Growing along - late July

Everything is going really well. The compost tea seems to be working. The plants are getting really big and tall. There is a level of learning involved during every season of growing. No two seasons the same, no two years alike. Every year, some new shit goes down that didn't happen last year.

Last year, my plants did not get too large and they did not produce as much as I would have liked. I had somewhat of a pest problem and the plants were kind of malnourished because I refuse to use chemicals, but had not figured out a really good organic fertilizer yet. I think compost tea has solved that problem for me this year.

This year, my plants are 4x larger, healthier, greener, thicker trunks, but what amazes me most of all is lack of pest infestation I have experienced this year. Granted, I moved, maybe I left them all behind. Maybe they haven't discovered my garden yet. Or maybe my compost tea has made my plants wax (like human skin) so thick and healthy that those buggers can't even bite through it! Who knows, but I like it. I'm not saying this year has been incident free..... I lost 3 tomato plants to blossom drop...a disease that is a result of sweltering heat. Not much I can do about that. Makes me glad I'm not a really real farmer, I really feel for them. They can't control the weather any more than I can, and they can lose their whole livelihood.

Here is a look at how we are growing along.

Peas reached the top of the latter

Arugula, ROUND 2

Tomatoes, now 6 feet tall, 3 on left not producing due to blossom drop.

Zucchini, Cucumber, Summer Squash, Watermelon patch

Beautiful Zucchini Blossom (iPhone you still take my breath away)

Watermelon!

Kohlrabi

Eggplant blossoms

Radishes are 4x bigger than last years leaves. Almost no pest damage.

Heirloom stand alone

Pumpkin Patch gets bigger every day

Baked Zucchini for Desert

The first Zucchini that we harvested was far to large to eat as a steamed vegtable, so we gutted it and stuffed it with goodness. That's my pastry chef workin' it at home. Desert included the following ingredients in no measured out order:

Butter
Cinnamon
Streusel
Walnuts 


Baked at 375 for 30 minutes of so.

Yum!

Orchards in Bloom

Since we moved to the new house, our fruit orchard has grown leaves, bloomed and given us fruit. We were not sure what one of the trees were at first, but we are going with Pluot now that we have tasted the fruit. We also have a grafted walnut tree on the property. A sweet plum tree and a pomegranate tree hang over our back fence from the neighbors yard as well, lucky us! No pomegranates or walnuts yet....

Pluot tree on right, English Walnut tree (branches) on left

Yummy Pluot

Filling in the holes

The patches of dirt left bare between the seedlings are beginning to fill with new life as the baby plants stretch out their new arms to compete for the sunlight. Watching a garden grow is such a rewarding experience for me. Every morning, I walk down my back steps, let Stella out, and examine all the growth that took place the night before. Then I go to work. When I return, I water the plants that look stressed from the heat of that day using Stella's pond water and examine the changes that took place that day. Maybe over the course of the week visitors may see some differences, but to the gardener, we see them every day and night. 

 The Zucchini plant is healthy and has gotten huge. I had to take down the little white picket fence aka "duck barrier" in front of the plant because this huge Zucchini grew right into it. Technically, you should not let your zucchinis get this big because they become fibrous and woody, less juicy and not as sweet, however, we are going to let this one go, and go, and go, and see how big we can get it. We might make zucchini bread, or a roasted zucchini boat out of it. We have plenty of others that we will be eating. It was a good thing I tool the picket fence down when I did, because it's been growing an inch a day.

The zucchini leaves get bigger every day

Remember the first pics of it??

Watermelon vines

Flowering cucumbers and summer squash

 I don't really know what is going on with the leaf at the very bottom on the pic below. It seems to be a healthy green leaf, but the veins are turning white. To me this indicates a deficiency, a disease, or a pest. I'm going to do more research to find out what it is. We did just have a heat wave, so I'm hoping it was just the result of extreme heat, but it might be low in iron or something.

Cucumbers, one with white vein (bottom)

Kohlrabi

There are a lot of advantages to successive planting. Unfortunately I do not do it as often as I would like. The nice thing about successive gardening or planting, is that not all your crops mature at the same time. It is the best way for a home gardener to have a continual harvest, its just hard to remember. I also have a hard time hold back on seeding my entire plot!

Below is a pic of my radish crop that I am successively seeding. I planted some 1 month ago, and the others 1 week ago, and I still have some fallow dirt.

Successive planting of radishes 

My worm bin, started last year sometime

My little red friends

More worms in the bin

My pumpkin patch 

Stella loving her new pond, she gets in herself 

Midget melon flowering, can't wait for this one

Huge tomato vines

Like, huge, like probably 5 feet

GARLIC!!!

Laura's red onions

Bolting lettuce. I need to eat this stuff.

Peas Starting to climb

4th of July on the Urban Farm

It's been really hot in the Bay Area the last couple of weeks, with the exception of a cloud burst system which made a cameo mid-last-week. When I say hot for the Bay Area, that is anything above 80 degrees. This is hot even for plants and can damage them sometimes if it gets too hot, especially if you are not diligent with watering. I seem to have an issue with "blossom drop", a common symptom of the plant overheating in the summertime. Simply put, the blossoms drop off at the elbow, instead of turning into tomatoes. Unfortunately, there is not a whole hell of a lot you can do about this since we can't control the weather.

My mulch has been proving helpful in retaining soil moisture, although I haven't been able to mulch the rest of my seedlings, because they aren't big enough. As a result,  some of them are drying out because they are so tiny and fragile, only the strong shall survive.

Here are a few pictures of the property and how far it's come since we've moved in. We finally sank Stella's pond into the ground and got a filter, fountain and some pond plants. The best part of my day is looking out our kitchen window to watch our duck get in her new pond and take a nice afternoon bird bath.

Side yard

Stella pond+side yard+garage+house

Stella's duck house, and today's egg

4th of July Stella egg

My beautiful sunflower that a squirrel planted for me

Yummy Strawberries coming into season

Pond and duck house

Side yard beds

Wilted radishes in the afternoon sun, they come back to life every night.

Daryl brought home the kiddie pool, I didn't complain.