Passion Fruit Vine, Eucalyptus, Fertilizing

Last week we finally had the eucalyptus removed from the back yard on the East side. It was a nice visual screen between us and the neighbor's but it was an enormous tree that was very out of place for the location and required lots of trimming to keep it safe that near the house. Plus, I disliked the leaves it dropped, knowing it was pushing out other plants. I'm looking forward to planting a fruit tree near there instead.

On Saturday (2/17/24), a friend gave me a passion fruit vine, which we planted in the back yard near the back fence. I hope it will grow on the fence eventually.

Today,  I fertilized the back vegetable bed, all the fruit trees, and a bit to the star jasmines. The many seeds I'd planted a few weeks ago in the vegetable bed germinated quickly and have been slow to do much since. I'm hoping the fertilizer will help. I really should thin them, too, but I haven't yet. I'm not the best at thinning

Fertilized, planting seeds, new asparagus

 Happy 2024!

The star jasmine climbing up trellises on either side of the garage was looking a little sorry on the west side. It has done this before in winter and fertilizing seems to help, so I gave some Osmocote to them plus other flowering shrubs and potted plants in the front yard.

I've been waiting for bare root asparagus to come to the nursery to get some for our new raised bed in the backyard. The nursery flyer said they were in, so I went there with my mom this week. Sadly, they sold out fast. I was able to get 2 small potted asparagus, which I planted as the first plants in the raised bed. The tag says "Asparagus Millenium" and "Aspargus Officinalis". I put an old container, missing it's top and bottom, as a plastic tube around the plants with wire spikes coming up through them in hopes of protecting the plants from critters. Fingers crossed.

I also bought a Scented Geranium called "Sugar Plum" hoping that it might discourage squirrels in the backyard. I'm thinking it will avoid direct squirrel damage but fear it won't deter them. I'd really like some vegetables to survive in our back bed but not sure how to achieve that exactly. One way I know will work is to enclose the whole bed in hardware cloth on a wood frame, as they did at the community garden. It may come to that, but I'd prefer to avoid that. Anyway, we planted the geranium plus I took some cuttings to root some more plants from it. We've also planted some vincas from the fall to edge the back yard.

In the new bed, I buried some old pumpkins, as I do each year with that line of miniature pumpkins. The first ones I buried were from fall 2022 and had been explored by animals, so I'm not sure how they'll fare. We're still enjoying the fall 2023 harvest inside, but those will go out in the coming months.

I was going to plant some milkweed seeds to get starts to plant around the yard this year. The ones I had last year, I never planted. I had caterpillars and butterflies, and sometimes lent them to a friend for her use in a school library. They were in flats and shuffled around for a long time such that few survived. So, I need a new batch. I got the flats all ready but discovered I'm out of milkweed seeds, so that will have to wait for another day. Instead, I started a few California Poppies.

Fruit Trees, Worm Castings, Milkweed

 I finally got more fertilizer for the fruit trees today, so I applied Gro Power to all the fruit trees. We also put worm castings from our very full bin on all of them last weekend. The citrus trees also received some Citrus Grower's blend. And the little, struggling mandarin got all of that watered in with a bit of kelp extract. I removed a couple fruit from that one, so it wouldn't put too much energy into production.

Speaking of production, this was a big year for peaches on our little tree, meaning it has 8 fruit! 3 of them have fallen off in the last couple days. They're about the size of an apricot and still look green. I'm hoping they'll ripen a bit on the counter, but I'm not confident these will be the peaches of my dreams. I remember a peach tree I planted in Maryland, gave about 2 fruit it's first year, but they were delicious. This isn't looking like that.

I've been having some fun this summer with the milkweed I planted last fall from seeds a friend gave me. Due to life chaos, those poor plants are still in the little 6-pack style pots (can I call them pots?) I planted them in. I hope to get them in the actual ground someday. This hasn't put off the monarch butterflies, who find them anyway, lay eggs and the caterpillars demolish the plants to a leafless state before we start the cycle over again. I haven't found a lot of chrysalises in the garden, as a friend of mine does. I'm not sure if they're walking away further than I'm looking, if I'm bad at finding them, or what, but this is a good start. I'm hoping it will be better once the plants are in the ground.

Soil sulfur, Gro Power, fertilizer

Happy Spring! Things have been so busy, but this week I made some time to give the trees a bit of love. The citrus all got a bit of soil sulfur as I think alkaline soil/water are the source of some issues for the citrus. I also applied Gro Power Plus to all of the citrus trees before scratching it in. The ornamental flowers got some Osmocote long acting fertilizer. 

We've had some of the best chard from the garden in the last month or so. And the peach tree is blooming up a storm. It loves all of the rain we've had this year in Southern California.

Iron plus slight acidifier to mandarins

 We've had a lot of rain lately by San Diego standards, and there's a bit more to come next week. The 2 smallest mandarins are not looking happy, continuing to have the yellowed leaves with dark spots. My Mom had a good look at one and suggested iron chelate. So, I gave them each some iron chelate and a little bit of Gro-Power Plus, which has humic acid, so might continue to gently acidify the soil. 

Citrus update, Fertilizing, Squash, Pumpkins and Milkweed

    My husband reworked the valves and commandeered one exclusively for the fruit trees, which has been great for the citrus. Now we can water them more deeply and less frequently. Since I started hand watering and then we transitioned to the new valve, the mandarin that had been struggling with brown spots on the leaves has not produced new leaves with that. In fact, it had a little new healthy growth. But then the new leaves are now curling on themselves, which I believe is from an insect. I've seen some white fly, but not necessarily on the curling leaves. The citrus saga continues. 

    Speaking of citrus, this time of year we're still eating our Valencia oranges which we enjoy plain or in smoothies. I love that tree, especially when peach season ends and there's not a lot of fruit in the stores that excite me. Although, props to some of the grocery store pears recently. There's been some good ones.

    This weekend I fertilized all of the fruit trees with an organic fruit tree fertilizer. The citrus trees also got a small dose of Citrus Grower's Blend.

    We've had a lot of small pumpkins and squash from the community garden. For 5 years, we've planted and replanted the descendants of some mini pumpkins my daughter got in school. Over the years, they've changed in appearance and had varying harvest sizes. Last year for the first time, we got a few white ones. This year's crop had one white one, and they all lost their mini pumpkin shape! I suspect the shape issue may be cross pollinating with the seeds I'd saved and planted from a kabocha squash, which we're now into the second generation of. The first generation of those looked like kabocha and overgrown zucchini. This year's didn't look or taste at all like kabocha and mostly reverted to plump overgrown zucchini-ish squash. I know, of course, that I could have squash and pumpkins that bred true if I used seed packets, but I do enjoy seeing what shows up.

    Here are some of this year's pumpkins

    We've had lots of squash like this, most of which tastes zucchini-ish

    There's the age-old dilemma of what do do with a bunch of summer squash. I made an eggless frittata-type thing that was pretty good. My husband's favorite (other than zucchini bread) is when I roast it with garlic.

    A friend of mine is really into monarch butterflies and, thus, milkweed. She gave me some seeds she'd saved, which I planted. I was surprised that most of them germinated. 

    I've just transplanted them to give each sprout a bit more room. I'm hoping the critters don't eat them now that they've graduated from my window to the great outdoors. 

    If it survives the critters, someday it might look like this, complete with caterpillar. See the caterpillar?

    Here's a yellow garden spider that set up shop in my community garden box. It's big! I'm glad to have it though, to eat the bugs.

Citrus challenges

 Do you recall my little Algerian Mandarin that I've been trying to spur to grow with fish emulsion? That hasn't worked. It has more leaves that get dark spots on them. Then the leaf yellows and eventually falls off. There are also some deadwood areas on the tree. (My other citrus get some deadwood in the summer as well.) Feeling the soil, I think it is too dry. 

First, for context, this picture shows the mature Valencia Orange on the left, near the tiny, newer Algerian Mandarin that's struggling on the right.

Looking more closely, it has some greener leaves and some yellowed leaves.

See the spots on the yellowed leaves?

Along with these pictures, I brought a leaf to the nursery. After speaking with a few employees, the proposed issues are underwatering and micronutrient deficiency.

Regarding the watering, unfortunately I don't have a separate irrigation valve to devote to the longer, deep watering better suited to trees. We may figure out a way to make that happen, but for now that's not the case. This tree is pretty far from the nearest hose bib and across a driveway. Getting a hose there brings the hose past a pot of succulents and results in arms of the succulent being knocked off. And our hose storage is an old plastic pot where the hose gets wound up by hand. While the tree does get supplemental watering by hand in the summer, since it is such a hassle to get the hose to it the watering is done with a watering can and isn't a significant amount. Watering by hand has been a job my kids do on the weekends. They do it very quickly, so I know not much water is getting to the trees, although it is enough to help some little pots we have. We have the trees on drip irrigation that runs on the same valve as the nearby landscape plants. A few weeks ago, we added some emitters to each tree (going from 3 to 4 or 5), but this valve runs briefly due to the other plants on it.

To change the watering for now, I've taken over the citrus watering myself. We bought a hand crank hose reel so it is easier to put the hose away. Also, I used a shovel to widen the wells and give them better berms, hoping to be able to fill the wells with a meaningful amount of water. 

Regarding the micronutrients, I fertilized three ways today. 

    1) I used about half a bag of chicken manure in the well and to build the berm for each tree.

    2) I dosed each tree with an organic citrus tree fertilizer.

    3) I added Citrus Grower's Blend to the well area of each tree. The point of this product is micronutrients.

I'll water deeply weekly for a bit, then reassess. Next time I'm targeting nutrients, I'll consider if I should add iron and/or humic acid

Fish Emulsion and Citrus Grower's Blend

 I'm still trying to use the fish emulsion repeatedly on the fruit trees, so I did that again today. I also applied Citrus Grower's Blend for the first time to the citrus trees. Also, I used a general, slow release fertilizer on some landscape plants and flowers.

Gro-Power and Soil Sulfer to Trees

 Some of the smaller citrus trees are getting some yellowed leaves like mine frequently do in winter with rains. I've added some soil sulfur and a Gro-Power humic acid product. I'm hoping that along with less rain will help fix this. Only the citrus trees got the sulfer, but all fruit trees got Gro-Power.

I recall that several homes ago, my citrus would get similar issues. Gro-Power and sometimes a foliar spray of seaweed emulsion would help. I don't have any seaweed emulsion at the moment, so hopefully this will help.

Planting tomatoes

 Yesterday we planted Sun Gold Cherry tomatoes in pots at our house. We added in compost from the bin and organic fertilizer. It was a nice family project for Mother's Day weekend. This week, I will plant the Champion tomato 6 pack that I bought at the same time at the community garden. We're still not going into stores, so these were both selected over the phone at a place that offers curbside pick up. I grew Sun Gold last year and actually prefer some red cherry tomatoes, but this is what they had. The plants in the packs look nice and healthy, which is better than I'd expected for curbside pickup. Kudos to Armstrong Nursery.

Fertilizer to Star Jasmine

 We have two star jasmine plants, one climbing up next to each side of the garage door. This time of year, one of them has leaves turn red and massively fall off. The other is fine. I think in prior years, giving fertilizer helped stop this, which doesn't really make sense. They're the same variety. Both are on the north side of the house. One is behind like it is supposed to be deciduous, unless it is fertilized. Anyway, I gave it some fertilizer, and we'll see what it does.

Fertilized Community Garden Box

For a few months the garden box was hard to access due to trail and parking lot closures, but we managed to walk in various ways most weeks. Now the trails and lot are reopened, thankfully. This weekend we walked the canyon trail to the garden with containers of fertilizer in baskets. We fertilized and harvested to our limits of carrying back. We had kale, chard, lettuce, beets, tomatoes, strawberries, and turnips. The tomatoes have taken over about half of the box, so it helped that we pulled all of the turnips. Now the pumpkins/squash have a little more space.

Planted vegetables and fertilized

The weekend of 3/28 we planted tomato and lettuce starts at the community garden and home. We walked to the garden carrying baskets of plants. It felt very old fashioned. The following weekend, 4/4/20, we carried vegetable fertilizer in yogurt contains in those same baskets. This past week we've had a lot of rain, so the plants must not be thirsty. We had few seeds sprout from those planted a few weeks ago. Most successful seemed to be some radish and turnip seeds I'd saved from prior years.

Holiday Lights, Citrus, and Fertilizer

Something I love about our street is that people work together to string holiday lights across the street from the roof of one home to another. Today was that day.  In addition to the lights going up across the street, we put up our own along the front, in the apple tree, on a couple trellises and on the ivy and into the pigmy date palms.  We also have some big ornaments we put in those date palms. I love watching them blow in the breeze, although sometimes it blows so hard that they blow right off.

We also added composted chicken manure and organic citrus fertilizer to all of the fruit trees. The lemon got an extra dose of humic acid (Gro-Power), as did the star jasmine.  Also, several pots, the star jasmine, a camelia and a few other plants got some all purpose fertilizer (OsmoCote).  Some rain would be welcome to really water that in well.  This week we got some long awaited rain... 0.09 inches. I know... impressive.

Community Garden update

Today at the community garden, I harvested the last of the summer tomatoes before ripping out the vines.  The kale is still going.  I harvested some BIG broccoli and broccoli leaves for sauteing.  Then I added 2 bags of chicken manure and one of steer manure and turned it into the soil.  I planted carrot seeds in a small area.  The rest is ready for planting soon, when I get to it. I think I need some beets going in soon.

Fertilized Citrus and Lawn

At home the rains have stopped for now, so I took the opportunity to use citrus fertilizer on the valencia, peach, pomegranate and apple trees.  I also fertilized the back lawn.  I've been using worm tea regularly on the bougainvillea and pomegranate as well.  The worm castings I used months ago in a potted plant on the front porch seems to have halted the white fly.

Fertilized Community Garden

I've had a fabulous harvest of tomatoes that are now petering out.  The green beans have been a small quantity, but ongoing.  Today I pulled the bulk of the remaining carrots, plus a beet, and some kale for dinner.  Once in the last month, I went out to the community garden at night to hunt for hornworms.  My friend and I found only one, but what it lacked in numbers it made up for in size.  I think it ate the competition.  We also found two chrysalises.  Contrast that to a hunt for similar at home where we found about 16 on three plants!

Since I could see bare soil here and there again, today I spread 2 bags of composted chicken manure and 1 bag of composted steer manure in the community garden.  Makes for happy plants but stinky soil.

At home, a plumeria I got as a cutting about 2 or 3 years ago is blooming beautifully.  We stick our noses in its flowers each time we pass.  It is still in the pot I stuck it in when it was a bare branch.  I hope to plant it sometime soon, since it seems to be happy in its spot.  It is slightly under an overhang of the house, which I hope will shelter it from future frosts.

Fertilized Community Garden and My Favorite Gardeners

I used the organic vegetable fertilizer today at the community garden.  Last week I harvested the last of the turnips.  The lettuce is starting to bolt, so I'm trying to eat that up aggressively.  Unfortunately, slugs love my lettuce.  Today I picked a head of lettuce and removed 2 slugs from it.  I looked around for me and didn't see any.  While reaching for a bag, I turned the lettuce upside down and another slug fell out next to my foot!  Then, I looked more carefully to see if there were any more hiding.  I found one that had a good grip, so I turned the lettuce upside down again and shook it.  The slug clung on tenaciously, but 3 other little caterpillars sprinkled down!  Good grief!

I'm also harvesting some very nice carrots, some of which are surprisingly fat considering that I never thin the carrots.  Also, some beets and the chard is nearly as big as my 7 year old!  Here's a picture of the chard with DD and my niece's Flat Stanley.  I know the Flat Stanley looks like a snowman, but this one is from Connecticut, so it looks different than our San Diego Flat Stanleys.  Oh and check out our matching Yosemite shirts.  DD thinks it is so cool that our we're shirt twins!  We just had a wonderful family trip there with friends.

And here's a picture of the garden with my two favorite gardeners!  DS just turned 11 and DD is 7 1/2.

Fertilized at New House, Community Garden

We moved in Sept 2015 and now I'm finally getting around to the bare minimum of yard work.  We have a citrus tree in the front that looks a lot like a Valencia Orange.  The prior owner thought it might be a mandarin but was unsure.  It doesn't look like a mandarin.  Another in the front that is almost dead, but resprouting from the stem.  It is labeled a Washington Navel Orange.  There is a tiny Anna Apple.  In the back there is a small Babcock White Peach and Pomegranate.  All of these I fertilized today.  Plus, I did the potted herbs and veggies, the carrotwood trees, a bougainvillea, and 2 star jasmines.  I hope to plant some more citrus soon.

Also, about 2 weeks ago I fertilized at the community garden. From there we've been eating kale, beets, bok choy, and one strawberry!  Also, this week I picked some radishes.  DD and DS planted some of that garden this winter and nothing is labeled, so it is a surprise when things come up.

Fertilized pots

It was past time to give the pots in the back yard a kick, so I gave them the granular vegetable fertilizer.  

The citrus have not looked better or worse since the recent changes.  I've been spraying them every day or so with the combo fish emulsion/ferrous sulfate hoping to keep them going.