Fertilized Citrus

The lowest Mandarin has been looking fairly sorry with some leaf drop and some curled up and yellow leaves.  This one a raccoon had been using its well as a latrine, but I cleaned that up last week.  I checked its drip irrigation and I think one of the emitters may have been plugged, but I fixed that now.  Plus I gave the two mandarins a shot of iron chelate and fertilized all the citrus with organic citrus fertilizer.  We'll hope that helps.  The smallest mandarin (not the lowest on the slope) is teensy tiny and yet has one hopeful little mandarin ripening on it!

Gardening update

I've been neglecting this blog and recording what I've been doing.

At home: The VFN tomatoes didn't die super quickly, but they don't look very happy either.  I wonder if the FN load in the bed is just too much.  Also, the marigolds quickly got skelatonized at home (and a bit at the community garden), in a pattern that spread in such a way that I wonder if it was a caterpillar or something that crawls.  I've planted many broccoli and cauliflower starts at home, plus some cosmos and snapdragons.  Twice now they've been badly uprooted and thrown about.  I'm wondering if it is a raccoon or a skunk doing that.  I've replanted everything that survived, used a my granular all-purpose organic fertilizer, sprinkled some crushed dried jalapeno peppers around and DH set some rat traps in the garden.  I'll hope some part of that helps.

At the community garden: brussel sprouts, broccoli, and cauliflower starts went in.  Plus lots of seeds for kale (saved), carrot (saved), lettuce (saved), broccoli (saved), onion, beets, bok choy, kohlrabi.  What am I forgetting?  Oh, and today I fertilized at the CG with the all-purpose dry organic fertilizer.

Fertilized Magnolia and Carrotwood Trees

Last week I had an arborist out to look at a very sad looking Carrotwood tree in the backyard.  The Magnolia in the front needs a tiny bit of deadwooding.  But that Carrotwood is a mess, so we shut off one sprinkler that was hitting the trunk, removed from rocks that were too near the trunk, took out a pampas grass that limiting airflow, deeply watered and fertilized.  DH cleaned out the garage and found some ancient (>10 years old) Osmocote and Miracle Grow, so I used that on both trees figuring that since I didn't plan to eat either it would be okay.

Canned Organic Chicken Stock

We normally save the bones from organic chicken that we've eaten and freeze them until I'm ready to make soup or stock.  But this time the freezer was full and it wasn't really soup weather, so I canned most of the stock using this recipe, mostly.  I did my bone broth as usual - lots of chicken bones with bay leaves, a little salt and pepper and 1 T apple cider vinegar per quart of water added.  I had so many chicken bones that I put them all in my new 16 quart stock pot.  It was the perfect size.  After simmering for 24 hours, we strained out the bones (which we bury in the heart of the compost pile to add phosphorus and calcium to the compost.)  The saved stock, I reboiled and canned as directed.  I had originally added 10 quarts of water, but this boiled down a bit.  In the end I had 7 quarts canned plus about 1-2 quarts that I made into a quick lentil soup.

Horticultural Oil at Community Garden Again

The Bagrada Bug situation was slightly better on some kale, worse on some others and worse on the peppers.  I sprayed again with the horticultural oil.

Sprayed Horticultural Oil on Bagrada Bugs at Community Garden

In an effort to get a leg up on the millions of Bagrada bugs that are decimating my kale, peppers, etc at the community garden plot, today I sprayed a horticultural oil on them.  I sure hope it helps.  In a few weeks time the kale has gone from happily feeding us to being almost totally dead and completely inedible.

Fertilized Community Garden, Bagrada Bugs

Today I fertilized at the community garden with Dr. Earth's Veg Fertilizer.

My kale, which has been feeding me wonderfully for almost a year, is now getting decimated by bagrada bugs.  I'm considering spraying them with horticultural oil the next time I'm there, but I need to investigate that further.