January 23, 2016 - chard

First chard harvest of the year - from seeds planted in October 2015.

January 22, 2106 - pea blossoms

Even with all of the cloudy days and rain we've had for the past couple of months, we're getting our first winter pea blossoms this week. Forecasts call for a dry week ahead of the next batch of El Niño storms the first week of February. To take advantage of the break I'll be seeding and transplanting then.

January 16, 2016

I completely reworked the soil on a couple of the boxes this past week getting them ready for winter and spring plantings. As I mentioned last post, I've decided to replant an herb box as last year's plan to keep Box 4 for perennial and annual herb planting didn't pan out too well. Perhaps due to the fact that the plants were not in the ground or perhaps due to last year's continuation of the disastrous drought, the perennials mostly died back significantly. Since it is easy enough to simply purchase herb plants and restart them, it gives me a chance to rework the soil; not a bad thing.

Box 1 is going to hold another planting of broccolini but on the opposite side. I'm also setting this for seeding of greens to follow up the current autumn-planted crop in Box 2. The broccolini performed so magnificently I had to set another planting out for the Spring.

Box 2 holds the current crop of greens. The peas have been growing well, perhaps too well as they are more or less crowding out the adjacent row of chard.

Box 3 is progressing nicely with the garlic and onions.

Box 4 will continue to hold last year's herbs until the herbs in Box 5 are established.

Box 5 is the new herb box. I purchased several plants from Berkeley Horticultural yesterday which, after I reworked the soil with steer manure, I planted. From bottom: Italian flat-leaf parsley, cilantro, Cretan oregano, culinary sage, English thyme, French thyme, chervil, Greek oregano, Italian oregano. I'll probably transplant the marjoram and chives from Box 4 when I clean it out later.

January 6, 2016

We've been having a much more normal winter this year with regular rains coming since the beginning of November. The garden is also much more subdued but there's still work to do. As I learned in my horticultural experience in my few years at Weston Nurseries in Hopkinton, MA back in the 1970's, the movement of the earth towards and away from the sun between the solstices determines how vegetation grows. From the summer solstices to the winter, the sun rays move back, and from the winter to the summer, they move forward resulting in a kind of Doppler effect in terms of sunlight.
Hence once the winter solstice has passed, like it did a couple of weeks ago, the days grow longer and the decreasing angle of the sun's rays inspires the growth of plants. As it is relatively mild and (usually) wet here in the Bay Area, I consider January a prime month for getting plants started.

I usually repot all of my herb containers in the middle of the rainy season. This is one of the three mints I grow in pots getting a reboot.

Box 4, the herb box for the past year, is nearing its end. At first I was planning to keep perennial herbs going here indefinitely but in practice, I'm finding it would be better to simply replant all the herbs I'm not keeping in containers each winter. Although the herbs served me well, it's just too simple to purchase new ones and restart them fresh with renovated soil. I'll keep the herbs here until I've established new ones in Box 5 then use Box 4 for other plantings.

Box 5 is going to hold the new herbs which I plan on planting once I've renovated the soil, probably in a week or two weather permitting.

December 12, 2015

Checking in as we move into winter. I'm leaving everything alone for the remainder of the month as I'm waiting until after the solstice to set new plants and seeds. It very much looks like we're going to keep getting rain this year, such a difference from last year when we had high and dry days even into the 70's through the solstice and into January. We did have those two storms at the beginning of Dec 2014 but the storm door shut with a slam after that. This year I've shut off all irrigation since the beginning of November. Hopefully it can stay off until well into Spring 2016.

In Box 1 we're still getting broccoli florets for the dinner table. They are getting slim but I think we might be able to pull one more harvest before pulling the plants. The remainder of the box is all overgrown now but waiting until I am ready to completely redo the bed before taking everything out.

Box 2 is progressing nicely. I've been diligent about making sure we keep thinning the herds for eating so that this box doesn't overgrow like Box 1 did.

Box 3 will hold the garlic and onions through the spring and into summer for the harvest in July with some pickings for green plants in around March. All of the garlic has come up now. Took a while for many of the plants to do so.

November 28, 2015 - late autumn

Late autumn has arrived, the entire month has been cool to downright cold with a reasonable amount of rain for a change. The produce has quieted down a bit so just an update today of the current status here and there.

I planted the garlic back on October 17, rows 1-4 here. See post. The shoots in row 4 (from the left) came up within the first week while the others have staggered along with a different shoot finally popping up in the weeks since. Even today there are new shoots just appearing now. I'd been concerned that they were not all going to succeed but apparently each one has its own timing.

The basil is finally succumbing to the cold (34°F-45°F) evenings and mornings of the past week or so. I got one last harvest for a pesto a couple of weeks ago but even then the taste wasn't up to what we get in the peak of mid-late summer.

The broccolini plants were planted from a nursery 6-pack back in August. We started harvesting the stalks back in mid-October and have been picking from them since periodically. I'm finding that as long as I leave enough of a stalk with a side shoot from every cutting, more will keep popping up afterwards. I've done about 4-5 harvests in the past 6 weeks with more to come, each one yielding at least twice of what we can use in one dinner. Well worth growing since the flavor is far superior to even the best of what I've seen even in farmer's markets.

The performance of these two thyme plants in the herb box are pretty perplexing to me. They did well last winter and spring and grew quite a bit. During the dry summer after months of no rain, they started showing signs of stress even with the regular drip irrigation that helped the basil and Mexican oregano to boom. I started hand-watering by July to get them through and it really seemed to help. However for the past several weeks they've both been slowly dying back to the extent that I'll need to replace them soon. Maybe they're too crowded with the nearby marjoram. The thyme I've been growing in a container has done ok and I'm using that for cooking now. I'm thinking that maybe they just need to be replaced periodically but less than a year seems a bit premature to me.

After almost losing the Bearss lime to the drought last summer, the regular irrigation I gave it over the summer and autumn with the tree bags seems to have brought it back to life. I removed the bags at the start of this month as the rains started arriving and with it looking like more is in store for us over the next couple of weeks, I'll let them go for now. I got some blossoms last month which have now translated into a few fruit. Hopefully they won't drop this time if the plant keeps getting water.

November 4, 2015 - winter is coming

Just as we passed into November this past weekend, we are suddenly leaving summer, hot weather, and forever drought. We had a substantial (for the Bay Area, anyway) rain (almost 1") all day Monday and the nighttime lows have gone below 50°F for the first time since April - not too shabby. Forecasts call for more rain the next two weekends and then some after that so maybe El Niño is finally kicking in.
After 4 dry winters, the rain was so glorious it was amazing. The plant material in the yard immediately perked up and I was able to kill the irrigation, at least for a while.

Meanwhile the garden beds are being reworked to meet the new season.


Box 1

I planted everything way too close and didn't keep tabs on it. The broccoli has done very well but the beets were buried, the greens overgrown, and the kale and chard got moldy from a lack of air circulation. My wife has been picking from the greens regularly though so we've had plenty of them for salad every night.

I've gotten 3 harvests of broccoli for dinner and there's more on the way. Now that I've removed the kale and chard, I may replace them with a few more broccoli plants to get us through another month or so. Box 2 has a fresh seeding of greens, beets, kale, and chard which should keep us good for a while.

 Box 2

I planted a couple of rows of peas along the eastern edge and seeded the rest of the box with radishes, greens, beets, kale, and chard. I'm keeping a close eye on everything to keep them from crowding as happened in Box 1. I've also noticed the problem with the pea sprouts that I had in the spring (someone is snacking on them) so covered them with netting to keep them protected until they've grown a bit.

Box 3

The garlic and onion transplants are progressing nicely. The only question is about sunlight as this box may get as little as 4-5 hours near the solstice.

Box 4

The herbs are holding their own for the time being. The cold temperatures will eventually get to the basil but they're still doing ok for the moment.

Box 5 

I pulled the remaining carrots last week. The basil and peppers are hanging in there for the moment. The only row left that needs to grow is the fennel which has been coming along.

Citrus 

There are hardly any lemons remaining. I've cleared out the rotted ones and there's only a few that are still usable. There are quite a few flowers and green fruit but may not be reliable for picking for at least another month.

The satsumas are close to being mature. The tree looks a little straggly but considering they've only received the piddling from the irrigation all year, not doing too badly. Hopefully a good wet winter will revive the tree for next year.

I was able to save the persimmon tree using the large green bags for watering twice a week along with the stakes used during irrigation. This is the first of 5 fruits the tree was able to produce. Hopefully more next year.