Root Knot Nematodes vs Janice's Garden

I am purchasing Dragon Fire CPP, an organic wild sesame oil spray that is supposed to kill most of the root knot nematodes we have!

Organic Gardening Supplies and Biological Pest Control Products from ARBICO

Garden Updates, new DIRT!

So! here's the new dirt we've been talking about! Exciting, but we found LOTS of rocks in it, so we'll have to clean those rocks from the beds.

taking out the pebbles

just a small portion of the rocks that came with the dirt fill, we have a big job to do cleaning this new dirt!

Garlics, onions, chinese lettuce, romaine lettuce, snow peas, celery seedlings, napa cabbage, cabbages, and in the foreground tall marigolds

Lori basking in the morning sun

Here's the yams before frost damage

Frost damaged the yams, so out they came! You can see our second harvest in the updates

After cleaning...must plant something else now!

Winter Garden Harvests

Autumn Garden

This is a delayed post as I took this set of pictures before I left for a 1 week trip to Barcelona.
Autumn Mums with Fever Few

Next year's strawberries being nurtured in pots

Satsuma Mandarins turning color.  Now many are ripe! I'll post more pics later since I have several weeks off from work due to a Hiatus!

White Guavas galore!

The new member of our family, Musa Mahoi.
It's supposed to fruit 2 bunches of bananas instead of just 1!
It's also a semi-dwarf reaching only 10' instead of 15'~20'.

Dwarf Mango is getting settled in. It was planted about 3' from the spot the poor pear tree had succumbed to fire blight.

Carrots growing along side garlic chives. Unfortunately, unbeknownst to us there are a LOT of root knot nematodes here. I just discovered that when I started thinning these carrots last week. :-(  I think I will have to splurge for the Dragon Fire SSP spray or some sesame cakes. Will need to research which is better. Anyone have any experience with the Dragon Fire?

View of the Garden from the east side of the garden.

We decided to take out one of the beds that was hugging this wall. We need a space just to mix soil, process large branches and composting materials. We had been using the large open space we opened up this past spring, but this weekend, we are finally bringing more dirt we found from San Dimas. I'll post pics of that soon!

Garden beds from the west side

Autumn Harvests

First Harvest of "Satsuma Mikan" Mandarine, White Guava, and some strawberries.

Our last Zucchini, Chinese Lettuce and a bit of strawberries

Experimenting with indoor lettuce.

Yams, Limes (foraged), and Rugen Alpine strawberries

More Strawberries, and a lovely Fuji apple!

Lettuce, Bitter Melon, Onion (hiding), White Sesame Seeds (lower right corner)

White Guavas, and one Mikan.

Ruby Yams from the front yard!

Lots of Sun-chokes and more to come!

Tender baby lettuce greens.

Lotsa Peppers from the Garden! Home Grown Meal

With all the extra pepper harvests, we are adding it to almost every meal we have! This is a stir fry noodle dish called Yakisoba. Yakisoba literally means, grilled/stir fried noodles. We used a gluten free noodle substitute that is normally used for Pad Thai and it worked great! We added Tonkatsu sauce, for the flavoring to mimic the traditional sauce. Tonkatsu sauce tastes is kind of like Worcester sauce but sweeter and thicker. I guess the closest mixture would be Ketchup with generous amounts of the Worcester sauce mixed in.

Here are just the veggies: HG Paprika and Anaheim peppers, Farmer's Market Carrots, Onions and Cabbage.

Here it is with the noodles added. The noodles were cooked separately, slightly undercooked, so it can absorb the extra liquids from the veggies. It was very yummy!

Harvest Updates

Here's some peppers, pineapple guavas, green beans, and the last of the eggplants

First crop of Sun-chokes, pretty good sizes, and still a LOT more from where these came from. We found a good way to eat them. We've pickled them. They don't develop the strong smells that we were not fond of when cooked. Plus we applied shaved bonito flakes, salted, minced perilla (shiso) and ground sesame very generously. It's crispy and refreshing! They say it's very good for diabetics because it contains inulin, which helps regulate insulin levels.

More Peppers

Even More Peppers!

We're nearing our end in Pepper production. We were VERY pleased with the plants this year, and thankfully NO Pepper Weevils!

We have started seed on Broccoli, Cabbages, Lettuces, Celery, Daikon and Napa Cabbages in pots while we let the soil rest a bit between the summer and winter plantings. We have started a new method of composting. Instead of stuffing our compost bins with the veggie garden's end of season plants, we're chopping them up, taking out a few inches of soil from the bed, then placing the chopped vegetation there in the bed directly, then burying what was grown in that bed (as long as it's not diseased). The idea is: that that plant, be it tomato or beans, grew using the soil's nutrients and the sun's energy to grow, so returning it to rest right THERE makes the most sense. All the nutrients minus the fruits of the plants are are basically returned, in addition to new energy made by photosynthesis. There are other methods, like cutting the plant at the base and simply laying the old plant on the soil, but for us, that method takes too long for decomposition.

We are blessed with a very long growing season, so we don't let our soil rest as long as those who have snow cover.  So far, as long as we add nutrients back into the raised beds from our compost and through our till under method and a bit of rock dust, we get great results with happy plants! We are in zone 9 with 120-150 days with heat about 86 F. We get frost about 3~4 weeks out of the year, so growing winter hardy crops, we can be growing year round.  Carrots, Beets and Daikon actually store more sugars in their roots when there are colder temps. Cabbages can withstand some frost, and peas cant withstand quite a lot of it. I know we're spoiled here with all the warm weather... I just wish we had more rain! (the grass is always greener...)

Garden Updates

Peppers are nearing
the end of production

Bittermelon in pots

Garlic starting to sprout

White Sesame blooming
and setting seed

Strawberries for next spring all in pots

The fig tree has finished this years' production
and the leaves are starting to turn color

VERY late season pumpkins next
to Borage almost ready to flower

Navel Oranges are now bigger than baseballs

Carrot seedlings on the left.
Onion and Garlic Chived on the right.
This is where Cherry Toms
were grown this summer

This Valencia orange was surrounded
by too many plants in it's  root zone
and was infested with bark-boring beetles.
(LOL, I envision Volks Wagon bugs,
barking and being bored)
The Bird of Paradise growing
behind it was finally removed
and planted in the front yard.

This bed had cucumbers,
zucchini, pumpkins and beans.
Most of it was tilled under and
the land is waiting for
the fall plantings of Peas.
Against the back wall, the Sunchokes
are starting to wither

Pink little Cosmos enjoying a
little rain this morning. 
The weather is SOOO bizarre!
Earlier in the week we
had Temps in 110.
Now we have thunderstorms
with scattered showers,
temps in the 70's

Seed starts of Cabbage and Lettuce

This area is where the Asian Pear
Tree stump was.
Tim dug it out and Andrew planted
the Mango tree in place of it and filled
the area back up

Late cucumbers: we're taking
a gamble with the weather

New Zealand Spinach is so hardy