A mid-June weekend

Here's a peek at what's going on in the garden in mid June. We had a heat wave last week and all seems to have survived except the remaining english peas turned starchy. I learned that fall planted peas are much more worth it. Those did really well and produced for a much longer time period than the early spring planted batch. Note the hose lying off to the side, well used this weekend.

We bought an umbrella for the center of the garden so I can escape the sun every few minutes. I'm still not sure what seating to put underneath it. A table might be nice but it sure would be great to have a lounge chair out there.

These are the left beds that include my daughter's bed with broccoli, my gopher safe tomato and parsley bed and a bed that held the most productive pea plants. So productive the bamboo trellis wouldn't hold.

The bed above is the most authentic square foot garden we have with a huge variety of plants. The chard here hasn't bolted, yet. And we have tons of calendula flowers popping open every day. There are some bare bits that need succession planting but haven't been able to do anything with this heat.

This is a view of the opposite side of the garden with a weeping Santa Rosa plum on the left. Lots of plums growing. There are brussel sprouts in the center and several bush variety english peas adjacent that I will never plant again, they hardly produced.

I did manage to weed some this weekend. Oxalis is taking over this bed. I'm hoping if I just keep at it and remove all the soil along with the weed, I'll eventually knock those back. I hate oxalis. The kale didn't seem to mind but the lettuces couldn't survive.

And finally, the most important planting of the year, according to my daughter, corn! Not something I would have chosen due to the huge amount of space they take up for so little reward but I hope I'm proven wrong! They certainly look good in the bed. Next weekend I plan to mulch more of the beds. Planting in 95 degree heat wasn't fun but I did manage to finish the irrigation with some help. The beans are behind the corn and are doing well. No gopher action ... yet. And also this weekend, more cherry plum jam making. It looks like a few more weeks before the other fruits are ripe, whew.

Cherries, garlic and gopher snacks

It started off as a sublime weekend, the net on the cherry tree held up and we had tons of ripe sweet cherries ready for picking. We gave some to friends and still managed 20 cups of pitted cherries.

We froze most but made some divine balsamic cherry preserves with four cups of them from this site. So many more recipes to try out!

The garlic was also ready for harvesting, some of the cloves were beyond big.

And even three onions that had started as seeds snuck in the bed were ready for plucking.

But the gophers also realized it was prime harvesting time. Last week I had noticed that one tomato plant had just up and gone. This week, three more! After doing a little internet research, I realized they're the culprit. Who would want to eat an entire tomato plant, bleh.

A gardener told me to pour fish emulsion around the plants, they'll hate it. It was like a vinagrette for the tomatoes. They went after those first the next morning. One of the highlights of the garden was going to be harvesting loads of heirloom tomatoes. Not to be had likely. I'm on the hunt to get rid of them but have resigned myself that it's probably too late for the tomatoes, sigh.

Spring break

Just a few images of the garden from the past few weeks. The cherry tree was in full bloom last week. Beautiful! This more than makes up for the terrible formatting blogger is having right now, grrrr.

There is fruit developing on some of the trees already, mostly the plums. The peach and nectarine trees were hit hard by the late rain leaving lots of peach leaf curl. I sprayed three times like I was supposed to but apparently that doesn't matter if the rains come late. No one is sure how much fruit we'll see this year. The same thing happened last year in Sonoma county.

Peach leaf curl on one of the peach trees.

The square foot garden beds are starting to fill in. I was able to plant some peppers this past week, fingers crossed no late freezes! I chose a red and yellow bell pepper and two padrone pepper plants. Padrones have been all the rage in the bay area the past few years. They're amazing grilled in some oil and salt.

Radishes, carrots, beets, lettuces, peppers, tarragon, calendula and cosmos.

Even though the ladybugs are everywhere in Sonoma this month, we let a few more free in the garden one evening. They seem to be especially happy in the artichokes.

My daughter's garden bed is growing quickly. It's the first bed we planted after moving in. She picked out two cherry tomato plants over the weekend at the Tomatomania festival here. We'll have to figure out where to squeeze those in. We chose eight more for the rest of the garden. I have no idea where I'll plant them.

Chard, broccoli, oregano, parsley, radishes, carrots and stray onions.

April in the Garden

It's been two weeks since I last saw the garden and a lot has happened since then. The harvest is growing! Three baskets worth this week.

Green onions, oregano, thyme, asparagus, parsley, snap peas, chives.

Chard!

Spinach

Besides the weeds taking over even more of the beds (one more week until the gardener's mulch the paths, I can't wait), my seeds have taken off.

Merlo Nero Spinach seedlings.

Those peas I planted back in the fall are growing tall and we're able to enjoy some snap peas off the vine. Next year, I will plant lots more snaps.

There are even tiny little figs growing on the fig tree.

This month is when the rest of the planting happens: pole beans, melons, tomatoes, peppers, and all those flowers to encourage beneficials into the garden. There are lots more pics of the new growth on my flikr site here.

The overall plan and signs of real spring

I've finally been able to sketch out an overall layout of the garden. It's wonky, it's in photoshop (which I have a love/hate relationship with), but it's done. Considering my San Francisco backyard contained just one little 4'x6' bed, this is quite a shift. The largest bed is 15' in length to give an idea of scale.

Fruit trees surround the raised bed garden area but there are more fruit trees around the rest of the property. This is only about 1/4th the area of the yard shown. It looks all neat and tidy on the plan but I don't do something soon, the weeds were going to over and I won't be able to find these raised beds. Here's the last of the beds I haven't tackled yet and the weeds surrounding.

I called in my gardener for a quote to till the weeds and lay down landscape fabric and then mulch or gravel over top. I usually won't allow the gardener in my bed area, that's my domain, but this was becoming a crisis. If I were here full time, I could tackle it myself. I might have to still if that quote comes in high. I dread that, sigh.

In the meantime, I had some nice little surprises over the weekend. The first fig leaves are popping out.

And the tulips under the apple trees bloomed!

They are as beautiful as the previous owner, Kendra, told me they would be. I had to cut them so we could enjoy them this week back in the city. And see all that green behind those tulips ... weeds, weeds, weeds. sigh.

Planning the garden

It's time for some organized planning. I've struggled with how to keep my thoughts in order with so many beds to lay out using the square foot gardening method. I decided on a plan to have two large gridded sheets. It naturally worked out that one sheet covers most of the early spring plantings and the other the later spring plantings. I can use the see-through vellum to overlay succession plantings for the next go round. I tried to keep track of everything on the computer but I just couldn't coordinate well enough between the actual planting into the keyboard.

Finishing the planting of bed J (lower right on the sheet above) was the focus this weekend. I had half of the bed completed but was afraid to tackle the rest because I knew what was lurking underneath.

The bed from hell. These are roots of a certain pesky weed which I can't remember the name. And these are likely those weeds that just multiply when you break the root in two. Sigh. I did my best but at least I know I won't be planting any carrots here! I first sowed one more row of shelling peas just in case 132 plants aren't enough. Seriously, they say 170 for a family of four. We'll just see!

Then onto the weedy bed. It will be a guess just how much sun this bed gets in the full summer. I think a fair amount. There's a cedar tree just south of it that blocks out most of the sun in the winter.

I hope to save this leftover chard in the foreground. I transplanted two spinach plants over and planted two more squares. The bed will also have lettuces, radishes, kale, beets and flowers. And a surprise awaited me in the compost pile. A rapidly growing rhubarb plant which I did my best to salvage for another bed that already had the rhubarb.

I suppose in my haste of weeding beds last fall I chucked it before I knew what it was. We'll see if it survives although I'm sure any plant would be happier growing in pure compost.