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!

 

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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!