Soil quality

Most of my prefered garden vegetables are fall, winter, and spring crops (spinach, carrots, radishes, scallions). With the intense heat of summer, my gardening tasks have actually decreased. I got a small harvest of shelling peas (delicious!), but the strawberries have barely grown since I planted them months ago. I think the main culprit is the cheap (in both price and quality) soil I bought. With the quantity that I needed to fill up all my containers, it seemed like a good idea at the time, but now I'm (wait for it) paying the price. The "soil" is mostly tiny woodchips.

The carrots did not like it either.
On the bright side, the worms have been very busy eating up everything I put into into their original bin, and it's almost all completely broken down into rich castings. They've also been busy multiplying, so I had plenty of worms to move to a second bin and start the process over. Come fall, I will mix the finished worm castings with some of the woodchippy "soil" and some higher quality new soil, and my next batch of crops should be much happier.

Quick garden update: flowers blooming

The foxglove is looking beautiful! Aphids are landing on it here and there, but I check daily and crush any trespassers between my fingers.

Beautiful bell.

Also, some weird-looking bug that sat there for a few days.

Forget-Me-Nots growing through the vegetable pen.

And speaking of veggies, the potato plants are growing sizable, which makes me so happy.

And I'll be eating fresh peas soon!

The dahlia plants are growing but not producing any buds. I don't know if I'll see anything from them this year. Darn.

Monthly garden update

I came back from a two week vacation to find most of my garden doing quite well. We had a lot of rain (5 inches in 2 days!) while I was gone. That has been followed by lots of sunshine and warm days. The plants are happy!

 

Foxglove reaching up for the sky!

First columbine flower!

Dill also reaching up for the sky! This thing might end up going to seed soon. I can't keep up. Also aphids are eating the top fronds.

 

Potatoes!

 

Radishes! The back row was ready for harvesting!

They didn't grow as large as advertised on the package, but they've been in the soil for 2.5 months, and were supposed to be ready to harvest after 3-4 weeks. I suspect that the cheap soil I bought isn't providing enough nutrients for the veggies/fruits, as the carrots, scallions, and strawberries are also growing very very slowly. I should add some compost or liquid fertilizer. Not much to lose at this point, if I mess up.

I ate the radishes with some sandwiches. They tasted just like radishes. I'm not actually a big fan so this wasn't as exciting an experience as eating my homegrown spinach and peas.

The spinach plants are not happy. The outer leaves are yellow and the inner leaves are stunted. Some of them are starting to bolt. I guess spinach season is over for the year. :(

Sewing pattern weights

I made these pattern weights after watching this YouTube tutorial. It's very simple - wrap strips of fabric around heavy metal washers, and sew the end of the strip down to hold it in place. A fun, practical project to do while watching a movie.

New shady plants and replanting succulents

To celebrate the spring equinox, I took my pup to the beach with a friend, and then we went to East Bay Nursery to pick up some shade-loving plants. (Of course, I couldn't resist picking up a few new succulents as well.) For the past few months I've been frowning at the patch of dirt between the stairs at the front of the house and the garage. The spot could really use some greenery to spruce it up, but we use it as a walkway, and it doesn't get any direct sunlight. So I needed a shade-loving ground cover, and I figured I'd add a fern as well. I found just the thing at EBN! (Click to see the picture come up in a larger size.)

The four diamond-shaped patches are low-growing Corsican mint, which I hope will spread out quickly. The little circles in back are a moss that grows in a pretty mound shape. And there's the potted fern. (And also in the back, the new little succulents.) In the middle are ceramic tiles I picked up at Urban Ore. You can see there's still another dirt patch to the left. I'll probably end up doing something similar on that side, but I'll have to save up for more tiles and plants.

After that, it was time to finally, finally replant my succulents. I'd been meaning to do that for months. In fact, I've been neglecting them in favor of carefully tending my edible garden in the back yard, and the succulents are out of sight, out of mind up on the upper deck. They suffered frost damage back in December:

...and then I got a frost cover for them but forgot to remove it for weeks and they burned:

...and recently leaf miners have done a number on them:

I don't even know what happened to this one - it was going strong for two years, and suddenly it lost all of its "petals" and turned black on the inside:

But! Some are stronger than ever:

And others are blooming:

I got all of the smaller succulents planted into one communal bin, and the bigger ones will be transplanted tomorrow or over the weekend. I worked until it was too dark to continue, so pictures of that will come later. But I can leave you with this sunset:

Happy spring equinox!

Update on the rest of the edible garden

I'm sure you're all eager for updated pictures of the rest of the edible garden! No? Well, I'm eager to catalog it! It's in the low 70s today, but next week we'll hopefully get more bursts of rain and cooler weather. A number of my vegetables (spinach, scallions, carrots, radishes) do better in cooler weather. I'll keep planting and harvesting as long as I can, and note down when each variety gives up the ghost. I only started this edible garden last fall/winter, so I'm still learning most of the ropes as I go along. Click on any photo to see a bigger version.

Potato plants are shooting up since last week!

Radishes on the right (planted earlier) will soon be ready to pull.

A forest of scallions, my favorite vegetable.

Spinach, my second favorite. I've already plucked a few baby leaves for sandwiches.

I haven't been eating the dill lately so it's getting huge. Parsley (behind/to the left) is doing well.

Strawberries had powdery mildew, but it looks like fungicide took care of that.

Four new pea plants to replace the ones I killed. I love peas!

Cucumber finally sprouting. The seeds weren't germinating well.

Okay, these aren't edible, but they're planted in the same area. Lupine in front, Columbine in the middle, and Foxglove in the back.

Young raspberry canes. Mmmm.

First clementine tasting

My dwarf clementine mandarin tree had a tiny fruit when I bought it back in January. I couldn't tell if it'd grown at all since then. It was still completely green.

But since there were now lots of tiny flower buds on the tree and some of them had started blossoming...

My friends told me that it was time to pluck the tiny fruit.

It was orange inside, with a couple of seeds, and a small amount of sour juice.

My housemate and I split the pieces, and we agreed that it tasted "better than expected." I'm looking forward to seeing how the tree does next winter.