The long weekend.

We were able to spend four days at the cottage this past weekend. It was a tad too chilly for my liking but we have a 90% working kitchen so I didn't mind staying inside a bit more this time. My dream stove was installed, I can't wait to start stirring batches of jam on it. I ordered lots of Weck jars and picked up a canning book at our local bookstore. In the meantime, I cooked up lots of our produce from the garden.

As soon as I arrived Thursday afternoon, I got right to work digging out the old garlic bed to lay down gopher wire. I now have a place to safely grow all of my tomatoes and parsley. I plan to slowly replace the raised beds throughout the rest of the year, shifting some around now that I have a better feel for the garden.

The apples are starting to redden on the trees. I'm waiting for the June drop before I thin these. I'm curious to see how much these trees self-prune.

We spent some time riding our bikes around town for some wine tasting a lunch or two out. After twenty-two years, I upgraded my bike. My posture was terrible on the old bike and I just didn't feel safe riding it as it never felt balanced to me. This one is a dream ride.

We love to ride on the Sonoma Bike Path past The Patch. Just beyond, there's a charming little cottage that I'm always admiring. Hidden behind the olive trees are raised bed veggie garden using metal troughs. It all looks out onto vineyards and the bike path. Hmmm, maybe we should paint our house this color?

Soon, we'll be able to spend longer weekends here once summer arrives and school is out. There's lots to do in the garden, so it will be nice to have more than two days a week to work on it.

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.

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?

The garden is on steroids - compost!

Seriously, something happened in the span of a week that made my plants double in size. As the previous owners just posted on their own blog, it must be the compost. I ran around the garden Saturday morning after being away for a week, "Look at that! This one was half this size last week, OMG, etc."

The biggest difference was in the tomatoes. We bought ten tomatoes plants all the same size. I had one left still in it's pot that was waiting for a space. The ones I had planted the week before were twice the size of the little one. See the wimpy one in the back right of the bed? That's the newbie. Oh and that post? I need to pound it down more but it's from the previous owners who swear by this method to deeply water their tomatoes. We're going to do an experiment and compare sides this summer.

The strawberry bed is kicking in too. We planted thirty-six plants, enough to feed a family of four. A few strawberries here and there are ripe, enough to bring a smile on your face when you take a bite. There's nothing like a homegrown strawberry, they're so much sweeter than even the ones from the farmer's market. Why is that?

On the inside of the house, we're getting the kitchen ready for a bumper crop just in time for summer. Gutted and gone!

Our contractor is working at a furious pace and hopes to be done by the end of May. In the meantime, here was this week's harvest in three acts. Chard and spinach, lots and lots of it.

Peas, broccoli and a lemon. These peas are from seedlings planted in November. Lots more coming next month.

Green onions, lettuce, radishes, parsley, mint and chervil.

Next weekend will be all about the watermelon and pumpkin beds, the last beds to be ready for planting. Then the hard work will be done!

The transformation in the vegetable garden!

I was thrilled to step into my backyard last weekend to see this! Welcome to the newly mulched vegetable garden.

Morning glories are on their way up this arbor.

It looks even better than I imagined. Weeds all gone (I only wish the gopher was gone too, grrr).  I can now see lots more room for expanding those raised beds one day. The mulch will hold us over until we 'live' with the layout for a year and decide how to redesign it, if we even do. At the moment, we've got our hands full with the rest of the house as well.

A little seating area would be perfect right here.

 I spent the entire weekend going over the existing irrigation, updating and expanding it. I also mulched and netted the strawberry bed to keep those sweet birds off my food. I planted a first flush of pole bean seeds in their own bed. They'll be kept company with some love lies bleeding and calendula flowers tucked into the corners.

Kentucky Wonder beans on the outside and Purple Podded in the center.

The rest of the garden is filling in fast as well. The irises are in full bloom now. Not my first pick of flower colors but at least there's something. Beyond the irises is the vegetable garden area with broccoli, garlic and english peas reaching high.

Speaking of growing. I think we're more than set with chard plants. In addition to these babies I salvaged from the existing garden last year, my daughter's raised bed has twelve more that are almost ready for harvesting. Good thing we love chard!

And as if I didn't have enough raised beds, I built another one this month. This one will hold a lot of herbs. I plan to keep a fair amount of herbs in the main garden as well as natural pest deterrents but needed an extra spot for my tea herbs and those cuttings you need in a quick pinch when you're in the middle of cooking. The herb bed is located between our outdoor patio and covered porch.

We built the bed with cedar boards and plan to add a seating lip around it for parties. I can't tell you how many wheelbarrows or compost and soil it took to fill it. My back knows. The bed is filled with two determinate cherry tomatoes, chives, lemon balm, tarragon, savory, chamomile, four mints (in their own pots), thyme and allyssum. We also planted scarlet runner beans and perpetual spinach to climb up the trellis and block out some of the fierce afternoon sun.

And last but not least, the fruit is coming! These are cherry plums above that the previous owners used to make jam. Check out my flikr page to see all the other fruits developing in the garden. This weekend will be all about preparing the last two raised beds for melons plus some more inter and succession planting. It's settling down finally!

The anticipation is killing me ...

I'm heading up to Sonoma this morning to see what progress (if any) has been made on the giant mulch job of the garden paths. See all those weeds? They grew even higher after this picture was taken in March.

The gardeners said they would lay down mulch sometime last week. Fingers crossed they actually did it. If so, I'll have some incredible transformation photos to share. I'll spend all weekend redoing the battered irrigation lines that run all over the place. We've been hard at work ourselves in another part of the yard, building yet another raised bed, this one for herbs that will be located closer to the back door.

See that flat patch in front of the lattice? It's now much higher off the ground. My husband built an amazing contraption that I'll be busy filling in with loads and loads and loads of compost this weekend (my back is already crying). The bed will be 3'x8', lots of plants to slip in the soil this weekend as well. And just maybe I'll have a few moments of this too.

Maybe I'll have a little time to do some of this as well. It will have to be iced though, it's supposed to be 85 this weekend!

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.