May 1 Overview

As the peak gardening season begins in other parts of the country, it's winding down here. I removed the last of the broccoli and cilantro yesterday, and planted another melon in their place. I've stopped harvesting asparagus and let the ferns grow to provide food to sustain the plant for next year's crop. Very few lemons remain on the tree, the first flush of rose blooms have come and gone, and nasturtiums and petunias are pretty scraggly looking. In their place, zinnias, marigolds, alyssum, coreopsis, and galliardia are appearing. Hollyhocks are still going strong, and sweet potato vines are spreading into the streambed and the floor of the gazebo,

I harvested the first of the green beans, tomatoes, and eggplant this week, and should be picking yellow squash in another week. I've picked the half-dozen apricots our young tree produced, along with about two dozen smallish peaches. The remaining ones are even smaller, so I think I'll let the birds enjoy them. There are about a half-dozen green plums on our Santa Rosa plum, which is somewhat of an improvement over most years, and dozens of developing Asian pears. The apple tree is, surprisingly, still alive, but unlikely to produce any fruit.

The black metal structure in the upper left is the framework for one of our two portable gazebos that we use to shade the side patio in summer. We have to take down the canopy when the wind kicks up, as it has been doing for the past week. One of our future projects will be to replace these with a permanent pergola, which should be more functional, attractive, and stable.

Buggy things

This year, as an experiment, I decided to let the cilantro go to seed. I doubt we will see many coriander seeds because finches have really been enjoying themselves, and I thought about pulling them up and planting something more attractive. I changed my mind this morning when I saw them covered with lady beetles in all stages of development! Here's what they look like, in case you aren't familiar with the larval or pupal forms:

I learned that cilantro, besides being good for bees, also attracts several kinds of beneficial insects. Here's an article (pdf format) about beneficial insects and how to attract them to your garden.

Cilantro by any other name

Cilantro is the name given to the leaves of this herb, while its seeds are called coriander.'ve tried growing cilantro from both transplants and seeds. It works better when grown from seed. Last year I attempted to extend the growing season by pinching it off before it bloomed, but this year I've decided to let it go to seed. I think the flowers are rather attractive, and they also attract bees and other beneficial pollinators.

If you're interested in growing cilantro and/or coriander, here are a couple of informative links:
http://www.tropicalpermaculture.com/growing-cilantro.html
http://www.tropicalpermaculture.com/growing-coriander.html

All good things...

I've been away from our garden for a week, visiting my mother in Alabama. She's probably where I got the gardening bug, although gardening is quite different in Alabama. When I returned I decided it was time to take out the snap peas. Their best days are gone: I don't see any new pea pods and very few blossoms, and if I wait too long it will be too hot to plant something new in their spot.

The tall plant in the back of this bed is cilantro, which flowered while I was gone and not pinching it back every day. I think I'll leave it like this, as I understand cilantro is good for bees, along with a number of other plants I have.

After I harvest all the peas from the vines I pull up, I'm going to chop up the vines and use them for mulch in another part of the garden. Perhaps some of the dried peas I leave on the vine will surprise me by coming up nest spring.

Fall plantings

We finished clearing out this bed, except for the Survivor Tomato and a plumbago that we'll move elsewhere this winter. The recent rain was helpful in watering in the sulfur and ammonium phosphate that we added prior to planting. I planted romaine, buttercrunch, and Salad Bowl lettuces, arugula, and Oregon Sugar Pod II peas in here, along with a few cilantro and bunching green onion seeds that were left over from a "salsa pack", and topped it all off with a light dusting of mulch.

The irrigation setup for this bed is a combination of 6 inch and 12 inch drip tubing. The 6 inch tubing runs around the perimeter of the bed and the 12 inch tubing is laid out in a grid pattern about a foot apart. The seeds are planted directly under each drip emitter. I planted several seeds in each planting hole because these are all leftover seeds and I'm not sure about the germination percentage.

For design purposes, I usually like to plant flowers around the edges of the raised beds, particularly this one which is right next to a sitting area on the patio. The last two years I planted nasturtiums here, only to see them destroyed by frost. I may try petunias this year, but I'll wait a few weeks before planting them...it's still over 100 degrees on a regular basis here!

Herbs and things

Lowe's had a sale on vegetable and herb pots, so I thought it would be a good time to clean out the Swiss chard and Chinese greens from this area and plant a herb garden in front of the roses in this bed. I planted oregano, parsley, basil, cilantro, and catnip. I thought this would be a good location for these as it is convenient to the kitchen, and will make an attractive foreground planting for the roses. There are also three tomato plants in this bed, and asparagus behind the roses.

The thevetia hedge between this bed and the pool area still hasn't started to leaf out after it took heavy frost damage this winter, so we may have to trim it back further. It's still alive, though, because when scratched with a fingernail we can see green wood.

The tomatoes in this bed look fine, but something happened to to the three I put in a different location. They turned black and wilted overnight...they look like they have been sprayed with Roundup, but we haven't used any in this area.