Our little garden is growing really well right now. This is a great time in San Diego County for plants. The sun shines for well over 12 hours a day, and the temperatures are generally mild. We did have some fairly extreme temperature jumps this week. Last Wednesday our high was only 67 degrees, but by Sunday it was about 95 degrees. I had to make sure I kept the soil from drying out and allowing my seedlings to die.
I also had a problem with something digging in my garden beds. I have some sort of beetle grub that lives in the soil. The grub seems benign, but occasionally there will be holes dug all over the garden beds when some animal decides grubs are on the menu. At least I think that is what is going on. When I find dug up spots, I just attempt to put the dirt back in place and resettle the plants. Generally, the plants do OK, but I do miss out on seeds sprouting when they are disturbed.
Our lemon tree is growing and putting out many lemons. Three years ago the lemons looked diseased and were inedible, now there are more lemons then we can keep up with.
I think we might actually get blood oranges for the first time. The fruit seems to have set and is growing larger right now.
The key lime tree I bought at Costco has blooms all over it. I planted it near the end of the summer last year, and got a few limes off of blooms that were on it when I bought it. I think we will get a lot of limes this year.
My Anna Apple tree is blooming again. I was surprised to see more flowers on the tree. It is the first year I have this tree, so I have no idea what to expect from it.
The almonds continue to look good. They really don’t look like almonds at all though. The part we eat is safely protected inside of its large fuzzy shell for now.
I really hope this plant is an artichoke and not some lesser cousin. I think the seeds blew in from my neighbors yard, but I haven’t been able to ask them yet.
This garden bed has a large cauliflower plant in it that I think is finally going to give us something to eat. There are also green beans, carrots, Desi Squash, Patty Pan Squash, Long Beans, Pok Choy, and Swiss Chard. I had some Kale plants, but lost them when that part of the bed got dug up. I might have a couple pepper plants going, the seedlings look like peppers, but I planted the peppers so long ago that I am not sure.
The large plants you see in the bed are New England Sugar Pie Pumpkins. We grew this type last year and got 19 pumpkins out this small area. There are also 3 kinds of peppers in the background, and green beans in the foreground.
The brown plants in the back of this bed are my garlic. They look bad, but seem to be growing well. There are also three types of flowers, mustard greens, kohlrabi, and some kind of cauliflower.
This is my long bed. It has a number of things planted in it. Unfortunately, this one got dug up pretty badly twice. I probably lost the carrots I planted in here and some of the green and wax beans.
My 7 year old’s garden bed is growing like mad. Some of his corn plants have corn on the stalks already. Earlier this week I harvested two of his beets to make room for the other beets. One of his cauliflowers was eaten by caterpillars so I replaced it with two chard plants that I bought. His other cauliflower is getting chewed up by caterpillars too, even though I try to look for bugs to kill on it every day.
My thirteen year old’s garden bed is also growing well. His corn is also starting to have fruit on it. His cilantro didn’t like the mid 90s temperatures from the weekend and looks like it wants to bolt. Cilantro is very heat sensitive, which I find interesting because it seems only be eaten in places where it is warm. His Black King Pansies have started to bloom a little.
Here are some pictures of a tomato plant since that is what my mom and my wife really want me to grow.
There isn’t much growing right now that we can eat, since I didn’t do well in the transition from winter to spring. There are a few things that I was able to pick.
This afternoon we had a decent sized California Kingsnake on our driveway. I wasn’t able to get much pictures or video of it since it quickly slithered into our ivy. There are a number of gopher holes near the snake, so I really hope the snake slaughters some gophers.
I hope that everyone that read through all this enjoyed the pictures, and I hope your planting endeavors are doing well.
-Joshua
Your ‘orchard’ and gardens look very good. I’m going to have to look up the term ‘bolt’ as I’m not sure what it means. My own plants (herbs) had a good start but the cold followed by hot followed by cold is messing things up quite a bit. I need to replant my Italian basil as only 2 plants germinated out of the 8-10 seeds I planted.
Bolt as I have heard it used means start flowering.
https://www.gardeningknowhow.com/edible/vegetables/vgen/what-is-bolting-what-it-means-when-a-plant-bolts.htm
Thank you, that makes sense, of course. I’m guessing that the bolting is earlier than desired as at some point in their life cycle, all flowering plants produce flowers leading to seeds. You’re encouraged to pinch off the flowering tips on things like basil, to promote branching of the stem and more leaf production since that’s what you want to harvest. However, as the basil plant matures, the stems gets tough and the leaves become bitter so you’re better off to rip out the old plant and transplant younger plants in their place.
Yes much earlier in some cases. Our cilantro is a rather small plant, but is already looking like it thinks summer is starting. I am hoping a return to some high 70s low 80s weather will calm it down.
I didn’t get any basil to germinate so I cheated and bought one.
I used to get lots and lots of seeds germinating, from the package I bought about 3-4 yrs ago, but this time I used some of the seeds I collected from my plants last year … I let them bolt and didn’t harvest the leaves in a timely fashion so it was a disappointing year for pesto production. I have both Italian and Thai basil plants, 3 lavender seedlings, more than a dozen shiso plants (after I had one seedling self seed, I stripped the seed pods from the dead stalk and was amazed how many germinated) that need to be thinned/transplanted into pots and a single mitsuba plant from last fall that overwintered and is putting out leaves like crazy. I also have a single pot with a basil plant in it that overwintered and some oregano.
I want to grow Thai basil some day. There are enough basil types to fill a garden bed with them alone!
I agree. Chocolate, cinnamon, lemon basil. But then what do you do with them? 🙂
Good question!
You are experiencing the ups and downs that are familiar to very gardener but you seem to be surviving them very well.