Summer is starting

Its finally getting hot, and our friends need water. Here is a swallowtail taking advantage of a few splashes. I must remember to splash a little more.

Everything is finally taking off; I'm doing my final harvests on the Fava beans at the moment, both for the table on my second sowing, and for seed on the first sowing. At about 7c per seed, it wasn't really financially viable to keep buying these. But if I can keep some of my crop every year to use as seed for the following year, things should work out. When saving seed, its important to wait until the pod is black and dry (or mostly dry). Next year, if I remember, I'll mix some peas in with the sowing with the idea that the pea tendrils might hold the beans together as a block and prevent them from the odd one flopping around.

The Bush Beans and Runner Beans are starting to come into production, so far it looks like there are no pollination problems, and a bumblebee has found the Runner Bean flowers. However, its been relatively cool up till now, so thats no predictor of summer success. Hopefully the Insuk will live up to its promise and do well in the hot weather as well. Otherwise, I'll have a pretty windowshade, but not much else. Fingers crossed.
Harvesting some lettuce here and there; the small butter lettuce (Tom Thumb) grows and tastes well enough, but it seems to trap a lot of compost/slugs in its leaves and cleaning it is a bit more trouble than other lettuces. I have some "Red Sails" coming in soon with bigger leaves, but after that, its probably the end of lettuce for the season.
The tomatoes are all doing fabulously. Some look stressed (notably "Mr. Stripey", which is very dark with curly leaves), but all are throwing out tomatoes and growing healthily so far. I should be getting the first ones on the table soon, maybe a week or two. I tried one of the "Green Grape" cherries last week, but it was still obviously underripe. Hard to tell on these, hopefully, like "Green Zebra", they'll become apparent when they actually ripen. "Green Zebra"has a nice yellow background to the green stripes when ripe.
The Zucchini are finally into harvest season; I have been taking and cooking 2-inch stubs recently, because they werent growing fast and the plants were just throwing these out 2 and 3 at a time, none of them getting anywhere fast. But now they are settling down and beginning to produce 6-inch ones that expand as normal (Day 1: pollinate, Day 2: to 4 inches, Day 3: harvest at 6 inches in the morning).
Last night I planted out the bean plants in pots, as the roots were bunching up at the bottom of the posts and the first real leaves were unfurling. Hopefully most of the slugs have packed up for the summer. The beans all had problems germinating, but I think I have it worked out; after a couple of hot days I got a flush of new seedlings, so I think they really need heat - say, 65-70 degrees - to germinate. Next year I think I should wait until we have warm weather before sowing. Warm as in impossible-to-stay-out-too-long warm. The garden is finally looking full, now my only question is where the heck do I put my multicolored cherry tomatoes? I sowed them later on a whim, they're planting size now, but not much space available. Under the Runner Beans so they too can climb the wires? Among the roses? Should I harvest the last of the Favas and use that space for 4 of them?

Decisions, decisions...


Going through my phone, I came across this picture of the leek bed in winter. I guess its a reminder to sow leeks for next winter.

Zucchini harvest

Some miserable ones trickling in this week; looked like they were going gangbusters a week ago, strangely with female flowers more abundant than males, but then we got cold cloudy weather. The Zucchini at that point just sat back and didnt grow much. Hopefully we'll warm up soon and get going.
The beans came crowding through 2-3 days ago, again before sitting back on their heels. They have been beset with germination/growing difficulties, all of them, bush and pole, so maybe that a warmth thing too.
Still, some favas and lettuce have been gracing the table, along with a pea puree made from a handful of plants I ripped out to make way for patty pan squash yesterday.

Bee plants, Runner Beans

Soaked a handful of Runner Beans last night (Jim Wright's Insuks), and placed on the soil today under the window. Same principle as last year: Provide summer shade (as well as enriching soil, providing beans, color, etc.).
Some more young zucchini seedlings planted out too, in the shade bed (they really had to be planted out).
2 of the 5 gallon buckets planted with the young tomato seedlings, one tub with Green Zebra, another with Yellow Brandywine. I'll be moving these under the Topsy-Turvy pots so that when I water them, the ones underneath catch the drips/fertilizer.
The sage is looking fantastic at the moment, and is attracting a few bees. I think its important that we plant as many bee-friendly plants as possible. Next to the sage you can see some blue-flowered borage, which the bees also love (although they appear to be giving it a miss at the moment).

In the front garden, in what used to be essentially waste land, as its far from a hosepipe, I have planted a mix of native flowers with some drought-resistant non-natives. Here you can see predominantly Blue-eyed Grass and California Poppy, but behind there is a red Geranium under a White Sage. The White Sage is a desert plant, not native to the Bay Area, but is very drought-tolerant and has nice spikes of flowers that the bumblebees love. I'll be putting some more of this out next winter, hopefully, along with some more bright-colored Geraniums to show up against their silver leaves. There are other plants you cant see in the picture, wildflower seed from the packet, but also 2 kinds of onions now coming into flower, and some nice tulips that have just finished flowering. Altogether its been great for a month or more now, and promises to continue at least for another month.

Spring madness

So much going on at the moment. First, all those seedlings had to be planted out

On the left are heirlooms saved from last years seed - pretty much 100% germination. They are now on about the second pair of true leaves, and potted 3 days ago. The spindly looking things are summer savory, which have now been planted out looking more healthy.
I've been putting out bush bean seeds and lettuce plantlets all over, and the zucchini finally went in.
The good news is that it finally looks like a good broad (fava) bean crop is on the way, despite all my worries. I've seen some bumblebee activity of late:

On most plants I can already see 3-4 rows of 2-3 beans, so they clearly were getting pollinated earlier, just took some time to turn into beans (see top picture).
Some of the Insuk runner beans are starting to take off, others have been succumbing to something (slugs?). Time to throw out a few fistfuls of seed, methinks.

Against the fence, some burgundy and "pencil pod black wax" (yellow) bush beans are popping up, and today I sowed a full packet of about 40 "Greencrop garden beans", all from Lake Valley seeds. Hopefully Bush beans will succeed where the pole beans failed in the heat last year and the year before.

Looking at my peas and favas this year, I had an idea - Favas tend to flop over a little, especially in the rain, but if I were to plant a few peas in their midst, the tendrils might reinforce the fava block a little. The favas dont need support, as a block, but one or two fall out. The peas might solve that. Next year, if I get the favas in early enough, say the start of November, then plant peas in say, January, then I might get both crops out, having fertilized the ground, by, say, Mid-April.

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.