Memorial day weekend in our garden - lower garden

Penny is filling one of the two new garden beds with dirt. The beds have been created for a while, but just today we got to the task of siting them, leveling the ground and laying hardware cloth beneath them (gopher protection). We order the dirt from Diestel, local organic turkey growers who make their own dirt and compost. We have found that we have to amend the soil quite a bit; it doesn't seem to have a lot of vitality on its own. We poured a lot of compost tea on this bed today! The new beds will soon house melons, cucumbers, ONE summer squash (a green scallop), and maybe even some more tomatoes.
The tomato bed in the lower garden. Penny is putting the finishing touches on another home-made tomato cage. Most of these are made from miscellaneous scraps of fencing. They have openings in them where Penny has removed some sections of fence so that we can reach in to harvest.
The rock rose plant that might slowly take over the entire lower yard if we let it. It blooms amazingly for about three or four weeks a year - that's it! I think they bloom almost year round in cooler climates like the Bay Area. The folks who built this house were the ones who planted it, and it was quite small when we moved in.
California poppies abound, but we are nearing the end of their season. They'll soon be taken over by the red ones. The red are not native. They were part of a mixed flower seed packet we planted many years ago and they have spread themselves widely around our yard. They are spectacular when they really get going but they like the heat and we have not had much yet. (We are not complaining about that!)
What the asparagus bed looks like once we stop harvesting. We have frozen asparagus soup in the freezer!
Our view from the lower yard - a beautiful Memorial Day sky. It was really just about a perfect day, and we got a lot done. Gray skies and slight chances of rain are predicted for the next couple of days. Definitely not beginning-of-June weather.

We're still eating lovely salads from our lettuces, and there are three more small heads of cabbage awaiting harvest. I think the greens are getting near their end, so I may do a big final harvest, wash them, chop them all up, steam them, and bag them for the freezer.

But now I'm just going to sit and read for the rest of the evening!

Memorial day weekend in our garden - upper garden

I find it impossible to figure out how to put pictures and text together in this blog program!! If I write the text first, the photos don't go into the right place. If I do the photos first, as I am now, I can't make the text go where I want it!! Actually, these poppies are beginning to fill our lower garden, and I wanted to delete the photo and make it part of the next blog, but it won't delete! So here they are!

These are the blooms on our lovely sage plant. I don't think they have an odor, but the whole plant smells so fresh and wonderful. We planted this in the very early days we lived here, and have to cut it back every year.

Volunteer petunias! This pot was planted with several flowers last summer. We thought we had pulled them all out after they were done blooming, and the pot has been thoroughly dug up all winter by the cats. But from somewhere, these survived and offered themselves!
One of our newly planted tomato beds. We planted out 22 of our 40 tomato seedlings, and if we can find some more room we will plant more of them. But we probably can't plant every single one, so if you are local and would like a plant or two let us know. We also put cages on all 22 and watered all our new plantings with a new batch of compost tea. We purchased a system at Sierra Green Days that creates compost tea with an aeration process. Hopefully, it is really good food for these plants.
One of two beds of winter squash that we planted out on Saturday. We have these covered with a material that is called "summer weight." It is very light, lets in sun and water and may keep some pests out. The particular pests we are hoping to keep out are the cats, who see all the beds as giant litter boxes. We also suspect the local raccoons may be routing around in the beds at night.
We have some potatoes planted in bags, like this. These potatoes and the bags came from Gardener's Supply in Vermont. The potatoes themselves (carola, cranberry red, all blue, red cloud, butte, and onaway) are from a farm in Maine owned by the Gerritsen family. We knew their parents at First Congregational Church in San Francisco!
And we have some potatoes, these purchased from our local organic growers, in this bed (desiree, yellow finn, and yukon gold).

So, I will attempt another post on the goings on in the lower garden, but maybe not tonight!

Too many plants, too little time

I realize that it takes a real commitment of time and energy to give the garden all it needs. Time and energy that seem to be used in many different arenas, only one of which is the garden. So, things in the garden get neglected and delayed.

Yesterday I found time to give all of them - seedlings and plants and fruit trees - a dose of Maxicrop, a kelp based food. The seedlings need something like that after they get their first true leaves, which they have had for a week or two now. And they should get it now every week. So should all the garden.

The seedlings will need to be planted into bigger containers this week. Our success rate:

tomatoes: all but two of the 42 starts germinated and are growing
onions: 11 of the 30 germinated
winter squash: all but two of the 16 starts are doing well. Two Guatemalan Blues did not sprout.

We're still working on preparing beds. All the cover crop is out of the ground and ground up into fine matter. We're using some of it as mulch on the planted beds. It really helps to retain the moisture and cut down on the watering. We're preparing our first batch of worm tea from a contraption we got at last weekend's Sierra Green Days. We'll spread it on all the ready-for-planting beds. They claim that a light application of this is the equivalent of two or three inches of compost. That would be lovely! Save a lot of shoveling!!

This afternoon the intention is to get some more seeds started - another tray of lettuces for the next succession and some melons.

One of the baby peach trees we planted (hmm, last year? the year before?) just up and died. The leaves came in really small and one day just wilted and dried up over the whole tree. Sudden infant peach tree death.

Okay, time to get to work, but here is the promised photo of the cabbage that was lunch recently!