Cardiff Garden Blog

One of my favorite things about having a garden is how it helps to me to explore new foods. Before I started gardening I never really enjoyed tomatillos, boysenberries, turnips, chard, and the list goes on. I love the reward of eating something you helped nurtured along.. Kinda cannibalistic if you think about it. hahaha.  But this was my first time growing Artichoke. And to be honest the only time I've eaten Artichoke was in spinach and Artichoke dip. Not very brave I know. But last night I got to enjoy this sucker and he was delicious. Can't wait for more. Hopefully we'll have the barbeque going by the time I pick the next one. 

I think its about time to pick this guy. I still can't believe how great this has grown. I never in my wildest dreams thought it would be these easy to grow these.  Now just have to figure out what I want to do with it.. Dip... or maybe something else.

So every year I've been trying to keep plants surviving longer and longer. It seems like I cannot get a plant to last more than a season. Peppers in particular. Regardless of how large the plant was the previous season, I've struggled to get that plant to produce a product the next season. Grapevine and boysenberries being exempt from this discussion. But this pepper plant is proving me wrong. The plant was much larger last season and produced quite a bit. In the winter the plant sort of died off but not completely. And then this spring I started noticing a resurgence of life. The plant looks really healthy and already has large peppers on it. Lots of flowers as well. I don't know what I did but it seems to be working. And I hope it keeps working.

So last year I had limited success with pumpkins and watermelon. I had just a few vines that produced limited product. I was happy with what I got but wanted more.  So this year I've decided to go nuts on planting both pumpkin and watermelon in the alley box. This box has the most open direct sun and room around the box.  All my other boxes are hampered by space constraints like fences and other boxes nearby.  My hopes are that this box will shoot runner vines well into the alley to soak up the sun and green up an area that is usually pretty drab during the summer season. I've gone with seed and store bought plants. Obviously the store boughts are larger and further along than the fresh new start ups that just arrived this past week. Also can see some garlic off to the center right of this pic. I have a feeling that is going to be a huge hunk of garlic.

Now normally I'm against caging my tomatoes.  I like the plant to reach its largest potential and somehow I don't think caging it in will help that. But in this instance I am caging because the lack of support for the plant in the alley. I won't have anything to stabilize the plant with so I decided lets see how I do.  I do have other tomatoes plants growing free range.  This plant looks to be doing fine for the moment. We'll see how it gets when it grows beyond the cage.

 So I'm finding more and more of these on my grapevine. Which has me super stoked. Obviously these are the beginnings to something tasty I've been patiently waiting for some time now (over 5 years to be exact). It appears my patience is being rewarded this summer.  The vine has also spread well across the alley and into the neighbors yard. (they don't mind already asked) Besides who wouldn't want free grapes.  These will be the eating kind and not the wine kind. Concorde to be exact. Seedless.

So I came out to my garden one day to see that someone had stuffed a full size onion into the ground in one of my garden boxes. I'm assuming someone (probably someone that I share the house/yard with) had an onion they didn't want or was just not ripe enough and decided to see what would happen..  Well this is what happened. A bunch of large onions. Last year a grew a few from seed and the seed pods seen at the top of the plants spread a few good seeds to other areas of my garden and had fresh onion plants this season.  Here's hoping that happens again. And thanks to whomever planted that onion.  Also seen in this picture are some juicy red strawberries to the left and a tomatillo plant bottom right.  Artichoke behind the onion

So this being the second year that I've had the boysenberry vine, I'm finding that each picking reaps a little more. This being the height of bounty. I've never picked this many berries in one session. Granted I didn't get a chance to pick some over the weekend so there may have been a few I could have picked earlier. Still way impressed with the yield.  This photo doesn't show the 15+ berries I ate that I just thought were to delicious to make it to the bowl. Who knows how many I'll pick in the next couple days...

My Artichoke plants are coming along nicely. I've included a pic to show the progress. I've noticed 3 heads on this plant. This is my first time growing artichoke so I'm new to the stages of maturity and when to pick.