Late February overview

Spring is definitely here. The petunias planted last fall are blooming, most of the fruit trees are blossoming, and asparagus spears have poked their way out of the ground. (I picked the first spear today!)

The bed on the right still contains lettuce and Swiss chard, and the gone-to-seed broccoli has been replaced with tomatoes, peppers, eggplant, and squash transplants. The bed on the left contains transplants of the same summer vegetables, plus bush beans which germinated rather poorly. Beyond the two beds in the foreground, in front of the upper pond, is a small bed containing red potatoes. I planted the seed potatoes in January, and they have come up nicely.

In the pool area, the banana tree has shown new growth, the roses behind the pool have leafed out, the bottlebrush is beginning to bloom, and the snail vine on the fence is showing signs of life.

Same area of the garden as the first picture, taken from a different angle, shows the "Iceberg" climbing rose in bloom, tea roses leafing out, and a carpet of larkspur seedlings.

February overview

 It's still pretty barren-looking, but our garden is beginning to show signs of life. The bed on the right contains broccoli, lettuces, and Swiss chard. I've harvested the main stalks of most of the broccoli, but we should be able to enjoy another meal or two from the secondary stalks that are forming. Some of the lettuce that we planted last fall is bolting, so I put out more transplants a few weeks ago. I also took a chance and put out tomato transplants a week early. Since our last frost date is around Valentine's Day, I usually wait until then, but temperatures have been in the high 70s and even into the 80s over the last week, with overnight lows in the upper 40s and 50s. This year we planted Yellow Pear, Sweet 100, Early Girl, Roma, Phoenix, and Heatmaster varieties.

I've been working on cleaning out the Mexican primrose invasion in the bed on the left. Currently it contains  a few hollyhocks, an artichoke, a couple of pepper plants and a Japanese eggplant that I think are still alive, and hopefully green beans. I planted those last week in the mulched area to the right of the pear tree, but they have yet to show themselves. Yesterday I sprinkled sweet allyssum seeds around the border of this bed.

This is the view from our side patio. You can see more of the broccoli/lettuces bed on the left. I put petunia transplants around it last fall, but none of them are blooming yet. In the bed on the right, the roses we pruned back in January are beginning to leaf out, and there are hundreds of larkspur seedlings that are about an inch high. No sign of asparagus yet, though, which concerns me a little. Last year we picked our first spears at the end of January. It's possible that I cut them back later this year than last, and that might be a factor.

We planted red seed potatoes in the bed in the middle of the picture, in front of the upper pond. A few of the potato plants have emerged. This bed should eventually have a nasturtium border, but I don't see any of those coming up yet.

This view is taken from the pool deck area. You can see the roses better from this angle, as well as the larkspur seedling carpet. The climbing rose on the right side of this picture already has several buds on it.

This photo is of the pool area. We have several rosebushes behind the waterfall, in a raised bed along the block wall. They usually bloom around Easter. In addition to the Key Lime tree in the back corner, we have a couple of young peach trees and a blackberry bush in this area. One of the peach trees began to bloom yesterday.