Bye-bye broccoli

February 19, 2016

This week I harvested the last of the broccoli, which was beginning to flower, and removed the plants. Rather than pulling them up, I used the permaculture technique of cutting them off at ground level and leaving the roots to compost in place. That way I didn't uproot the larkspur seedlings that were hiding among the broccoli plants.

Peas, please!

Asparagus

Our days of eating fresh roasted broccoli for dinner are over for this year, but I picked the first of the snap peas and saw the first stalk of asparagus emerge from the ground.

Peach blossoms

Apricot blossoms

Almond blossoms

Almost all the fruit trees are beginning to bud and blossom now, with the exception of the Royal Minnie cherry and an unknown species of pear tree which is always the last to show signs of life. The cherry is probably dead above the graft line, but we're leaving it in the ground for now as there are still green sprouts from the rootstock.

My Lenten garden

February 12, 2016

  It is obvious what kind of life develops out of trying to get your own way all the time: repetitive, loveless, cheap sex; a stinking accumulation of mental and emotional garbage; frenzied and joyless grabs for happiness; trinket gods; magic-show religion; paranoid loneliness; cutthroat competition; all-consuming-yet-never-satisfied wants; a brutal temper; an impotence to love or be loved; divided homes and divided lives; small-minded and lopsided pursuits; the vicious habit of depersonalizing everyone into a rival; uncontrolled and uncontrollable addictions; ugly parodies of community. I could go on. This isn’t the first time I have warned you, you know. If you use your freedom this way, you will not inherit God’s kingdom. But what happens when we live God’s way? He brings gifts into our lives, much the same way that fruit appears in an orchard—things like affection for others, exuberance about life, serenity. We develop a willingness to stick with things, a sense of compassion in the heart, and a conviction that a basic holiness permeates things and people. We find ourselves involved in loyal commitments, not needing to force our way in life, able to marshal and direct our energies wisely. -Galatians 5 19-22, The Message

Lent usually arrives about the time our garden begins to wake up. The roses we cut back in January are beginning to leaf out, the fruit trees are beginning to bud and blossom, hollyhock and larkspur seedlings are emerging, and the temperatures are generally in that sweet spot between the chill of the winter and the blast furnace of the summer. We usually aim to plant tomato transplants and other warm-weather crops by Valentine's Day, so that they will have a decent start before it gets too hot for them to prosper. Today I put out transplants of Roma, Early Girl, Mr. Stripey, and Pink Brandywine tomatoes, Armenian cucumber, zucchini and acorn squashes, along with a couple of pony packs of petunias. In the next week, I'll plant seeds of Roma II bush beans,Red Burgandy okra, yellow squash, and basil. By Easter time, the current barren brownness of the raised beds should be alive with tasty and beautiful growing things.

On the one hand, it seems incongruous that Lent, that traditional time of introspection, repentance, and self-denial, should occur just when the circle of life is reinventing itself in our back yard. On the other hand, it makes total sense. The garden has to be prepared in order for desirable plants to grow. That includes a lot of digging in order to remove Bermuda grass, Mexican primrose, clover, and assorted weeds which will take over the garden if ignored, and crowd out the vegetables and flowers I want to have. It includes adding fertilizer, compost, and other soil amendments to nurture the growing plants, and making sure the drip irrigation system works so they will get enough water. If I don't do these things, the garden won't be what I want it to be.

And so I think it is with life. Lent isn't about giving up something for a prescribed number of days. It's a time for taking stock:  thinking about what kind of person I want to be, of acknowledging the many ways I fall short of being all I could or should be, and of making the changes needed to start anew in the right direction. Sometimes that means digging up weeds, and sometimes that means adding fertilizer.

Blossoms on the peach tree

Peas at last

February: Hard Labor

February 5, 2016

Here's a panoramic taken from our side patio. Mike completed the raised bed/patio paver redo necessary for our pergola plans, and we're waiting on HOA approval on those. Since the weather has begun to warm up a little in the afternoons, we've been working on clearing Bermuda grass and other unwanted invaders from the raised beds, redoing the wells around the fruit trees and rosesbushes, working on rejuvenative pruning of frost-damaged and overgrown bushes and vines, and other labor-intensive tasks. Today Mike is working on the pond and streambed, which has again been overwhelmed by cloverlike plants with thick matted roots. He also found that iris roots had grown up into the pond pump, and is cutting those back along with doing some root pruning. I've been working on the raised beds and tree wells, and found several nice-sized sweet potatoes as a reward for my labors.

We're harvesting lots of broccoli, which is peaking now, along with lettuce, spinach, and citrus. Too bad my mother isn't here to enjoy the grapefruit. We can't even donate the extra to a food bank. Although we haven't had any problems, concerns about the pest which spreads citrus greening disease have caused a quarantine for citrus in the West Valley. There are lots of blossoms on the pea plants, but no peas yet.

Broccoli

Snap pea blossoms

Assorted lettuces

Grapefruit

another day, another project

January 21, 2016

We're in the midst of another backyard project- adding a patio cover to the north side of our house. We haven't been totally satisfied with either pop-up gazebos or the semi-permanent one we got from Lowes, so decided to go ahead and have one professionally installed. This has meant reworking the patio pavers and raised beds so they will be able to pour footings for the support posts, So things are looking even messier than usual for this time of year.

The weather has been pleasantly warm in the afternoons, so I've been more motivated to work in the yard. My February gardening resolution is to spend at least 15 minutes a day weeding and getting the beds ready for spring planting, and I also need to rework the drip irrigation going to the two raised beds that were resized for our patio project. I planted zucchini, squash, Armenian cucumber, and melon seeds indoors in peat pots in the hopes that they will be ready for transplant in mid-February.I don't think we will get another frost this year, but it still gets too cool at night for the warmer-season crops to germinate.

I found this artichoke growing several feet away from the large artichoke plant in front of the gazebo, and moved it to what I hope will be a more hospitable and attractive location next to the stream bed. It must have sprouted from seed, as it was too far away to have spread from the mother plant underground. We are enjoying mixed green salads from an assortment of lettuces and spinach, and I think I will pick one of the broccoli heads in the next few days.

Anticipation of things to come

January 14, 2016

Things are still pretty boring and messy looking around here.We got a fair amount of rain over the past week, which is always welcome here, but also means many cleaning up and getting ready projects were put in a holding pattern. We did trim back the roses, sprayed the weeds in the gravel pathways, and removed some plants that are subject to invasive behavior. Elm trees and pink lantana seem to sprout up everywhere, and can be quite a pain to remove if they're overlooked long enough.

Broccoli is beginning to head, and snap peas to bloom.

New year, new resolutions

January 7, 2016

Although it's a necessary part of gardening, I tend not to post when things get messy or boring. I resolve to overcome that habit and endeavor to post a photo once a week from the same vantage point so that changes in the garden will be better documented.

I didn't do as much as usual in terms of fall planting, partially because my freezer is full and partially because of laziness. Only one of these raised beds is currently deliberately planted, the one directly in front of the upper pond waterfall. It contains broccoli, which is coming along nicely, and spinach, which is rather sparse.We are also growing snap peas and lettuce in another part of the yard, but they aren't visible from this angle.

Artichokes have made an appearance in the largest raised bed in front of the gazebo. The large one you can see in the picture above is several years old, and there's also a smaller one planted last year. They die back to the ground in the heat of the summer, but are resurrected when temperatures begin to fade and are absolutely gorgeous in the spring when they bloom. Although I haven't eaten any of them yet, I plan to add a couple more plants so that that the area along the streambed is lined with them. I allowed the frost-ravaged eggplant and tomato fruits to lie where they fell while removing their bushes, which should result in some interesting volunteer vegetable plants later this year. Already I can see a number of larkspur seedlings, and I haven't planted larkspur for several years.

There are some pretty pathetic-looking poinsettias in the bed nearest the patio, which had the misfortune of being planted shortly before a cold snap. This bed, too, is dormant. We are planning to build a pergola over the patio, which will probably mean reshaping the bed, so I haven't planted anything here either.

The first week in January has been unusually rainy, so I haven't yet cut back the roses, which are still blooming. We're always appreciative of any amount of rain we get. And of course, there are lots of weeds in gravel, further proof of my gardening inactivity...along with a nice head of romaine lettuce and more than a few hollyhock, larkspur, and nasturtium seedlings.

December overview: Winter roses and regenerative pruning

We returned from a twelve-day vacation to find that Mr. Freeze had made an early visit to our backyard while we were gone, with eggplants, tomatoes, and peppers taking major hits. It wasn't cold enough to damage the produce, but the leaves took sufficient damage to end this fruiting season. I harvested most of the eggplant, but left the green tomatoes on the vine, where I hope they'll continue to ripen. One method I've successfully used to ripen green tomatoes involves pulling up the plants and hanging them upside down in the garage. I don't see why leaving them on the vine should make any difference, unless we get another freeze.

The freeze changed the asparagus fronds from green to golden, indicating it was time to cut it all off. Some people have trouble growing asparagus here, and I think it's because it's easy during our generally mild winters to ignore their need for regenerative pruning. The asparagus cycle begins in late winter or early spring, when the green shoots appear and can be harvested and eaten. After a month or two, you need to exercise restraint and let it go so the fernlike fronds can store up food in the roots for next season's harvest. If they don't die back on their own, as they will in colder climates, you must cut them back in order to force them into dormancy. I think last year's harvest was late because I didn't cut them back until January. I cut them back today, so we'll see what happens next year.

Although most things are dying back, the roses have fully recovered from their summer slump and are blooming profusely once again. They too will need a regenerative pruning, which we usually do in January.

It's hard to get a good overview picture in December as the lengthening shadows put a good bit of the yard in shade, even at midday when I took this picture. In the background you can see another winter success story: broccoli, which is coming along nicely, along with at least some of the spinach I planted a month ago.