Category: soon

Fun with cuttings

~ Homo neanderthalensis ~ 1 Comment

So I like to take cuttings from my mint plants and grow more mint. Some of this is so I can finally ditch the mint thunderdome and put something else in that pot- but a lot of it is so I can give home grown mint plants as gifts to friends.

Like this lovely strawberry mint. It’s easy to grow mint from cuttings- but it’s never a one hundred percent success. In fact-

Those are my successful cuttings so far- minus the few I’ve given as gifts already.

Here’s a stack of all the failures! Cuttings are always a gamble- but mint in particular has a higher chance of success than most other plants.

It’s a fairly simple procedure. You just snip off some mint, right under some leaves, usually a piece a few inches long. Then you strip all but the top-most leaves off, and stick it in some dirt. I put a pinch of sure-start on the stem. Then you just keep it wet and wait!

Here’s my new hopefuls- 2 more pineapple mint, and 4 lovely ginger mints from the new plant I put in.

Hopefully I’ll have more mint to give soon!

The herbs await…

~ Homo neanderthalensis ~ 5 Comments

I knew getting a job at my local garden center would be dangerous. Here are 8 new herbs for the herbs beds waiting to be planted tomorrow. Of course working means less blog time, so my apologies for the upcoming lessened frequency of posts- but it is my dream job so…

Yeah not sorry. Can’t wait to put that borage in! Soon!

April has no more showers- but plenty of flowers

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So the last couple of days were in the 80s. Today was much more sedate- but still warm for April. At least it was properly overcast. The main advantage of the extra unseasonal heat is that it’s triggering some early flowers- which is good for the bees I suppose.

Now I’m not 100% sure this is a bee- it might be one of those pollinating flies that mimics bees. Also could be one of the smaller native bees. I don’t know. I do know that it really likes my chamomile and it is adorable.

The insect activity is reaching June levels. This is of course both good and bad. Plenty of fat little bumble bees trundling through the garden, along with some truly lovely western tiger swallowtail butterflies. Yesterday I saw the most amazing dragonfly flitting too and fro the garden. It was moving much too fast for photography but it stayed darting around for almost an hour. The bad is that the “harmless” spittlebugs are reproducing at rates that make them harmful and I had to spray them on my parsley plants and there’s some sort of small scale insect on my dill weed. Not to mention the aphids- though it looks like operation ladybug has curbed the worse of it. Also the amount of earwigs in my potato bags has me worried.

But wow the flowers.

Despite being heavily laden with lemons- the lemon tree is flowering again for next year’s crop. I suspect this is due to the heavy rain it’s gotten this year. I’m not complaining- just racking my brain for lemon recipes.

The apple tree is also setting out flowers. For a few year later during the drought I thought we’d lose this tree so it’s continued existence and health is an absolute joy. It is frankly a gnarled mess that desperately needs pruning but I’ll handle that this winter. For now the fact that the tree planted by my parents still lives is a triumph.

The sauce pot is flowering like mad- as is the sun gold. If half these flowers turn into fruit I’m going to have a very productive year of tomatoes. That’s a ways off. The black krim however is giving me a bit of pause.

I have never seen a tomato flower look like that. It looks nothing like the other tomato flowers- almost as if it’s a related but different species. Maybe it’s a function of being an heirloom, but it’s slightly odd looking. The black krim was an experiment anyways so I’m not overly concerned.

Now this isn’t flowing yet- but it’s sprouted encouragingly. This is my poppy pot, ready to give me lovely multi-colored California poppies. Highly recommend them- especially if you want to sow them in the ground, they grow like absolute weeds. In San Francisco they grow wild in the cracks of transit lines and sidewalks- almost like their preferred growing medium is concrete.

The squash monster continues to flower rather magnificently, and it’s starting to set out little fruits-

In a couple of days I’ll have my first zucchini!

Now that’s a lovely surprise for April!

Beans glorious beans and how to stake them.

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Well trellis them really. At first I thought I’d just use 6 of the tall stakes and that would be it- but I recalled how last years beans did well on a net and how the peas are quickly outgrowing their stakes… so I broke out the netting.

I used soft ties to anchor the netting to 4 of the really tall stakes. These are the trionfo violetto beans, and they’re growing fairly well. The turnips in front of them might be gone, now replaced with the last of the romanesco seedlings but at least the trellis is up.

Also- growing turnips and beans in the same bed was as stupid as growing carrots with beans last year. Legumes fix nitrogen to the soil- too much nitrogen with a root crop means lush leaves- stunted roots. I have to at some point learn from my mistakes.

I also set up another trellis with the new blue lake bean starts.

Pretty much an identical set up. I am slightly concerned about these new beans though- they look a little eh.

They’ve been immediately set upon by some nibbling pest, and some of them are almost wilting. Now that’s the weather’s fault- yesterday it was 80 and today it was 75. I am in awe at how hot it’s getting, and while it was nice to wear shorts yesterday my tender bean plants would like it to be a little cooler please and thank you.

The Kentucky wonder beans I sowed from seed however are all sprouting on queue. These little guys won’t need a trellis for a while though.

The peas are quickly climbing up their stakes, I have a sneaking suspicion I’m going to have to use eyelets and wire to secure them to the fence soon.

As you can see I’ve put the spinach seedlings in front of the peas- sowed the bare area with some mizuna mustard greens because god knows I love a brassica. I’ve been super diligent about checking the roots of all my cabbage family crops- so far no more cabbage fly- looks like they were just devouring my turnips.

This trionfo violetto is already reaching for its trellis-

Aren’t beans grand!

Biological warfare

~ Homo neanderthalensis ~ 1 Comment

So the reason I temporarily damaged the rose tip on my watering can was that I set it down to pick off the aphids on my sun gold.

Unfortunately they’re still there. I’m squishing them as quick as I can of course, and if needed I’ll spray the plant with some soap- but I had a brilliant idea.

See the dill plant is lousy with ladybugs. Heaving with them for some strange reason. Probably means there’s some scale insects at the roots, which would explain why it’s growing a bit odd.

I searched the roots of the dill until I found my quarry.

See those golden orbs? Ladybug eggs! Soon to hatch into ladybug larvae! And it’s the larvae that are the ultimate aphid eaters.

So I placed my biological weapon at the base of the tomato plant, and now I wait. The sun gold has a thick healthy stem and very bushy leaves, so I’m optimistic that it will be fine during the aphid onslaught.

But still… better safe then sorry, and might as well use nature to your advantage!

Because the sun gold is flowering well, and I want my cherry tomatoes!

Hatch little ladybugs hatch! Go forth and eat!

Finally sowing the back mixed bed

~ Homo neanderthalensis ~ 3 Comments

This is the bed that used to have Swiss chard and arugula- both going to seed. I still want Swiss chard, but I have an arugula pot for the arugula. Also this bed gets a lot of sun, good for chard not so good for arugula. In winter it wasn’t such a big deal but now that the days are longer…

Ripping out the bed was hard work. I had no idea arugula roots were so deep.

I had about a third of a packet left of five color silverbeet and many Kentucky wonder seeds left.

The back is sowed with green beans, and the front with chard. I’m expecting the chard to need some serious thinning, I oversowed because chard is one of those seeds that sometimes just doesn’t come up.

I also sowed what was left of the chard packet behind the upper Bok Choy and romanesco. Eventually the very back of that bed will also have green beans. In order to get a staggered harvest of beans I’m waiting to sow until the other plants are bigger.

In other seed news, the regular chives are coming up- but the garlic chives are not, so I resowed them.

Chives need darkness to germinate so it’s possible the soil on top wasn’t packed down firmly enough.

I’ll leave you with my neighborhood supervisor who was very interested in all the work I was doing out back.

April planting part 3

~ Homo neanderthalensis ~ 3 Comments

I am so done. The next few days of rain will be a welcome rest. But as today was cloudy but clear- it was work time.

All you really need is a shovel. And muscles. I dug and I dug and I dug the side area under the fence. Then I put down some soil acidifier and fertilizer. In went the blackberry vine and some mulch and I was done.

Well not quite. Turns out blackberries don’t produce so well without a buddy. So as soon as the rain goes I have to get Ms. Marion here a friend. I left room for it- I just have to dig another hole.

But that is a future neanderthal’s problem so I’m just going to put my heels up today.

I also planted my Joi choi and larger romanesco seedlings today, but that was very easy work.

8 went into the fabric bed, along with some mulch, and 4 went into one of the top beds.

The two seedlings on the left are the larger romanesco.

So I’m all cabbaged up. I just have to mulch the upper bed and let nature do the watering tomorrow.

I need a nap.