First, all of the tulips that I planted last fall for my birthday came up and blossomed gorgeously. My idyllic dream of traipsing about the front yard and picking a bouquet of tulips with which to decorate my kitchen table came to fruition. Here is the ...Continue Reading: Tulips, OMG Apricots, and Walkway Restoration.]]> Hello there, blog! Let’s see what has been going on…

Tulips

First, all of the tulips that I planted last fall for my birthday came up and blossomed gorgeously. My idyllic dream of traipsing about the front yard and picking a bouquet of tulips with which to decorate my kitchen table came to fruition. Here is the photographic evidence!

The tulips bloomed for at least 4 weeks and I am very hopeful that they will naturalize and continue to bloom each year.

OMG Apricots!!!

I have to say that with three exclamation points because up until this week I did not realize that my apricot tree had even set fruit. I checked it several months ago and found no fruit. Then, just a few days ago I was looking out the window at the apricot branches blowing in the wind and spied a gorgeous golden apricot hanging from one of the branches.

Being very wary of the birds eating my fruit (all 3 of my cherries were eaten by not-me!), I went out to check it right away. It wasn’t 100% ripe, but it was starting to soften and close enough to pick and eat.

If I do say so myself (and I do), it was DELICIOUS. If you are in the market for an apricot tree (especially a very-vigorous self-fertile one), then “Pixie-Cot” is an excellent variety.

Walkway Restoration

The only other gardening thing that has been going on is that I finally pruned my front walkway. That might not sound like much, but prior to today you had to fend off branches and fight your way past unruly rosemary and lavender that were so large that the rosemary branches and lavender flowers were practically reaching across and holding hands in the middle of my walkway.

Now if you walk up my walkway you will no longer be accosted by swathes of herbs covered in honeybees. I think the pile of clippings is 3 feet high. Whew! Glad to get that taken care of.

As a side note, my pomegranate may have decided to set fruit this year. Here is a photo of one of the flowers in action.

Happy gardening!

My awesome little brother bought me Alpine Strawberry seeds for Hanukkah this year and I decided that this month would be a good time to start them, with the hopes that I’ll have little plants to set ...Continue Reading: Alpine Strawberries from seed and other adventures.]]> Hello again, dear garden blog! What’s been going on lately? Quite a lot, indeed.

Alpine Strawberries:

My awesome little brother bought me Alpine Strawberry seeds for Hanukkah this year and I decided that this month would be a good time to start them, with the hopes that I’ll have little plants to set out around mid-April. My friend Carrie was in town visiting and helped me get them off to a good start.

I set out trays of seed starting mix (I really like the Burpee kind), wet the mix until it was very very damp (almost soggy) and then we sprinkled the seeds on top and just patted them gently in to the top (no real covering depth). Then we placed the trays on top of a seed-starting heating mat, and placed them underneath some grow-lights.

The instructions on the seed packet say to be very patient and that it takes 3-4 weeks before any seedlings emerge. Imagine my surprise when I noticed at least 10 sprouts on Day 4!  Now it is Day 14 since planting and there are easily 150 little sprouts and most of them are starting to get their first true leaves.

Tonight I transferred 36 of the most promising seedlings into larger pots. I placed 4 in each pot – hopefully they won’t be too crowded as they get bigger. I tried to disturb their roots as little as possible by scooping them up with a spoon and gently pressing them into the pot.

Here is a photo of one of the little 4″ by 4″ pots – the seedlings look so scrawny. I really hope that this works out and I’ll end up with at least 20 strong strawberry plants to place in my front yard landscaping.

Front Yard Drip Irrigation:

The front yard irrigation project went off quite successfully, with my husband and father working together to invent a genius way to dig under the sidewalk to run the drip line.

• All drip lines and drippers hooked up, including the parts that have to go under the sidewalk? Yes! 
• Manifold valve connected at start of drip line? Yes! 
• Electrical run from valve to the automated irrigation controller box? Yes! 
• System tested to see if it actually works? Yes! 

Single drip emitter near blueberry plant on 1/2" tubing.

Wow, it has been quite a project getting the front yard automated drip irrigation installed, but I have really learned a lot.

What I learned while installing drip irrigation:

1. Drip Depot is totally awesome and I LOVE their kits, minus their one small downfall (see item 2!).
2. The downfall of Drip Depot kits is that they do not include enough stakes. Seriously, if the kit says “20” of the 1/4 inch size stakes, buy 40-60 additional! If the kit says 20 of the 1/2 inch size stakes, buy at least 40 additional!
3. Manifold valve systems are usually installed by professionals onto pipes with pipe threading and are not normally installed as at-garden-hose-faucet systems. I had to concoct a 4-part conversion series to get from the 3/4″ male hose thread at the faucet in order to get to the 1″ female pipe-thread that started my manifold valve.

Haven’t been doing much with plants this winter, but I have been painting them – at left is the painting I gave my mother for Hanukkah/Christmas.

I am really looking forward to spring! It is a ways off yet, but I have big plans for January and February and then will be starting some veggie seedlings ...Continue Reading: Dreaming of spring veggies and making big backyard changes.]]>

Haven’t been doing much with plants this winter, but I have been painting them – at left is the painting I gave my mother for Hanukkah/Christmas.

I am really looking forward to spring! It is a ways off yet, but I have big plans for January and February and then will be starting some veggie seedlings as early as March.

What’s in store? We are building a retaining wall to add in a large raised bed against the back fence – it is going to be enough space for several espaliered fruit trees and lots of vegetables.

This weekend was an online-ordering frenzy after I saw some of the trees that I wanted becoming sold out on several sites. For the front yard I have purchased these additional trees:

• Minnie Royal Dwarf Sweet Cherry (low chill)
• Royal Lee Dwarf Sweet Cherry (low chill)
• Aromatnaya Fruiting Quince
• Potomac Pawpaw and Wabash Pawpaw

Woohooo! I would have purchased these front yard fruit trees last year, but with all the trees I was already ordering it was way too much money. This year it was also a lot of money (ouch, my wallet!), but I decided it was time to finish off the front yard investment and get these trees in this year. The sooner they are in then the sooner they will be producing fruit! Once these trees are in then I’ll be able to make some headway on planning and installing some kind of drip irrigation system for the entire front yard.

I am also dreaming of planting tons of new vegetables this year. I’ll be re-using many seeds from last year (same spinach, onions, leeks, chard, eggplant, beets, peas, bok choy, and salad greens). I am also getting a ton of new seeds to expand the variety that I am growing, and to try out some tasty new varieties.

Last year my carrots were pretty, but lack-luster in flavor (I got a kaleidoscope carrot mix) – this year I am focusing on flavor and getting one called Sugarsnax Carrot.

I didn’t try growing any corn last year, but my parents raved about an amazing new triplesweet hybrid corn Honey Select that they tried, so this year I am going to give it a try as well by growing it in a single row along my back fence.

My tomatoes last year were delicious, but reading through the Baker Creek Heirloom Seed catalog left me with no choice but to buy some additional varieties, since they all sound so darn amazing. The two I selected were Black Cherry Tomato and Delicious. Really it was the glowing customer reviews that sold me on these two particular varieties. I hope they are tasty!

Some other items I am particularly excited to try are several items in the cucurbit family. I have never grown any melon varieties before (growing up in Washington, the season there is much too short to even attempt), but now that I live in California I am going to try Vedrantais Melon – doesn’t the description sound great?

For cucumbers I was thrilled to find a powdery mildew resistant variety called Picklebush. In the bay area you are basically guaranteed that your squash plants will be in a constant and eventually-fatal battle with powdery mildew, and I had read in the Golden Gate Gardening book that there were some great resistant winter squash varieties available. I had a really hard time finding any for sale! I read through this powdery mildew resistant winter squash trial research project before deciding what to buy, but then I kept looking up each resistant kind at my regular seed sites and none were available.

Finally I found a random vendor (who I have never heard of – I hope they are legit!) and bought the Bugle Butternut Winter Squash. I have high hopes that the resistant varieties will fare much better in my garden.

Now that all of the seed and tree buying excitement is out of the way, it is time for me to buckle down and finish building out this retaining wall and then make a drip irrigation map to plan out how I am going to do drip irrigation in the front and back yard. I’ll hopefully post about that soon with some diagrams. So complicated!

To the left is a photo of a quick set-up of the stones to test and see how they would look in place (then we took them down and did the actual careful leveling and are in-process on installation…)

What has been going on in my gardens… well, the first exciting news is that my fall crocus survived being planted in the horrible clay of my front yard.

I was pleasantly surprised ...Continue Reading: Crocus flowers and a new espalier.]]> Where did November sneak off to? It seems to have passed me by without a single Graphic Gardener post. I better get on that!

What has been going on in my gardens… well, the first exciting news is that my fall crocus survived being planted in the horrible clay of my front yard.

I was pleasantly surprised by the density of the crocus flowers.

I had expected each bulb to send up one flower, but instead each bulb produced three flowers – it was wonderful!

The crocus flowers bloomed at just the right time to get partly trampled by all the trick-or-treaters for Halloween, but I think the damage was mostly superficial and that the bulbs will be fine.

Here is a close-up of the crocus flower. The yellow center of these little guys positively seemed to glow – so vibrant!

Another recent project of mine has been installing a trellis for creating an espalier with my peach tree.

First we put up a four-line trellis onto which the branches will be trained.

It is made of heavy-gauge galvanized wire placed onto large 4″x4″x12′ redwood cedar posts.

The second phase was preparing for winter – there is a chemical-free method for tackling Peach Leaf Curl in peach trees by thwarting the cycle of the peach leaf curl disease during the winter.

In order to do so, I’m supposed to keep the branches 100% dry for all the winter months.

To try to achieve this we put up a plastic shield that we will keep up for Dec/Jan/Feb and then we can take it down for the rest of the year.

Here is how it looks from the yard. We just had a huge windstorm over the last few days and miraculously the plastic structure made it through unscathed. Whew!