Garden Update | The Organic Sister

March’s Garden Update

March 30, 2009 By TheOrganicSister 15 Comments

The weather has fluctuated so much over the past few weeks, none of our plants seem to know what to think. We’ve had highs of 85 and lows of 43. The wind has been hellacious several times this month, including yesterday and today, leaving much of our yard a mess and several damaged plants (mostly snapdragon’s and broccoli).

The spinach I planted last month is very healthy and getting bushier every day. We harvested some for sandwiches the other night. The broccoli is rather pathetic and struggles with the fluctuating temperatures. The bottom inch of some of the stems dried out after transplanting, leaving them fairly brittle and susceptible to the high winds (up to 50 mph yesterday!). They are still growing and are about 7-8 inches tall (the tallest ones are the ones with brittle stems…??) but I’m certain I won’t get anything other than their greens before they finally bolt. I’m looking forward to trying these again in the fall and overwintering them. I’ll direct sow them in hopes they won’t become brittle near the soil line again. I don’t know what caused that or why it only caused it in some of them.

Our sunflowers are coming up. It took nearly two weeks for most of them to sprout. Even though the temps were warm enough, the current position of the sun keeps our yard shaded for much of the day, so the soil temps didn’t get as warm as quickly. We also have one bush bean coming up and several of something that could be a weed or could be alyssum. I really need to add photos of each of my plants in various stages to my (newly created) garden book.

This also sprouted recently. I have no idea what it is but since it doesn’t look like a weed, we’re letting it grow for now. Any guesses?

In the front yard and hopefully working on coming up is: nasturtiums, marigold, Scarlet Emperor runner beans, Yard Long pole beans, Tendergreen bush beans, German Chamomile, Japenese Hullless Popcorn, Straight Eight and Snow’s Fancy Pickling cucumbers, California black-eyed peas, sunflowers (Mammoth, Big Head, Funky, Ornamental Mix), and Rouge Vif D’Etampes and Howden pumpkins. We have a bunch more to plant but I’m waiting until I see things come up and fill in before confusing myself further. Note to self: Use plant markers.

Our fruit trees are mostly covered in small leaves at this point. We’ve wrapped their trunks in cardboard for the time being while I debate the merits and risks of painting them white to protect from sunscald. These are the buds on the Fuji apple tree.

Of my indoor summer seedlings, the following germinated: 3 of 4 Pineapple tomatoes, 4 of 4 Jellybean tomatoes, 7 of 8 Amish Paste, 5 of 8 Brandywines,3 of 8 Mortgage Lifters, 3 of 8 Romas, 4 of 4 Jalapenos, 3 of 4 bell peppers, 1 of 4 Eggplant. ZERO of my strawberries germinated making me dislike this indoor seed starting mess even more.

Our irrigation hoses kept popping off their adaptors and wasting unmentionable amounts of water, so we used zip ties to hold them on. We’re still trying to adjust the watering times to the front yard. We either end up too dry too quickly or with water runoff on the sidewalk. The back yard (trees and raised beds) seem to be doing well, although the surface is drying too quickly to hope to start seeds outdoors in them. But I’m still determined to figure out a way to not start any more seeds indoors.

I’m soaking up garden updates where I can despite the fact that most other bloggers aren’t quite near planting yet (have one for me to read?). I can’t wait until I have some really exciting photos to share – like a front yard that shows more than dirt, or a Boston Ivy creeping up my column. Or lots and lots of food.

Will this wind ever stop?

Filed Under: Organic Living Tagged With: Backyard Orchard, food not lawns, garden update, locavore, Raised Beds, seeds

The good. The bad. The ugly.

January 16, 2009 By TheOrganicSister 2 Comments

The ugly would be the state of our yard right now. Scrap wood in piles, giant holes dug for the trees. Concrete found in our old beds (what the heck?!?!) now lying in the grass. Tree branches in heaps by the wall. It’s a mess. But my friend Rachel says it looks busy, like stuff is happening, so I’ll go with that.

The good would be the irrigation guy that came this morning. Cliff Wood is not only an organic gardener and irrigation installer, he also knows his trees and he’s cool enough to teach me what to do. Yup. He told me everything needed and how to put it together. He essentially saved me over a grand of labor costs.

And then there’s the bad. Oh, that nasty bad news that seems to infiltrate our every home project, that is uncovered with every turn of the corner. It’s never-ending and seemingly inevitable. If we have something to do, we now plan for the bumps. Where to start…

Our raised beds were made with scrap wood and 4×4 blocks to reinforce the corners. Those 4×4 blocks were treated with arsenic-something-or-other. Not. Good. So the beds will need to be redone. Also the railroad ties that were in the backyard and were relocated to the front yard in hopes of terracing the slope need to be removed for the same reason. Freecycle, here we come.

The other big issue is the number of valves we have for the front and back yard and the number we actually need. We’ll (I’ll) be adding at least 3 more valves to the front and back, which means moving my newly-built 3 bin composter and digging up the existing valves. They also need pressure-regulators and filters.

And then the trees. I knew from the tree inspection we had last month that the existing trees were touch and go. Ash trees grown in grass and with sprinklers create shallow roots. Switching over to Netafim puts the trees at risk. We’ve got a 50/50 chance of losing both trees in the next few years. Not only that but the rootball of these trees is twisted, something I learned is an epidemic of sorts in the U.S. and creates problems down the road. He also thinks we might have an issue with the sheet mulching we did, although I think he’s just unfamiliar with sheet mulching.

So there ya have it. I may be hand-watering for awhile while I retrofit a sprinkler sytem into a Netafim system.

After doing some thinking, I am going to look further into clay pot irrigation (olla pronounced OH-ya) for my raised beds. They essentially are clay pots, filled with water and planted under the soil. Dry soil pulls the water out and irrigates the plants. After i look into it further, I’ll post more details.

Oh. That To Do list I posted? I think I’ll be extending that another week. It looks like my weekend will be used up installing irrigation valves.

Filed Under: Organic Living Tagged With: food not lawns, garden update, Irrigation, locavore, Raised Beds

Tree Update

October 7, 2008 By TheOrganicSister 1 Comment

Our tree inspection was today and the news was fair. Both our trees are doing okay, although they do have a mild case of Bacterial Wetwood. Thankfully, this is not something that necessarily kills the tree and it has no treatment. Basically we just need to trim the trees up a bit and support healthy growth. However, our ash trees probably won’t be sustained more than another decade. Why in the world people in the 80′s and 90′s thought it was a good idea to plant things that don’t belong in our climate is beyond me. But it’s such great shade for us during the summer, keeping our rooms much cooler. I hope to keep it going for awhile longer.

The tree guy did tell me it is his opinion that our outbreak of spiders is a great sign of a healthy eco-system. Sure buddy. You want’em?

We haven’t yet decided on getting the professional soil test, but we were reassured that the canker from the removed trees will not reside in the soil and planting new trees is safe. Budget willing, we may actually get those trees in this…er, decade. Yeah, money’s tight and we may not be putting them in this season after all. We’ll see, though. I do believe in miracles, ya know!

Filed Under: Organic Living Tagged With: food not lawns, garden update, locavore, trees

We’ve got the canker!

October 2, 2008 By TheOrganicSister 2 Comments

:sigh:

Now that we have time to do so, focusing on our backyard has opened my eyes to how much work we have to do back there. It’s in pitiful shape, folks. And all I keep wondering is how I didn’t notice the extent of it before.

Our goal after removing the non-bearing fruit trees was to mulch it all with hopes of using or donating it. Well, that ain’t happenin’ now. As it turns out all of them had Cytospora Canker. (Nasty picture huh?) Silly me just assumed that trees ooze sap on occasion. Don’t they? So I guess I’ve solved the question of why these trees wouldn’t produce fruit. Now comes the exciting job of hauling many truckloads of tree debris them to the dump, the last place I wanted it to end up.

So then I started thinking about our other trees and wondering just had badly our yard has been neglected by us and its previous owners. Turns out the front tree looks great but the last one left in the backyard…erm, not so hot. Dieback, lots of pealing bark. Oy.

What’s wrong with our backyard? Diseased trees, areas where nothing will grow, other areas that just barely sustain life. We don’t have these issues out front; what is going on back there? We’ve scheduled a tree inspection and they said they can also order an expert soil test if it’s warranted. I hope that gives us some answers.

So I don’t know if we’ll still be planting those fruit trees this season or if we’ll be putting it off. Depending on the problem we find back there, will we even be able to finish our conversion before spring planting or maybe just get the new fruit trees in the ground? Maybe this is a blessing in disguise, telling us to divert our attentions to the front yard – you know, the half-finished fence I’m sure our neighbors are tired of looking at (and everyone is tired of reading about), the sheet mulching, the 645 sq ft of garden space to design and plant. I mean, it’s not as if we don’t have plenty else to do, right?

Filed Under: Organic Living Tagged With: food not lawns, garden update, locavore, trees

My garden grows!

June 19, 2008 By TheOrganicSister Leave a Comment

Homegrown tomatoes
Originally uploaded by OrganicSister

My first harvest of tomatoes! So far I’ve gathered about 15 tomatoes from 8 tomato plants. A few had cracks, but none other than 2 previous fruits had blossom end rot.

And these are the best dang tomatoes we’ve ever had! I’m definitely planting more next year, and am debating starting a few seedlings now that I can plant in a few months. Space may be an issue, but since a few things have given up in the heat, I’ll see if tomatoes can rotate with their old space.

My cucumber has been crawling more and more with several blossoms. I’m not sure when to start expecting to see actual cukes but the heat doesn’t seem to be deterring their growth so far.

Or grapevine is a pathetic sight. Although I’ve always seen grapevines on walls, ours seem to not be handling the heat very well. I actually think it’s a combo between the heat, the outbreak of the dreaded grape leaf skeletonizer (sounds ominous, huh?) and our drip system possibly not dripping correctly. I think I’m going to redo a lot of our irrigation in the fall.

We’ve been doing a lot of garden planning. I spent hours creating a properly scaled blueprint of our yard to play with and found we have over 2,000 square feet to play with! Some of that is patio space but will be filled up with pots and containers. Part of that is in our tortoise habitat but they eat many of the same things we can eat (the grape leaves but not the grapes and hollyhocks or other flowers), so we plan to incorporate some of their land into multi-purpose plantings.

I purchased the book “How To Grow More Vegetables” from PeddlersWagon.com and have been reading when I can. I’m excited to get started and am pacing myself as well as I can. But with all this space at my disposal, I’m very excited to get started!

And! Did you know you can plant eight – EIGHT! – fruit trees in a 10ft by 20ft space? That’s four fruit trees, in one hole, spaced about 18 inches apart from each other, five feet apart from an identical hole and trimmed to remain small. Our one large plum tree is taking up more than that and producing less! Being that it is not doing well and is leaning over so much, we are considering taking it out and replacing it with eight new trees. I’d hate to lose the shade, but productivity is topping my priorities right now. And eight varieties, rather than one, sounds sooo good.