Edible Garden
We planted all our indoor pepper and tomato starts. The Serranos looked most distressed prior to transplant 🤞🌱
I just installed this Antelco eZyvalve 4 Zone Valve Box. I’m very pleased so far. We’ll see how durable and long lasting it is. I’ll be connecting drip to it. It’s wired to my Rachio Gen 2 irrigation controller.
Row Crop irrigation kit from Drip Depot installed. Really pleased with this so far. I need to stake the tubes in a bit. Will be planting in a week or two. The peppers & tomatoes are hardening now. 🌱
Took a Potensic D58 drone photo today of the backyard (bottom photo) to compare against January 2020 (top photo). Looking real nice. Fun to have unusual views of the yard.
Slowly preparing the backyard garden rows over the past few months 😅 Almost time to plant the peppers, tomatoes, and direct sow the herbs. No more lawn!!!!!! Tilling is amazing at removing thatch and dead lawn. 🌱
Tomato sprouts all day today! Peppers should be next. 🌱
Lemon grass is overwintering nicely. This time we dug up the plant to include roots. Last year we rooted a few stalks in water; here’s its progeny 👌 There’s another bunch of lemon grass outdoors. If it survives, that’ll be the second year overwintering outside in native soil. 🌱
Last year we successfully grew peppers by direct sowing mid-Spring. Today we’re starting plants from seed indoors. Mostly peppers: Thai, Serrano, Jalapeño, Santa Fe. 🤞🌱
Been a few years since we first wanted to mulch the backyard. Weather got nice so here we go with 10 cu yd of chips!
Frosty garden grown hot peppers (from the freezer) about to become hot sauce. We harvest over the summer and freeze until ready.
Cultivated native California grapes. Seedy & thick skinned but good to eat. Since the birds aren’t.
Orange Grove Update
This year, our Mandarin orange will provide plenty to eat in January. We’re lucky it’s not alternate bearing (this year, anyway).
Meanwhile, this is the first year our Meyer lemon has produced more than a couple fruit. Super exciting! It did lose a lot of leaves earlier this summer, though. I attribute that to overwatering. Oops.
Finally, our Valencia is also producing more than a couple fruit:
The lemon grass coming in strong. It came back from last year’s planting and a cutting we took.
Anaheim pepper with a surprise mantis for scale. Then a jalapeño. Just popped out of nowhere while I inspected the peppers this morning. It’s protecting our garden!
Garden Update
Experimental pepper garden update: Cayenne, jalapeño, Anaheim, Hungarian wax. We will ripen all peppers to red for making hot sauce and tastier eating. Direct seeded March 29.
Our cultivated native California grapes are ripening! The birds will hopefully soon find them. Or we’ll enjoy them despite their massive seeds.
Our peppers are doing okay despite the very late seeding. Just a bit of brown rot initially but some Jobes organic fertilizer seems to have stopped that.
The last two days of 110°F heat has also resulted in our cultivated native California grapes turning to raisins on the vine.
110°F yesterday and today. The avocados we planted 2-3 years ago transpire water more than they can replenish from the ground and so their leaves desiccate and die. Especially the young leaves on the Bacon (1) variety and random adult leaves on the Mexicola (2) variety. ☹️
Scrub Jay patiently waiting for the grapes to ripen.
