The tour, June edition

The harvesting has begun, and it’s time to show the progress!  This week we have to build a lot of support systems for our floppy plants.  We’ve also started to pickle, freeze and nibble food in the gardens.

Today I wanted to share with you all a look back at how much we’ve grown since building our gardens.

This was day one.

[Insert entire garden pic from today] At the end of the blog I’ll show you what it looks like today, but there’ll be bits and pieces as I take you on a tour around the garden!

The acorn squash/ eggplant/ bean bed. I couldn’t take a very good picture from this angle, because the two little squash plants on the front left of the picture are now taking over a tomato cage and going everywhere!

The beans and summer squashes are starting to produce.  The eggplants are finally taking off.  I have one more Rosa Bianca in the nursery, which I’d like to plant this week.  Part of the hold up has been that Mardi, our tomcat, likes to sit (and occasionally leave us presents) in the open space in this bed.  We’ve been working on deterring him, but he’s strong willed.

This was taken in April, after bringing home the half dead yellow yarrow.  We had yet to plant the okra behind the apricot.

Isn’t the apricot tree looking great?  We have been watching it and letting it take it’s shape, so that when it comes time to prune it this year we can encourage more main stems.  It’s too bad it isn’t closer to the wall, because it seems to be flat and would have been perfect to espalier.

We planted a little chamomile  that we started from seed, towards the back of the apricot.  There will be verbena and hyssop going in also.  Right now those seedlings are in the nursery, and I’ll probably transplant them into larger pots and keep them in the nursery until fall.  I hear fall is a good time to plant perennials.

Here’s the yarrow on planting day.

And today!  We will have flowers soon, and I’m pretty sure they’ll be yellow.  But the plant wasn’t labeled so we could get something else!

Here’s the potted daisy after pruning.

And we have flowers!  I am enjoying the shape of the plant, and loving that the pink flowers have come back.  Notice the red kuri squash is overtaking the pot?  David is hoping to pick up a cattle fence panel while he’s in Bakersfield this weekend.  Then these squash vine will be growing up and over this pot!

In the side yard, the shell beans and cucumbers are growing well.

This is right after I transplanted the little leaf pickling cucumbers and the nasturtiums.  (sorry it’s not a great picture, but I wanted to show the size.)

Today the cucumbers are climbing up the ladder, the dill is tall and attempting to flower and the shell beans are nearly ready to be picked.  We harvested our first cucumber from these plants today!

On the other side of the cucumber ladder is the tomato raised bed.

Here it is after we planted, and when we were still finishing up our winter growing season.

Today the tomatoes are coming along, the basil is ready for it’s second harvest and we have a pepper growing.  We have a few varieties of radishes and carrots growing, a small patch of lettuce, and one small leek that just won’t be done growing.

In the front yard we also have our mystery garden area.  

We let the compost sprout, and sprinkled a wildflower mix.  The first batch of sprouts that you see here was mowed down by hungry snails.

The snails have long been killed and we’ve discovered that wildflower mix= alyssum.  The nasturtiums survived the snail onslaught, as well as the one cosmos.  We’ve been more diligent about watering this area and we’re starting to notice a tiny bit of variety appear.

David has almost no allergies, but he’s allergic to alyssum.  It’s too bad because I think it’s beautiful, and the cats enjoy rolling around in it.

Our herb bed was cut way back when the bulbs were flowering.

This was taken right after the sage and basil were planted, and during that small window when the cilantro was ready to pick.

Currently the cilantro and oregano are flowering and ready to be cut down. We’ll be cutting back and pulling out most of the bulbs shortly.

The cilantro/ coriander flowers attract flies.

And ladybugs.

We plan to harvest some of the coriander seeds, and let the plant self seed.

And of course, here’s Rosie to point out the peppers.

This is pretty soon after we planted the banana pepper, jalepeno and cayenne.

The cayenne are green and growing well.  We haven’t had any turn red yet, but we know soon enough we’ll be drying them and searching for ways to use them.  Anyone have suggestions?

The banana peppers have already been picked and been added to salsa.  There are a handful more ready to pick this week.

And of course, the jalepenos.  We’ve picked four so far, and have a few more waiting for us to use.  These plants are small but full of fruit.

We also have other pepper, tomatillo and tomato plants but they’re not doing much yet.

And here’s the backyard today!

The tomatoes on the left were just trellised, using the Florida weave.  The arch and squash trellis should be up this week. It’ll be great when we can freely walk around again, without worrying about squishing squash vines.

I’ll try to do another tour update soon, but it may be a couple of weeks.  Life is getting busy, summer vacation is about to start and we’re already preparing food.

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Project update

This evening, while bringing out an egg carton to add to the compost, I heard the alarm call of a bushtit.  It reminded me of the noise the squirrels make when they’re trying to get avocados and Rosie is protecting the tree.  I’m not sure if the bird was annoyed by Rosie, Shadow or me but the cats have figured out that the nest is there. David and I are thinking that when it’s fledgling season, we’ll have to try to keep the cats inside.

I’m not sure Mardi knows there’s a nest yet, but  I caught him staring up at the angry bird. Notice the nest on the right side of the picture; he’s pretty close!

I’ve been meaning to post pictures of the garden growing up.  We have so many little projects happening right now, I wanted to update on those first!  We’ve had two days of rain, which is a special treat in Los Angeles.  Our front yard is watered with the sprinkler irrigation system, and the back yard with a hose or watering cans.  It was nice to not have to worry about watering the back yard for a few days, although it’s back to needing it.  Just today, while I weeded our freshly sprouted Scarlet Runner Beans, I flushed out a whole mess of ants.

Because of the rain (and the sprinklers), our seedbombs in the front yard are starting to break down!

It’s great to see the clay breaking down and the seeds being revealed! This bomb is right next to our wildflower mix/ sprouted compost mystery garden.

The mystery garden was devoured by snails, and then re-sprinkled with seeds about two weeks ago.  Here’s what it looks like now:

Notice the seedbombs and sprinkler in this picture.  The two nasturtiums were not eaten by the snails when everything else was, so that’s why they’re a little bigger. I also recognize cosmos and calendula.  Hoping to recognize some more flower friends soon!

David spent a day prepping the sink that was full of sauerkraut.  He recently purchased a 5-gallon crock and the cabbage is now fermenting in it.  Five gallons?  Yes! He wants this to be the only crock he ever needs!

David also purchased weights and lids but they were backordered until next week, so he’s getting creative with the bag of water and saran wrap.  It’s been working out pretty well so far.  We were worried the cats would climb on the top of the crock, as they like sitting on things, so we covered the top with a towel.  I don’t think they’ve been sitting on it, but we did find the towel soaked in cat urine…. ew.  (We have three cats and cat pee is sadly part of our life.)

Sauerkraut should be ready for eating and storing in two weeks! We’ve been storing away as much food as we can, and we (David) just finished making two jars of nasturtium “capers”.

Last weekend, while I was deadheading the roses, I noticed that we had a nasturtium plant that was dense with flowers.  When I looked underneath the plant, I was able to easily pull off handfuls of fresh, young seeds. David helped me pick and clean them, and then we looked up the recipe I had read earlier this year for nasturtium pod capers.

The recipe itself was simple. Picking the seed pods was a bit time consuming. Between David and myself picking over this one plant, we were able to triple the recipe! It was great timing on our part, and if we like them we will have plenty for the next batch when these finish flowering.

We cleaned the pods, separated each of them, and soaked them in salt for 3 days.  Tonight Dave heated up the vinegar and sugar and we put them in a jar. Can’t wait to try them! I hope they’re not too strong for me.

We’ve also been spending the week eating chard. I pulled out one plant to eat, and there’s another one that has to come out. We’re making room for one more tomato plant. We have three more tomatoes to plant: Prudens Purple, Black Krim and Abe Lincoln.  I’m not sure which will go in the raised bed or where we’ll even put the other two, but they still have a little ways to grow.

If you look at the chard compared to the coffee maker, you can get an idea of how immense the leaves and stem were. We ate it that night with pasta and last year’s tomato sauce from the freezer. The stem and more chard went in our quiche cups, which is my daily breakfast.  The stem has such a nice crunch!

The yard is starting to bloom more and more. The succulents, herbs and tomatoes are all flowering.

The daffodils by the front door are blooming, one at a time. This was our first year planting the bulbs, and it’s a fun treat to see them blooming.

Mardi can’t resist a camera!

We’re excited to get more projects underway and to see how these all pan out.  Our new mason bee house just arrived in the mail, and we’re brewing beer this weekend. As if we didn’t have enough to keep us busy…