I had no idea how long it had been since my last post until I checked back today. I apologize for my hiatus. I am still here and have been doing more gardening this year than last, both because the weather has been more to my liking (less very hot, very humid weather so far – knock on wood!) and because I haven’t been busy with an intensive study program like I was last late spring and summer.
I started back in March, when I did my annual clean-up, including sprinkling the seeds that had spent the winter outside on seed heads but hadn’t yet been eaten by the birds. I also sowed the seeds that like a cold period then – annual poppies, love-in-a-mist, sweet peas, probably some others I’m forgetting by now. I also went ahead and sowed the California poppies round about then. Those have done particularly spectacularly; they had an especially high germination rate, and are blooming their little hearts out as I type. But the sweet peas have done abysmally – they took ages to sprout and have never grown very tall or put out a single bloom. I have heard from others here that their sweet peas have also had tremendous problems this year.
In late March or early April I cleaned up the half-barrels I used for my crops last year, that I had overwintered outside. To my great surprise this spring, the garden strawberry and the thyme made it through the winter without protection. The oregano did not, however. In the pots, I sowed peas, two kinds of kale, spinach, arugula, fava beans, radishes, carrots, turnips, and some cold-weather herbs. I also planted two cilantro plants (I sowed seeds too, but wanted immediate gratification; I generally do both with cilantro). The carrots and arugula have had very low germination to date, but everything else took off decently. The favas haven’t produced much, but I suspect the weather swings are at least partly to blame; it will be warm and muggy, then cool and rainy, then mild and sunny, and sometimes quite windy. All but 1 of the 9 pea cultivars are doing great; I just harvested some more peas today. The radishes and some of the turnips have bolted, but I’ll just let them go to seed and the seeds should germinate when temperatures are to their liking in early autumn.
Since then, I have sowed beans (mostly pole beans, as well as a bush bean and a lima bean) and some warmer-weather herbs (dill, summer savory) and have planted some plants from the area farmers’ market and a couple from friends in the half-barrels. I have added:
- 7 chile plants – a mixed 6-pack from a farm stand (habanero & others), & 1 poblano-type chile ‘Tiburon’
- 4 sweet pepper ‘Islander’
- 2 sweet pepper ‘Golden [something]‘ (possibly ‘Golden California Wonder’ as it gets the most hits on Google for “sweet pepper golden,” but I will have to check the tag)
- 5 tomato plants – ‘Pruden’s Purple,’ ‘Green Zebra,’ ‘Black Cherokee,’ 2 others
- 3 eggplants from a friend – 2 wee ones labelled ‘Asian eggplant’ & 1 larger plant labelled ‘Black Beauty’
- a replacement oregano
- Greek oregano
- a replacement pineapple sage (it is not typically hardy here anyway)
- a replacement prostate rosemary (ditto)
- chives
- sweet basil
I have also put some herbs in pots on the porch:
- more sweet basil
- bay laurel
- lemongrass (mine abruptly died after 3 years, about 1 1/2 years ago)
I have more herbs I want to pot up, but I don’t want to add any more plants to the half-barrels, and I’ve run out of soil though I have some extra pots. They are:
- sweet marjoram (so far, my seeds haven’t germinated, so I eventually bought a plant while the market was still carrying them)
- summer savory
- a different kind of basil
And I got wooly thyme and lemon thyme at the market this week during another one of the late June all-plants-must-go sales, but I think I will use them in the main garden rather than for cooking. They are such pretty little plants.
I am growing some taller non-garden-beans this year, but instead of trying to rope a friend into driving me for more half-barrels and more big bags of soil, I am aiming to use them as a living screen in front of the front section of my house. They have had good germination rates, and yesterday I finally purchased more 6 ft. stakes so that I could provide more adequate support for them. I am growing 3 kinds of runner beans (species scarlet runner bean; scarlet runner bean ‘Scarlet Emperor’; and potato bean), 3 colors of pods of yard-long bean (‘Mosaic,’ ‘Red Noodle’ and a green-podded type); and 2 kinds of hyacinth bean (‘Red-Leaved’ and ‘Ruby Moon’).
I need to make dinner, so I’d best publish this now instead of writing any more, lest this become another unpublished draft. I have been taking photos with my camera this year, so hopefully I will post again soon sharing some of them.
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