Dove nesting in Robin nest

The nest wasnt even cold before a dove took up residence:


And here is a picture of the tomato bed by the fence (compare with spring photo April 3). The tomatoes arent as large as I'd like, some I have seen in tubs recently are monstrous. So I gave them a dose of fertiliser. I like to make them work a little, and keep the place somewhat organic, so they dont get as much as most would.

Runner bean suggestion

I dont like copying others' posts, but as I'm using this blog as my garden notebook, I cant think of a better place to put it. So apologies for duplicating content, but here goes:
"I like to hedge my bets and plant both scarlet runners and kentucky wonders. That way, during the hot spell, the kentucky wonders go wild with production, while the scarlet runners don't like the weather, and by the time it cools down, the scarlets are taking off just as the kentuckies stop producing. and if we have a really hot summer, I get armloads of kentucky wonders to make up for the paltry harvest of runners; if we have a cool rainy summer, kentucky wonders don't produce, but the scarlet runners go crazy."

Picture: Robins just about to fly the nest. Next week, a dove took over the nest!

Scarlet Runner Beans in the Almaden Valley

Having experience form Europe of huge crops with runner beans, I thought I'd try these this year after a particularly disappointing experience last year with Kentucky Pole Beans. The last couple of weeks I have had lots of beautiful red flowers - this is one of the more ornamental veggies - but no pods are forming. So once again I trawl the internet, to find that its simply too hot here. To quote: "blossoms will drop - regardless of pollination - until day temps drop into the 70's"
So I can basically write this off for a couple of months. Perhaps thats why my Kentucky Pole Bean crop was so lousy last year, and further reading lets me know thats certainly why my Fava beans stopped setting beans earlier - Fava beans will not crop in warm weather. So overall, it looks like I'm going to have to rethink my planting times with these beans - perhaps sowing for a fall crop, or perhaps even a winter crop. I'll try out a few planting times and see what happens. Unfortunately I only have 5 runner beans seeds left, so I'll have to be judicious in my experimentation for now. However, I have lots of Kentucky Pole seeds saved from last years crop, so I can seed those liberally. I guess the trick will be to label each vine with sowing date, so if I get a good harvest on any, I can look at the label and read off the optimum planting time.

Other tips from the web:
"If you live in a hot climate, try yard long beans (aka asparagus beans.) They love heat."
"Insuk's Wang Kong (Runner bean)... is remarkably heat tolerant for a runner bean."

The Robins nesting have all fledged and flown, its a bit quiet in the garden now, but the Zucchini are cropping well, although they appear to be variable. The plants in some shade are healthier plants, but crop less, whereas the plants in full sun have more yellow and smaller leaves, but seem to crop more. From my dozen plants, I have harvested about 35 zucchini so far - enough to keep me scrambling for ways to cook them.

Here are some ways to eat Zucchini:
(1) In stews - Ratatouille, of course, but also any stew. Simply substitute for hard squash or turnips, etc., using them as filler.
(2) Raw: Either as sticks with a dip, or what I do for salads: Either coarsely grate, or peel them with a peeler into ribbons, and dress with lemon juice, oil, salt and pepper. I like to mix with 30% carrots for a colour/crunch improvement.
(3) The old standby: Fried. Slice into rounds and fry with a little olive oil, salt and pepper until golden on both sides. If you're not into oil, you can always simply microwave the zucchini, whole, for a minute or two, then slice into rounds. Either way, they should come out nice and sweet and juicy.

Dec28 2010: Update on shade/sun... later in the season - Sept/Oct - the shade zucchini were bearing well while the sunny zucchini were getting a little yellowed and tired. TIP! - Grow some in shade, some in sun, to stretch the season a little.

Mid-June harvests

The Zucchini are finally cropping, although irregularly, so far I have harvested about 16. Its going to become a regular part of meals from now on. A few of the cherry tomatoes have ripened, but mostly they are going to take another few weeks. Last week, I took out the Fava beans, with 2 meals from one packet of seed. Quite sad really, but if you count from the number of plants - about 12, I suppose its reasonable. Still, something seemed to stop them podding half way up. Perhaps a glitch in the weather? It did get occasionally hot and cold. The more tender leaves did give an interesting alternative to spinach - with an interesting fava-musty taste and chewy (but not stringy) texture. They went particularly well with Oyster Sauce.

The lettuce are starting to bolt (send up flower stalks), so its time to get those out of the ground before they get too bitter. Thats a function of the hot weather - even in Ireland my lettuce bolted when it got hot.

I've been able to clean out the tomato bed somewhat, by taking out some swiss chard (a decent crop, and useful in soups, but some leaf-mining bug destroyed many leaves) and the Fava beans, and weeds that came to light while doing so. That left room to put in some more runner beans that I had in pots waiting for just such an opportunity, and with the sunflowers starting to show some height (about 5 feet), they have something to climb, at least to begin with.

The bed against the house is now full of 4-foot high corn, which oddly, is male-flowering long before any cobs seem apparent. I hope there is still some male pollen around when its needed. The runner beans there are climbing nicely, some on sticks and string and some on the corn. So far, theyre about 5 feet and climbing fast.

Happily, a robin has built a nest beside the back door, and as I write, there are 3-4 hungry mouths gaping wide. Cute.

June Arrives

The spinach I sowed back in December is starting to flower, so I'm harvesting the crop, such as it is. Although I have harvested some of it earlier, and to be fair, my planting was small - about a five foot row - I dont really count this as a success. For a start, it was slow in germinating, then it was slow in taking off, and when it finally did start growing, its been attacked (like the chard) with something that paints tiny clusters of eggs, 4 or 5 clusters to a leaf. Whether these hatched into the leaf miners that later appeared or not, I dont know, but they certainly made washing the leaves more troublesome. I guess its just a mind-thing, the eggs are so small that theyre hardly going to affect the cooked product. Again, I have to be fair and note that the peas overshadowed the spinach for a month or two, but that to me just indicates that the peas were a far better crop. I'll try spinach again sometime, but for now I'll just say that it wasnt a star performer in my garden. Overall, I harvested about 2 or 3 supermarket bags of the stuff - and I have left the stumps in case it wants to try throwing out another few leaves.

By way of contrast, in the same bed I grew peas, got about 3 or 4 harvests, and then replaced them with lettuce seedlings which are now approaching maturity. The lettuce are needing more watering lately, as the temperatures are rising, despite growing in the shade for most of the day. Its a mixture of red leaves - red cos, red oakleaf, lolla rossa and others ("Lettuce Mesclun Valentine" from Botanical Interests), and is doing quite well.

The Garlic, also in the same bed, appears to be doing well, and will hopefully be ready to harvest within a month - the bulbs are already starting to swell. The plan, such as it is, is to use this as a carrot/leek bed later in the season. I already have the leeks sown now for about a month; they are a few inches high, and look like thin grass. They are sown thickly, so I can then dig them up and plant them out in the summer-shaded bed. They can then grow in the winter when the leaves have fallen and the shade has gone.

The winter-made compost is how ready for use, so I'm crumbling it into a bucket and using it as mulch. Hopefully the worms will dig it in, helping the soil for next year. One of my next projects is to buy more wire mesh to build a bigger bin. It would also help in turning the compost to have two bins, rather than one.

Yesterday, I hand-pollinated the first female Zucchini flower. I can see a few more getting ready to open, so within a week or two the Zucchini harvest should start in earnest.

Over the last few weeks, I have been planting out the runner beans ("Wisley Magic" from Thompson and Morgan), and theyre starting to climb already - just. I dont have as many plants out as I had envisioned, maybe 15, so I planted a few more seeds in pots to follow. Runner beans should provide a much bigger crop than the Kentucky pole beans did last year, but of course they dont have the same taste (poorer, in my opinion). I'm considering planting a few Kentucky seeds in and among the other crops and leaving them to their own devices. Finally on my agenda, I sowed some more sweet corn in pots to fill the gaps, and they need to be planted out. Suddenly, there dont seem to be so many gaps.

Growing Tomatoes in Almaden Valley

If youre growing tomatoes in this neighborhood, there are a few things you should know beyond the standard items. First; the general guidelines.

(1) The easiest way to grow tomatoes is to purchase plants. The cheapest is to grow seeds. Sowing seeds also allows you to purchase specialty heirloom seeds that you may not be able to find as plants in stores.

(2) Planting tomatoes is rather simple, find a nice sunny location (tomatoes love full sunshine, as much as possible), prepare the ground as normal - making it nice, loose, moisture-retentive - and unlike most other plants, you want to strip off a few lower leaves and bury as much stem as possible, but of course leaving the growing tip with some leaves overground. The reason to bury the plant so deeply (most other plants would rot if planted deeply), is that tomatoes will throw out extra roots from the buried stems, and the more roots you have, the better the crop.

(3) If you want a large crop with many medium-sized tomatoes, then leave the plant alone. If you want fewer, but larger tomatoes, then take out any sideshoots that appear between the leaves and the stem when they are small. My personal preference is to allow the plants to ramble as they will, but if you are into training things up cages, stakes and so forth to gain height and decrease ground space, thats what most seem to prefer. However, if you are purchasing a cage, be careful - the cheaper cages can be quite flimsy, and may last only a single season, if that. If you want to go the cage way, my suggestion would be to go to Home Depot or similar, and find some strong steel mesh and make your own cages that way.

(4) If you want to plant your tomatoes in a container, there are a couple of interesting options you can try; first, a water-saving "EarthTainer" that basically has a water reservoir in the bottom that the plant can wick up as needed, and the site provides detailed instructions about how to construct one (it will take reasonable effort though). Secondly, you can try these "Topsy-Turvy" things that dangle the plants upside down. I'm trying one out this year, mainly because I can use some space over the patio, in the sun, also providing some shade, and so far the plant is doing quite well over a test partner I planted in the garden. However, the garden-planted one didnt get two bags of potting compost to itself. I'm also going to grow climbing beans out of the top of the container, so we'll see how that does. My theory is that the bean will provide nitrogen for the tomato, and also clamber over the pergola providing more shade.

(5) Try not to grow tomatoes continuously in the same area, as diseases will build up in the soil. In fact, do not plant eggplants, peppers, chiles, or potatoes the following season either, as they are all the same family. If you have 3 suitable plots that you can rotate the planting in every three years, so much the better. To avoid disease, you can also restrict your choice of variety to disease-resistant varieties. However, crop rotation is still recommended. Not only to make sure diseases dont build up, but also because different plants take different nutrients from the soil.

So what are the specific guidelines for planting in the Almaden Valley? Well, if you've noticed, it has almost no fog, doesnt freeze often in winter, and gets scorching hot in summer. So that makes our climate very different from San Francisco or even Palo Alto. This has two major consequences.

First, the season starts much earlier; I planted my tomatoes this year in March, and I have continued planting them this month. The earlier you plant, the earlier they fruit, and they can continue fruiting in some cases into November. Last year, I eked out the last handfuls of cherry tomatoes, but in retrospect, I should probably have abandoned they last few, as they tended to get bitter, or dried out and sweet (but small), and I'd have been better off digging them up and putting in some winter crops earlier. The only real worry about planting early is that the plants may get frost and die - but the chance of that is fairly small, so I'd suggest putting some plants out early. However, the plants wont start growing fast until the soil warms up; mine took off around the start of May, and are now about a foot or two high, and setting some tomatoes.

The second issue is that plants will not set fruit if the days are too cold or the nights are too hot. I dont see the former as a problem, as the plants will simply continue to grow until the weather is warm enough to set fruit. However, if you plant later in the year, you may well have a problem with hot nights (over about 80-85°). In this case, youre possibly going to have to wait all summer, losing most of the ripening weather, until it gets cool enough to set fruit. So you may get a late crop, but miss the summer season. You can always try spraying with water in the evening and morning, making sure that youre not too close to heat sinks (brickwork, concrete paths, etc.), but if your plants have flowers that drop off without leaving fruits in hot weather, this is probably the problem. In most years, however, you'll probably have a few cooler weeks in summer to set fruit. There are also heat-resistant varieties you can try. (Note: I'm not endorsing any websites or merchants with these links, not unless they are good and/or they pay me - this is just FYI as an example). If I ever get paid for a link, I'll let you know.

CHOICE OF VARIETIES:
I'm trying out quite a few varieties this year, so I'll be able to let you know how that works next year. But for now, I'll just write a simple note on what to look for:

(1) Determinate versus indeterminate varieties. This should be listed on the label. If not, look it up online. Vines that straggle all over the place (most people train these) but which crop continuously are indeterminate. I like them because the harvest is spread out and crops can be heavy. Cherry tomatoes, for example, tend to be interminate. Vines that tend to form a more definite bush and which ripen all their fruit about the same time are determinate. These are easier to manage, in terms of staking and working in definite seasons, but you can end up with a lot of fruit at once (consider making paste, sundried tomatoes, etc).

(2) Heirloom/Hybrids
Heirlooms you can save seed of, Hybrids you cant (they will give plants that are not like the parents). However, more generally, hybrids tend to be commercial plants, bred for disease resistance, size, shape, etc. whereas heirlooms tend to be all shapes and sizes, better flavors, and prone to disease. Check individual plant descriptions for more details though, as this is a very broad generalization. I'd suggest starting by buying hybrid plants, and moving towards sowing heirlooms as you get more experience. If you develop problems with disease, youre probably then going to have to use disease-resistant varieties.

(3) Paste/Beefsteak/Salad/Cherry
These are all fairly explanatory; but briefly, paste tomatoes have thick walls and few seeds, so are useful for making paste and sauces with. Plum tomatoes like San Marzano/Roma are paste tomatoes. Beefsteaks are large with a lot of meat in the center, which helps to hold the slice together when cut. Great on burgers, sandwiches, etc. Salad tomatoes are regular-sized tomatoes that have plenty of juice/seeds, used for most salad purposes. Insalata Caprese - yum! And of course cherries are cherry-sized, often very sweet tomatoes, generally used whole in salads.

(4) Things to look for:
Flavor - make sure the flavor is good. Some tomatoes are high in lycopene, which adds flavor and is very good for you nutritionally. Color - there are many different colors and patterns (striping) available. Everything from brown through purplish, red, orange, yellow and green. Growing a mix of colors will make your salads look very gourmet.

(5) As mentioned, heat-resistant and disease resistant varieties are available.

Happy Gardening!

Hummingbird pollination

The fun in gardening is in seeing the unexpected, the flowers that appear overnight, stray seedlings planting themselves, and today, a hummingbird pollinating my broad (fava) beans. Last week I enjoyed the sight of a fat black bumblebee, about 3/5" long, attempting to hold onto the flowers as it desperately suck'd at the nectar. Today, it was a hummingbird that surprised me - usually, my veggies arent pollinated by birds!
Last week, the fun came from the carrots, first the multicolored carrots, which came in all shapes and sizes:


then it was a carrot that decided to sprout an extra root, rise out of the ground, strangle its neighbour, and then dive back into the ground: