Duvet days and joyful riots!

Last week we had a couple of dull days and the promise of rain. The ideal time for me to transplant my hardened off tomatoes and peppers into their new bed. I like to transplant before a rain-shower, when possible, to give my babies a chance to get really soaked in.

The day was so dull that even the poppies where having a duvet day and not even bothering to unfurl.

I had approached my bed building in a very lazy manner - I simply threw horse manure over the mulch that was there. I maybe should have dug it through the soil beneath, because I had forgotten how deep I plant the tomatoes. I hope they will be able to root in the deeper more solid packed soil. The top 4-6 inches is still loose enough and should be fine.... I hope!

I'm experimenting with straw bale gardening, basically because I had a bale of straw left over from the crib at Christmas. It is essential to use straw as hay has seeds in it, and straw is cheaper anyway. Also you have to leave the straw to weather. Mine has been sitting outside since December, so it is starting to compost in the middle. I will add some fish emulsion too to "lace" it with nitrogen.

I had planned to made a little trough in the top of the bale and fill it with soil and then plant some seedlings but it was really hard cutting through the straw. I even resorted to using a saw, but it was still slow work.

Eventually I made a 4' hole - big enough for a tomato seedling. The straw that came from a hole expanded to nearly fill a bucket!

I planted two tomato seedlings in the bale -one at each end. I may even add a winter squash, something that vines, later.

As soon as I'd finished it rained for the rest of the evening.

In the days that followed the sun came back out and the garden celebrated with a joyous riot of blossom. The poppies opened up and I caught this bumble bee practically rolling in the anthers!

 The monkeyflower bush amped up it's profusion of blossom to near gaudy extremes.

 The Chinese houses are blooming lovely!

I'm particularly proud of the foxgloves that I grew from dust-like seeds. They were the first seeds I'd sown that needed sunlight for germination.

I have a particular fondness for bell shaped flowers, and foxgloves are a reminder of home. I have them planted in the shady, part of my garden that receives regular water, right along the front of the house to give it that cottage garden look.

Everywhere I look, the garden is bursting out in blossom. In the foreground are irises and the color is repeated in the sweet-pea patch against the back fence.

 

Some of the irises have come up pink and purple. I love this combination.

And in a forgotten corner a broken pot, left for dead, has sprung back to life. It seems there is no such thing as an annual when the weather is a lovely as it is here!

Just when I thought that my garden was at it's most beautiful in April, May is promising big things!

Byddi Lee

Advertising California Native Plant Week

My garden has been celebrating California Native Plant Week by not just blooming profusely,  but  by producing blooms on plants that I have on several occasions given up on.

This was labels as a Western Columbine when I bought it at a native plant nursery. It was hard to spot much of last summer, with just a hint of life in its slowly growing leaves. When it blossomed I was surprised that it was all white. I'm hoping it . This year it is definitely at the top of my favorite blossoms list, with its deep nectar reservoirs for feeding hummingbirds protruding out behind the flower, adding to its intricate and complex shape. It may not be the native plant I was hoping for but it looks too pretty to remove. Any thoughts?

This is a shot of the entire plant. Its foliage is quite nondescript and this one is about 12 inches high.

The bush monkey flower, Mimulus aurantiacus, has begun to blossom. Last year this kept flowering almost until the end of August. This enhance any garden all summer long.

The blue-eyed grass, Sisyrinchium bellum, grows in a swath around the little brick wall that retains the slope of the garden. These cheerful blooms are great for borders.

In one line of sight you can see 5 different colors of blossoms, from the blur of blue eyed grass in the foreground, past the creamy yellow of the bush monkey flower and the pink checker bloom. Of course the poppy's vibrant orange steals the show, but just behind it is the demure white of the Western(?) Columbine.

Here's a closer look at the checker bloom, Sidalcea malvaeflora.

Tucked in against the wall of railway sidings the blue flax, Linum lewisii, has blossomed for the first time ever too. I started these from seed and am so pleased to see them blossoming in a "proud parent" kind of way!

The bush anemone, Carpenteria californica, was once described some where as a plant to "brighten up a dark corner" and it certainly lived up to that reputation.

 

I wanted my native garden to showcase native plants that could produce as pretty a garden as non-native blooms are know for. I think that as these plats have certainly accomplished this. I hope that folks who are nervous about moving away from "conventional" plants in their yards will see that native gardens don't have to be about wild-looking, meadow-like landscapes.

Every native garden is an advertisement for planting with natives, and with that in mind, think about keeping your native garden so that your neighbors and all who pass by it will admire it and be inspired to venture into the realm of going native.

To view other native gardens you can go on the Going Native Garden Tour this weekend. You need to register first but it's simple and free. Just go to their web page.

There is a CNPS Native Plant Sale at Hidden Villa today too.

Byddi Lee

Why buy broccoli when you can grow your own?

Listening to people talking on the radio when you are driving rather than blasting music and singing along is sign of getting old, I reckon. But I was listening to a talk show the other day about the health care vote thinggy-majiggy here in the US. As far as I can make out the question is about making everyone buy health insurance, and an analogy has been drawn along the lines of forcing people to buy broccoli.  However, this is not a political blog, and I don't really want to air any comment on the health insurance issue as I feel ill equipped to make a call on it either way (Can I get health insurance for being ill equipped?) But I thought it was a great title for a blog post.

I've been agonizing about what to write in my blog these days. The very nature of gardening is cyclical, so I could end up covering the same topics year in and year out which gets too repetitive for my liking. I could post lots more "How to"s but there is very little out there that hasn't been done, that can't be googled and it feels too much like my work as a gardening coach.

So this week I decided  to give you a "Spring Garden Tour" sponsored by all the lovely rain we finally and gratefully received. And there is actually no pictures of the broccoli which I've largely allowed to go to seed for next years crop! But I do buy health insurance - can't rely on good health setting seed year after year unfortunately.

The order of the photos is fairly random - Enjoy!

First stop the bulb garden.

Having bought a few dozen tulip bulbs before I knew just how high maintenance they were purported to be in California, I decided that I couldn't go through the rigmarole of keeping them in my fridge for eight weeks and then have them probably only ever blossom that one time. Unwilling to throw out what looked like perfectly good bulbs after they had bloomed and died back, I buried them in the bulb garden only to be wonderfully surprised by blooms this year.

Not the most spectacular tulips ever but hey, better than a kick in the nuts. (I'll show you my nuts later in the tour.)

 

This shot captures the gogi-berry bush in the foreground. It still hasn't produced berries. And a fence lizard - tip-toeing through the tulips!

My containers are spewing forth blossom left, right and center.

Regular deadheading and fertilizing is the key to beautiful pots.

I love lettuce - its so easy, so forgiving, and oh so colorful...

Some are still in the six packs where I planted their tiny wee seeds and never got round to transplanting them. I'm harvesting them straight from here.

I have about a dozen varieties of lettuce - the ultimate ornamental edible - say that quickly five times!

 

These are from seeds saved last year.

  

Even better are the plants that save you the bother of saving their seeds and just reseed themselves. The winter arugula crop decided to go for it again.

 

And in the native garden the Hooker's Evening Primrose had put out one brave little seedling. A disappointing amount of reseeding but lets see if the rain brings forth any more. I'm maintaining the "prime directive"  as far as I can in the native garden, until they get warp speed of course!

It works for the poppies.

For the checkerbloom too.

And for the blue eyed grass - which has yellow 'eyes' and is not a grass but a petite iris.

And the succulent garden delivered a sweet surprise. My stone plant blossomed practically before my eyes.

And an hour later I walked past and it was doing this...

Blooming gorgeous is the name of the game for this drift of candy tuft - amazing for a plant that gets absolutely no attention (including irrigation) from me.

My spoon petaled daisy (given to me by a Master Gardener buddy last year) blossomed in abundance.

The artichoke given to me by my friend Lisa is coming along nicely too. I just have to figure out to to cook these things!

Propagation is ongoing in the garden, sometimes on purpose - I need to fill these new raised beds.

 

Here are some of the warm season seeding results.

Other propagation is accidental - nature finding a way to keep going.

My neighbor Laurie gave me a Christmas Cactus and one of the "leaves" (actually it's a segment of stem) came off. It seems to be growing.

I lost one of the Dracaena marginata in this pot but it seems to have left behind a baby!

Outside, I'm protecting the new seedlings from the nasty birds.

Having run out of bird netting I had to get creative.

As promised - a picture of my nuts. Almonds to be precise.

I just hope I get to harvest them before the squirrels get there. Nothing worse than the squirrels sinking their teeth into your .... harvest!

Byddi Lee

Eco Gardening Coach

A Piece on Potatoes for St Patricks Day

In my efforts to research native Irish vegetables, I found it impossible to get past the potato. The problem is that potatoes are not native to Ireland at all, having only been introduced to Ireland in the 1580's. 

Originally potatoes came from Peru. Laura Stadley from "Whats cooking America" has a very interesting article on the history of the potato. I was particularly tickled by her reference to an Irish legend that told of potatoes coming from the shipwrecked Spanish Armanda. However, most historians agree that Sir Walter Raleigh introduced the potato to that part of the world. 

Potatoes were easy to grow and the Irish embraced the little white tubers, slathering them with butter and salt, turning them into a veritable feast. They became completely dependent on them which is why when the potato blight hit in the mid 1840's they had nothing else to eat and the country quickly spiraled into famine. Over a million people died and many more fled to the new world. The population of Ireland shrank from 10 million to 3 million in that decade.Even now the population of Ireland is still only 6.4 million.

I still panic if my spuds aren't doing well, but I do plant other crops, and well, if they fail there is always a Safeway's up the road. I have great respect for the billions of people on our planet to whom the failure of their crops can be a life threatening event.  

Growing your own potatoes

You can buy seed potatoes at most good nurseries or you can plant potatoes that you get at the grocery store and that have sprouted shoots. These grow equally as well as the seed potatoes, but the seed potatoes will have less risk of carrying disease. I haven't had any disease on my potatoes and I use both.

Potatoes are very frost tender so plant after danger of frost.

I plant my potatoes in a trough that is about 6 inches deep. When I fill in the soil I heap it up into a drill that means the potato is under about 8-10 inches of soil.  If I'm burying my potatoes in a pot or a grow bag I will usually only plant them about 4 inches deep and then add soil to them as they grow. This is called "hilling up." I have found both ways work equally well. The bottom line is that you want a long stem under ground. Potatoes are not roots, but are tubers that have grown from the stem. 

Whilst under the soil they remain white (blanched), but if they have sunlight on them they will turn green and this causes a build up of poisonous alkaloids. Green potatoes should not be eaten. Remember that the potato is a member of the deadly nightshade family. The only part of it that is NOT poisonous is the potato tuber. Never eat any of the rest of the plant.

It takes a while (up to six weeks) for the potatoes to emerge - especially the deep planted ones.

Once they unfurl they are like green roses against the soil.

They need plenty of fertilizer,cow manure being one of their favorites! They like lots of water, though I do have a volunteer potato in the far flung reaches of my yard that has received no additional water. I'm surprised it has survived this drought-winter we've been having.

Well, when I say drought , I mean until this week! Although the rest of the Bay Area has had a nice thorough soaking, we seem to be in a rain-shadow and the moisture in the air has not even wet the ground. However, the cloudy skies have tricked the spuds into thinking they are in Ireland, and they are loving it!

One thing that potatoes have in common with the Irish is that they get absolutely everywhere. If you have planted potatoes at all in the past, you will find them popping up everywhere. I like to think of volunteer potatoes as growing menu choices!

Here we have champ growing - potatoes in the scallion bed - just add butter and salt.

And who's for garlic potatoes?

Asian fusion - spuds and bok choi - just add Chinese five spice.

The leaves on this potato look a little different, a night shade for sure, but could it be a volunteer potato leaf tomato? It is extra pointy and a slightly lighter shade of green. Time will tell - in the meantime I'll keep eating the chard!

The other members of the deadly nightshade family have started to germinate.

Above and below are tomatoes

And a pepper - I don't use heat mats, but these guys do get babied and even get to sleep in our bedroom!

In previous years I've posted about the man himself, St Patrick, and the shamrock  in case you were interested, seeing as it is the season!

Wishing my readers a Happy St Patricks Day - have fun drowning your shamrock!

Byddi Lee