Cardiff Garden Blog

I wanted to take some pics of my colorful spicy bowl of peppers. I find that I cannot use them fast enough. 

My girlfriend snapped this one the other day... love the contrast and color

just a shot of the garden plot as of end of July 2012.  On the right on the fence is the grapevine.  Most of the plants in the picture are peppers and tomatoes. As well as some pumpkin & squash vines.

These are just a few heads of garlic I picked the other day.  With these the portion of the plant above the soil was already dead or about to be dead. I couldn't just yank these by the above the soil part of the plant. Instead I dug them out by hand from under the surface. I still have a few heartier plants in the ground. Those left in the ground are still green and I expect that they are still growing.  I'll wait until I notice them dying off before I uproot. After removing from soil I washed them off under the sink and placed on the window sill to dry them out. 

I've tried growing squash in the past and had limited success. This year they seemed to be doing better in the alley box that get the best amount of sun. These squash are growing outside the box on the sandy soil. The vines roots are in the good soil in the box but the vine itself doesn't need to be on top of the best soil.  I suspect these squash need a few more days to fully ripen. Anyone got any good recipes?

Really love how cool the onion flower looks. This flower is from the onion that a neighbro planted in my garden.  I have since planted my own guerrilla onion in another box. And by that I mean an onion that was chopped and used for cooking. The remaining half of the onion was stored in my fridge in a plastic baggie. After about a week or so the moisture from the bag helped the onion to start growing inside the fridge. So like this plant, I took the half onion (sprouting) and dug it into the soil a few inches. After about a week I am already seeing the sprouts coming up.  I think this was even easier than from seed.  I'm gonna have to use this method more often with leftover food scraps. This flower is also serving a purpose other than just being pretty to look at.. I've noticed a number of bees frequenting it.  Which we all know as a good thing for plants.

Everyday I am more and more impressed with how much grapes grow in size daily and weekly.  This bundle here is probably the furthest along.  The bundle above this growing over the open alley. I can't imagine I'll have to wait too much longer for my first taste of patience.  I feel like I've been really lucky with the lack of bugs and critters attacking my crops. The birds haven't paid much notice to the vine nor have they paid much attention to my boysenberry vine. Here's hoping the continue to ignore it all.

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.

So I spent a good part of my Easter sunday weeding, picking, trimming, planting, and digging. I planted new plants like peppers, tomatillo, tomatoes, pumpkin, and watermelon.  Also added new compost to some of the boxes that needed it.  Spring is here and the garden needed the attention that comes with the warmer weather.  Here are some pics from that afternoon's labor.  

It's been sometime since I've updated the progress of the boysenberry vine. It's in full bloom for the spring. Tons of white flowers everywhere which means tons of berries. Can't wait for them.  I've already eaten a few that were early bloomers.

This area below my bedroom window was dead space. It was originally just a pile of rocks and rubble.  I've worked with the soil the past few years to try and coax life out of it.  Mostly sunflowers in the past but this blueberry bush has been surviving for a year or two now.   To the right of the bush is a freshly planted tomato plant. It will be a pseudo test to see if this area can reap actual rewards, other than birdfood.  Also can see the boysenberry vine popping up from under the sidewalk. 

This is my first year for growing artichoke and I have to say it hasn't been much of a burden. I haven't had many issues with the plants themselves. I will say I didn't expect they'd be as large as they are. If I'd had known their size I might have been a bit more careful in where I planted them.  Looking forward to seeing more from them.