In the Edible Garden - May 2017

My four garden beds are mostly occupied with tomato plants, but I have one bed dedicated to cantaloupe melons and several other crops going on currently; trellised Armenian cucumbers, multi-colored carrots, bell pepper (no fruit yet), pole green beans, luffa squash, zucchini squash, green onions (always), basil (always) and garlic (I've harvested several small bulbs). Strawberries are still growing in a pot near my porch where they get morning sun only. 

Armenian Cucumber

Armenian cucumber

Cantaloupe melon (aka muskmelon)

Cantaloupe Melon (aka muskmelon)

Rosemary (finally growing well with partial shade)

Basil from seeding mother plant

March in the Edible Garden

It's easy to take more photos of my flower gardens than my vegetable garden. Especially now when everything is small and just beginning for this season. I was pleased with the harvests with the fall garden and while some of those plants are still producing (garlic, cilantro, tomato, carrot, green onion, basil), I tore out a few crops when the weather warmed up (Celery, turned out tough and small) (Snap peas and lettuces, kale, spinach, eggplant) to make room for Armenian cucumber starts from my friend Shirlee and pear tomato starts from my friend James and yellow bell pepper and patio tomato plants from A&P nursery. 

Volunteer Tomato plant from Fall 2016

Armenian Cucumber starts I will try to train up a trellis

Yellow Bell Pepper

Patio Tomato

Cantaloupe Melon from seeds planted 2/8/17, very slow to grow

3 Strawberry plants from May 2016 starts

 I also purchased a few more trellises (raw metal ones in the lumber area of Home Depot, not sure what type of construction work they are actually intended for). In February, I planted luffa squash seeds after soaking them for 24 hours, but they never sprouted. I may try again. I also planted green bean (pole) seeds last week and they sprouted quickly but my tortoises got into them and ate them down to the ground. I am fixing that problem with an additional garden bed by the wall with the trellis.

We have harvested many tiny strawberries and enjoyed the deep flavor compared to store bought strawberries. I moved them back to a place in my yard where they receive afternoon shade since the weather has been hot lately. 

Strongest Papaya Tree

I still have my two Papaya trees growing near my garden. One had it's trunk broken (probably one of my children), but I braced it up with a bamboo stick and it is still alive. I water them infrequently and deeply. It will be exciting to watch them grow taller and determine their genders.

In November

In November, my Chitalpa Tree bloomed the first time (planted March 2016)...

Eggplants bloomed, set fruit and are growing beautifully...

Several delicious strawberries were enjoyed...

Two dinners of green beans were harvested from my 4 remaining pole bean plants, as well as green onions...

Our slow-poke pumpkin had to be harvested prematurely since the vine was overtaken by white flies and my attempt to kill them with soapy water killed the vine...

A beautiful tortoise-banquet grows, complete with dandelions, allysum, dichondra, lettuce varieties, ruellia, weeds and grass. But of course the tortoises have been underground and are not getting to enjoy it.

The garden is doing well. I don't have adequate time to blog about it, but I will try to post more about December progress soon. The weather has been nice and has prolonged the season for some of my plants. I love what I have going on in my garden!

July, August, September Progress & Failures

What would gardening be like with no failures? I seem to have a lot of them lately, but I won't let it get me down. A few lessons I have learned recently are 1. Don't store seeds in a hot garage. 2. My dirt in my yard has residue of herbicides.

The first lesson was an easy one to correct, although many of the seeds I planted did nothing and I will blame the hot storage location for most of that. What I am discovering about the dirt in my yard is less than ideal and I have little information about what it was sprayed with and how long I can expect to see deformed and stunted growth in my plants. From my research, when a harsh chemical is used to prevent weed growth (which I assume was completed before we moved in about a year ago), it can take a while, depending on weather and conditions, for it to no longer affect plant growth. Small deformed leaves are visible on my chaste tree, orange tree and corn stalks while I haven't been able to get a tomato plant to grow here after several different attempts. At this point, I am trying to improve the soil by adding organic materials and watering deeply to hopefully recover and improve soil quality. 

Corn seeds planted July 25th and soon after we had a large monsoon storm that had them under water for a few hours, very few germinated. (Half of what I planted were older seeds that had been stored in the garage, non of which germinated.)

Corn seeds planted Aug 8th, Aug 13th, Aug 16th (battling the birds who wanted to peck out each little seedling. Covered the area with netting, several reinforcements as birds would still get in, hung up CD's and flashing tape to deter them.

I planted seeds (all old) of bush green beans, cabbage, green onions, carrots, eggplant, squash, kohlrabi, tomatoes, cucumber and pumpkin all on August 15th. Of those plantings, the pumpkin, eggplant, corn and one squash plant are still living. 

Sept 1st, corn seedlings protected by netting

Sept 1st, Basil plant from Spring

Sept 1st, Marigold seedlings

Sept 1st, Pumpkin and sunflower seedlings protected from birds by netting, held up with paint stirring sticks.

 The photos below were taken today, Sept 13th. The corn looked normal when it was small, but as it has grown it has started twisting and curling, some stalks even pointing to the side instead of upward. I will watch and wait to see what it does and how it produces. 

I got an idea from an online gardener to plant pole green beans alongside the corn since legumes are nitrogen fixing and corn supplies a growing support for the beans. The green bean seeds were planted on Sept 3rd and are growing great. 

I have enhanced the soil with worm castings and a balanced granular fertilizer.
I pulled out the cantaloupe vines I had kept alive all summer since they were not producing any fruit. I appreciated the green and yellow they supplied for the summer months.

Sept 13th, Corn stalk, deformed and curly tips. Green bean on left.

Sept 13th, Green Bean planted by corn

Sept 13th, Pumpkin and sunflower

Sept 13th, Strawberries planted back in May, hoping they will start flowering now. I pinched off it's flowers all summer.

Last week I sewed cilantro and today I sewed lettuce (a variety) and spinach in the garden bed with my beautiful basil. 

Giving up

I'm sad to say it, but only a few corn seeds grew to a few inches tall. The zucchini, roma tomato, cherry tomato and watermelon seeds did NOTHING! So, this past week I gave up on all of them, since a few stalks of corn isn't enough to pollinate and produce anyways. No more wasting water on those seeds. They may have been old seeds (although they were just purchased last year) or the soil may have not kept in moisture well enough for them to be planted on hills.
My tomato and strawberry plants that I purchased are doing well and those will be my success this season. :)
The cabbage from the winter season is still growing and I am still hoping for some cabbage soon, it looks like it is forming in the centers of 4-5 plants.
Cilantro and lettuce are also still edible and I use them frequently. The peas stopped producing this past week and I believe that's because it started getting too warm for them. I am happy with what I got from the sweet pea vines.

Strawberries

I went to Whitfill Nursery the other day and bought 3 tiny strawberry plants and 3 small Roma tomato plants. I planted them all in the garden after making room by taking out all of my slow-growing carrots. Here are my new additions to the garden.

3 Tomato plants in semi-sunny location

2 Strawberry plants in sunny location

In the next few days, I will give each tomato plant it's own tomato cage to help them grow big and under control. I also need to research these strawberry plants to see if I should allow fruit to grow in the first season, or pinch them off to allow the plant to focus on growing larger and stronger. Always more to learn.

A Lot of Hot and a Little Rain

My garden consists of 8 cherry tomato plants, 1 better boy tomato plant that has never produced a tomato and my compost cantaloupe plant that has many pretty yellow flowers, large and small. I have been battling the squash bugs on the cantaloupe plant with shovel and pesticide, but they seem to be winning the fight. I wonder if I will get any melons.

Cherry tomatoes took about a month off in July and didn't produce since it was so hot. Then, we had a few monsoon storms in a row and it gave them deep watering and a bit cooler weather. So, there are about 6-7 tomatoes growing again.

Strawberry plants on the side of the house are having a rough time because of the heat and my inability to water them all day long. I hope they stick it through until nicer weather comes along.

The citrus trees look much healthier these days since I slightly increased watering. I don't think we will have any grapefruits this season since they all dropped at the beginning of their development. The tangerine tree has TONS of fruit and we are very excited about that.

Our front lawn is infested with GRUBS, the early stages of Japanese Beetles. I treated the lawn with grub killer granules on Aug 10th, and I didn't notice improvement until I just looked at the photos I took on the 10th and compared to the grass today. The grass is much more green and the brown spots are much smaller. I hope for more improvement and to control the grub problem better in the future.

This photo was taken the day I applied the grub killer granules, Aug 10th.

Flashback: I ended up pulling out my sad dehydrated-looking corn stalks in mid-July. I peeked in at a cob of corn and the kernels were small and dried out. It was just too hot. I wanted to plant corn a few weeks ago for fall harvest, but I could not find the early variety at either of the nurseries I went to. I will try corn again and hopefully have better luck next time.

I mentioned in my last post that I have two cherry tomato plants that only produced 3 tomatoes between the two of them and that they stayed green for about a month. They finally turned red in July and I picked them. They tasted good and were about 3 times as large as all the others from the other plants. I believe those two plants are from the seeds I planted and the 6 other plants are purchased from Home Depot as young plants.

I've been loving the rain we are getting; it makes our backyard look so alive! I look forward to cooler weather that will be calling me outside to my plants once again.

Growth

I thoroughly enjoy looking closely at each one of my plants once in a while. It is wonderful to see the details of these amazing plants. Here are some of my observations from today.


I have a random plant growing from my compost. I love random plants, it's like a bonus surprise that just gets me excited to see what it will become. I think it is a potato plant, which is funny to me because I have researched about planting potatoes and all the sites make it sound like such a hard task. If it is a potato plant, I hope I get something from it, but my compost will have to sacrifice being cultivated for a while.
Here is my surprise plant:

The cilantro is blooming and is not producing the cilantro leaves as much any more. I have picked off the flowers many times to try to get the plant to focus on the leaves that I desire, but it seems the flowers are winning. Cilantro flowers can be dried and create coriander, but I would rather have a supply of fresh cilantro leaves.


Here is the progress of the yellow squash. They are looking great. I don't see any zucchini growing on that plant though.

Lots and lots of growing cherry tomatoes! None are growing on the better boy tomato plant yet.

I plucked a carrot because my curiosity got the best of me. They are not fully grown but the aroma and flavor are wonderful!

The strawberry plants took several weeks off without any blooms or fruit. In the last few days, there are two white blooms on one of the plants, so we should see strawberries again soon.

One pea plant is still thriving, the others fried in the heat. I eat about one pea pod per week from the other and they are sweet and delicious.

The corn is getting taller and looks the same as the last several weeks. It is 4 1/2 blocks tall (measured using the block wall behind the two rows).

I fertilized the garden today with Arizona's Best All Purpose fertilizer. I also fertilized the citrus trees.

What I have growing

Carrots

Cherry tomato

Cillantro

Citrus (orange, grapefruit & tangerine)

Corn

Bell Peppers (variety)

Better Boy Hybrid Tomato

Mint

Strawberries

Sweet Peas

Yellow Squash

Zuccini

The beginning

We have one grapefruit, one tangerine and 3 orange trees in our backyard.

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STRAWBERRIES! Seeing them brings me happiness. And my little girl loves them too. Creation of deliciousness.
Strawberry plants transplanted in early 2010, photo April 14th 2010.

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I had to replant many plants after cats and birds attacked my planted seeds. They wiped out my young growing corn and the seeds of all the zuccini, yellow squash, cantelope, watermelon and cuccumbers. If they only could understand how hard I worked to get it all ready just in the nik of time! Anyway, I really want a harvest, so I picked up some plants at home depot to make myself feel better about my losses.
I replanted corn, although it was a little late in the season, and I bought some netting and set it up using four stakes that we had lying around and some string. It was a great solution to the pooping cat and pecking bird problems.

My Garden on March 31st 2010