Completed "side yard"

A bit sparse but they tell me it will fill in around 6 weeks. Water daily for 2 weeks then once a week after. Looks nicer :-)

Fall is here .. what's happening?

It's time to pull up summer vegetables: tomatoes, peppers, squash, corn. I am trying to work on that this weekend but who knows how much I will get done. In the meantime, there's this sore thumb in our yard -- I will refer to it as the side yard. This area was once part of the chicken run which was removed after we lost a hen in a raccoon attack. (The hens are all safe now in a fully-secured coop that is behind the lemon tree...)

So we have a team of garden personnel who will be here to take care of this issue today -- they tell me if they start now it will be done by 7:30pm TONIGHT.

It has been a while...

Since my last update. Here's the garden on Sunday, August 30.

And the girls are all grown up -- well, almost. They're about 3 and a half months old now and, generally, will start laying at 4-6 months. Hopefully there will be fresh eggs in September.

I needed soaker hoses....

The garden is so lush that it needs a bit more water than before. I have been spending a lot of time watering (30-45 minutes each day) so I installed soaker hoses to cut my watering time down. Now I just have to go out, turn on the water (low) and walk away for a few hours.

For about $30, I invested in 2 soaker hoses (25' and 75') and some duct tape to set it up in the garden. We had a hose splitter so I was able to direct the water to the 2 soaker hoses from a single hose connector point. (I used saran wrap and duct tape to "seal" the soaker hoses in sections where I did not want it to weep.)

Here are some photos of the garden from today.

3 Broccoli crowns -- a 4th and 5th are forming as well. We'll have too much broccoli at once so we'll be giving it away. Next time, I will stagger by 1 or 2 weeks between each plant!

Purple Podded Pole Beans

Costoluto Genovese (Heirloom) tomato cluster

Tumbling Tom (red cherry) tomatoes

2 types of Bush Green Beans: Blue Lake and Early Contender

Speckly, Buffy and Red - they're about 6 weeks old now.

Noah is proud of our first "big" carrot harvest.

The Garden at 7am on Wed, Jun 17

Here is the garden as taken by Yoel's Blackberry. Fruit/vegetable production is up. We've harvested more green beans, snap peas, lots of spinach (although we've yet to eat any of it), a few fingerling carrots and some basil.

The tomatoes are starting to set! I've counted at least 10 baby Costoluto Genoveses (heirlooms), a few Tumbling Tom (red cherry) tomatoes, a single Chico III (a roma/paste tomato) and tons of blossoms on the other tomatoes: Blondkopfchen (yellow cherry), Green Zebra, Chudo Rinka and what I think is a Ponderosa Pink tomato plant. I also put into the ground: Giant Belgium, Black Cherry and Baby Beefsteak tomatoes.

Cayenne Pepper and Serrano Chili plants look like they are ready to flower soon. Early Jalapeno and Orange Habanero are a bit slower, but catching up.

3 Broccoli heads have started to form. They heads are currently the size of a half dollar. The other 2 plants should be close behind, but if not, that's ok! I'd like to have the harvest spaced out a bit. Next time, I'll plant them a week or two apart.

CANTALOUPE: 1 Cantaloupe has put out several flowers. The other 2 look like they are starting to develop flowers.

CUCUMBERS: We have 6 thriving Cucumber plants. I'm not sure how many cucumbers to expect but perhaps this many is too many for our family. We shall see. They've started to flower and are putting out tendrils, so I've set up a short garden barrier around their squares to encourage them to climb. This should help keep the cukes off the ground.

BEANS: The first planting of beans did not produce nearly enough for our hungry, green bean-loving family so I planted another huge crop of beans a few weeks ago all at the same time. 1 square of Blue Lake Bush Beans were planted about 1 month ago. They have taken off and are starting to crowd out the neighboring squares. I also put in (about 2 weeks later after the single square of Blue Lake Bush Beans):

1 square (9 plants) - Queen Anne Sugar Snaps
2 squares (18 plants) - Contender Bush Beans
2 squares (18 plants) - Legend Bush Beans
2 squares (18 plants) - Purple Podded Pole Beans. I've just added stakes around these squarse so that beans can start climbing up.
2 squares (18 plants) - "Edible Friend" Soybeans. Only about half of these came up so I just replanted the spots where the plants had not emerged with more soybeans.

ZUCCHINI: The zucchini plant looks to be developing at least 3 zucchinis at the moment. I'm curious to find out how this plays out. Does the zuke plant just keeping cranking out the zukes until it gets too cold? Or, does it produce for a few months and then die? I don't know but I suppose I could google it...

I was tired of looking at the empty squares so I decided to fill in the rest of them in with eggplant and peppers. I put 2 Black Beauty Eggplants, 3 Sweet Italian Peppers, and 2 "unknown" eggplants into the open squares. The "unknowns" came from a package of Burpee seeds -- I actually do know what kind they are but they're one of any 4 different varieties that came in that package.

First baby tomatoes spotted!

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Sun, May 31: First green bean harvest

This may not look like much but they came from our garden! These are the first of the 9 Blue Lake Bush Beans that were put into the ground on March 28. There are about 2 or 3 times this many beans left on the same plants. I've also followed the advice on the seed package which advises that we should plant a subsequent crop. There are now 8 new squares of green beans growing and another 2 squares of a soybean variety called "Beer Friend."

There were actually enough from this harvest to make a nice dinner for the family. Yoel made a minced beef, basil (also picked fresh from the garden) and green beans dish that we ate over rice. Yummy. Green beans fresh picked from the garden. Wow!

May 27: The Garden is Blooming

Urban Chickens

I think that every victory garden should have some chickens so that's why I'm adding them to this blog. We decided to pick up some baby chicks this weekend. It was pretty last minute so I didn't have anything on hand to deal with them -- so I made due. I started with a laundry basket as a makeshift brooder then worked up to a shipping box. The bedding is shredded paper and newspaper. I only had to buy the feeder and waterer bases ($2.99 and $1.99, respectively) and was able to use them with some existing quart mason jars (from Spaghetti sauce.) The rest of the stuff I had on hand: clip-on desk lamp and thermometer to keep track of the temperature in the brooder. The desk lamp has a 40-watt bulb which gets warm but not burning hot.

The chicks cost $4.50 each and are supposed to be 95% pullets (hens) -- I decided on 4 different varieties. I also picked up 10-lbs. of chick starter crumbles ($6.50). Yes, that price is expensive for chicks if you ask me....


Here's the first one. She's first because she's the largest -- I'm guessing at least 2 weeks old. The guy at the feed store said 1 week but I'm positive now that he doesn't know what he's talking about when it comes to chickens. This one is a Black Australorp that will give us big, brown eggs.


Here's #2. She's number 2 because she's the 2nd biggest one. I guess she's about a week old. She's a Plymouth Barred Rock. Great self-sufficient laying bird who will look a bit like a checkered black and white chicken. She'll lay brown eggs, I think.


Here's #3. Yeap, she's a tiny bit bigger than #4. She's a Red Sex Link (or Red Star). The chicks are a hybrid of 2 breeds where you can tell by the color of the chick's down whether its a pullet or cockerel. The pullets are buff/brown and the cockerels are yellow for this variety. Brown egg layer.


And finally, here's #4. She's a really cute Buff Orpington. Another brown egg layer.

All brown egg layers. I was getting tired of white eggs anyway.

Thu, May 14: Garden Shots

Remember This?

















The Blue Lake Bush Beans are flowering.

















Broccoli in the foreground with my mini-coldframes over them. They work great to keep the plants from being knocked over by the occasional strong wind.

























Sugar Snap Peas.






















Monster Zucchini

Hanging Strawberries -- lots of 'em

FUNDRAISER PLANT SALE -- THIS WEEKEND!

Mother's Day: Sunday, May 10

One of these days I'll take a picture with our "real" camera. We've been gone for a week on vacation and the growth in the garden was very dramatic (for me) since I wasn't tending to it daily. Everything has taken off in the week that we were gone.

Zucchini is the large monster plant in the lower right. It gets 9 square feet but I grow some quick crops - like radishes- around it to maximize the use of space.)

The white bowls you see in the upper right are recycled instant noodle bowls with the center punched out for light to come through. They were used to help the Bell Peppers and a few other plants adjust since I planted them direct from grow center into the ground without hardening. This method works VERY WELL!!! I'm extremely please and I'll post something about that in the near future. I may need to distribute these bowls with the plants that I sell next weekend since I'm not sure if I will be able to harden any of them before the sale.

In the lower left corner, there is a single square of green bush beans. The radishes in that square had already been harvested a few weeks prior. I'm saving that corner for the eggplant and peppers that are in the grow center. I think it is about time to move them into the ground soon.

Hanging Strawberry Bags, anyone?

I planted these hanging strawberry bags about a month ago and here they are hanging from our fence. These are green poly-vinyl grow bags that can be used to grow flowers (and strawberries) that I filled with potting soil. There are 8 holes along one side/face of the bag in which I put a strawberry plant in each hole -- and then a ninth plant goes in at the very top (opening used to fill the bag with soil.) Tonight we returned from a week long vacation and found that several plants have started to flower. We will have lots of strawberries this summer!

No Habanero for you!

I was recently contacted by my seed distributor that there were complaints that the Orange Habanero seeds were duds. I looked in the germination chamber and sure enough -- they were! Drat! This means there will most likely NOT be any Habanero Plants for the sale. At least we'll still have Serrano Chili, Cayenne Pepper and Jalapenos.














On another note, the corn kernels I planted last week (exactly last week on Tuesday morning) have emerged! 3 corn seedlings -- and I am waiting for the 4th one to break through. Gosh, I hope he makes it to join his brothers. (Corn plants are boys to me for some reason.)

Our first vegetable in 2009: White tip sparkler radish!

Maybe this is getting a little out of hand?

Actually, I've got it all under control. Almost all of these plants (tomatoes, eggplant, peppers, oh my!) are being grown for a Preschool Fundraiser (date to be determined -- sometime mid-May?) I think that's about perfect timing for our area of San Francisco without having to fret too much about the occasional chilly day/evening. Unfortunately, a lot of the big name stores are already putting out these plants for sale and the temps are NOT quite there yet in most parts of NorCal, at least not for warm weather crops like tomatoes, peppers and eggplant. If you're waiting to buy plants to transplant (in NorCal), wait a little longer. There won't be any shortage of transplants to buy at the nurseries.

Status: Sunday, April 5 (21 days later...)

The first seeds went into the ground on March 14. Today, about 3 weeks later, there is visible progress. A point I want to make is that those "DTM" numbers on the seed package, which usually indicates days to mature fruit (or days to harvest) are typically wrong -- I think what they mean is days to maturity from the point the seedlings are above ground or from the point the seedling is tranplanted outdoors. Unfortunately, that first 2-3 weeks waiting for the seedling to emerge does not count!

Albino Pepper Seedling - an abomination?

This is an albino "California Wonder" Bell Pepper seedling that I have been nurturing since March 18. I learned today that it is an abomination that will not survive as it lacks the ability to produce chlorophyll (why most plants/leaves are green.)

And here are its 3 other siblings already outgrowing it. Poor guy; he is doomed.