Next bed done, now with bonus celery!

October 10, 2019 ~ Homo neanderthalensis ~ 1 Comment

Today was a real San Francisco special, which is to say in the morning was so windy I had to wear two sweaters but by 2pm it was nearly 75.

Yay October!

Stupid weather tricks aside, I had work to do.

That bed is kinda a mess even with all the beans pulled out, so it was time for the loam builder.

That stuff reeks! It’s like 50% chicken manure though which is what you need for a depleted bed.

I also mixed in a box of kelp meal.

Largely because it was time the celery went into the bed. They’ve been struggling in their pots and they need more space for their roots. Celery are heavier feeders then brassicas so I’m not taking any chances.

Then it was a matter of filling in my army of kohlrabi and some more bok choy.

This isn’y my usual type, this is win-win not joi choi, so we’ll see how it performs. I also have way too many for this one bed…

But I did have some room where I’ve been picking the Joi’s…

Eh it’ll do.

Still have some left, but as I pick the big ones I’ll have the room to plant these.

Anyways, after a good mulch the bed is complete.

The weather is set to be kinda wild again this week, with tomorrow nearly 80 but possibly rain in a week. So I’m trying to get as much in the ground as possible before it starts reliably pouring.

You’re always working against the clock gardening out here.

Captain’s log: October 9th 2019

October 10, 2019 ~ Homo neanderthalensis ~ 1 Comment

Been a while, and this one’s largely going to be a good news/bad news post because I have a lot of that going on right now.

October is a good month.

So good news first! The second brassica bed is doing great. Sprouts are sprouting, kohlrabi is rabi-ing- good news all around.

My next project isn’t really good news or bad news, it’s just an empty bed.

The bad news is…

Due to some delays the brassicas for that bed got a little wilty. We’ll see how many of them I can salvage.

It’s also time to put my celery into a bed, they’re both chafing at being in pots.

The whitefly traps are certainly killing the whitefly!

Chayote still looks rough though. Lots of damaged leaves at the bottom. The tops are pretty vigorous though so I’m cautious but not overly concerned.

The powdery mildew has returned to the zucchini, which is bad news but not unexpected news. It’s just what happens when the fall fog comes in.

The apple tree is producing like crazy which is nice. The apples are super tasty this year too, great for baking.

And the falling leaves make great mulch for the onion plot.

Back to bad news. The garden wide scale problem continues, and I’ll have to send my chocolate peppermint back to mint rehab.

Annoyingly my baby ginger mints are also damaged. I really have to get a handle on the ants out here, which are spreading the scale.

In good news, the Roman mint looks fantastic. Still some slight whitefly issues, but as mentioned previously, whitefly is more cosmetic than anything else, and only really bad when it’s everywhere.

My corn is sort of both good news and bad news. The ones I put on the edge of the bed were largely duds… But the big ones in the back…

Looks like I might get a couple of ears after all!

Back to bad news. This one really stings. The carrots look beautiful, nice sized roots, not to big, the right orange color… And they are bitter and tasteless. Looks like from a bed that was over-enriched which was the problem last year, I went to a bed that was very nutrient depleted and therefore the carrots are inedible.

I’ll have to pull everything, mix in compost and re-seed. What a pain.

It looks like my new Marjoram and Oregano are doing great though, maybe those humic acids are the key to nutrient uptake after all!

In good news that means a lot of prickly work, the blackberry vines are doing what blackberry vines do- grow like crazy.

I’ve got to strap on my gloves and tie up this sucker. I can already feel the wounds on my hands!

The arugula that reseeded itself is almost pickable. No such thing as too much arugula.

The thyme forest needs to be hacked back again, as it often does.

And finally in really really really good news, it turns out the confetti cilantro does breed true, and all that lovely coriander I got from the last plant is now two pots worth of more cilantro- and I still have seed left over!

I really have to get moving, the rains will come soon and then garden work will be very difficult. But October is a good month for planting, since there’s no frost or snow to worry about.

Just the possibility of a deluge!

Alpine strawberries have arrived!

October 9, 2019October 9, 2019 ~ Homo neanderthalensis ~ 2 Comments

I’m pretty excited about these guys.

They’re an everbearing alpine strawberry and I got two because I’ve had a free low bowl for a while since I moved the leeks to the former mint thunderdome.

The blue pot is a goner- huge crack down it’s side. So I’ve revived it as a pot stand, and set the low bowl into it!

Then I got real technical about soil.

These strawberries are much more likely to be a gardener’s snack rather then anything I make a pie with. That’s the issue with everbearing types rather then ones that fruit once a year- you’ll always have a strawberry to pop into your mouth, but you won’t have the volume to make a dish with.

I’m ok with that! So I’m being real particular with soil. The base layer is the remains of a bag of fox farm ocean forest, for drainage and nutrition.

Yes that’s the soil people grow pot with, but it’s really really good for a variety of veggies and fruits.

But I only had a small amount left of that, so the rest is that good old organic potting, which I mixed with a good heavy handful of perlite to increase drainage.

Great! Then it was a matter of actually planting the strawberries with a good handful of sure start in each hole.

But strawberries are heavy feeders…

So I top dressed them with some compost.

Yes this is clearly overkill.

I apologize for nothing.

Then all my pot in a pot needed was a deep watering and a nice mulch with some shredded redwood.

I’m looking forward to yummy alpine strawberries, and since these guys like to throw off runners like crazy, I’m also looking forward to having yet another plant I can take cuttings from to give as gifts.

Everybody is going to get a strawberry plant!

Many months from now.

They do have to grow.

Trying to fix the sun herb bed

September 29, 2019October 10, 2019 ~ Homo neanderthalensis ~ 1 Comment

The latest try to anyways.

It’s not draining great and paradoxically dries out too easy and in general the really established plants are doing great while any new ones are kinda meh.

Also the sage looks rough.

That empty spot on the end in particular is like where herbs go to die. I lost a blue basil there and two oreganos.

Time for a change.

Part of the problem seemed to be that nutrients were going nowhere, so I tried something a little interesting. Granular Humic Acids are a soil additive that (supposedly) helps with nutrient uptake. This is not even remotely settled science, but anecdotes support it, and it isn’t too expensive so why not.

I also dug out as much soil as I could and lightened it up.

Of course I planted my newest two sacrifices to the death corner, a nice marjoram and a fancy mountain oregano.

Fingers crossed!

Then I cut back the sage (still going strong underneath) and mulched like crazy.

Its… a work in progress.

Like all things.

Oh god monster zuke

September 28, 2019September 28, 2019 ~ Homo neanderthalensis ~ 1 Comment

So for a while all the zucchini I’ve been getting have been fairly runty, and if I try to let them grow to normal size, fairly rotty. Not terribly surprising as the vines are old at this point. Weirdly the leaves look very healthy for this time of year, so I started digging around the base to see if anything was off or not.

WHY HELLO THERE.

Um. Wow. Looks like my vines were putting all their energy into one monster zucchini which is why all the rest were on the runty side.

Good news is now that the monster has been ~~slain~~ picked, the rest of the squash should develop as normal, and I should be getting zucchini into at least October.

The bad news is what the hell am I going to do with this behemoth? It’s almost as hard as a pumpkin! This is a straight up marrow!

…

Stuffed and baked?

Stuffed and baked.

As far as ridiculous problems go, this is a good one to have.

More Brassicas, more problems, more heat.

September 25, 2019 ~ Homo neanderthalensis ~ 2 Comments

Well it cracked 90 today here in the sunny Excelsior and I felt like I was going to melt out of my shoes.

Had to do some mid-day emergency watering, which is always fun at noon. Then once the sun wasn’t so high in the sky I did some planting and an even deeper watering that meant I was out until literal nightfall. At least a summer night is pleasant, even though the mid-day temps were brutal.

Kohlrabi! Now this, unlike the Brussels sprouts, is a veggie I’ve grown before. It’s actually pretty easy, and is one of the real fun brassicas. If you’ve never eaten one before give it a try at a farmers market or a really good supermarket, it’s weird looking but tasty.

Unlike the head of cabbage or broccoli, the edible part of a kohlrabi is it’s swollen stem and the leaves. Since it’s not a root veggie like a turnip, I shouldn’t have to worry about the horror that is cabbage maggots.

Easy peasy, just put my seven little plants in a row in front of the sprouts!

Unfortunately the sprouts themselves look a little rough. The heat has done a number on them, though the new growth in the center looks promising. Nothing some deep watering and good mulch can’t fix.

That and as we go into fall, cooler temps.

The caterpillars however, a being a pill.

See that white dot? That’s an egg! My sprouts were riddled with them. I picked off what I could see, and then it was time to spray.

I’m just not going to fool around this year.

I also moved my tree collard over by the other brassicas, and gave him a fresh coat of B.t. as well. I got my first harvest out of him, and boy are collard greens delicious.

I’m having to move a lot of things around, as the season starts to change. So of course my latest garden map is now out of date. Oh well.

I’ll leave you with my neighbor’s barking corgi, who serenaded me all evening long as I gardened. He apparently had something important to tell me as I worked, but as I don’t speak dog it was incomprehensible.

He’s quite cute though.

Planting a fall bed, second best brassica edition

September 20, 2019September 20, 2019 ~ Homo neanderthalensis ~ 1 Comment

As the season turns, from summer into ~~actual summer~~ fall, it comes time to plant more cabbage family crops. I have my nice bok choy, which despite my best efforts of spraying them and setting slug bait, are becoming well nibbled.

*sigh*

One must pay the pest tax to garden.

ANYWAYS.

Look, I don’t have the room/time/patience to painstakingly make my own compost. So I buy, sue me. It’s good stuff! After sifting through the remains of the last bed, I added a bag of the good stuff and mixed it in. I kept some of the old shredded redwood, it helps the bed drain.