April 23, 2016

A few weeks have passed.  Here are some highlights of what's happening in our garden today...

We added a second tomato plant (on the right) to this pop-up bed.  I forgot to mention last time that the one on the left is a volunteer that popped up in December, and somehow made it through all the rain and frost.  It currently has 3 baby tomatoes; we suspect they will be Chocolate Cherries.  We had other volunteers pop up in December, but our hens got into our backyard one day and chowed down on them.  This was the only survivor.

The baby clementines...  This tree is only about 1.5' tall and is covered in these baby clementines.  It will be interesting to see how this develops.

Mr. Honeybee doing his thing in the blackberry blossoms...  Carry on, Mr. Honeybee.  Carry on...

Something is eating our almond tree leaves.  Does anyone know what it could be?

Check out this cluster of baby Honeycrisp apples!  I think there are about 10 on there, total.

The bush beans look happy, and a few baby jalapenos are growing...

I don't think I got a picture of the kale last time.  These plants are leftover from last Fall.  They keep making these tender kale leaves, which is awesome.

Cucumbers are getting bigger but not looking very happy.  We need to figure out what's going on with them.

These two summer squash plants are stoked in this planter; but the ones in the beds are looking sad, not sure why.

I had to throw in this picture of our new "Kettlepizza" attachment for our Weber.  It is supposed to create wood-firey pizzas without the expense of an actual wood-fire pizza oven.  

We're trying it out tomorrow. 

These are chickpea plants and red beets.  I don't think it is red beet season? But I'm throwing them in anyway.  Worst case scenario: we'll eat the greens.

Our stray cat gang has been thinking it's cool to sharpen their claws on the tender bark of our baby cherry trees.  Enter awesome invention: plastic spikey mat that you can put around the base of your trees, which makes it unpleasant for animals to stand on.  Nice!

Some eggs from our hens this morning...  And check out our awesome retro chaise longues from the 1970s.  Chris wanted to throw them out at one point, but is now grateful for my intervention.

Check out how great these lettuces are doing!

Lady bug larvae!

Maddox, thinking she is hiding...

And finally... We are giving Mason bees a try.  We just got this little starter house for them.  They should be arriving on Wednesday.  We hardly have any honeybees around anymore, so we are hoping this will help with pollination this Spring/Summer.  Stay tuned.

Our Garden 4-10-2016

I can't believe it's been 10 months since we last posted...  Over the Fall/Winter we planted broccoli, Brussels sprouts, cauliflower, kale, lettuce, spinach, onions, red beets, red cabbage, shallots and garlic.  We also had our die-hard chard and celery still going from a few years earlier.  In December we decided to go crazy and plant a bunch of new fruit trees as you'll see pictures of momentarily.  

The Brussels sprouts, red beets (all but one), cauliflower, and spinach were total duds.  We got one legit cabbage, and ate the leaves off all the misfits.  We picked all the lettuce to make a giant salad but then one of our cats whose name I won't mention (Anni) dipped her paw in the water we had it soaking in, and we had to toss it out to the chickens.  The kale, onions, shallots and garlic are still in the beds.  We pulled a head of garlic out the other day to see how it was coming along, and it was adorable.  -Had about 5 cloves on it, which we promptly tossed into our soup.  Looking forward to harvesting that in another few months.

So, here's what's happening in our garden today...

 Here's a baby apricot (1 of 2) on our new apricot tree...

 Here are a few of the baby peaches from our new tree...  The tree is loaded!

 This is a mixture of all the greens (beets, some kale, cauliflower, cabbage) that were still on the plants when we pulled them out.  We chopped them up, and I am eating some scrambled in my eggs as I write this; Chris used some in her smoothie today; and all the rest went into some veggie burgers we (read: Chris) made and froze for future consumption.

 And here is the adorable baby garlic!

 There are a ton of baby clementines on our new tree...  Stoked.

 Baby meyer lemons on our new tree...

 We got two new cherry trees.  No blossoms yet...

 We added another raised bed a few weeks ago.  This one is in a part of the backyard the chickens can't get to.  We planted our lettuce and herbs in it for easy access.  Here you see some parsley, tarragon (tiny), lettuce, marjoram, cilantro...

 Here's the other side of the same bed...  More lettuce, basil (looking sad), thyme, oregano...

 And here is one of our "barnyard cats," as I like to call them...  They are stray cats that have made our backyard their home, and we are so glad they did.  This is Thurston.  He is keeping this baby tomato company.  (Not shown: Cleo and Maddox)

 Blackberry bush...

 Here's our grapevine and the sole cluster of baby grapes.  If there are more on there, they have not yet made their presence known to us.

 Our fig tree looking sparse...

 Here's our new almond tree, barely out of diapers.  It's only about 3' tall.  Made one blossom, zero almonds.

 This is our new Gala apple tree...  

 I think this is the other lemon tree, but all these citrus trees look the same...

 Here's the Honeycrisp apple tree we planted last year.  

 We have 4 of these jerry-rigged, hanging strawberry baskets.  This is the best they've ever done, since taking them out of the ground and putting them up high last year.  These started from a plant that I first bought when I moved out here from San Jose in 2006.

 This is one of those trees with 4 different types of pears on one.  

As you can see, it's not looking too hot.

 Lime tree with baby limes...

 Two new blueberry bushes...

 This bed has some of the spinach leftover from last season, a habanero pepper and 5 summer squash plants.

 This is the bed still full of onions, shallots and garlic...

 In here we have kale leftover from last season, 2 cucumber plants, 4 corns, and another summer squash.

 Here is more spinach, a few more corns, a yellow and a green bell pepper, a jalapeno, a serrano, and who knows what else...

 We've got three tomato plants over in this bed.  This is a newer bed Chris built about a year ago.  Doesn't get the best sun, but we needed to give the other beds a rest from tomatoes this year.  We're crossing our fingers...

 This bed is a mess!  Die hard chard on the right - but aphids took one of them down (but only temporarily; it'll be back.) as you can see.  There's also some giant parsley and giant celery plants in there, along with some lemon thyme and weeds.

And here are our awesome mamacita hens.  Molly in the background, Bonnie on the left and Penny on the right.  These ladies work hard all day keeping the bug population down and eating weeds.  But they don't stop there.  They take it a step further by giving us delicious eggs on the daily.

Well, that's all for now.  I'll post again in another week or two.  Over and out.  J