A garden emerges - weekend three

I was only able to spend three hours this week in the garden, but productive hours they were. Progress is slow but I'm already starting to see the results.

This week's trip brought me smiles as I discovered lots of new seedlings emerging from the chard, spinach, pea, carrot and turnip beds. Newly planted flowers are starting to bloom as well. I was mentally prepared to wait for the carrots to appear after reading The Carrot Seed to our daughter countless times, but less than two weeks later, here they are.

Of course, with lots of seedlings, comes lots of thinning. Next week will be spent hunched over pulling out extras. You have to be ruthless or the plants won't grow well when they're too crowded. I was able to start thinning the bok choi this week. There will be another thinning once the bok choi has grown a bit more but those will be big enough to go into a salad.

This weekend's job was to tackle the bee and butterfly gardens surrounding the raised beds. I was able to find most of the main foundation plants in 4" containers at the garden store, which will save a lot of money since I need a lot of plants. They'll grow quickly once spring arrives.

The feature foundation plant will be Smokebush 'royal purple (Cotinus coggygria), seen above in the foreground. Its' dark purple foliage will make the surrounding green and pink plants pop. Along the back of the beds will be mass plantings of feather reed grass "karl foerster" (Calamagrostis x acutiflora) to define the back edge. In front are Anise hyssop 'Vivid' (Agastache), Verbena bonariensis, pale purple coneflower (Echinacea pallida), California buckwheat (Eriogonum fasciculatum foliolosum) and 'Red Velvet' yarrow (Achillea millefolium). I also squeezed in some extra english peas in one of the beds and the seeds have already sprouted.

There will be much more bee loving flowers soon. The irrigation takes longer than the planting to set up but will pay off down the road. Though it doesn't look like much now, below are before and after pictures of a beautiful garden by Kate Frey, a landscape designer in Hopland, CA. See more of Kate's work here.

The Melissa Garden by Kate Frey, February 2008.

And after four months, this is what the garden became.

The Melissa Garden by Kate Frey, July 2008.

Patience and ample plant spacing makes for a beautiful garden. At least it's starting to pay off in the vegetable beds.

Just a few more weeks and we'll have plenty of ingredients for stir fries.

The raised bed garden plan

Here is the overall plan for the south facing vegetable and fruit tree garden. Amazingly, the location of the new raised beds fit perfectly within the existing fruit trees on our property. The new design reduces the lawn area by over half and connects the vegetable garden with the main house. We also discovered we now have mountain views to the north and west when we set down our adirondack chairs in the back of the garden. Now we have to plant as many perennials we can manage to build up the bee and butterfly gardens for flowers  early next spring. Laying the irrigation takes up the most time.

The Santa Rosa weeping plum tree is now one of the main highlights of the garden. Before, it was lost among the tumble of raised beds but now it is fully on display next to the dining table we have yet to find. By midsummer next year, the branches will be brushing against the gravel and we'll be able to pluck fruit from our chairs.

I've found that labeling the raised beds makes life much easier when I'm planning future plantings. The beds will rotate in groups of two to three in a counter clockwise direction every season to allow for ample crop rotation. I like to do things backwards for some reason.

Beds A through F are 4' x 6' and beds G through J are 4' x 8'. Four feet is the maximum width to allow for easy plant reach during planting and harvest. Beds I and J are in the foreground below.

Attached to the covered patio, Bed K used to be an herb bed but will now become an extra planting area where I plant whatever doesn't fit into the main beds. The perfect place to plant even more english peas.

This is the one bed that wasn't touched during the remodel so I was able to continue harvesting parsley and oregano during the construction. I also have a new herb bed that has been planted near my kitchen door. I always find myself running out into the garden to pick herbs when I'm cooking so this will make the run shorter. Here is the area off the kitchen before the remodel.

We've since replaced the concrete path with more grass and tucked in the herb bed in front of the side fence underneath the cherry plum tree that overhangs into our yard. I plan to plant honeysuckle along the fence for my daughter. It's her favorite snack in the summer.

September is here.

I can't believe September is here and summer as we knew it in Sonoma is over. We're only able to come up again on weekends. I'll miss our long stays in the heat and sun.

There is a lot of canning happening this month. Sometimes in Sonoma and sometimes back in San Francisco. It's easier in Sonoma with the fantastic new range but the cold fog in the city sure makes it easier to stand over a hot stove for hours.

Grape jelly happened last week in Sonoma. We had about 12 pounds of grapes that ripened all at once. Tasty as is, I knew we couldn't consume that much in a week!

We also have plenty of cherry tomatoes to harvest. I've taken to freezing them. They look great in quart jars in the freezer.

And now the larger tomatoes are ripening. The gophers ate all but one of my canning tomatoes so I hastily bought more to replace them without thinking what varieties I was buying.

Let's hope our stomachs can handle tomatoes with every meal for the next few weeks. And of course the apples are ready too. It came so fast this year, I didn't believe my daughter when she told me they were ripe. We'll see how these pears do. There are a lot on the pear tree but not sure when they'll be ripe enough to eat. Last year we had one pear when we moved in.

And of course, the harvest is accumulating on the kitchen counter, including a second flush of green beans.

Tomorrow I will plant more seeds for the fall and winter crops, including parsnips. We'll see how those do as I hear they have a hard time germinating. I think I'm looking more forward to the winter crops this year.

August - the peak

Summer has officially kicked in. Two weeks straight of 90+ degree weather has made some plants go crazy and others wilt away. I don't even want to think about the water bill for this month and last. I finally have chairs in the garden although it's been too hot to sit out there until late evening.

Charantais melon and amaranth in foreground with kale beyond.

The upside is I'm gearing up for fall planting already. I couldn't wait to get some winter radishes started to see how they would do. Remember this picture? This was on July 14th.

Daikon, black and china rose radishes, carrots, onions and celery.

Here's what the bed looks like on August 16th below. Amazingly, some of the radishes are ready for harvesting one month after planting the seeds. Winter radishes usually take three months to grow to maturity. I was finally able to put in a proper shade cover structure that I'm using elsewhere as well.

Radishes take over.

The tomatoes are picking up speed too. The cherries are going full guns right now and the larger varieties are just starting to ripen. They all taste SO good. That's one tomato plant behind all of the basil below. I bought it to replace one a gopher ate, it's called Anna Banana. The fruit is awesome and makes a salad so beautiful with it's bright yellow fruit.

I was able to plant seeds in one of my new beds and we'll see how they come up. The mushroom compost I bought this season looks disappointing so far. I bought from a different supplier. It wasn't as broken down as much as last year's so I worry the drainage and acidity might be an issue. Time will tell. At least I can use most of it on the lawn.

Kale, radishes, carrots, beets and broccoli grow along with
some charming flowers at the corners.

The rest of the garden beds have survived another year. We will likely replace a few more beds this fall before the rains hit.

And sooner than I expected, it's apple season! I just realized that the Gravenstein apple fair was last weekend and I thought that's way too soon. Then I realized my own apples had almost grown overnight. They're sweet and tasty.

Time for applesauce making!

And almost time for pumpkins too. It all goes by too fast it seems.

First weekend in July

There are plenty of flowers in the garden finally. I still wish I had planted more among the vegetables. Next year, I'll add more, including more flowers for cutting. The sunflower seeds I planted were gobbled up quickly so I had to resort this year to seedlings from the nursery.

I planted them next to the beans and they've become friends. Those are purple podded bean flowers below.

The calendulas I planted from seed are doing well at least. I need to harvest them more quickly but so far the plants seem to be going strong.

The red flowers below are coreopsis tinctoria. Any plant with tinctoria in its latin name means it will be excellent for natural dyeing.

And you can't go wrong with marigolds growing next to tomatoes. These have all but been engulfed by the monster tomato plants surrounding it.

A lot of those early spring flowers have rapidly turned into ripe, luscious fruit. We have about two dozen santa rosa plums that are ripe. They taste beyond divine! We can only eat them outside leaning over because the juice content is so high.

We also have strawberries and blackberries ripening daily. I'd forgotten what those fruits tasted like right out of the garden.

And last but not least, the vegetable harvest is starting to pick up again. We still have way too many beets (not complaining there) and chard. We also had kale, carrots, padrone peppers (which were waaaayyy too hot) and the last of the broccoli.

And anyone want some herbs? I can finally say I have enough parsley to harvest nightly now that I've gopher proofed one of the beds. I am in the process of gopher proofing the carrot and parsnip bed. What carrots I have harvested (they left me a handful) have been huge and flavorful.

Anticipation

I feel like the garden is almost, almost starting to reach it's potential. I still have a long way to go learning the quirks and little rodents that enjoy feasting here but I've managed to keep most things alive.

I've figured out with the strawberry bed that pill bugs LOVE strawberries. It took me a few weeks but now that the plants are large enough, if I carefully lay the unripe strawberries on top of their leaves, the pill bugs can't reach them.

This weekend was herb harvest central in the garden. Mint, chives, chervil, lemon balm, german chamomile, thyme, sage, oregano, basil and more basil were cut for drying and making pesto. Above is summer savory, something you don't find too often in the grocery store. Eating them with green beans is sublime. A gopher ate one of my plants but this one is already 2' in diameter and still growing. Speaking of beans ...

Here's batch one of Kentucky Wonder and Purple Podded beans. The bed is about 5' square. After planting them all and seeing the gopher destruction on my other plants, I wanted some insurance so I planted more last weekend.

This was where the english peas grew, underneath a weeping Santa Rosa plum tree. I can see beans climbing up the branches now. There's another spot that I've planted even more beans. We'll see how much is too many soon enough.

Other plants are growing quickly too. This is a Rouge Vif D'Etampes pumpkin that I planted far away from the watermelons this year. I overhead someone at the garden store mention this and took their advice. So, we won't have pumpkiny tasting watermelons this year.

And here is one of the watermelons. A little small for my liking but I'm hoping the growth spurt kicks in soon enough.

Our next big project is to rebuild and start to organize some of the raised beds. This little area as you first enter the garden from the house is screaming for some order. I plan to build 3 3''6"x6' beds to replace the four hodge podge beds  located in the back. We'll keep the strawberry bed for much longer. As soon as my beets are ready to harvest in one of the beds, we'll get started. Speaking of beets, they are the best growing thing I have. I thought they would be done but they taste great. We love the greens the best.

The harvest has begun

This weekend was a busy one, all still without a kitchen. A few more weeks and all will be finished.  I'm so happy to have my wainscot ceiling. It's cheaper than drywall and looks a lot better.

I spent today harvesting the last of the spinach and chard before it bolted. Over six risotto dinners in the basket.

I prepared one of the last two beds to plant melons with my new broadfork. This will save me a lot of backbreaking work. I even feel like I had a good workout, although my neck muscles are sore, I hope I don't start to look like a linebacker.

We also managed to partially net the cherry tree before the birds stole all of the cherries.

Friday I saw a few reddish cherries but on Saturday I noticed many more. So did the birds. I watched a bird land on our roof, check me out and then jump onto the tree to do a taste test. I went back through the cherry postings at A Sonoma Garden blog, written by the previous owners. A great education! The next morning, we partially netted the tree. It has one trunk that reaches about 20' up, too high for us to even attempt to net. But we covered the majority. My husband told me he read that netting a tree can test a marriage. Ours was tested, but we came out just fine. Next year I'll plan ahead and order a finer grade mesh that's easier to work with and safer for the birds.

Spring planting in the square foot garden: chard, radishes, shiso, tarragon, peppers, lettuces, carrots,
calendula, bachelor buttons and santolina.

The rest of the garden is growing fast as are the gophers. All five of my parsley plants just disappeared one week as did a tomato (not sure who took the tomato, I didn't think gophers would eat those). What's next I wonder?