a LOT of books, but the most insightful are:

Square Foot Gardening by Mel Bartholemew
Rodale's Illustrated Encyclopedia of Organic Gardening
How to Grow More Vegetables by John Jeavons

I glean info from these books to apply to my garden. Some things work great, others not so much.

Currently, I'm trying to expand my knowledge about Permaculture, and 

Gaia's Garden by Toby Hemenway is a great intro book into the concepts.

The never-ending debate is about mulching in our family. My Mom and I disagree about the need for mulching. I say, mulch heavily (like 1' deep) and she says "No, it invites slugs, weevils and other harmful pests." So far, I'm letting her do it her way in the raised beds but the soil pays for it. It dries up so fast in this CA weather.  The trees do get lots of mulch in the backyard since slugs don't eat bark, she agreed to let me do that.  I show her piles of leaves and yard waste stacked because we had no room in the compost. Showing her the soil line right below the rich decaying material, were mostly red wriggler worms and hardly any slugs or weevils. I explained that slugs will eat the decaying material if there's plenty of it. They only bother to eat the greens because they lack food. She just shakes her head in disbelief. (I'll convert her some day... hehehe.)  We are having an explosion of slugs this year. Perhaps it's the extra rains we're getting.

She and I also disagree with my adoption of the "Square Inch" methods that the Dervaes incorporate.  I pack the lettuces/carrots in. I seed them very densely and thin them as they grow. She complains it takes too much work.  I say we get more food out of the bed than neatly spacing them out according to seed package instructions or mature size of the plant, and the density provides a natural living mulch.  She says the plants don't thrive because they compete too much for nutrients with each other.  I say you just keep adding more nutrients as needed. You can tell if a lettuce is anemic. It starts yellowing and stops growing.

"The best fertilizer is the Gardener's Shadow." ~author unknown

So, there you have it some reading recommendations and a glimpse of our daily discussions. :-)