Moving the Blog to Facebook

Hi fellow gardeners and do-it-yourselfers! It's been a LOOOOONG while since I've posted!
I have decided to move my thoughts onto a Facebook page since I have maxed out the photo space limit on this blog.

I do hope you will follow me there!

Happy summer, and keep on growing, learning and sharing!

-Janice

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

Flowers of Late Spring

Pineapple Guava blossoms, the petals are edible, and very tasty

 African Blue Basil. The honey bees go crazy over these blooms

 Mexican Primrose

 Pelargoniums and Alstroemeria. The foreground leaves are Lemongrass. 

 Geraniums

 Kalanchoes

Alstroemeria (salmon pink)

 Day lily (these are edible too)

 Elephant Head Amaranth

 Periwinkle

 Alstroemeria

 Mango only had one flower cluster this year. :(

 Blackberry blossoms, can't wait for juicy berries!

 Amaryllis

 Not sure what this flower is, but the bees go nuts over it too.

 a bouquet of amaryllis

 Pelargoniums

 Mom's pelargonium collection

 Cosmos, Blue Basil and Purple Orach under the avocado tree

 Fuji's apple blossoms. We trimmed both trees, but Akane is still pouting and hasn't really woken up yet, so let's see if Fuji will set fruit without a partner in bloom

 Fever few

Cosmos

 Cream California Poppies

 The obscure persimmon flower. Our Fuyu perimmon has a lot of flowers this year. We hope we'll have more than last year, (which was 1 fruit!)

 Tiny Thyme flowers

 Reaching for the sky!

Scarlet Runner Bean gifted from a friend,

is already needing more room near the top of the pole!