First, please excuse the quality of the pictures. I’ve been busy in the garden, and have been snapping pics along the way, but these days they’ve been going to Facebook instead of here. So, in an effort to get back to blogging, I’m posting my phone pictures here. Hopefully I’ll squeeze in time to continue to garden, and share it!
What’s great about spring in California, is things are taking off and starting to grow. The past week has been quite windy and a bit cool at night (50s), so some of the new plants are a little stressed.
Our roses have been loving the weather though! They’re just about in full bloom!
The mint below our roses is perfect right now! Usually the roses go through an aphid phase, when they first start leafing out. That didn’t happen this year! I blame climate change. Heh.
The onions are still growing. A few look like they’re going to flower soon. I’ve never grown onions, and would love any advice you all have. Should I snap off the flowers? Can I cook with the flowers? Are my onions ok? So many questions– I’ll probably look up some of them later, but I’d much prefer to spend time playing with the dog, cooking dinner or grading papers.
A couple of weeks ago, I pinched off all of the chive blossoms to make chive blossom vinegar. Today, I noticed that this one flower is showing off. Perhaps it should go into a salad? 
We’ve planted almost all of our tomatoes already. They’re small, but they’re growing and looking great!
Most of them went into the backyard lasagna beds. David is going to put in T-stakes for the Florida Weave. The closer to the wall row has slicing tomatoes, and the front row has tomatillos intermixed with San Marzanos.
We’ve been picking broccoli every few days. This is probably the biggest head we’ve grown. Any great broccoli recipes to share? I keep wanting to freeze it for later in the year, but David really likes to eat it fresh while we can!
Heads of lettuce hasn’t been my thing. I’ve always grown leaf lettuce. Since living in this house, I haven’t been able to keep up with our salads. So, I decided it’s time to plant heads, and plant them in intervals. Here’s the first few (as well as a chard that seeded itself). 
Our strawberries and blackberries are new this year. We’ve been watching our first berry grow. Today I looked, and it was too late. It was shriveled on top, and full of tiny millipedes who were eating it! To my dismay, when I look a bit closer at the other ones that are growing, I noticed most of them are deformed. I’m no longer optimistic about the strawberries. The raspberries are just starting to form buds, so I’m now hoping they’ll produce at least one fruit for us. 
We have a volunteer tomato by our hose faucet in the front yard. David and I have harvested 5 small tomatoes so far. Unfortunately, they taste like winter store bought tomatoes (which I don’t ever buy because they’re so gross). However, the tomatoes did taste good in the guacamole that we’ve been making and it IS nice to be able to pick some. I wonder if these will become piccalilli, or green tomato salsa…
Our apricots. We’ve been watching these, with great anticipation. I’ve never grown apricots before. Each time I look, I notice that some have fallen from the tree. I hear that it’s normal for the tree to do that, but it still is hard to watch! Here’s what they look like today. 
So many more things are going on outside. Most of the direct seeding still needs to be done. The broccoli, cabbage and cauliflower are finishing up. We have a few eggplants ready to go in the ground when the brassicas come out. Our squash is just about big enough to go in. We didn’t have very good germination on the squash and cucumbers, so this week I reseeded them as well as seeded herbs, hot peppers under the grow lights.
I can’t believe it’s already April. It’ll be summer before we know it!
Life In Our Little LA Garden 