Busy Spring in the Garden!

 I've been having so much fun in the garden that my blogging can't keep up!

About 4 weeks ago, I gave up on the seeds I'd planted in the back raised bed due to the ongoing squirrel attacks. While we're planning an enclosure, I got busy on a new plan for spring. I pulled out a couple plants that I could salvage after the squirrel damage (the two asparagus, some chard and alyssum that may not make it). The soil level had settled a bit since the bed is so new, so I added several bags of raised bed mix, a few bags of composted chicken manure, and some coffee grounds from Starbucks. This helped bring the level up. After letting that settle for about a week, I then planted some tomato starts and one eggplant there. I did plant the tomato starts extra deep, but next time I think I'd plant them deeper. They're a cherry tomato and a plum tomato. I'm hoping since we don't actually eat those plants but rather their fruit that the squirrels will leave them alone. I did put a plastic cylinder around them to protect them for a bit just in case they're tempting. So far, so good. I also planted 2 of the cherry tomatoes in pots nearby.

We've deployed a couple rat traps that we hope will be annoying enough to at least discourage the critters. I also heard that sometimes the squirrels want the water in the seedlings as opposed to the seedlings themselves, so to try to help this I put out a saucer of water on the ground on the other side of the garden. The first few days of the traps being out and baited with sunflower seed butter, the traps were sprung. Since then, it's calmed down. Maybe it is helping, but I wouldn't bet on it. I don't notice a big recovery of the poor chard sprouts. 

We also planted a white guava tree in the back. On 3/30 it was 53 inches tall. So far, it's looking like it is fairly happy. 

I received cuttings of several types of sage and a red fig tree cutting that I'm attempting to root. 

At the garden exchange, I also picked some aloes suffering in a pot. Perhaps they hadn't been watered in a while. I'll see if I can revive them.

I sowed some old herb seeds indoors. Most haven't germinated, but the cilantro has. In fact, so much has come up in one little pot that I'm considering if I should attempt to separate them. 

This last weekend, we bought the cedar 2x2's to make the cage to exclude the rodents. We still need to get fasteners and hardware cloth.

Planted bulbs, Garden Update

 Recall the passion fruit vine I recently planted? It is not happy. The other day, I took a closer look at it and discovered 7 snails on or around it, which I removed. Then 2 days later, there were 2 more. I'll keep checking it and picking them off. I hope it recovers. My friend saw how sad it looks and told me not to worry as she'd already asked her other friend for more cuttings.

Remember the lettuce wasn't looking so good and I gave it fertilizer. That was an organic vegetable fertilizer brand. I think that was too much for it, as it quickly withered and died.

In other sad news, the asparagus starts that I'd enclosed in protective plastic sleeves (old juice jugs with top and bottom cut off) is browning. I'd guess the overheated in the sun. I've removed the sleeves, but kept the wire spikes I put in with them to dissuade rodents. I hope they're happier now.

And the great, yet inevitable, garden tragedy of the week is that right after fertilizing, the squirrels discovered the chard and beet seedlings. They had a feast! Hubby and I have been researching wire enclosures to decide what to make to exclude the squirrels from the garden.

Some of the flower seedling I planted over a month ago are starting to sprout, so we'll keep our fingers crossed for them.

The succulents we moved around a week or so ago are looking pretty good. A friend gave me another succulent that we put in the back border. Speaking of the border, we also planted snapdragon and alyssum starts there (and alyssum in the veggie bed). We also planted about a dozen of each ranunculus and freesia bulbs in the back border. I hope they get established and return for years! Time will tell.

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

Garden Update

 The seeds that I planted directly into the raised bed are going crazy. Those were all ones I'd saved from last fall (beets x 2 types, chard, lettuce) plus a newer envelope of carrots. I didn't realize they'd do so well. If I'd known, I would have planted them more sparingly.

On the other hand, the seeds that were mostly old that I planted in little pots or 6 packs aren't doing nearly as much. Fingers crossed that more come up.

Last week, I brought seeds (beets x 2, chard, lettuce, celery) first to the library for the seed library and later to the garden swap at the library. I came home with a few tomatoes and some passion fruit. Yum!

This weekend, we transplanted some nasturtium from the community garden bed (where it was overwhelming the space) to a side of our yard. We'll see if the plants survived the journey, which was actually pretty funny. Dear husband carried the long nasturtium vines slung over his shoulder for the mile hike home! We sometimes get odd looks coming back from the garden. This time we truly deserved them.

We also moved a hydrangea that a friend gave me years ago from the pot it had been in to a border area. The loquat seeds that the kids and I started from neighborhood fruit May 2023 went into the front yard. I won't hold my breath on getting any fruit from those soon. They're about 5 inches tall. We also cleared out some succulents from a bed where I didn't want so many of those. I'll give them away. When next we have time and interest, I hope we'll plant some succulents that are currently in pots in that bed. 

Southern California is getting an historic amount of rain, which is probably good for the vegetables bed and eases the transplanting but bad from some homes, etc. Son's dorm has some leaks, the hot water died, and today classes were virtual. Our home has been fine, thankfully. I hope everyone is staying safe and relatively dry.

Planting more seeds

After posting about planting asparagus on Saturday, a friend warned me to be ready to treat the asparagus for the asparagus weevil and asparagus aphids. Perhaps I’ll soon regret planting them. On the bright side, they’ve survived 2 nights without being decimated by squirrels.

Sunday was another busy planting day, as a friend came through with milkweed seeds. Thank you, friend! I planted an entire flat of those (6x6=36 starts). In 6 packs, I also started alyssum and carnations (Chabaud, Dianthus Caryophyllus), plus the poppy yesterday. In little pots, I started sunflowers, three flower mix packets that I’d been given, and some Sweet William from a friend (Dianthus barbatus). Hopefully some of these will flourish for us. I'm hoping to plant flowers in the border around our redone retaining wall.

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.

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. 

Fertilizer and Iron to Citrus

The citrus trees look okay but not fabulous. I asked my mom to look at them. She has lots of experience growing citrus, although that was in Arizona, not California, so we're not sure how transferable her knowledge is. She suggested that I try giving some iron chelate to the trees. So I put some around each citrus today. I also gave all of the fruit trees some Gro Power plus with humic acid. Let's see how they like this. 

Planted winter vegetable seeds

 The community garden offered up some new "Raised garden bed mix" from San Pasqual Valley Soils. We took advantage of that and put plenty in our box as over time the soil sinks. Whenever we add new soil or amendments, we then lift up the drip irrigation to put the tubes back in order. Once this was done, it was time to plant some seeds for winter crops. We planted carrots, beets, Swiss chard, Romanesco broccoli, and kohlrabi. 

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 to Citrus and Apple, Summer Garden

 A few more times this spring, twice in March and twice in June, I've applied fish emulsion to the citrus and apple trees. I wonder if it is helping my smallest mandarin a bit, but it is hard to tell if it is just normal spring growth. 

In the meantime, I'm harvesting delicious grape and cherry tomatoes that are mostly volunteers from the compost I spread near the trees or in pots. I planted some Celebrity tomatoes and Annie Oakley II okra starts in pots and at the community garden in June. 

The aphids and bagrada bugs have put a halt to the amazing swiss chard from this spring and really slowed down the kale. This seems to be a pretty normal cycle each year, so I'm just moving on.

At the garden, I planted seeds saved from kabocha squash and also planted whole mini pumpkins that are the descendants of the ones my daughters got at school 4.5 years ago. Like last year, I'm getting some bizarre squash from those that I didn't actually plant in addition to the mini pumpkins and kabocha I desired. At this point, there are some pumpkins although they look rounder. There's one that looks exactly like a golden acorn. And there's the omnipresent zucchini/random summer squash thing that's chubbier than a zucchini and more oval. Time will tell on the squash project, although it is fun to watch them and guess what's coming. For the record, some years I do grow squash from actual seed packets. I just didn't do it this year or last. 

Anyway, Happy Summer!

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.

Fish Emulsion to Fruit Trees

 The soil around the citrus dried out. We turned off the water to the citrus trees for a couple weeks, and we've had some dry weather. Now, the water is back on. Today, I watered each of the fruit trees with some fish emulsion, hoping to give them a shot of nitrogen to spur growth. The leaves and blossoms are starting the bud out on the apple tree, so I'm hoping it is a good time. Maybe I'll repeat some this spring. I'd like to help the newer citrus trees get well established. I recall the most successful and fastest citrus to establish for me were 2 houses ago, about 8 miles from here. It could have been the location, obviously, but at the time I used a lot of fish emulsion in my gardening. So, I'm trying to replicate that. 

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.

Compost to fruit trees

 We still compost both in the worm bin and in a normal compost bin. I've not been adding to the normal bin for a month or so, allowing it to finish. Today, we sifted it and put it at the base of all the fruit trees. The sifting step is not necessary, but we like to get out the sticks and some bits that are taking longer to compost before using it. We throw those items back in the bin so they're broken down for next time. Our current compost has quite a few worms in it, too, as it hasn't been heated very hot for a while. 

If anyone reading this does not yet compost, I'm a big advocate and think you all should do it, too. 😊 It can be as easy or as involved as you want it to be. We keep a lot of our waste out of the landfill by composting, rarely having more than a couple small bags in the trash can each week. But on a daily basis, I empty kitchen scraps into the compost bin. Between that and the recycle bin, that's where most of our waste goes. 

Blood meal to fruit trees

 My friendly guardian angel/master gardener was concerned about the fruit trees and the steer manure. While normally I use 2 parts chicken and 1 part steer manure, this year when I went to buy them they were out of the chicken manure. I just got the steer, which is a poor substitute. It is too high in salt and low in nitrogen. The timing of putting out the steer manure before so much rain is good in that it will wash the salt away from the tree roots. To address the low nitrogen, I spread blood meal on the fruit trees. I'm considering repeating this in a month or two or perhaps using fish emulsion. I really would like to see some growth in some of the newer trees (like 5 years old - I'd have to look that up to know exactly). I'll also try to remember to only use chicken manure in the future, adding no steer manure at all. 

Worm castings and composted steer manure

Our worm bin was full, so we harvested the castings and switched the tiers. There are tons of happy worms in there! We spread the castings, along with the composted steer manure I bought months ago, on the fruit trees. There's been plenty of rain this week and more is in the forecast. Hopefully, that will help soak these into the soil, not wash them away.

Our tiny Gold Nugget Mandarin tree has ripe fruit now that we're enjoying. I love the fruit, but I'd like to see this tree grow more this coming year.

Happy New Year 2022 is almost here. Hang in there everyone. 

Cleared community garden plot of tomatoes and zucchini, planted parsley seeds

 This past weekend we cleared all of the remaining tomato and squash plants from the community garden bed. It is always hard to decide to pull out the tomatoes because so many green ones remain, but they just stop ripening. We will put down composted manure (this time only steer, as the garden center was out of chicken) and plant more soon.

Here's the last tomato harvest of the year (except some cherry gold tomatoes at home in a pot that are still producing).

Also the final overgrown zucchini-ish squash and some zoodles I made from them. I'm getting sick of zoodles. I think I need to make a LOT more zucchini bread.

At home, I planted some parsley seeds in a pot. They're pretty old, so I'm curious if they will grow.