Today I had a nice block of time to finally add some manure and compost to the raised beds nothing wants to grow in. First I removed the non-thriving Brussels Sprouts and just planted them in ordinary garden soil. I figured they'd probably die, but at least this way they had a chance and I had a vacant raised bed so I could start digging it up and adding nutrients. Maybe they will like their new home better.
I also removed the bok choy from the other raised bed. It was only about three inches tall and bolting. I decided to throw the six small plants into a stir fry for lunch tomorrow. The lettuces were doing a bit better so I transplanted one of my Batvian lettuce seedlings among the small Romaine plants, and planted a nasturtium seed and a marigold plant nearby. That left half the bed to dig around in, so I added nutrients to the rest of that bed where I will be planting tomatoes. I just read today that tomatoes don't especially like to be rotated -- they like to stay put. That's fine with me, since I really don't have anywhere to put them except where they were last year and the years before that.
When I started the digging, I discovered the soil in the beds had gotten quite hard, though the clods were full of worm tunnels and the beds had lots of earthworms. I added the manure and worked it in and then worked some ordinary garden soil in with that. The soil came from the field our weed abatement man dug under Saturday and it had been fallow, growing only a healthy crop of weeds for the past few years. It seemed full of organic material. Probably a lot of weed seeds there as well, but I'm good at pulling them and plan to fill the beds enough to smother any sprouting weeds when the crops get bigger.
When I finished amending the soil, I decided to have another try at planting radishes, carrots, and parsnips. I hope they decide to come up this time. When I finished that, I watered everything and covered it up with a row cover to protect it from pests -- including our resident cats. Two of them were on gopher patrol today. One was watching over a fairly new hole a few feet from my raised beds. The other was playing with something in the weeds near the recently plowed field. He was the same one who was so curious about what I did in the herb garden yesterday and came to inspect after I went in. I followed him, since I had loosened the soil and I didn't want him to do his business in it. I wish I'd taken my camera with me. He jumped up on the rock in the middle of the garden as if to survey his domain, and stayed there quietly for some time, just looking around. What a picture it would have made!
This morning I went on a weed and walnut tree safari with my camera and discovered new trees that have not only started by themselves but also are taller than I am. I'm not sure what they are. I also discovered a new poison oak plant which I did my best to dispatch. I have posted one of my weed assortments at the top of this blog. Sometimes I think weeds can be almost pretty -- if only they didn't spread so fast.
Are they black or are they Persian? That is the question. Unfortunately I didn't think to take the field guide outside until it was already dark. I only picked some leaves and male flowers from each of the two trees. I seem to remember the previous owner telling us one of the trees was a black walnut, but I remember that I didn't like the taste of the black walnuts I sampled as a child and I like the nuts from both of our trees. Also, I lived on the central coast of California and according to the field guide, the black walnut trees are found on the East Coast and California walnut trees tend to be Persian or Carpathian. Can anyone tell by these slightly wilted leaf pictures what kind of walnut trees they came from. I have labeled them A and B for the sake of reference.
Other than fussing about identifying these trees, I actually did some useful garden tasks today. I dug a nice home for my angelica transplant and transplanted it. Then I remembered the cats, who would love the nice freshly dug dirt. I dropped a bit of red pepper flakes around the plant and then remembered the deer. I didn't want to spray the angelica itself with Liquid Fence, so I pulled a few weeds that were nearby and sprayed them and put them around the plant as mulch. I also transplanted a couple of very small thyme plants that were very tiny but outgrowing their peat pellets. I've been taking a risk dividing the pellets before transplanting, since each has about 5-7 baby plants. Since the ones I transplanted this way Sunday survived, I tried it again. I hate killing off the extra plants. I also did some weeding and put down a few more newspapers to block the weeds from coming back near the borders.
I'm pleased to see that several borage seeds have sprouted, and also a few calendula, lots of poppies, and some dill have reseeded in this bed which is in view of my kitchen window and which I refer to as my herb garden. It's actually the second herb garden. The first one is on the hill. In fact, I don't think I have any planted area without at least one or two herbs in it.
Yesterday I saw a hummingbird moth visiting my herbs. Except for it's size, it looked and sounded like I'd imagine a baby hummingbird would. It made the typical humming bird sound.
Today I bought more herbs, but didn't get them planted yet. I did get a few marigolds transplanted into the herb garden I see from my kitchen window. My biggest job was getting lots more flower, herb, and veggie seedlings into bigger containers. I grew them in peat pellets, and their roots were beginning to poke through.
I also cleared a few more feet around my herb garden border and covered the bare ground with newspaper and bark chips to keep it weed free. Still have a lot more to do there.
I'm still waiting to see what the flowers at the back of that bed that are intertwined with the poppies will turn out to be. I'm pretty sure they aren't weeds. But I can' t believe they are from the seeds I planted months ago, either. Time will tell.
Over these last few days I've been pulling weeds, finding new seedlings that have finally sprouted, admiring my daffodils and new poppy blooms, watering, and just enjoying the warm weather and the feel of the earth in my hands. After weeding an area I'm not yet planting, I've been covering it with newspaper or cardboard to keep it clear of weeds until I'm ready to plant. Today I planted some borage, radishes and scabiosa in the garden I look at from my kitchen window. In the fenced garden area I got reckless and planted just a few radishes , a couple of spinach seeds, a couple of lettuce seeds, and a few borage seeds in the actual soil -- not a raised bed. Nothing is growing in the raised beds this year for some reason. The brussel sprouts I planted last month have not grown a bit and the leaves seem stunted (See left picture). The lettuce and bok choy transplants don't seem to be doing much growing, either. I gave them some fish emulsion a few days ago, but I don't see any real changes. Maybe I'm expecting too much too soon. But I am begining to wonder why even a radish seed won't sprout in the raised beds which have always done so well. Only the chive plant, now on its third year, is thiving (picture on right). And a few onions I found in the fall and spread out are alive, even if they don't seem to be growing much. It will be interesting to see if the seeds will grow in the ground!
It's been a long and cold winter. On New Year's Day it was beautiful and I planted some seeds for winter vegetables like radish, lettuce, Oriental greens, and more. And about the time they should sprout we had a hard frost for several nights. I still have some of the radish spouts, but they never grew. I'm waiting to see if the Oriental greens that sprouted will grow. Meanwhile, on Feb 4, I planted another batch of everything. Still no new spouts. I think I may have dampening off in the raised beds. I planted some brussel sprout plants in Feb., but they have not grown much. Five went into the raised bed with a row cover. The other went into a pot with no covering. The one in the pot disappeared. The five in the raised bed are still there -- just not any bigger. The January frosts seemed to kill eveything -- even the gazanias which I transplated in January -- just before the frosts. I had taken the plants from my other house in a neighborhood. Almost everyone in the neighborhood had them. And after the frosts the neighborhood was a depressing place. It seems most of the plants were heaps of dead leaves. There's not much that looks worse than mounds of dead gazania leaves. Today, after about two weeks doing very little in the way of garden care except laying papers and cardboard to block weeds before the rains, I decided to hoe some of the weeds I couldn't get covered. I could only handle about three minutes of that before wearing out, so I decided to hand-weed my herb bed where I had planted all the gazania transplants. Almost everything in that bed had looked pretty dead except the irises and the rapidly growning weeds, and the carnation I had planted in a pot. At least I could kneel to do the weeding. And when I got close, I saw some fresh green shoots coming from almost all the plants I thought were dead. (See picture above.) I cut away the dead parts, pulled the weeds and noticed a few new poppy seedlings popping up. So far one borage plant remains from last year. The frost didn't kill that. But a gopher knocked out the other one last week, so I have a feeling my borage, about to bloom, is not long for this world. I'll have to plant one in a pot if I want it to be able to reseed, I guess. After I finished the bed by the kitchen window, I moved to the bed by the pumphouse wall. Most of what was planted there survived. When I saw how destructive the frost was in the other beds, I covered almost everything in this bed with dry leaves. It seemed to work. And I also got my first daffodil blossom there today, with another about to bloom. All the daffodils I planted in the fall are started to emerge.There still may be a few weeds in my beds I didn't get out, but I got the worst of them and gave the other plants breathing room. Now the big project is to hoe weeds before they get too big to hoe, spead all the cardboard I can get to block as many as possible, and start vegetable seeds indoors. The garden centers already have leggy tomatoes, but I wouldn't dare put them out until I know what the weather will be doing. So I guess I'll grow my own. I hope to grow at least tomatoes, sweet peppers, cukes, squash, and lettuce. I'd also like to grow root vegetables, kohl rabi, and chard. And, of course, flowers.
It seems we almost had no autumn. We went from hot to cold, with only a few just right days in between. And tonight our rains started in earnest. Since I last had time to post we finished harvesting everything. We added some lantana and mums to the bed I see from my kitchen window. I planted daffodil bulbs in all the beds. I've weeded and watered until it rained. I pulled up the tomato and cucumbers. I put down a cardboard, newspaper, and wood path through the main vegetable so I can walk from the gate to the raised beds without getting muddy feet and so there will be at least weedless access to everything in the spring. I'm hoping I'll have time to keep up with the weeds as they grow during the winter and early spring so I won't face what I did last year when the ground is accessible again. I wish the frost had not come last week and killed my blooming sunflowers before they could finish producing their seeds. But at least I had them to look at for a season. My borage is still blooming and will probably reseed where it is. My chard plant is huge and looks like many in one. The stem is as thick as a small tree. It's the only growing thing I can still harvest and eat. I have one lone blooming lettuce I hope will reseed. As I look back over the year I see progress. I now have a lot of color to look at from my kitchen window. Since I've added new perennials and planted bulbs, I expect to have color in both the spring and fall. Indeed, I still have calendula and coreopsis in bloom, and several herbs. I hope they will also multiply. My bed by the pump house isn't doing as well as I'd hoped and some plants died unexpectedly. But I planted daffodils and irises there, too, and look forward to spring color. Some of the perennial herbs are doing well, and I hope the rain will help my new sword fern get established. I have divided the sage and transplanted some to the other side of the hill. I have some poppies blooming on the hill now, and look forward to some of the wildflowers reseeding by spring. I still need to divide more gazanias if I have time and put them on the hill and by my kitchen window. They do a lovely job of spreading. I'm hoping that next spring I'll be ready with cool season crops to plant so the garden will get an earlier start than last year.
