Gardening Group Meeting #2

We held our second gardening group meeting this past Saturday!

You can view a summary of what we covered HERE.

We detailed several popular crops and you can view the information on planting, nutritional needs, pollinating and watering of tomatoes, green onions, garlic, lettuce, kale, spinach, herbs and zucchini HERE.

And in case you need our desert planting calendar again, you can view that HERE.

January 2017 in the Vegetable Garden

Sweat Pea Vines, flowers and pods (one of my very favorites):

I currently have 5 volunteer tomato plants and because the weather has been so mild, they are flowering and a few fruit have set. I'll try to keep them going through the next season.

Plenty of carrots harvested over the past months as well as additional seeds planted, colorful varieties too. My kids love eating carrots they pull out themselves.

Celery plants growing beautifully, I make sure to give them organic fertilizer about every 2-3 weeks.

Marigolds, garlic, cilantro, lettuce varieties

The New Year's Freeze 2015

So late December and surrounding the start of 2015, we had a dip in temperatures. A few garden plants suffered mild freezing the night before the official "freeze warning", but I covered the tender plants during each night of the freeze (air temps below 35-ish). Here's how my garden fared:

Plants that were not damaged:
Lettuces
Cilantro
Sweet Peas
Carrots
Cabbage
Spinach
Green onions

Plants that were damaged but salvageable:
Tomato plants
Marigold flowers

Plants that were killed:
Zucchini
Younger tomato plants
Green Bean
Potato (an experimental planting)

I picked a decent harvest of zucchini before the plants dying off. Tomato plants had not provided many ripened tomatoes, but the cherry tomato had hundreds of green tomatoes. I used them as an experiment and my results were very interesting. The tomatoes continued to ripen off the bush and also a few that were on a low live stem on the bush after trimming away almost all of the plant. New growth is filling the bush in and I still have hope for the plant for this season.

All the fallen green tomatoes off the frozen cherry tomato plant Jan 9, 2015

The same cherry tomatoes several weeks later, many ripened and taste great. Jan 30, 2015

A fraction of a very abundant and enjoyed Sweet Pea harvest

I chose a few plump pods to try drying the peas for planting next year.

The cherry tomato plant after the freeze, Jan 17

The zucchini plants post freeze

The cherry tomato plant after I groomed away all the frozen leaves and branches. Just a glimmer of hope in it living. Jan 17.

September Planting

It was very fortunate that my procrastination and I delayed planting. This past Monday, our area was flooded with over 4 inches of rainfall. My garden area was a foot under water. Unfortunately, many had it much worse than I and their homes were beyond damaged by flooding, roof problems and fallen trees. Our desert wasn't prepared for that much rain all at once.

The soil was good and ready for the seeds I planted today. 

Sugar Daddy Pea

Green Onion

Organic Cilantro

Mesclun Gourmet Greens Mix (Arugula, Romaine, Kale, several Lettuce types)

Romaine Lettuce

Organic Black Seeded Simpson Lettuce

Crisphead Lettuce

Cabbage

Spinach

Green Bush Beans

I also placed my growing tomato seedlings out in the garden area to start acclimating them to their future home.

Soaking Peas and Beans overnight

Morning

Noon

March Life

The backyard is buzzing and birds are lively. The weather is allowing us to enjoy the pre-Spring growth. 

Sweet peas, spinach, lettuce and cilantro are still providing for our consumption. 

On March 16, I planted yellow squash (2 hills), melon (probably a cantelope variety, packet not labeled), watermelon, carrots and bell peppers. During the tilling process, we had fun with the worms.

Cilantro and new seedling spots.

Spinach, squash seedlings, lettuce and peas.

 Other beauties in our yard.

  

The Peas, Lettuce and Cilantro are Happy

And so am I that I have some gardening left. The pea vines are growing much faster now that the weather warmed up. Cilantro and lettuce all look great. Spinach is growing slowly. Everything looks pretty happy and I can imagine they are because the weather has been perfect.

After 4 nights of below freezing

Last week, many plants died all over this valley, including all of my beautiful tomato plants. 

Here are the after photos in my garden and of the 3 hibiscus that I hope will make it.

I'm grateful that the cilantro, broccoli  spinach lettuce and peas seem to be ok. I covered everything and kept them watered in hopes that they would be strong through those nights in the 20's. 

One of the broccoli plants have blossoms and many attracted bees.

Loving this Time of Year

Every year around this time, I again fall in love with gardening and being outside. What a beautiful alive world we live on. 

Our family gained a member about a month ago. We now have a small Russian desert tortoise living in our backyard. We first made a small enclosure for him, but then decided to enclose the garden area and let him roam free so he could eat weeds and hibernate in a place of his choice. He's now half way under the ground near our home foundation and hasn't moved for several days, so maybe that's his location of choice. 

Here's my garden today with its new cinder block surround:

I planted more cilantro and lettuce on Saturday, November 24th as well as some spinach and I will be planting more sweet peas tomorrow after they soak. None grew from my first attempt, so they may be bad seeds.

Lettuce (what's left of it after tortoise and pests) and Brocolli

Big tomato plants are the heirlooms I received from friends. All the small ones I planted.

Tomato plants and Cilantro

I love you cilantro!

And my 3 year-old daughter was so excited to see this gorgeous hibiscus flower yesterday, so we had to snap a photo.

A few weeks ago, she helped me plant some random flower seeds in these pots. I look forward to some flowers.

And oranges, grapefruits and tangerines are on their way! Ripeness is a few weeks away!

I'm grateful for this little space that I can use to enjoy creation.

Fall Garden Begins

This beautiful morning, I planted:
3 heirloom brandywine tomato
3 cherry tomato
3 yellow tomato
2 rows of my old cilantro seeds and 2 rows of organic cilantro from the free seeds
1 zucchini seed (unfortunately, I didn't realize that was all that I had left, so I'll need to get more.)
1 row of romaine lettuce
1 row of crisp head lettuce

And, I failed to soak my sweet pea seeds yesterday, so I got those soaking to be planted tomorrow.

Yesterday, our neighbors/friends offered some horse manure that they had left over from preparing their garden soil. So, my husband brought over a wheel-barrow full and we spread it over and mixed it into our prepped garden area. I've heard that horse manure can increase weeds in gardening because the horses eat the weeds/grass and poop out the seeds. So we'll see from our experience how horse manure affects our garden. Part of the learning experience!

It's March!

I love this time of year! It's so beautiful in our backyard. Here's some of what's going on back there.

I have made so many crisp delicious salads with my lettuce this year and I still have a lot of lettuce growing. I love having fresh lettuce in my garden. 

The spinach is doing great too and I've been using it in green smoothies lately.

I trimmed my existing zucchini plants because most of the leaves had withered and turned white but the plant still looked alive. I planted some additional zucchini seeds last week, and I still want to plant some other seeds in the next week, but I haven't decided what.

Even though this sunflower has a hard time standing, it continues getting more beautiful each day.

And orange blossoms are on there way!