April Happenings

Last weekend our tomatoes went in. We only have 9 plants this year. Two are cherry tomatoes and two heirloom and only one that is determinate. All but one were purchased from our local nursery and one of the heirlooms was from a local Master Gardening event I attended. I may be tempted to purchase one more this year if I can find a spot for it. I'm thinking a green zebra. We are already maxed out on garden space as I over did it with onions and garlic this year and they both have a handful of growing days ahead of them. I'm hoping to find a location for a least two squash plants and a cucumber plant as well but both require ample room to sprawl. Perhaps vertical growing is the way to go here. Our lovely rhododendron is in full bloom and putting on quite a pink show in our front yard and between our pink jasmine in the back and cecil brunner rose in front, the smell outside is amazing. Sam's lettuce is thriving and ready for harvest now and his arugula is almost there. Maggie's red onions will be the first of many harvested and her radishes are growing successfully! Our first radishes ever.  Looking forward to the weeks to come. I'm waiting patiently for the back yard to explode in color from the cosmos, zinnias and sunflowers. I have a feeling our garden will be very productive this year.

Lettuce & Arugula

Chives in bloom

Random lettuce growing between the onions

Rhododendrons

No matter how long the winter, spring is sure to follow. ~Proverb

Welcoming the Three Sisters at Tilden Park

 I received a copy of Edible East Bay last week and enjoyed it so much. It was full of great resources about gardening and local events and local foods, season by season. We attended one of the listed events (which was free - bonus:) at Tilden Park last Saturday and had so much fun. It was a hands on gardening event where children were learning how to plant the Native Americans' Three Sisters: beans, squash and corn.  Maggie was especially excited about the event because she had learned about the Three Sisters last year in 3rd grade. Both kids enjoyed the experience. They created mounds out of rich compost and planted away. After the event they received seeds for home and corn plants and were invited back in September to see the results of their work. It was a wonderful day for all of us.

Onions, Garlic and Potatoes

A few weeks ago I transplanted all the garlic over to the onion bed - easy job but very time consuming. I must remember not to the plant garlic where I plan to plant our summer veggies! Spring planting always seems so far out to me when I plant the garlic and I'm not known for patience. I love the look of the greens coming through the straw. I also love the fact that one bed is completely planted.

 
 Yesterday I planted about 8 rows of lettuce and 2 rows of arugula. A must have on Colin's homemade pizza - yum! Today I plan to finish planting the leeks and more onions and this weekend the composter will be converted to a potato growing bin. We have a stackable composter which allows us to achieve what they did in this great tutorial here.  We will be growing both red and white potatoes this year.

Janurary's seeds

It's always fun for us watching how fast the seeds sprout.

The September garden

The leaves are starting to change color and the smells have changed in the air. School has started and most of us gardeners are planting our fall veggies. Some of us have unsightly tomato plants with green tomatoes hanging all over them wondering when and if they're going to turn red. It was a pretty cool summer here and only now with the recent heat the tomatoes starting to turn red. Here is an article I read this morning regarding this subject. Looks like I wasn't the only one disappointed this year with our crop.
http://www.mercurynews.com/bay-area-living/ci_18912349?source=rss

Maggie's Chinese cabbage is growing beautifully and we have lots of red onions & walla walla onions in the ground. Carrots and lettuce are sprouting and any day the beet seeds I planted should will too.  Here are some recent happenings from out back..

Finally red

Green zebras

Rows of Chinese cabbage

Herbs galore

Colin's huckleberries

Poblano peppers

Basil

Perfect rows of lettuce

I don't necessarily buy into the whole astrological sign thing but I am a Virgo and I do happen to like most things "just so" I'm also a fanatic about things being straight and even. I know, I need to relax and undoubtedly having 3 kids is bound to cure me at some point :) When it comes to gardening though, I admire full, lush, out of rhyme & reason gardens but I do love the look of perfect rows of lettuce and I find it easy to care for the lettuce this way. My method of planting lettuce seeds has always been using a straight piece of wood to mark where I dig. This year though I am trying a technique I saw online using flour to mark the rows. I unfortunately can't remember the site where I saw this but thought is was a great idea. We'll see how it goes!

Goodbye July

Hard to believe that summer is almost over. The fall school clothing and Halloween items are already well stocked in the stores. We are anticipating the new school year and are in denial that Maggie is going into 4th grade and Sam 1st and that little Amelia is already 4 months old. Crazy. I gave up hope on our tomatoes this year. The plants are tall and leggy. We have had a few ripe tomatoes so far and we're not impressed. Thank God for farmer's market. The herbs however are enjoying this cool summer and we have enjoyed making homemade pesto a lot. The beans look like they're doing well and we should be picking a bunch any day now. I love the way the vines are up against the fence, creating a green wall. The sunflowers are tall and happy. Never a favorite of mine but I am enjoying them more and more every year. They happen to face our 90 year old neighbor's house and she looks forward to seeing them. They bring her so much pleasure. We now plant them for her. The bright light cosmos are indeed bright orange, beautiful and wild. All of them reseeded from last year. They even managed to reseed over the fence along the creek. Beautiful. looking forward to our first acorn squash, Sam's plant is amazing! Our vacation away with family will happen soon and when we return, I will be mapping out the winter garden. I already know that one bed will be full of onions and another with garlic and of course we'll have plenty of lettuce. For now though, I'll enjoy these last few days of summer and those sunflowers.

 

 

 

 

Our First Potatoes

We harvested our first potatoes yesterday. We planted the seeds in early Feb and didn't know what to expect. Amelia was born in March and needless to say, the potatoes fell victim to neglect. Not a good thing with container gardening. The plants never bloomed and actually withered away altogether. Yesterday we dumped the container expecting to see nothing and we found a handful of potatoes from each container. It was pretty exciting! We are definitely going to grow them again and I imagine with more attention and care, we will have even more to harvest.

Welcome Summer

The cosmos in Maggie's garden are quite charming right now and the nasturtiums have happily found it's place in our yard once again. The mint is relentless as always, popping up everywhere and there's a rumor that we will be drinking some yummy mojitos this summer. The squash is rambling about in Sam's bed and volunteer tomatillos are popping up everywhere! The tomato plants are on the small, leggy side but that's not all that surprising considering the low temperatures and record rain we've had this month. We do however have blooms and fruit and of course lots of hope for plenty of bruchetta. I started off the morning today contacting Farmer Fred , our local Master Gardener via Facebook (how great is that?) inquiring about planting tomatoes this late. Hopefully I can get at least one more in the ground. Other than that, I am planning on pulling out some climbing roses that aren't doing so well and replacing them with something else. Something bright! I am thinking about the black eyed Susan vine but heard they are frost sensitive. I plan to pop in the garden center today and see if I can find them. I have only seen them available in seeds.

Rhododendrons & Red Onions

I love our rhododendrons. They bloom for only a few short weeks out of the year but it's well worth waiting for. Not knowing what a rhododendron was, these were the only plants that I saved on our property after we moved in. Everything else was cactus and shrubs that were pruned wrong and covered in cobwebs and they had to go.

Last weekend I caught my first glimpse of summer. I think a lot of people did. Our local garden centers were busy. I bought some red onion starts to add to the red onions that I planted by seed weeks ago. These 6 packs hold a lot of onions. Each plug is a bulb. It's hard to see in the picture below, but the onions are filling up the right side of the bed. I also managed to get in 8 tomato plants, 3 squash, 6 bell peppers and herbs. It's great to be working in the yard again!  

Finding my way back to the garden

Blame it on winter or perhaps the new addition in our family but either way, it's been awhile since I've found myself out in the garden. With baby Amelia being almost 1 month old and the weather warming up, I'm slowly finding my way back to the garden. The zinnia & cosmo seeds are planted & the beds are prepped and waiting to be filled with tomato plants, squash, cucumbers and more. I recently added soil to the potato pots and my husband helped me with the wire on our fence for the climbing pink jasmine. The jasmine is ready to bloom and this will be the year that we'll start to see significant growth from it I'm sure. Here are some recent pictures.