View From the Roof and Other Random Photos

Sorry I have not been a very good blogger these last few months but I just seem to be very busy these days. Last weekend I took some photos of the garden. The always loved roof shots are up first...

Click on photos for a larger view

The next two photos are ground shots.

I don't know for sure because we have never really experienced a "real" Spring here in the California  Bay Area but if I had to guess this is the closest we have come. It's the end of May and we are still getting a little rain, cool temperatures and a lot of wind. This is just not the norm in these parts. My cool weather crops are loving it but my Summer crops are not doing so well. Had I known the cool weather was going to last so long I would have held off planting Summer crops. My cucumbers are producing fruit but the plants are small and weak. Not sure if they are going to recover. I have been feeding them with seaweed extract and fish emulsion in hopes it will give them a bit of a boost. I also wrapped the bed in plastic today to protect the cucumbers from the wind and to give them a little more warmth.

Cucumbers

 The tomatoes seem to be doing OK. The Fox Cherries have almost out grown their 5 foot trellis.

I'm getting fruit but they are not going to ripen until the weather warms up a bit more.

I had a nice harvest on May 22nd. 2 pounds of lettuce some carrots, spring onions, snow peas and dill.

Last Christmas sweet husband  bought me some new garden art...

As the sun was setting tonight we were blessed with a rainbow.

Lots and Lots of photos

So sorry for being MIA. Here is a photo update....

It's been four years and no sign of fruit on the banana.
The reason for this is there may be too many pups in the pot.
Time to cut the apron strings on two of the smaller pups.

Now mom might have the energy to bear fruit. 

So far no leaf curl on the nectarine.

The bees have been out in force.

Lemons

Mint

Lettuce

Cucumbers

Lettuce

Hungarian peppers

Carrots

Lettuce and carrots

Pole beans

Onions

Bush Beans

Broccoli

And more lettuce

Summer squash. The four in the back are vining or so said the package.

Harvested on Sunday for dinner

Carrots

Carrots harvested on Sunday for dinner this week.

Cucumber

Raspberries are showing some color

Snow peas

Spring onions

Lots of great things going on over at the Haven Garden. I'll be there this Saturday. We are getting great support from local businesses... big name businesses... I'll post more when I get the OK. Other things going on... I'm working on getting my teacher certification to teach Square Foot Gardening. Seems to be a lot of interest but no classes in the area. Wish me luck!

Catching Up

Last Saturday I continued working on my never ending water project. I now have soaker hoses in beds 3 and 4. Not that I need them with all the rain we have been having this week. But there will be a time in the near future that I will be happy I took the time to get the yard "hooked up". This will save me lots of time this summer and I will not need to rely on family to come over to water when I'm on vacation. My son was really happy to see me put the water lines in... as he said to me " it took me 45 mins to an hour to water your garden every other day when you were away". Ha ha! Tell me about it!

I still have more to do to get everything in the yard "hooked up". Bed 2 needs soaker hoses added to it. It currently had over head sprinklers. Beds 1, 5 and 6 still need water lines as well as all the potted plants. The photos below are of bed 4 with the soaker hoses.

Click on photos for a larger view

Square foot garden bed with water lines

The two tools I could not live without during this project...

Hose hole punches

If you are thinking about adding water lines to your beds I was doing some research on line and came across this video from the Garden Girl Patty Moreno on how to install a drip irrigation system. Which I found helpful even though I'm working with an existing sprinkler system.

On Thursday (March 17th) I about scared myself to death. I was working from home and about 9:00am the sun was shining on the patio so I thought I would take the tomato and cucumber seedlings out of the greenhouse and give them a little morning sun. So out they came and I went back to work. I walked by the window about 10:00am and looked at the cucumbers and saw this....

 Oh no! what have I done! I've killed all my cucumber starts! So what was it.... was it too much sun? No it was cool out... that's it... it was too cold and a bit too windy... I moved the cucumbers back into the greenhouse and gave them some water. After about an hour they came back. Boy was I lucky!

The tomatoes had no problems with the cool air and wind. In the photo below you can see some blooms on this cherry tomato.

 I really should pot these up one more time before they go out into the garden.

Tomato starts

Even though the weather has been cool the bok choy and pak choy is already starting to bolt. I will need to pull them as soon as it stops raining long enough for me to get out into the garden.

The carrots that I started in the greenhouse are doing so well. Who said you can't start carrot seeds indoors and transplant them out into the garden?

The sweet and hot peppers are doing much better than I thought they would in this cool weather. They have been off the heat mats for about three weeks now.

The raspberries seemed to have sprouted overnight.

And the nectarine is in full bloom.

The first apple leaf...

And finally the sweet potatoes. They are rooting very well. I updated my Sweet Potato post with some new photos. Scroll to the bottom of the post for the update.

As I finish up this post the winds are started to pickup and the rain is coming down. Be sure to check out my post on the hail storm we had this morning. Here is the link if you missed it.... Hail post

That's it for now. Happy First day of Spring!