January in the garden - its all about LEAVES

OK, maybe it's not ALL about leaves. You can see some lemons in the background and, thanks to global warming, some nice fresh Serrano chillis in the middle of January in the Bay Area. Its just a shame that my digestive tract doesn't really appreciate these as much as I do.

But now back to the stars of the season - plants that are really difficult in the heat of summer. Plants that love moisture and dont require intense sunshine to prosper. The leaf plants.

We are talking (1) Lettuce - for example, black-seeded Simpson lettuce, very floppy leaves that provide a nice, sweet, bland background to any salad. The color really pops in any garden and livens up the place no end. Go wild - plant them in your winter flower beds for some welcome color.
Here, the green of the lettuce is set against a lovely red-leafed mustard plant. These mustards develop really large leaves - this one is called "Red Giant". Both of these plants were sown in late November, and are now being harvested for the bigger leaves, letting the smaller leaves continue to develop.

The kale in the same  bed is about 2-3 feet high and is at least one year old at this point; when the kale starts looking a little old or about to flower or is insect-infested, I just lop the tops off, and they then sprout fresh from the stump. The plant pictured is now growing on two levels - a head at the top, and a few smaller heads near the base. For crop rotation reasons, I'll probably pull it up this summer, but it looks like it could go on forever. I have about 15 plants here and there in the garden, and I harvest a good bunch every time I feel like cooking it. In between, the plant harvests itself by dropping lower, yellow leaves. My previous attempts with Laciniato kale were rather mixed, but this plain old curly kale seems to do rather well. Or maybe its just the age of the plant. I'm still going to work on the laciniato because I prefer it; one thing is that I'm adding some simple fertilizer to the greens, not just using compost, so that might be some of the improvement. The second is that the soil is getting better as the compost builds up in it. A third reason is that we are in an El Nino, and the garden is getting lots of water right now.

 Here is another batch of kale, some of these are younger and smaller. This is a good example of how I like to plant - close spacings, and mixing different varieties. Here there are kale, chard, onion and fava beans, with some lettuce, mustard, cilantro, chinese celery and parsley here and there. This confuses pests searching for their host plant. Or so they say - its certainly not foolproof. But so far this winter, I have had very few pest problems, perhaps because the insects are in hibernation.

Mushroom Time

 We have finally had some decent rains, and mushrooms are coming up all over. To the left is a Lepista Nuda, the Wood Blewit, a pretty good-tasting edible mushroom. This specimen lacks a lot of the pretty purple color that is found at the base of the stem and in the gills of young specimens. But the cap has that nice light brown, and its growing in a spot that I know produces blewits, so I fried it up. The smell is very earthy, woodsy.

 To the right, we have what I first thought might be a Caesar mushroom - supposedly very good eating, but because I dont know this species, I looked it up. Good thing I did. The Caesar mushroom is an Amanita, like the deadly Death Cap and the red/speckled white fairy-sitting-on-the-top mushroom. Accordingly, it should have been growing out of something looking like an egg (the volva). As you can see, no such stem base existed. A little searching revealed it to be a Hygrocybe

Here it is growing in the lawn. Notice the black stain on the top of the cap, and in the picture above, at the base. If you cut or bruise the stem more (as I did), it turns pretty black. In the picture above, you can also see that the cap is quite slimy, as is the stem, although you cant see this in the picture. These are pretty diagnostic of:


Hygrocybe singeri is essentially a slimy-stemmed version of Hygrocybe conica. Like its more familiar cousin, Hygrocybe singeri discolors black and has a brightly colored, conical cap. But while the stem of Hygrocybe conica is dry or faintly greasy, the stem of Hygrocybe singeri is truly slimy, making it difficult to pick.

Not generally poisonous (although some close cousins might be), but not generally edible. Tossed onto the compost heap.  The common name is "Witch's Hat".

Endless Salads

It has been a good spring so far; this year, I discovered mustard greens. They grow well in winter, make huge leaves, which add spice to salads, and can also be cooked like spinach. I prefer them raw. However, mustard greens is not all I have been eating. The rocket, as usual, is doing well from its self-sowings, and crops of parsley and cilantro are also doing well. All of these seed themselves and look after themselves. The lettuce, of course also did well, but this I tend to block sow in pots, transplant into small posts, and then put into the soil when bigger. I also have a red lacy mustard that looks nice in a salad, and when you put all of the above together, I have been eating a big green salad every day for 2-3 months now.

In this bed, you can see curly kale (blue-green), dill (feathery), mustard greens (light green, rounded leaves), and other salad greens (endive salady thing on the bottom left, black-seeded Simpson lettuce on the top right).  I like to mix the plants like this, because they each take different nutrients from the soil; however, I'm aware that this is not the best thing to do from a crop-rotation perspective.

For those who think that global warming is a myth, you can see I'm harvesting bell peppers in Feb-March. Admittedly, the fruit are not growing much in the winter, but the plants are overwintering nicely outside. I have now re-potted these plants into larger pots, and I'm hoping that as the weather warms up, these plants will resume growth and make even larger plants this year.

Moles.

All winter long, I was wondering what those molehills were; not being native to this area, but to Europe, I would have said they were due to moles if I lived in the UK, but here? They could be anything for all I knew. Gophers, perhaps. Giant termites. Anything.

Anyway, the mystery was solved today, when I caught one accidentally while filling a pot with home-made compost. One of the chunks squeaked and quickly re-buried itself.

So here it is, in all its glory; an Almaden Valley mole.

Moles eat worms, grubs, insects and so on, mainly, so they won't be attacking my plants directly. They will, however, cut down on some pests - grubs, slugs, snails - and till and aerate the soil. So this little new acquaintance went back into the compost pile.

What you see of the tail in the picture is all there is; about an inch. Spade-shaped front paws, big nose. Lovely fur.

Squash Bug Alert!

Alas, the creepy-crawlies are once again beginning their assault on the garden.  Squash bugs infest, as you might have guessed, members of the squash family, to wit, Zucchini. Also pumpkin, but that's not a big problem for me because I don't grow pumpkins.

The life cycle of the squash bug is basically to come out of hiding when the Zucchini plants start to flower, lay loads of small coppery oval eggs in the wedges between the veins on the underside of the leaves, which then hatch into a load of absurd lime-green pinheads with black legs, which then molt into grey things, and then become the black thing you see pictured above, all in about 6-8 weeks. At which point they mate, restart the cycle, and any bugs that make it to adulthood by early fall then scurry away and hide in the underbrush until next spring/summer.

If you manage to kill all the adults at the start of the season, you should hopefully get a pretty good start on nipping the problem in the bud, or at least until the next generation flies in from the neighbor's.

Last week, I saw two mating on my plants for the first time, then the next day I found about 15, then 2, then 1, and today, none. So I would guess that right now is a good idea for people in Almaden Valley to be checking their Zucchini plants for these bugs.

The simplest way to find them is to water the plants in a decent shower; the bugs then like to climb the stems to get away from the water at ground level, and you get to see them more easily on the stems and under the leaves, and their movement helps too.  They are easily killed, and the name "squash bug" finds a double entendre in my garden. I have read that watering the plants with water including squashed bugs helps to repel others, but I have also read that you shouldn't squash the bugs because they release a pheromone that attracts more.  While it is true that they stink (I find it a slightly pleasant smell, but I can understand how others might consider it a "stink" bug), I have no idea if this affects populations. In the end, I decided that attracting more is not a bad thing, because it means I get to squash more of the population in the area at once. But the jury is out as to whether it makes any difference. If you don't like squashing, just drown in soapy water.

However, it is CRUCIAL to not let these breed. Once they breed, you have hundreds of these larvae things running everywhere, and these bugs kill the plants as they lacerate and block juice tubes in the plant. The leaves wither and die, and finally, the last few Zucchini are covered in these pests. So act with haste and pre-emption. Inspect your plants now, kill the adults, then continue to inspect the leaf undersides for masses (about 25 in each) of coppery eggs, and squash or cut these out and destroy. For now, every time you water the plants, look closely at the plants immediately after and look for these bugs.

My Zucchini season started today, when I picked a fairly small one. It didn't seem to be growing rapidly, maybe because it wasn't fully pollinated, or maybe because the plants don't have enough energy yet, so I just broke it off and ate it. I see more following. Cherry tomato, blackberry and apricot seasons are also at their start right now. So far, its only the early outliers, but it harbinges well. Is that even a word? Harbinges? If there is a harbinger, it must harbinge, right?

Free Potatoes

 

Last winter, a few potatoes in the bag were growing sprouts, so I thought, "Hey, why not throw these in the garden and see what they do". Not only are potatoes relatively easy to grow, but they help to clear the ground of weeds; however, my main though was simply filling some empty space, adding a little crop rotation, and seeing how well they would do in this climate.

At the start of May, the haulms (stems) were looking limp and fallen over, so I thought I'd have a look and see how the potatoes were doing underneath. Imagine my surprise when I found about 5 decent spuds under each one. Thats a 500% return in about 5 months - not bad.

Of course potatoes are cheap in the grocery store, which is why I never really bothered with them until now, but there are several advantages of growing them yourself; 

First, when I buy potatoes in the grocery store, I usually eat more than I want to simply because I dont want to waste them before they go green/bad/sprout. Even then, I usually end up throwing out the last few. Having them in the garden means I can harvest just as many as I need, leaving the rest in the ground for later, so there is no waste. 

Second, the potatoes I harvest are new potatoes, which you cant get in the stores here, other than perhaps as a specialty item, for which you pay through the nose.

So for those in the Almaden Valley and similar climates near here, I'd recommend growing potatoes as follows:

(1) In Winter - anytime in November, December, January, February - if you find any potatoes sprouting in your store-bought bag, simply dig a hole in the garden, about 4-6 inches deep, and throw the potato into it and re-cover. 

(2) If you have compost (not fancy stuff, just stuff from the compost pile that is reasonably rotted), throw over the surface when you are done. This is just a convenient time to be adding compost anyway, because you're not meddling too much with plants on the surface in winter.

(3) Plant more potatoes as they become available, until you have one for every 2-person meal you're likely to want, each about a foot away from the other. Allow about a foot and a half on either side as the stems will probably fall on top of anything growing there.

(4) If you want, you can plant other winter crops in between while the potatoes get going; you should be able to get a crop of lettuce in, for example, before the potatoes smother them.

(5) Harvest from the end of April onwards, as needed in the kitchen. Remember to throw the stems on the compost pile.

(6) As long as you dont grow too many and keep growing them in the same location, year after year, you probably shouldnt get too many diseases/pests showing up. It also helps to interplant with other crops. I had some spring onions, lettuce and parsley mixed in with mine (and the bed is bounded by herbs like lemon balm and oregano).

For 5 minutes work and kitchen waste, you get a meal for 2 of great-tasting potatoes.

Potatoes should also grow well in an old compost pile if you want to let it rot down a little longer or in buckets filled with just-finished compost; they are fairly greedy feeders, so they can handle younger compost than other plants, probably.

In terms of garden management, potatoes work well with compost and/or manure in starting off the crop rotation cycle, in improving the condition of the soil. By growing them in winter, there shouldnt be too many problems in water requirements either.

Catching up

Alas, I've been very slack in writing this blog last year, so here is a quick summary of last years highlights; First, I largely abandoned the ground gardening last year, simply because it takes so much water, I never do enough watering, and so the plants never do that well; also, all the beds are part-shaded. Of course its hard for me to waste ground, so I did put some stuff in here and there anyway, but I focused most of my gardening into bucket gardening. These buckets were filled with a mix of composts, soil, including the home-made compost from the previous winter. The best part; I get to move the buckets into the middle of the lawn (pretty much bare earth in summer here) so they get lots of light, and I even get to move them around to catch the sun if needed. Each bucket got punched with a nail several times so they drained, and then were planted. Most buckets last year got one or another tomato variety, and most did well, although there was an issue with a garden rat picking off all the early tomatoes until I filled the bite marks with ghost chili sauce. After trying to pick around the sauce for a while, eventually the rat gave up. It also helped that I found where he hid out during the day and hosed the place out. But all told, the rat probably got about 30 tomatoes or more. Possibly he was using the tomatoes as a water source, so one of my strategies was to leave a water source in a corner of the garden so he had a choice. I also noticed that he ate into my recycling plastic bottles, again looking for water. I really dont mind pests taking a little here and there, but when I lose almost every tomato for a few weeks after months of caring for them, it gets a bit much. Into the buckets also went basil, lettuce, eggplants and cucumber; these had very few problems; rats apparently dont like cucumbers, possibly because the leaves are rough and hairy. The crop wasnt massive (I only had 2 plants), but it gave a good enough show, so I'll definitely be growing some again this year, maybe different varieties. Last year I got cucumbers that were more like dill pickles. The one problem that these shared with the eggplants was that both tended to be bitter, so some were OK, others not. It turns out that the standard "black beauty" eggplant has to be picked quite young and gets bitter very quickly. Now that I've worked out eggplant growing - in containers in full sun - its time to try other varieties and see if I can find some that are inclined to be less bitter. The Zucchini crop this year wasnt great, at least in part because I wasnt growing so much in the ground; the ones in the buckets didnt produce as much, and there were fewer plants than last year. I guess this year I need to go back to growing zucchini in the ground; the ground continues to get better with all the compost thats going in, together with the occasional buried fish guts and whatnot. The topsy-turvy tomato containers were as good this year as usual (and safe from the rat), but once again I've lost a couple of containers because they really rot quickly (despite their claims to be reusable for many years). I've got other hanging containers this years, right-side up ones, but I dont suppose that will make much of a difference as the plants will tumble over the edge. The grapevine did very well last year, with about 30 bunches of grapes; I thinned these out a lot, by about half, then harvested the others fairly early to make about a liter of white wine, which so far smells a little yeasty, but I'm hoping this will go away in time. I'm hoping that this harvest didnt damage the vine, because they warn against taking early crops, but the vine was quite big, and I harvested early, so there should have been a lot of nutrients going back to the roots. It's also got a lot of soil to itself. I pruned the vine back around new years, cutting most of the side growths off, and knocking some of the leaders back. Cleaned out the pomegranate a little at the same time. Next post, I'll discuss how the winter crops are doing.