Support

David hit his head when we unfurled the cattle panel, and I scratched up my foot as we placed the arch in place, but we did it!

We now have a beautiful cattle panel arch in the garden!

We like the interesting shape of the arch.  We still have to tie the squash up on it, and hopefully they’ll begin climbing on their own.  The red kuri already has quite a few baseball sized squashes, so it may be time to sling them up also.  Growing squash vertically is new to us, but I read a good article on Pinterest a while back: Make Room for Melons.  Oh, and speaking of being addicted to Pinterest, here’s the thread I found about how to build a cattle panel trellis. 

First thing we did is buy T posts and a post tool to help pound them in.  David put in the four posts pretty quickly (although he realized afterwards that he needs earplugs next time).

Notice how crazy the squash is getting!  You can see the young red kuri squashes near the wall.  In the foreground, on the left, is where the acorn squash has been climbing up a tomato cage. This week we realized that the acorn squash is really buttercup!! I don’t know why it took us so long to notice that they weren’t pointy…

It was a bit scary to move the squash out of the way.  It’s even scarier holding the vines while tying them to the trellis.

After we had the area ready, David cut the twine from the cattle panel.

David and Rosie posed for this picture right before they both got hit by the unfurling panel.  Note to self: there is tension in the rolled up panel and use two people next time.

After we checked that everyone was ok, David and I folded the panel in half and moved it into place.  We secured it with zip-ties and voila!

David is 6 ft tall and you can see how it towers above him.  After this picture was taken, we continued to untangle and tie up the vines.

Tomorrow we build the A-frame trellis for the remaining squash and melons!

 

Advertisement

The promise of a harvest

 

David and I have been eating our borage flowers.  One of our two plants has started blooming, and we’ve picked a few flowers to taste.  We have yet to start decorating our salads or freezing them in ice cubes. I enjoy having flowers in my food. 

Remember I said there were ants all over the backyard?  They seem to have found the borage. 

The ants have begun farming aphids on the borage.  I’ve trying spraying them with a hose, but it doesn’t deter them. I know the aphids can leave a sticky honey (which the ants milk and eat), but I’m not sure this symbiotic relationship will hurt the plants. I watched a ladybug try to get the aphids and the ants jumped on the ladybug. I was able to intervene, one time, scooped up the ladybug and knocked off the clinging ant.

Next to the borage, we have two rapidly tomatillo plants.  One has a small tomato cage around it, the other does not. 

 

It’s a little hard to tell, but there is a noticeable difference in the growing styles of the two plants- one is bushy and the other is tall.

We have another squash variety with it’s first baby squash!

This is from the silver leaved delicata squash. Yum!

While I was poking around the delicata, and the cucumbers next to it, I was shocked to discover a mature pickling cucumber!

This little leaf cucumber escaped my watch.  It was half buried under the leaf mulch and was the perfect size to harvest.  There are many more on the way in both the front and back yard.

The other plants we’re watching eagerly, are the tomatoes. The indigo rose keeps looking like it’s ready, but we’re waiting for the green to turn red. The isis candy, and San Marzanos are full of fruit.

These Jaune Flamme will be yellow, and these clusters are quite heavy.  I wonder how much longer until we’re canning tomatoes?  

The basil is beautiful right now.  It’s time for our second pesto harvest of the season.  Rosie could care less, but she’s happy to point out her ball hiding next to the plant.

On the other side of the pesto is the little radish and carrot patch.  This is where we have Spanish black radishes, French breakfast radishes, and carnival carrots to round out the mix.

Our red bell pepper plant is coming along.  Hopefully we’ll have the patience to let them mature and eat them when they’re red.  The plant is so small right now, that we probably will end up picking this first one when it’s green to allow the other ones more energy to grow.

The acorn squash is still throwing out more flowers, and has fruit that is getting quite large.  As you can see, the tendrils are clinging to anything they can.  We still need to figure out more space for these guys to climb, as they have already taken over our walkways and are looking for more room to grow. I do love acorn squash.

In fact, the entire squash bed is looking great right now.  David’s going to get more bamboo on Thursday, and build the a-frame for the squash to climb.  They are ready for it.

The Kazakh melons are so fuzzy.  These were the first in the bed and have multi-branching vines right now.

The biggest vines in the squash bed are actually the buttercup squash, and one of them has reached all the way to the other side. The watermelon radishes have sprouted, and we’re still waiting for the carrots to come up. Hopefully the zinnias will begin flowering soon.

They are looking lush and promising.  As is our garden.

 

More buds, flowers and squash

I don’t know how we could have missed the obvious! In my blog last week, I showed a picture of the bush beans that we thought were pole beans, and cucumbers in need of trellising.  The plan was to build a support structure with the existing pole and the cucumbers could climb.

Silly me, making more work than necessary.

We saw the solution when we looked at the blog and picture together.  Move the ladder!

I pulled out broke the pole, moved the ladder, tied the cucumbers gently to it with twine, and DONE.

The cucumbers in the backyard are a different story.

The little leaf pickling hybrid in the front is growing in all directions.  The straight 8 in the back has just begun stretching out and reaching for anything near it.  The plan is to build a 3 bamboo trellis, like for beans, and use twine to help give the cucumbers space to climb. We may need to add wood or bamboo cross bars, as we also want our delicata squash to climb up it. (By the way, I’m not sure I like the look of leaves as mulch. We’re continuing to build our lasagna garden on top of the plants, and will add grass clippings next.  And we’ll water with compost and worm tea, once we make those.)

Here’s the delicata squash.  Probably one of my favorite plants in the backyard because of it’s silvery textured leaves.  I’m pretty sure the plant is healthy and supposed to look this way.  It’s just started flowering, although still all male flowers. This plant is grown from seeds from Johnny’s.  I must admit, I love looking through the Johnny’s catalogue, but I wish they had more heirlooms rather than hybrids.  For now, we’ll use the seeds we have, and save the heirloom seeds we’re growing.  (We have so many seeds, that we won’t have to purchase summer veggies for a few years.)

All the squash are starting to perk up, in fact.

The acorn squash (back left) and red kuri (back right) are taking off.  In the squash bed (future home of David’s magnificent A-frame structure) we are growing: (back row, left to right) marigold, thai basil, Kazakh melon, sweet granite melon, charentais melon, Malali watermelon. Front row, left to right: Pinnacle spaghetti squash, buttercup, sweet dumpling, sugar baby water melon. I can’t believe we fit them all (so far).  I found one more watermelon package we didn’t plant and may try to squeeze in another plant on the outside edge.

We decided to put a few plants in yesterday that will grow under the A-frame.  They are against the wall, and short rows right now.  We planted Purple Haze carrots, Parisienne carrots and watermelon radishes.

Hiding behind the Acorn and Red Kuri squash plants, are the summer squashes.  Our pattypan has it’s first squash about to flower. I love the shape of the buds!

The Red Kuri has as few squash coming along. This little baby has a long way to grow.

The okra, tucked in behind the apricot tree is taking off.  We noticed it has buds starting to form. So soon.

We’ve been waiting for the borage to open up, and today we got our first flower! We plan to eat these, but this first flower gets to stay and attract bees.  We’ve been watching bees come and go to the squash blossoms for the past few days.  Each time we see a bee, we cheer it on!  It’s impressive that even living in an urban area, next to the freeway, we have honeybees come to pollinate our flowers.

The pink flowers on the plant I massively pruned have finally opened! I’ll post a picture of the whole plant once it fills in.

The front yard has huge flowering herb plants right now.

Rosie took a while to understand what I wanted, but here she is posing with our cilantro plant. This one self seeded, and our plan is to harvest coriander and hope it will self seed.  The bulbs behind it will be thinned shortly, making space for more herbs and flowers.

Today we plan to fertilize everything, harvest lettuce and make radish pickles with the watermelon radishes I harvested yesterday. This morning I did a little research about using radish greens and would love suggestions if anyone has them!

Flowers on everything!

Each day I notice more and more flowers in our yard! You see, I’ve always had a thing for flowers.  When David and I moved into our house and began maintaining (and adding to) the gardens, we consciously decided to remove many ornamentals, like the Canna lilies who engulfed our sprinklers and hid snails armies.  I joke with David about how he wouldn’t let me plant flowers; he felt stronger about it than I did.  I understand and agree with the reasoning that we have such little space and want to grow as much food as possible.  When we began discussing what we’d do with the property, with no debate, the rose garden stayed.  We put a few annuals in our herb bed and after building our raised tomato bed, we dug a bed dedicated to flowers and perrenials.

The dedicated flower bed doesn’t hold much and I’ve been thinking about what to do with it.  We planted bulbs too late, and most of them haven’t bloomed.  Three of the five sagos look great and I just decided it’s time to take the other two out.  The asparagus fern was given to me by my sister, and it was half dead when we got it.  It’s now probably our healthiest looking plant in the bed.  There are other plants, not pictured, which were all experiments and the plan is to move the perennials in here around a bit later this year.

For now, I transplanted a few cosmos in here and they seem to like their new spot.

In our yard, the succulents do really well!  Most of them are cuttings from friends or neighbors, and a few of them are from David’s aunt.

This is the succulent on our porch that we’ve been waiting for.  Many of them have been flowering recently and it’s been so interesting to see all the shapes and colors.

I’ve been more enthralled with watching our vegetables blossom, bringing with them the promise of food.

These flowers bring David the promise of food, and are ones that I avoid like the plague.  It’s cilantro, or will be coriander.  The flowers seem to always be covered in flies and just rubbing on the plant makes the slightest breeze reek of cilantro.

Off to the backyard gardens, where flowers are everywhere!

The potted flower that I cut back this spring is getting buds!  I can’t wait to see it covered in pink flowers again, and am so glad that the chance I took on it has paid off so far.

In the backyard we have many types of squashes and melons, and many of them are flowering!  In the squash bed, the only one flowering right now is the Kazakh melon, but the others are getting close!

I love looking into these flowers.  I haven’t noticed a female one yet, and I’m wondering how different the female melons are.  I’m keeping watch!

This week the sugar baby and buttercup have been taking off. The first female pattypan flowered today.  We currently have three baby yellow crookneck squash on the way!

There are about five zucchinis growing!  I had originally planning on growing Sunburst yellow zucchini alongside of the Safari, but they were backordered.  I have the seeds now, and David and I were just talking about planting some if/when we do a second planting of zucchini this summer.

I’m already in love with the Safari zucchini.  I can’t wait to see them pickled and in jars.  Or grilled with fresh basil and tomato.  Or in zucchini bread.

We haven’t had space to grow squash before. I haven’t grown it myself in about 15 years and I’m excited about the harvest from our one plant. I’m hoping we have the perfect amount to keep up with.  In fact, that’s how we’ve planned our plants- enough to can and eat but not be over inundated at once.

Our acorn squash plants already have about five or six fruits coming.

We have it crawling up and over a tomato cage.  I love how it’s strong tendrils are gripping the wire.  David and I were talking this evening about pruning back the plants a little, so they don’t take over the garden. I think I made him nervous by suggesting that I did not water the plant to grow as large as possible and wanted to… gasp.. cut it.

Our cucumbers are starting to take off.  There are lots of male and female flowers and they are crawling through their beds.  We haven’t set up climbing structures for them.  We just talked about it and will hopefully find time in the next couple of weeks to do that.  The end of the school year is always tough to find time, but I think we have a rather speedy solution.

We’ve been planning our pickles and we’re keeping a close watch.

The beans have started to grow but are still tiny.  I planted the ones in our school garden a bit sooner, and I’ve been munching on fresh green beans throughout the day. 

The Dragon’s Tounge beans are flowering and growing.  We’ll be eating some within the next couple of weeks!

I really thought that the variety we had was pole beans, but here’s how they look:

Apparently they are bush beans!

The dill was just planted here, and has already begun to flower.  We pinched it back and are hoping it will bush out a little.  We need the dill for our cucumbers.  The two cukes here are both a little leaf pickling variety. These are the ones that should get another pole and a trellis to climb soon.

Both David and I will be busy this weekend, but hope to find some time to get plant supports in, and transplant the Malali watermelon.  This should be our last weekend in a while before we have a larger harvest.  Right now we have radishes and lettuce ready to harvest.  We just pickled more nasturtium capers tonight. And tried them for the first time- they are like capers with a kick!

Melons!

My heart beats faster when I see flowers on our squashes and melons. Today our first melons in the melon and squash bed began to flower!

These were the first melons that we planted in the bed, and are still the only ones on their side of the row.  They are from seeds given to me by my friend Sheila, and are Kazakh Melons.  We’re excited to see them grow and are cheering for them!

In the eggplant lasagna bed next to it, the crookneck squash is flowering and the zucchini has a few flowers open.  We finally have a female flower coming!

Notice on the right you can see a little zucchini under the bud.  Today when David and I went to the farmers market, we eyed the Safari zucchini’s  as that is what we have coming!  Having a cage over the zucchini seems to be helping keep the leaves from taking up so much space.  We’re optimistic that it will work and we’re hoping that we don’t have hungry bugs lurking in the yard.

We also have a tomato cage over the two acorn squash, and it’s been impressive to watch them climb.

It’s been a long time since either of us has had space to grow winter squashes in our gardens. While looking at the acorn squash, David and I observed that in the crook of each leaf axis there are flowers.  Hopefully that will translate to lots of acorn squash.  We could research more, and are curious about the male to female ration for these, but it’s more fun to watch them grow each day than to read about them online.

Practically underneath the acorn squash, is the fenugreek.  This week I noticed a flower and a seed pod thingy sticking straight out (9 o’clock position).

We have two other tiny fenugreek plants that were direct seeded next to this transplant. I know it doesn’t like to be transplanted, and it’s supposed to get about two feet tall.  This little flowering specimen is about six inches tall!  I’ve read that this legume can be harvested for their leaves as a microgreen, but my plan was to see how it grows and try to get seeds for the maple like flavor.  Time will tell.

Our garden has ants.  They are everywhere. They existed in the soil before we planted, and are common problems in California.  They don’t really bite, and they don’t seem to be doing much other than looking for water.  Hopefully we can co-exist.  Our lemon tree has ants and aphids working together as a team.  It’s not that great for the lemon tree, but it’s cool to watch and we still get fruit.

You will notice ants in many of our pictures.  They walk over everything.  I followed their path back to the fence, and they seem to going into the neighbor’s yard. David and I are conscious of them when we water, or walk around barefoot.  And again, hopefully they won’t be a problem.

We’ve been paying close attention to holes in leaves and bugs that we see.

I spotted this little guy on a marigold.  Also notice that someone’s been eating the leaf below it and leaving it’s maze-like trail.  I must read up on bugs in the garden this summer and would love advice and suggestions.

We have a few more tomatoes, peppers and tomatillos to plant. We need to buy a couple bags of soil and figure out where the pots can live for the summer.  I’d like to get it done this weekend, but it will probably be next week. The plants are still small, so there’s no hurry.

The tomatoes in the backyard are flowering now!  The plants are strong and we’re pulling suckers.  The side yard tomatoes are growing bigger, with the largest one being purple and half dollar size (for those of you who know how big that is).  We have one more tomato to plant in the side yard, but we must pull out our remaining chard plant to put in the tomato.  David and I aren’t sure we want to eat that much chard this week, so we’ve been stalling.

And lastly, our peppers are flowering furiously. It’s time to start buying canning jars, and I hope David likes pickled peppers!

Speaking of pickling, today David and I stopped at Penzys Spices and bought some pickling spice.  We’d never been to the store and were quite excited to see (and smell) the selection. He’s already planning how he can use some of the exotic spices with the food that we’re growing.

Time to get back out into the garden!

 

We’re growing food!

Today our seeds we’ve been anxiously waiting for have arrived!!  We ordered seeds from Baker Creek nearly a month ago, and they had to resend them because the first ones never arrived.  David went to the post office to sign for them and opened them before I got home.  As he knew I’d be as excited as he was, he sent me this text:

While we’ve been waiting for the seeds, the spot for the cucumbers has changed a few times.  Today, I planted 5 of them along the fence in the front yard, in the back of our mystery compost/ flower garden.  Hopefully the tiny little cucumbers and dainty vines won’t get lost amongst the cosmos.  (Although I couldn’t think of a prettier place to be lost.)

We’ll plant the white radishes after we finish the ones we have in.  These are a different heirloom variety (the others were a hybrid from Johnny’s) so we’re hoping we like them better.

The black radishes (which we’ll pickle) and the french breakfast went in, as well as some circus circus carrots that we had laying around.  I’ve tried the carrots in a few places and haven’t had much luck.  This time they all went in right in front of the sprinkler (see right hand side of the picture below).  *fingers crossed*

The tomatoes are growing well.  We’ve been pinching the suckers to help shape them.  They are getting full of flowers and each of them have little green tomatoes on them.  Which reminds me, I found a great recipe for radish and green tomato salsa the other day, but we don’t have the heart to use green tomatoes this time of year unless they fall off on their own. Perhaps you have some?

Watching the San Marzanos grow is great fun because they’re in giant clusters. This one is shaping up nicely so far!

In the back yard, we are just getting flowers on the tomatoes.  They need support still, and that’ll be coming soon.  Here’s a look at one of the beds in the back:

Everything from the beans to the arugula is growing.  They’ll get more fish emulsion this weekend and hopefully these beautiful sunny days are helping them out.

The cucumbers are starting to flower!  This is the same plant that I posted previously, and it’s had two flowers so far.  I love how the first flowers are so precious, and later in the summer we begin to groan at the sight of new flowers because the fridge is full.

The zuchinni’s first flower is giving us reason to celebrate!  We are ready!

This year I really think we have the right amount of food for the two of us, plus our friends and canning/drying. In fact, I’m hoping we have enough.

We have two okra plants, and David just planted three more seeds because we want more.  We’ve recently tried pickled okra (loved it) and roasted okra (sold dried like chips) and want to make both!  In the past we’ve grown okra, and not been sure what to do with it or when to pick it.  This year, we’re armed with recipes and want the plant to grow!

Our winter squashes are taking off.  I wasn’t sure how we were going to support our two acorn squash plants, so the other day I stuck a cage over them.  I did this to expose the fenugreek that was hiding under it, but it could work.  We’ve been impressed watching the tendrils climb away!

Our Dragon’s Tounge shell beans on the side yard haven’t started climbing their ladder yet, but they have the most beautiful flowers about to open.

The days are getting busier and busier at school, with so little free time during the day.  It’s wonderful to come home, and check in on the progress!

Checking on the baby plants

It’s hot in the garden. Okay, well it feels hot.

Spring in Los Angeles ranges from highs of 60 to 80 and lows of 50 to 65.  Today, it’s sunny, 75 and feels hot.

When I went outside to inspect the flowers, with Rosie, I found a tail under the fire pit.

The tail moved a little as Rosie’s ball ran into it, and I saw Mardi roll over on his back.  I decided to go in for further inspection.

Clearly he approves of the firepit.  We know he enjoys the garden, as we’ve spotted him looking for a spot to call his litterbox.

As I continued to walk around, I was happy to see that the nasturtium seeds I planted ages ago have popped up.

These little ones are so beautiful, with the red edges along the leaves.  I believe these are the ones with creamy yellowish flowers, and they’re more clumps rather than trailers.  We’ve been trying to plant flowers amongst the food, to help attract pollinators and good bugs.

I love looking at close ups of our dirt!  (Just like the background picture of the blog.)

One row of squash and melons is finally planted!  David will build the trellis within the next month, as these babies have a while to grow. I gave them a dose of fish emulsion this morning, to help them get going. From front to back these are: Pinnacle spaghetti squash(2), buttercup (3), sweet dumpling (2), and sugar baby watermelon (1).  I think they’re fairly close together, but I’ve never trellised squash before.  We had so many varieties of seeds, and haven’t had space to grown winter squash and melons before. I’m so excited for these!

We finally planted our first eggplants in the eggplant section. At the top of the picture are two Japanese eggplant.  The Rosa Bianca should be ready to go in this week!  This picture also has borage (left), marigold (center), fenugreek (3 on right), and acorn squash. Everything is planted pretty close together, which we’re hoping will allow us to maximize our food production space.

In the front yard, our pot of calendula seeds are coming along nicely!  We have more plants to put in pots, but right now all of our pots of full of mulch that still needs to be spread.  I spread some in the backyard yesterday, and then decided that making beer and hanging out with my friend was more fun!

In the raised bed garden, when I showed the picture of the white radishes that were ready to harvest, I didn’t point out all of the cosmos that have popped up behind it and are ready to transplant.  I have a few place where they may be able to go, and should do it before they get too big. Perhaps this evening, we can walk around the yard and pick a place.

I noticed today that our dragonfruit cactus has a new shoot.  This guy really needs support and a new place, so it can grow big and droopy.  We got the cutting from a friend a couple years ago and it’s fun to watch grow, but I don’t know if we’ll ever get fruit off of it.

A few years ago, David got some corms (like bulbs) of a plant that attracts hummingbirds to the front yard.  We believe they are Chasmanthe. It flowered in February and during full bloom we had a hummingbird come by about every five minutes!  The plants have multiplied in our herb bed, and we plan to dig them out and move them as soon as they die back.

Currently the little red seeds are dropping all over the place.  Between the fan palm seeds from above, and these guys, we have lots going on below. This is why it’s almost time to mulch!

And lastly, I recently reorganized the plants on the front porch, and found a new place for Jethro Troll. The succulents are looking great this time of year!