July Garden Tour by Way of Videos

I've been wanting to give y'all a video tour for a few months now, but wanted to wait until all the plants were up and growing...

These were the first takes, so I have to apologize in advance for them being so shaky and for the blurry "close-ups." Let me know if you have trouble viewing them or with this post loading. I didn't realize the video file size would be so large.

Video 1 is of the containers...

Video 2 is of the "square foot garden" raised beds and salad table...

Video 3 is of the raised beds along the deck and the rest of the yard...

Hope you enjoyed! On Friday I'll share a few picture updates with you as well.

Major Garden Update

Whoa! It's been a busy couple of weeks around the yard, and around town. I wanted to share a few of the highlights and a garden update with you, so grab a drink, maybe a snack (yep it's that long), and enjoy!

I first read about the Bay Area Maker Faire on Homegrown.org, and three weekends ago I took the boys (DH included) there. There were a wide variety of things going on, and something for everyone. We all had a really great time, and I'd love to go again next year. Here are my two favorites...

UCCE Master Gardener's Strawberry Tower, made of two 5 gallon buckets. You may be seeing one in my garden next spring... ;-)

I had just discovered these guys online, and here they were, in person! Absolutely love the concept...

On 5/26 I planted my Bush King acorn squash.

May closed out with high winds, making many plums go splat...

Over Memorial weekend we exchanged the cool weather at home for sand castles at Santa Cruz/Seabright Beach...

I almost stepped on this guy when we walked out of our hotel room at checkout time. No joke, it was the size of my thumb!

And, this morning, the yard and it's inhabitants looked happy to finally have a week of warm weather...
The Concrete Garden...

Raised beds and flower garden...

The Container Gang...
Clementine in the back left with nasturtiums, White Habanero's and Baby Belles in the way back (melons and tomato in the green SWP). In the second row is another Baby Belle, two potato plants, and a cuke. In the front are two more potatoes.

Charantais melons and Tumbling Tom (between petunias)...

Bush Slicer Cukes...

My poor, abused Meyer... It hadn't been doing well, and then I made things worse by doing a few things; extreme temp fluctuations, too much moisture retention due to me mulching the soil, and under fertilizing then over fertilizing (slap my hand) to correct nitrogen deficiency. A lot of very yellow leaves were blown off. I flushed the soil several times and removed the mulch, and it seems like it's finally recovering. I'll try to prune heavily when pruning time is here, and continue to cross my fingers.

The good Meyer news is that I've had several successful pollinations! I counted around 25 fruits that are plumping up (I doubt that many will make it).

Garlic, Charantais melons--two of three have started climbing the trellis. I pulled the third plant, and was going to replace it with the Thai Hot Chili plant behind it, but I noticed the melon's roots hadn't broken through the newspaper pot it was still in in the ground so I tore the newspaper off and replanted. I think it'll recover. (Darn! I'll have to make another SWP for the chili plant). A random basil on the right, and Purple Queen bush beans in front.

The tomatoes are doing well. I haven't seen any signs of Early Blight in almost 10 days. It's been 16 days since I treated them, and I'm hoping I won't need to again since I was told by my Organic-Guru-Nursery-Guy at OSH that any flowers that haven't set fruit go sterile when sprayed. Oh yes, I added two more random basil here too.

The Pearson (the one in front) is the first to fruit...

Despite the temps getting into the 90's this weekend, the salad table is doing well (See the random basils in the back right? LOL). Thank goodness for cool ocean breezes making it all the way over the hills to Pleasanton!

There's borage on the left side of the box... Ah, the beans... I started my beans in newspaper pots, and then I ripped most of them out because they were doing horribly. I don't think it was completely the newspaper pots' fault (although I'm still skeptical because of the scrawny melon plant). I just think I should've direct sown.

A few of the original bean plants that weren't doing too bad now have beans growing...

The Acorn squash (and a random basil) love their home...

Phew! Just a few more. The end is close! ;-)
Not a very good pic (I was running out of time this morning), but the plums are getting big, and there are a lot more than I thought there'd be.

Fire blight has returned to the Comice Pear tree, and I haven't seen a single fruit growing, although the foliage is really thick from the pruning we did last year after fire blight stuck.

I call this "Bird Food," DH calls this "Teasing." They're just too high for us to reach.

If you've stuck it out, here are a few flowers for you:
The one CA Poppy plant I've let live, and only because I appreciate it's ability to grow in this tiny crevice behind the AC unit.

PS Not pictured are three new random plants I bought that need homes. Can you guess which random plants I bought? LOL I don't know what this sudden fascination is...

Starting More Things

Just a small update on a few things...

I started my  Isabella Charentais melon seeds on Monday by placing them in a moist paper towel in a ziploc bag, and placing that on a seed warming mat. Two days--yes two days later and they've all sprouted... Craziness!

I've also started my green bean seeds using the same method. These will be going into my left bed along the raised patio which is currently growing Sweetie Baby Romaine lettuce.

I was originally going to grow Royal Burgundy bush beans, but they prefer cooler weather and I don't think they'll do well at this point. So I went and purchased a variety pack of bush beans from Renee's Garden which include Golden Roc d'Or, Purple Queen, and Green Slenderette. I'll be growing as few of the green-green beans as possible since they're so hard to find among the leaves...

I don't have a lot of my gardening budget left to purchase more pots, so I'll be potting the melons, beans and cucumber seeds in home made newspaper pots. I've seen a couple other bloggers out there making these, and someone even posted a great tutorial, but I couldn't find it once I started making mine. So, being a very visual person and needing to see the step-by-step of what I'm supposed to do, I chose to use these instructions from ehow.com. If you decide to make newspaper pots, do yourself a favor, and wear gloves! This is a great little craft to do while watching TV...

Finally Getting Back Into the Swing of Things

Wow! It's hard to believe I haven't blogged in a month! Time has gone by too quickly...

The day we returned home from our two week vacation in VA, the LO ended up with croup (I'm still extremely happy he didn't start his barky cough on the plane!), and as soon as he started recovering, I came down with a nasty cold turned sinus and eye infections with laryngitis, and now Boy Wonder is sick. I sure hope this is all we see of the sickies this season!

The next few days my posts will be focusing on updates around the yard. Today I'll do a mostly pictorial post of the growth and changes that have occurred to the plants I blogged about on 10/8. DH was kind enough to take pictures on 10/21 while I was gone.

SFG, right side

(back to front) Lantana, Green Arrow Peas, broccoli, radishes

 10/11

10/21

10/31

Today
(the line in front of the peas will be carrots)

SFG, left side
(back) Lantana, Garlic, Texas Grano onion (front) French Red & Dutch Yellow Shallots, Lettuce mix, and Musclun mix
10/21

10/31

Today

Cantaloupe

10/11

10/21

10/31

Today

Right raised bed
Sweet potatoes, musclun/lettuce mixes, carrots
10/21

10/31

Today

Dwarf Meyer Lemons
 9/23

10/5

11/7

During my next post, I will talk about the changes I've made to my garden plans, and a few issues I've been having around the yard.

Planning for Fall

I've been mulling over what to grow this fall, and I was finally inspired to get a move on after seeing Crystabel's plans laid out. Since I planted my cantaloupe, sweet potatoes, and watermelon late (they're in the right raised bed), I've decided to plant my beds more or less by month. As next spring rolls around, I'm going to gradually switch over to having each bed designated to certain veggies instead of a mish-mash of stuff in each one. That's the plan, anyway... To the people who know me and my occasional "obsessions" with putting things into excel: This is only the first page! LOL Please click the plans for your perusing pleasure. I'm told September is the hottest month of the year here (you mean it's going to get hotter than the 100* heat we've been having??), so I have some time to prepare for planting my cool weather crops. Here are my to-do's:

• Enrich soil in SFG - I'll do this by adding compost, used coffee grounds, and grass clippings. I was told 1.5 months was a short amount of time to do this in, but what can ya' do...
• Build trellis to add to SFG - I'm going to try to find recycled materials through craigslist, so I'm not sure how I'll be making this yet. I was given a height max of 4ft by DH though, so hopefully my peas (and whatever grows on it in the future) will be content... When I built my SFG, I installed PVC pipes on the right side before adding the dirt. These will allow me to install the trellis but also allow me to remove the trellis if I don't need it (yay me for planning ahead!).
• Add another set of 2x4's to my salad table - This will increase the soil depth to ~7in. Even though Lettuces have shallow root systems, a single level of 2x4's really only amounts to 3in of settled soil, and I don't think that's enough for growing good lettuce.
• Decrease height of salad table legs - When I built the table, I forgot to account for the added height from the casters so it's pretty, well, leggy right now (har har). It's a good height for working on, but I'd like it to be shorter so it's easier on the eyes.
• (maybe) convert the buckets I received in May to self watering containers (SWCs). This may or may not happen before fall sets in. I was originally planning on making the SWCs for next spring/summer's plants, but I also want more space to grow things now! I may just dump some dirt in a few and see how things grow...
• (maybe) Create removable "hoop house" over one or both raised beds - I'm thinking the hoops can hold either plastic to create an enclosure and extend my season (I don't know if that's really needed here or not), or row cover to protect against bugs.

Pictoral Update

I thought I'd share a pictoral update of the gardening's happenings... The SFG. Currently growing in the back row: spearmint; 3 squares bush beans; 3 squares okra; fresno chili. Front row: cherry tomato; 1/2 a square bush beans; failed carrots; marigold; empty square; okra; failed broccoli; bell pepper. After pulling the broccoli and carrot tops, I'll have 3 empty squares in the front row, but none next to each other. I think I'll leave them empty until the end of September since I don't know what to put in them this late in the game... My last broccoli plant. The one plant in my garden actually enjoying the cool weather we had, and it bolted in yesterday's 95 degree heat. I'll pull it this weekend. My first okra bloom. Sadly, it's already wilting, and won't open. I think it just petered out because of the cool weather... No worries though! See the other buds waiting to open? My third RB. The sweet potatoes are at the back, and I planted the watermelon seedlings this morning. Our plum tree, and a plum DH plucked on Sunday. The plums are really starting to fall off the tree now, so we're going to try getting as many off this weekend as possible. I have NO idea what I'll do with them, so I'll have to look up a few recipes. One of my Yolo pepper plants practically *bursting* with baby peppers now. I found this little guy this morning protecting my beans. Hopefully he'll stick around for a while to eat the aphids and whatever else has been putting holes in my leaves (I suspect grasshoppers). The only thing I saw in his web was an enormous mosquito--but that's a good catch too! Since moving here, I've seen so many different kinds of spiders I'd never seen in VA. I tried to identify him, but I hate hate HATE spiders, and couldn't stand looking at the different pics for long at all before getting all creeped out!