The sowing season; first bush beans sown

Things are moving fast at the moment; seedlings are popping up all over the place; all their heirlooms sown a week or so ago are showing, pretty much close to a 100% germination rate. Everything else in the same tray - white sage, cilantro, summer savory - are also looking strong, except the later sowing of zucchini, which havent shown yet. Yesterday, Mar 16, I sowed 6 pots of Bush Beans "top crop", and from now on, I hope to sow more beans every week or so. Today I'm pre-soaking some "Insuk's Wang Kong" (or, as I fondly call it, "Insuk's Giant Wang"). These are supposedly heat-resistant runner beans, something extremely important here in Almaden Valley. This is just the first wave - I picked out six of the blackest seeds to sow, and will harvest some of these as seed for next year. I'll also keep some of the pinkest ones together and save the pinkest seed from them. No particular reason other than tinkering with evolution.

Everything else is doing well now, the first pea sowing in the allium bed is showing plenty of flowers given the few plants that survived the ?slugs? and even a pod. The first Fava sowing is showing nice flowers now (about a foot high), and the second sowing is several inches high.

I am taking apart the winter compost heap at the moment - everything is unrecognizably black, but its still a little clumpy - and spreading it over the bed by the fence. The worms and rain should take it in, and it will protect the soil somewhat. I'm attempting to convert to no-till, but I'm not convinced on that yet. I'm not a purist though, I'm still digging in some stuff like chicken bones (from stock) to provide phosphates and calcium while avoiding rats etc. Overall, my goal is to make this ground the richest, blackest, most friable topsoil you ever saw, at the same time saving a load of rubbish from the county waste pickup system. I firmly believe that there is a massive crunch coming in terms of civilization, largely tied to the end of peak oil, and that we need to start thinking as locally as possible. Disposing our garbage as close as possible, and harvesting our food as close as possible. Of course, presently there are limits to what is acceptable in the urban environment, so I'm mainly limiting myself to composting grass clipping, street leaves and vegetable trimmings. But the day will come when we no longer discard our own manure and foul up some faraway place with it. Instead, it will be growing massive amounts of great food. I also foresee backyards with chickens and rabbits providing protein and wonderful eggs. Some people in San Francisco are even raising mealworms for human consumption. Like I say, there are limits.

Summer Winds is selling nice square wood planting fixtures, about 5-foot by 5-foot by one foot high that you can fill with soil/compost/etc. for raised beds. They look good, but at $60? $80? (I can't remember) they ain't cheap. The design is simple though, maybe worth building something with wood from Home Depot? The main advantage I suppose is that you dont have to dig - just stick it on the soil and fill.

Sowings, plantings

Last weekend, I sowed (indoors) 3 types of saved tomato seeds from last year; Black Krim, Green Zebra and Yellow potato-leaf brandywine. Also some white sage (also home-saved), Cilantro (I now have three sowings of Cilantro coming up) and Summer Savory. I have never grown summer Savory before, so this will be interesting.
All seeds are now sprouting; the sage and savory were up after about 5 days, and the others are barely poking through today.

Yesterday I bought some tomatoes at the garden center, as I got the sudden feeling that I might be getting behind (I had gone to buy some bush bean seeds). I also found topsy turvy planters in Rite-aid, and bought three given how successful this had been last year (double the crop of a soil-grown twin, easier to pick, and no staking required).

The tomatoes, (planted today from strong small plants) are potato-leaved red brandywine, Black from Tula (Indet.) and potato-leaved yellow brandywine (I really loved this last year, although the tomatoes were few and far between; the fruit were huge and the flavor magnificent).
I'll be picking up some more soon enough. Possibly even a green-zebra, despite my having germinating seed. Next year, I really should sow my tomatoes indoors and early - maybe mid-Jan?

First flowers this week on sugar snap peas (first sowing) and Broad (Fava) Beans (first sowing).

In wild, drought-resistant garden in front, Scilla Siberica flowering, California Poppy about to.

Second broad beans up

About half of the second sowing of Favas are showing today, presumably the rest will follow soon enough. That is about 16 days since they were sown as soaked seeds. The sweet peas sown Feb 5 (a month ago) are poking up as thin spears about an inch high now, and the Cilantro hasnt sprouted (about 2 weeks now, in a container). The broccoli sown also on Feb 5 are still at first-leaf stage and seem to be just sitting there. About a third germinated (and/or survived possible slug attack).
Last week, I put a few boiling onions in a few out of the way spots at the back of the roses - a lazy way to get a few onions later.

I was of course optimistic on the leeks earlier - these really grow slowly, although its great to look out and see something growing besides parsley and self-sown arugula. The peas (both sowings) are doing fairly poorly this year and appear to have germinated poorly. I'm beginning to suspect that if it rains while the seeds are germinating, they dont do as well. Maybe the seeds rot, maybe it forms a hard crust on the soil... Either way, I think I need to find larger packets of seeds to work with.

The garlic and shallots are going gangbusters however, and should do well. The garlic has done most of its growth already and should hopefully be starting to thicken its bulbs.

Finally, the Tom Thumb lettuce has germinated 2 weeks now, but its still pathetically small. Barely at second-leaf stage. I'm not sure if the record heat/record cold has been good for things.