garden update: june 1

How was your Memorial Day weekend? It was wonderful to spend it back in Minnesota where it was lush and green and full of friends and family. We crammed a lot of fun and a little sleep into our trip and now we’re back in time for “June Gloom” as they call the cloudiest month of the year here.

Happily while we were gone my garden figured out that it’s warm and sunny enough to get moving! It’s been a while since my last update, so here are a few highlights.

I couldn’t resist starting a few more seeds figuring that the long growing season here is more forgiving. On the left is one of a few sprouted Hungarian Yellow Wax Pepper, on the right is a sprout of marjoram.

After sprouting these cherry tomatoes from seeds I transplanted them all figuring a few wouldn’t make it. Ha ha ha. They were pretty small less than a week ago but seem to love the sunny spot where their pot is. Wow. I moved my other tomatoes to that area of the patio.

The last cilantro I had I bought sprouted from the garden center and it didn’t last long before bolting. This is slow-bolting organic heirloom cilantro, so I’m hoping I’ll get a bit more mileage out of it.

I couldn’t resist a buy-one-get-one-free sale on organic peppers last month so we ended up with two. This is a jalapeno destined to mingle with those tomatoes and cilantro for pico de gallo. It’s got several flowers already.

That pico de gallo will also need some lime juice and there are definitely flowers and tiny limes on our lime tree. It’s been a bit chilly and quite windy this spring so a lot of the tiny citrus get blown off the branches. Poor baby limes.

The other half of that pepper purchase was a banana pepper, just for variety. There’s an awesome pizza we used to get in Minneapolis that had banana peppers on it which I am hoping to recreate.

Last but not least, two rounds of lady bugs and an aggressive pruning seem to have saved my lovely hibiscus and it is blooming again. I’m pretty sure the hibiscus is the plant I brought home with the aphids that infested the rest of my garden, and it was so saturated with the pests that I had to cut off all the buds and blossoms to save it. Thankfully it seems to have worked and I’m looking forward to a summer of flowers!

A few of my kale plants are still doing decently, we have basil and mint, I’m treating some mold or fungus on my tarragon with cinnamon which I think is working, and the lettuce and arugula are a bit touch-and-go yet. My hopes are high.

What’s growing in your garden?

garden update: march 31

This week’s weather forecast has higher temperatures in the Midwest than in SoCal. Oh, irony.

However, my little garden patch carries on. Mostly.

On the sprout front:

The tomatoes are still doing well. Now that the real leaves are developing I’m going to need to thin and transplant them soon. We were gone for five days so I was worried that they would wilt or not have enough light, but they seem fine.

The arugula sprouts…. not so much. I’m going to blame a lack of water and a lack of cat discipline. Just my guess. I will likely plant more.

Time to head outside!

This is the Italian flat leaf parsley I grew from seed in the fall. It has survived the winter and is now starting to flourish. I look forward to using it in the kitchen.

The Lacinato kale is still alive but still has some aphid problems. The ladybugs didn’t do as well with the kale and its small curly center leaves make it hard to access the pests. I’m still working on it, though, and have high hopes. Kale is a cool weather green so I’m hoping it won’t wilt too soon.

I’m pretty excited about this little bud. When I brought home a gorgeous hibiscus for the patio, I had no idea it would become the bane of my garden. The flowers are beautiful, but it was the carrier of the aphids that have plagued my little garden all winter. In an act of desperation I lopped off all the hibiscus flowers that were just covered with bugs. It’s been a naked little shrub all season and is finally budding again!

The lime tree has so many flowers right now! You can see a few aphids in this photo, too. The ladybugs actually did a really nice job clearing them out, but it only takes a few survivors to make trouble again. I’m trying to combat them without buying more ladybugs, but we shall see.

In spite of the aphid problems, I do anticipate a good amount of limes coming from our tiny tree. One early developer is almost the size of a ping pong ball!

To add some color to the winter we put together two pots of snapdragons, purple pansies, and white alyssium. The snapdragons are white, pink, and this beauty:

(Sorry, the photo is a little too close, but it was windy when I was taking pictures.)

My favorite flower currently in bloom, however, is amusing to me. We have a bird feeder hanging from the balcony. The first time we filled it we used normal birdseed mix. The little finches that flocked to the feeder (much to the interest of the cats) are picky, however, and just ate the sunflower seeds, spilling the rest of the seeds all over the patio. Messy and wasteful, we decided against the mix and just got sunflower seeds after that.

Well, they’re still a bit messy, and one seed managed to find its way into the pot with the lime tree. Since it’s not exactly a weed we didn’t pull it up, and now we have:

It’s cheery and I like it.

My next garden project is going to be preparing pots for my tomatoes, and I think I want to grow more peppers, too. My jalapeno from the fall has some regrowth after being chopped back due to aphids, but it may be better just to sprout (or buy) new ones. Hmm.

Tomorrow is April 1st! Have you started any garden projects?

invasion of the veggie-snatchers: february garden update

Isn’t it strange to have an actual garden update in February? Bizarre. But according to the current survey results, possibly from snow-bound readers, there is actual demand for garden posts. Vicarious? Maybe, but I will oblige.

Yesterday I made a quick trip to the garden center. Normally I wouldn’t run errands on a Saturday since I can avoid it, but after it rained all morning and my husband was at work at all day, the sunny afternoon lured me outside.

I came home with a few gems:

Well, future gems. I realize that it’s not a huge pile, but I am limited to a patio and the pots I can fit in the sun! They’re all either heirloom or organic. I anticipate getting tomatoes from the CSA as well, so the combination should let me try to preserve a few.

We did buy a small bunch of cilantro a while back, but cilantro bolts (starts flowering, going to seed, then dying) quickly. The seeds are to sew new batches throughout the season to provide a continuous source of the herb. We sometimes get cilantro from the CSA, too, but that just means more salsa, right?

It’s still weird to me that I have had plants on my balcony all winter. Er, “winter.” Wanna see? Of course you do.

Here is the newest patio resident:

This lovely tulip was a Valentine’s Day gift from my husband. We weren’t doing gifts, but he was having trouble resisting. I said he could buy me flowers so long as it was a plant and not a cut bouquet. I need to re-pot them, but saving them from the cats was the first priority.

My greens were sprouted from seed in the fall and have been making slow progress. On the left is a lettuce mix, on the right is an arugula sprout that has been languishing at that size for a while. Both are seed packets from Botanical Interests, just like the tomato seeds.

I’m pretty proud of this one:

Italian flat-leaf parsley is supposed to be notoriously difficult to start from seed, but I didn’t read that until after I sprouted it. It has survived so far and has had a nice growth spurt lately. The basil I planted at the same time is still alive, but tiny. We’ll see…

This mint has to have its own pot (it’s very invasive and will take over your other herbs/veggies/yard if allowed), so it currently resides in a 64-ounce yogurt tub. I trimmed it back a bit and it’s looking pretty good.

Above is my lacinato kale, also started from Botanical Interests seeds . I started them in medium yogurt containers then transplanted them into the pot in mid-January. They’re loving this cool weather.

I also have two small basil plants and some French tarragon that aren’t huge, but they’re there.

What makes me both the most excited and the most dismayed, though, is this:

Oh, hello little lime. You keep on keepin’ on. There are more, too.

But…

What’s that? Something is eating my plants!?!?

More?!? They’re in the cilantro, too?

I hate aphiiiiiiiids! *shakes fist at sky*

They’ve also gotten to the fennel bulb I grew from seed, and even the kale pictured above (see the yellowing on them?).

It’s particularly annoying because they came home on the gorgeous hibiscus I bought a few months ago. The hibiscus was so covered in them that sprays were ineffective, I finally had to snip off all the blooms and buds (the aphids feed on tender new growth), but they managed to spread to the lime tree and now the vegetables.

Yesterday, along with the seeds, I bought something else, a new weapon in the war against aphids. We tried simple homemade sprays, then tried an organic pesticide to no avail. It was time to call in the cavalry.

Hopefully the aphid buffet will prove tasty enough to entice these bad boys to hang around for a while. That and the mesh bags currently enclosing the ladybugs with the infested plants. There are a lot of them, enough that I had to recruit my husband into releasing them. The beetle-y mass creeped me out a bit. The worms I can handle. That many legs? Ugh, no thanks.

Last month we did try to attract some beneficial bugs by luring them in with some flowers. We bought a few small flats of annuals and put them in pots. I’m not sure if they attracted any bugs, but at least they’re pretty.

garden update, august 11

Like everywhere else, our weather has been bizarre lately. It got hot early, giving a nice growth spurt to my garden, but then it got chilly and gray. It’s either near-drought, or torrential rain. The last few days have been hot and humid – not the most pleasant, but more typical of Minnesota in August.

The rain-followed-by-sun has given a nice boost to my plants. The jalapeno pepper is still doing well (and producing the most potent jalapenos I have ever had!), and I have at least one bell pepper on each of my plants — I harvested my first red pepper today! I also accidentally harvested a tiny green pepper. Oops.

But today’s story is my Early Girl tomato plant. I may have pruned a bit over-zealously earlier in the summer, so while it has been producing fruit, it’s only been a few at a time. The last two days have provided an explosion of flowers! I only hope they ripen fast enough that I get to enjoy them before I leave the state. Check this out:

That’s all the same plant! Those teeny little pea-sized tomatoes just starting out are so cute, aren’t they?

I’m very sad that I will have to leave my garden behind. Not only is it too difficult to transport, California’s agricultural restrictions won’t allow us to bring it along anyway. However, I am leaving it behind with some friends who just bought a house and didn’t get to start a garden this year. And I’m looking forward to starting fresh when I arrive!

garden update, july 27

My red bell pepper is just starting to barely blush pink. My Roma tomatoes are doing well while the Early Girl is producing too few delicious fruits. I may have pruned a bit over-zealously early on. Whoops.

While my jalapenos are also doing great, the other two red peppers are still fighting aphids. I finally broke off some of the worst-hit areas, and they have managed to produce some peppers instead of the blossoms being killed by pests before fruit could form.

My basil, which I sprouted quite late, is juuuuuust getting big enough to start harvesting, but barely. Luckily, my rosemary, Italian flat-leaf parsley, and mint have tided me over, but the basil will be nice to have. My arugula is taking hold well, but the dill looks a tad spindly. We shall see.

And a gratuitous macro shot of a gerber daisy, because I can:

I’m not one to take flower photos that often, but it looked so cheery this morning that I couldn’t resist.

garden update, july 14

Can you count the jalapenos and Roma tomatoes? So exciting!

I couldn’t get a good photo of the red pepper plants that have finally had a growth spurt. The war with the aphids is ongoing, but I think I have finally destroyed their headquarters, leaving only renegade bands of resistance. Siiiiiigh. Today was so windy, any pictures I tried to take were blurry!

Even though it’s late in the season, I sprouted a few more herbs – basil (which I had three sprouted plants due on me this spring!) and dill – and some arugula since aphids got my first batch.

garden update, june 29

After a week with temperatures in the 80s and 90s, this morning is a cloudy 62 degrees. While my peppers and tomatoes have enjoyed the heat, I think my lettuce is much happier today.

My rosemary is still thriving (it lasted all winter inside!) and my Italian flat-leaf parsley is making a healthy comeback after limping through the spring. I sprouted some new basil seeds which are leafing out nicely and just sprinkled some new herb seeds in the hopes that I can diversify a bit. The spearmint is almost overflowing its small pot, but I’ve been snipping sprigs off to add to pasta all week. Yum.