Why No Rain?

I found this article on the Scientific American web site to be of some interest regarding the lack of rain we've had here in the Bay Area. Apparently the entire nation has been affected this year.

Garden at New Year's 2012

The Brussels sprouts are getting close to picking. I took off the fencing, pulled off some of the bottom leaves, and did some weeding today to clean up the box a bit.

The sprouts start developing from the bottom up. I've read that they should be picked from the bottom if they are not coming out full in order to allow the ones further up to grow to harvest size.

Looks like there will be enough for a dish later this week.

The garlic is still growing and the ones I planted in the inner alternate rows later are starting to come up.

And here's the bay laurel really starting to take off. I'll be transplanting this to a larger pot next month.

Meanwhile, other than a couple of damp days, there has still been no rain for several weeks now and, according to the weather reports, none in sight for the next 7-10 days yet. As I've seen a few winters with no appreciable rains after Jan 1, it's completely possible we may not see any for the remainder of the season. But then I've also seen other winters where we've received over 75% of a year's precipitation between February and April, so who knows at this point. Undoubtedly this will be a below normal year but it'd be nice to get at least 10 inches before the season is over.

Early Winter 2011-2012

Feh, hardly any rain this month and, save for perhaps a few sprinkles later this week, there doesn't seem to be any on the horizon at all, certainly nothing like the storms we depend on here to get us through the year water-wise.
This is a real departure from the past several years in that rains have tended to last well into spring. Even though we can water our gardens through a dry winter, I've noticed from other dry years, especially back in the 80's, that no matter how much one waters, there is no substitute for several inches of real rain.
Hopefully things will turn and the second part of winter turns the tap on from the Pacific.

Late Fall 2011 Update

Checking in with a snapshot of the garden as we get closer to Winter. The garlic has been in the ground for a while and doesn't seem to be doing as well as it has in previous years. I've also planted them in rows 18" apart which now that's it's sprouted seems to be too large a width. Of the 3 varieties planted, one is hardly doing anything; I think that I may have planted them too deeply. I may go out tomorrow, look at those rows and then consider planting a few more between the rows as I've only planted so far half of what I have.

The parsley is still holding up well in the pots. It seems to help that I've been keeping them watered when it hasn't been raining (the past few weeks have been cold and dry - not a drop of rain for a while now and not much on the immediate horizon).

I may have left too many of the Brussels sprouts plants when thinning them after planting. I'll leave these as they are to see how they do and adjust spacing next time if I think it's warranted.

Sprouts are starting, we'll see how they develop.

This is the first I've seen of flowering on the satsuma since we planted it in March 2009. Hopefully a good harbinger as we had no fruiting at all in 2011.

We've gotten quite a few limes coming out now. I'd been unaware that Bearss limes tend to turn yellow and look something like lemons when they mature. They certainly taste like limes! Very nice flavor.

First Garlic Shoot

First garlic sprout, a true harbinger of winter in the Bay Area! This is one of those husky Russian cloves coming up to the light of the November sun in the garlic bed. The other two varieties are lagging somewhat but a couple of them are making their appearance just prior to the wet weather predicted for tonight and on Thanksgiving later this week.

Brussels Sprouts

I planted these Brussels sprouts last month from seedlings I'd started in August. I think that may have been a little late as the advice I see from Pam Peirce is to start them in July but nonetheless they seem to be doing pretty well. I had previously used this bed to grow the garlic last winter and then fingerling potatoes the summer prior to that. Although I thought I was pretty thorough in ridding any remaining potatoes there are still occasional volunteers that I've been pulling out.

We've had a couple of significant rains in the past few weeks so that hasn't hurt at all.

I finally got around to pulling the last of the baby carrots and beets from one of the beds yesterday. Laura's going to roast the beets over the next couple of weeks and pickle the carrots. Both should come in handy for Thanksgiving dinner next week.

Here is the seed garlic I purchased online and planted last Sunday, Nov 6. In the 4'x8' bed I have two rows of each of the 3 varieties 18" apart, 6 in all, with the cloves planted about 4" apart at depth of 1-2". In addition to the steer manure I worked into the entire bed I also added blood meal and bone meal to each row just prior to planting. I then fenced in the bed but the next morning found that something had worked its way into it. I'm not sure but I think whoever it was had themself a meal of a few of the Russian cloves as they are huge. I didn't want to dig everything up so I'll wait a couple of weeks to see what comes up before I make an effort to replace them as I've only used about half of what I purchased.

Planted left to right

Back to the Gardening Blog

Apologies for not keeping this up the past few months but I've been paying more attention to the cooking blog, still working the 9-5 gig (but only until Feb 2012!), and the past summer here was probably even colder than Mark Twain's summer in SF - I think it only reached 70 degrees once during all of August!
As a result the summer veggies didn't do so well, even with all of the promise they showed in July. We finally got some tomatoes but they were extremely reticent to come out and I can't blame them. And we got enough basil to make pesto a couple of times.

However...
I just planted some Brussels sprouts that I started from seed and planted the garlic for the winter. I'll post photos when they start to show. I also hope to get some salad greens started, we'll see how that goes.