Well I had to push the grand soil haul til tomorrow, but that didn’t mean I could rest on my laurels.
The weather is beautiful out- and coupled with the return of daylight savings I have a ton more usable time out in the garden. It was around 70 degrees out in the hottest part of the day today, and while I know a week from now we are going to have some more rain, it truly feels like the beginnings of Spring.
See- a bumble bee! This is the third or fourth I’ve seen this year so far, which is exciting. Just because I don’t grow most flowers doesn’t mean I can’t have a bee friendly garden. Most of my herbs flower wonderfully, and I’m planting more.
The blue pot is the garlic chives 2.0 after the wind killed pot 1.0- the other pot on the stand is new, and houses some regular chive seeds.
What- I like chives ok? Why not have both? Besides all varieties of chives have wonderful edible flowers that make bees go crazy. And more bees means more tomatoes later and more green beans and more cucumbers… you get the idea.
I also wanted to pot up some cilantro. I keep getting cilantro and planting it in the shade herb bed and having it grow just plain weird. Well- turns out this was 100% my fault. Cilantro is like dill- transplanting cilantro tends to make the plant all screwy.
Ok so I’ll sow it by seed into a pot like I did with the dill, only the only pot the right size is the plastic pot that we all know the wind likes to knock over…
The solution is rocks. The solution is always rocks.
Those are a couple of big rocks I found that I plunked down in the pot before I filled it with soil and seeds. Made it good and heavy- try to knock that over wind!
(Just kidding wind please be cool)
I’ve also been pretty pleased with the seedlings so far, except for the one Boston pickle I started indoors during the deluge- it died in the night. I just sort of shrugged and put another Boston pickle cucumber seed in the pot- you can’t really plant cucumbers in their bed til around May so I have plenty of time to screw around with seeds and grow a few strong plants for transplant.
Rip Boston Pickle plant. As you can see the rest of the older seedlings are doing really great- as are some of the younger ones…
All 12 of the Joi Choi came up! Which… is problematic as at the moment I only have room for 8 of them! Luckily with the soil infusion I’m getting tomorrow I’ll have room for plenty more and it’ll be a while before these little guys are ready for transplant anyways.
I’ve also started some mustard greens and Japanese spinach as nothing but 2 radishes ever came up in the side bed and it’s good shady real estate for greens.
The warmth and sun has really reinvigorated some of the herbs. All the water plus now the warmth has made my sage plant very happy. It wasn’t looking so hot in January so I’m glad it seems to have rallied. I really like sage, which is why I’m a little sad I’ll probably have to pull the purple sage.
I mean- that’s just not right.
The other herbs in this bed are doing well- including the hyssop which I never even thought I wanted.
Truly magnificent. That should flower very nicely in June- a real treat for the bees.
Another win- the potted mints. The mint thunderdome is roaring back to life after its winter slumber- and my two individual mints are growing with real vigor. This is the pineapple mint which is a real pretty plant. Smells fantastic too.
Happily both of the potato bags are also going strong, I’ll have to put more soil in soon. I’ve made up my mind on the potato front- I’m definitely going to get a few more bags and some proper seed potatoes and grow a few more. That whole middle area has a fair amount of room and a medium amount of sun- and I’m the sort who could eat my weight in spuds. Not to mention my mother who’s diet is fairly limited- like the zucchinis I will be growing and the carrots I am growing, it makes sense to grow her some more potatoes, which are some of the few vegetables she can eat.
The first bean seeds are in- we’ll see if they take- it’s early but the soil is just warm enough.
I’ll leave you with lettuce.
Get it- *leave* you, sounds like leaf…
Aw forget the bad pun. It’s pretty lettuce.
The Neanderthal Gardens 
Growing well. Re weighting pots, you might want to consider old used house wall bricks (make sure they are real baked bricks) as they tend to absorb\hold some water so a bit more available for the plants.
We have some bricks that have crumbled off the retaining walls but they were all to big for the pot XD
Goodness, that pun stopped being funny before 1985.
Is there concern that those big rock take up space that roots could use, or will there be plenty of soil for the dill? I know that most of the herbs would not mind, but I am not very familiar with dill. I remember it as a big plant that will want room for roots.
Oh that pots not for dill it’s for cilantro!
Oh, of course, What was I thinking? Anyway, cilantro would not care.
That was my thought- cilantro doesn’t need very deep roots- and the rocks will weigh down the lighter plastic pot!
The dill is in the green ceramic pot
It is not easy to see how big that pot is, but the dill looks happy. Is dill naturalized in San Francisco? I sort of ignore those plants in the wild. I remember what I think of as fennel growing along Highway 101 through Brisbane. I never bother looking closely to see if they make the fennel ‘bulb’ things down at the base. Dill supposedly grows wild along the Los Gatos Creek through Campbell, and I can smell it if I drive by, but again, I do not get close enough to see it. Just a short distance upstream, fennel grows wild at Vasona.
I sometimes used to see frond-y plants at a distance but it was always hard to tell if it was dill-fennel-Queen Anne’s lace-or worryingly water hemlock…
It seems that we all remember them, but do not remember what they were.