Garden

December in the garden – Garden Share Collective
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December in the garden – Garden Share Collective

This is my first post to share with the Garden Share Collective, a group of bloggers and vegetable gardeners from around the world. It’s organized by Lizzie who writes the blog “Strayed from the Table“.

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If you are new to my blog, let me introduce myself. I garden on a small side yard on the edge of urban Oakland. I have four raised beds as well as a standard vegetable patch. I battle deer, squirrels, and our cat who loves anything green. Getting enough sun is a big problem as there are large trees on every side. But, I manage to grow enough organic vegetables and herbs to supplement what I buy at the farmer’s market. My garden feeds my family, friends, and neighbors.

Oakland garden

Oakland garden

Oakland garden

Oakland garden

Oakland garden

Oakland garden

We’ve finally had some rain in Northern California, more is expected later this week. It has been such a dry year and I’ve struggled to keep my vegetable garden going while conserving water. The garden is beginning to slow for the winter, the lettuces seeded in late September are only an inch tall. They may not be big enough to gather till next year. I plan to seed some small radishes this month. If the warmish weather holds, they may mature before our first cold snap, fingers crossed.

I’m harvesting chard, the first of the broccoli, and salad greens including both lettuce and a few leaves from the fava beans. I’ve dug the first of the Jeruslem artichokes. Because they are so invasive here (I have direct experience with that woe), I planted a few tubers in a large container. However, maybe because I was so stingy with water (?), there aren’t very many artichoke tubers. Not to worry, I will dig them out of where I orignially planted them several years ago, in the middle of the garden. They are extremely happy there, unfortunately.

I’ve planted radishes and carrots in containers on my back deck. The radishes are ready for harvest. I don’t think they got quite enough sun, sigh. This one looks good though. Hopefully the carrots will pull through. I have terrible luck with carrots.

Radish

Radish

My to-do list for December includes getting the garden ready for winter.

  • Weed
  • Mow around the raised beds when the ground dries out
  • Rake leaves
  • Cut back the dead asparagus stalks and add compost to the bed
  • Pinch the snap and snow peas to encourage branching
  • Start reading seed catalogs and thinking about spring
Baker Creek Catalog

Baker Creek Catalog

I hope you’ve enjoyed this quck tour around my garden.

November in the garden – salad greens, broccoli, peas, carrots, artichokes
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November in the garden – salad greens, broccoli, peas, carrots, artichokes

Thank goodness we got some rain overnight. My garden has been getting along with occassional water from the hose but I don’t think veggies like it as much as rain water. Do you notice a difference after a rain? I do, they seem to perk up and go through a growth spurt.

The broccoli rabe is starting to form little heads. I may harvest a bit to add to pasta this weekend. Planting three varieties of broccoli is an experiment, in addition to the broccoli rabe I’ve planted purple sprouting broccoli and regular ones. We’ve had some warm weather during the day so they are getting a good start. In the past the cabbage worms and aphids got most of the harvest. I’m being diligent this year about picking off cabbage worm eggs and watching for aphids.

broccoli rabe

broccoli rabe

The cauliflower is standing tall, but there are no heads yet.

The lettuce is looking amazing! We had our first full salad from the garden last night. It was gorgeous with all those colors, textures and leaf shapes. I added fava leaves and trimmings from the pea plants.

fava beans and lettuce

fava beans and lettuce

I plan to scatter some more arugula seeds this weekend. We love it so, and it gets eaten quickly.

Arugula

Arugula

The watermelon radishes I planted seem to have become squirrel food! I’ll replant and cover them with a wire basket to keep the critters away. The radishes were purposely inter-planted with some spicy mixed greens, that usually keeps the furry pests away. Not this time, they selectively dug up all the young radishes.

The snap and snow peas are growing tall though.

nap peas, snow peas, and mesclun

snap peas, snow peas, and mesclun

That’s some spicy mesclun in the front, see the holes where the squirrels dug up the radishes? Grrrr…

carrots and radishes in containers

carrots and radishes in containers

Although I have many gardening failures over the years, the one that frustrates me the most are carrots. They should be easy to grow, right? Well, I have had terrible luck so far. Recently I decided to try another method, containers. I had some deep nursery containers that were sitting around waiting for me to stop being lazy and recycle back to the nursery. I thought I would use them, plant some radishes in the same container. So far, so good. I initially planted pelleted seeds (which are larger and supposed to make it easier to space the carrots), but the germination rate was terrible! So, I purchased several seed varieties and plan to thin the carrots when they are a couple of inches tall.

mini coldframe

mini coldframe – greenhouse

This mini-greenhouse is on the back deck, I’m hoping it will allow me to keep growing lettuces throughout the winter. It will get more sun once the magnolia tree looses the rest of it’s leaves.

artichoke plant

artichoke plant

The artichoke plants are coming back with the cooler wet weather. Last spring we had tons of them. This plant looks as if it could use separating out into at least 3 new ones. They grow like weeds here. Because my neighbor likes the flowers, I let some of them go to seed. Every since they have been self sowing themselves everywhere, even into cracks in the sidewalk.

artichoke plant growing from a crack in the sidewald

artichoke plant growing from a crack in the sidewald

 

October in the garden – what’s happening?
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October in the garden – what’s happening?

I can’t believe it is almost Halloween and the beginning of November! Our days are still warm although nights are cooler. It’s been a few weeks since I posted anything about the garden. Things are growing but there’s not much to harvest yet. I have been able to pick some lettuce leaves to add to a salad, the heads themselves are still developing and I don’t want to stress them by picking too much. I take the biggest of the outer leaves and leave the rest of the head, more seedlings were planted today. Once the cold weather hits everything will slow down.

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The broccoli and cauliflower have almost reached the top of their protective wire cover. They’ll soon need to take their chances with the elements and critters.

Speaking of critters, something has been nibbling at the young lettuce plants. It doesn’t look like snails or slugs, they would have taken it roots and all! Got to be squirrels, mice, or the monster cat. I covered them again with a spare wire basket. My garden feeds the neighborhood!

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Young lettuce, ready to be planted.

The peas are looking good and getting a head start before cold weather hits.

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We are supposed to get rain tomorrow, fingers crossed for the garden. Not so good for the Halloween crowd. And, I do mean crowd. We get carloads of kids in the neighborhood from all over Oakland. I love the little ones, not so much the teenagers.

October in the garden – time to plant peas
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October in the garden – time to plant peas

In my zone 9 garden it is time to plant peas. Freshly gathered sugar snap or snow peas are nothing like the ones you buy in the grocery store or find at the farmer’s market. Just pulled off the vine peas are sweet, juicy and snappy. The natural sugars start turning to starch immediately so they are best, like corn, eaten immediately after picking. There are short varieties of both the snap and snow peas; the shorter varieties don’t shade the other veggies as much. Sun is a valuable commodity in my garden. I grow them along a short pea fence (the same one I use for cucumbers in the summer).

I don’t have enough room to grow regular shelling peas, the vines are very tall and you need a lot of them to produce enough peas for a meal. Frozen baby peas are actually quite good, inexpensive, available year round, and easy!

Sweet pea flowers are a delight! With just a few plants you can gather a vase full of flowers each week, for months. They are expensive to purchase, if you can even find them at the farmer’s market or florist. They are worth every inch of space in the garden.

Peas, ready for planting

Peas, ready for planting

Although it isn’t generally recommended, I decided to start the pea seeds in flats then transplant them into the planting bed later. This has some advantages, as the birds (and the monster cat) love the seedlings. I started the seeds in the fall this year because last springs crop was a failure; I was only able to harvest a few. My mistake was planting transplants into the garden in early April; there wasn’t enough time for them to produce a crop before our unseasonal heat wave. They succumbed to powdery mildew before they developed any pods. I used some of the tips of the pea shoots in salads but had to pull out the plants. This year I will overwinter them for an earlier crop. Peas need some warm weather to sprout but then do fine in cooler weather, they are even ok with a light frost.

I seeded 3 types of bush snap and snow peas all from Cook’s Garden:

All of them are bush or dwarf varieties and only need a short support system. The entire plant of these is edible, so shoots can be gathered for salads even before they produce any pods.

  • Dwarf Grey Sugar – a snow pea with lovely purplish grey leaves and two toned pink and purple flowers. After reading an article on the blog Frugalista Gardener, I couldn’t resist them.
  • Cascadia – snap pea
  • Sugar Daddy – snap pea

I also seeded some flowering sweet peas. They will be tall and need strong support when planted into the garden. I’ll use the bean tower. I grow sweet peas each year, they are lovely in an arrangement with roses and remind me of my grandmother. Their delightful scent will permeate an entire room. Putting a vase in the entrance hallway gives visitors and family a special greeting as they come in the front door.

Flowering sweet peas:

All of the seeds had their outer shell nicked with a nail clipper to hasten germination and were planted in plastic flats (recycled plastic arugula and kale containers from the grocery store). I seeded 2 peas per hole, 1 inch deep, and about 1.5 inches apart. The plastic containers went onto a wet seed mat. The mat wicks from a well of water below to keep consistent moisture level for germination. The APS system came from Gardener’s Supply. This gives me the freedom to go away for a few days and know the seedlings are getting consistent and proper moisture for germination.

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I planted them along a short pea fence last week. They are in one of four of my raised beds. As well into that bed went Watermelon radishes, arugula, and some spicy lettuce mixes. The cooler weather means I can start harvesting lettuce from the garden again. Hopefully they will get established before the really cold weather hits us, our first frost date is December 1.

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The sweet pea flowers were planted beside the bean tower, as they will get very tall. In the past I have planted way too many and been overwhelmed with picking flowers to keep the plants blooming. This year I was more restrained in the number of plants, and maybe more optimistic that they would do well. The Incense Peach variety was sold out last year, I’m pleased I was able to get some for this year.

It’s not too late to put in pea plants in zone 9, you will find a wide variety at your local nursery this month.

There is always something going on in the garden!
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There is always something going on in the garden!

It pays to keep your eyes open when you spend time in the garden! I am never quite sure what I will find. It pleases me to think of the mini ecosystem the garden is supporting.

California stick insect

California stick insect

I came across this stick insect in the front yard while doing some clean up. It’s a variety of walking stick, a California Timemas. They usually live in trees and shrubs in the chapparal or at the foothills of mountains. I don’t know what it was doing in Oakland! This is the first time I have seen one here. Global warming?

Caterpillar of Black Swallowtail Butterfly

Caterpillar of Black Swallowtail Butterfly

Black Swallowtail catterpillar - about 2 inches long

Black Swallowtail catterpillar – about 2 inches long

While cutting parsley I spied this lovely caterpillar. Looking it up on the web I found it is the caterpillar of the Black Swallowtail Butterfly (Papilio polyxenes). In the past it was commonly referred to as the Parsnip Swallowtail as their favorite food plants belong to the Umbelliferae, or Carrot family. They like parsley and fennel, both of which are abundant in my garden. The adult butterfly must have visited my butterfly bush and decided the nearby parsley was a good place to lay its eggs. After photographing and identifying it, I returned it to the parsley. There is plenty to share.

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Butterfly Bush

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Black Swallowtail Butterfly. Photo by Peter Miller.

You can read more about them at:

http://kimsmithdesigns.files.wordpress.com/2011/07/eastern-black-swallowtail.jpg

And, asparagus growing in with the chard?! In October! This one must have seeded itself from the asparagus bed which is a good 50 feet away.

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