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I actually have something good to say about my garden this year. I may have mentioned that I hired a friend to work with me in the yard to bring it up to standard. For the first month and change we worked together twice a week, now it's once a week. She did all the things that took normal strength and height, and I did the pokey little things. At this point I can climb ladders just fine but hinestly it's sort of ineffectual to send me up a laddder when it's the apple tree or the jasmine vine* because I still can't reach the highest stuff. I do the plum tree, the fig tree, and much of the lemons trees myself. Another factor is Cassandra knows more about this stuff than I do, so it's good to have her in there making good cuts.
Anyway, this is where we're at. The mist-forest Guatemalan salvia has been completely refurbished. It had become a thicket of dead branches maybe twelve feet tall, and now all the dead stuff is gone and I have a revitalized stand of the monsters growing on a neat little berm. The detritus has been pulled off the compost heap and the compost heap has been revitalized and put back into action.
The former (and possibly future) berry bed has onions and turnips and possibly carrots and celery roots if they ever deign to sprout. The asparagus barrel is producing. The rhubarb looks fat and tropical. The newest of the recycled cement beds has kale, arugula, and radhishes growing in it.
The narrow bed that had kale and potatoes in it last year is ready for tomatoes when the Cabrillo College mother's day plant sale happens. It will have mostly black Russian varieties because they did well last year (so rumor has it, I was in Prague). It already has some mystery volunteers, and a Mexican marigold, the huge kind.
The other recycled cement bed still has last winters' brassicas in it. Since I fed them with acidp-lover's fertilizer, they still have not headed but they have magnificent, succulent leaves which I will treat like cabbage until the Cabrillo College mother's day plant sale, at which point I will put in cucumbers.
Along the wall of the garage I have put felt growning bags full of sunflowers and other flowers. They are growing apace. When we get to it, I'll have Zack put in a box there and I'll move the Jerusalem artichokes which are currently in aging barrels there along with some other sun-lovinf stuff. I really like Jerusalem artichokes. And shelling homegrown sunflower seeds is a pain, so mostly the sunflowers are for looks and to share with wildlife.
Besides that, I have plans for two more boxes: one under the southern edge of the deck, where I have a lot of flowerpots of different types and a barrel of mint and Jerusalem artichokes; and the other, in the sunnier spot under the apple tree, where I have a mound this year where I am about to plant a mixture of pole beans (runner, blue lake, yellow flageolet, purple something, and long) in a teepee, and maybe a couple of lettuces. After Emma got too old to play in the been teepee I would always sprinkle a few lettuce seeds in the middle of the teepee, and they liked growing there, sheltered from summer sun.
Heh. Summer sun. Santa Cruz isn't as foggy and San Francisco, but we do get a high haze most days, morning and evening.
We habve cleared out most of the mess from the side yard and the front yard now too. I'm not at this time planning to plant anything new out front, just cleaning up what's there. I may plant drought-tolerant ferns in the side yard. The flower seeds I planted in March don't seem to have made it.
Gradually I am lining every walkway and raised bed with mostly parsley, as well as rocket (arugula to you fancy talkers) and occasional flowers. I put beach poppies and horehound together in one sunny spot because they both have interesting textures. Also I love horehoud inordinately just because.
My herb pots on the deck are doing very well. They include more parsley because I should always have that to hand, and also I have been sticking all the weird little cloves of garlic that are annoying to peel into the pots. Everytime I cook now I am cutting up a bunch of parsley and garlic greens. And lemons, I have more lemons than I can use. Fortunately the neighbors know this and knock on my door regularly. I need to feed both the front and back lemon trees.
I have a potato forest in an older bed under the plum tree and I think this may be the spot where I start a mushroom patch. When we move the basement door to inside the garage, I would like to plant another dwarf fruit tree in a spot in front of where the door is now. If apricot trees did better in my soil I would plant that. The apricots from my old tree were hauntingly delicious but the tree just was too sick to live. So maybe a pear, or a kumquat?
The apple set a better amount of fruit than last year, so I think I just need to take better care of it this year and I'll get a nice crop. The plum set a "smallish" amount in its terms, which means a fuckton of a lot, really, because the plum is a fruit-bearing fool. The prune is still too young to flower, let alone bear fruit.
Anyway, this is where we're at. The mist-forest Guatemalan salvia has been completely refurbished. It had become a thicket of dead branches maybe twelve feet tall, and now all the dead stuff is gone and I have a revitalized stand of the monsters growing on a neat little berm. The detritus has been pulled off the compost heap and the compost heap has been revitalized and put back into action.
The former (and possibly future) berry bed has onions and turnips and possibly carrots and celery roots if they ever deign to sprout. The asparagus barrel is producing. The rhubarb looks fat and tropical. The newest of the recycled cement beds has kale, arugula, and radhishes growing in it.
The narrow bed that had kale and potatoes in it last year is ready for tomatoes when the Cabrillo College mother's day plant sale happens. It will have mostly black Russian varieties because they did well last year (so rumor has it, I was in Prague). It already has some mystery volunteers, and a Mexican marigold, the huge kind.
The other recycled cement bed still has last winters' brassicas in it. Since I fed them with acidp-lover's fertilizer, they still have not headed but they have magnificent, succulent leaves which I will treat like cabbage until the Cabrillo College mother's day plant sale, at which point I will put in cucumbers.
Along the wall of the garage I have put felt growning bags full of sunflowers and other flowers. They are growing apace. When we get to it, I'll have Zack put in a box there and I'll move the Jerusalem artichokes which are currently in aging barrels there along with some other sun-lovinf stuff. I really like Jerusalem artichokes. And shelling homegrown sunflower seeds is a pain, so mostly the sunflowers are for looks and to share with wildlife.
Besides that, I have plans for two more boxes: one under the southern edge of the deck, where I have a lot of flowerpots of different types and a barrel of mint and Jerusalem artichokes; and the other, in the sunnier spot under the apple tree, where I have a mound this year where I am about to plant a mixture of pole beans (runner, blue lake, yellow flageolet, purple something, and long) in a teepee, and maybe a couple of lettuces. After Emma got too old to play in the been teepee I would always sprinkle a few lettuce seeds in the middle of the teepee, and they liked growing there, sheltered from summer sun.
Heh. Summer sun. Santa Cruz isn't as foggy and San Francisco, but we do get a high haze most days, morning and evening.
We habve cleared out most of the mess from the side yard and the front yard now too. I'm not at this time planning to plant anything new out front, just cleaning up what's there. I may plant drought-tolerant ferns in the side yard. The flower seeds I planted in March don't seem to have made it.
Gradually I am lining every walkway and raised bed with mostly parsley, as well as rocket (arugula to you fancy talkers) and occasional flowers. I put beach poppies and horehound together in one sunny spot because they both have interesting textures. Also I love horehoud inordinately just because.
My herb pots on the deck are doing very well. They include more parsley because I should always have that to hand, and also I have been sticking all the weird little cloves of garlic that are annoying to peel into the pots. Everytime I cook now I am cutting up a bunch of parsley and garlic greens. And lemons, I have more lemons than I can use. Fortunately the neighbors know this and knock on my door regularly. I need to feed both the front and back lemon trees.
I have a potato forest in an older bed under the plum tree and I think this may be the spot where I start a mushroom patch. When we move the basement door to inside the garage, I would like to plant another dwarf fruit tree in a spot in front of where the door is now. If apricot trees did better in my soil I would plant that. The apricots from my old tree were hauntingly delicious but the tree just was too sick to live. So maybe a pear, or a kumquat?
The apple set a better amount of fruit than last year, so I think I just need to take better care of it this year and I'll get a nice crop. The plum set a "smallish" amount in its terms, which means a fuckton of a lot, really, because the plum is a fruit-bearing fool. The prune is still too young to flower, let alone bear fruit.