2013 Gardening

Before: Right after first planting in July.

Now.

I started the garden very late this year, since I was in Pittsburgh for all of June. July and August can get very hot in Mountain View, and the weather is quite sunny and dry. I did some blog research on late planting in the Bay Area to figure out what seeds to buy for my earth boxes. Eric and I went to Summerwinds Nursery on the 4th of July to get started. We bought six sweet corn seedlings, six cucumber seedlings, lettuce seedlings, swiss chard seedlings, spinach seedlings, a green pepper plant, a black krim tomato plant, and a Bulgarian Carrot Pepper plant. I also planted lima bean seeds, sunflower seeds, and herb seeds of basil, oregano, chives, and parsley.

Even with partial shade, the spinach bolted right away. The Romaine Lettuce and Rainbow Swiss Chard, however, did very well. I got so much lettuce I started giving it away, and it was delicious. It finally bolted, but I feel like I got more lettuce than I paid for. The Swiss Chard is still doing really well, though it grows much more slowly than the lettuce. I harvested early, and now it is growing back. I was only able to make a couple dishes out of the Rainbow Swiss Chard so I'm excited to be getting some more. Today I cut down all the bolted lettuce and made room for some cilantro. I hope to plant some spinach in place of the lettuce when it gets cooler. I saved the seeds from my first try.

Romaine Lettuce flourishing.

Rainbow Swiss Chard loving the earth box.

Amazing colors.

Lettuce is gone now.

My corn seemed to do well at first, but then completely stopped growing. The seedlings pollinated and developed ears of corn with silks, but then just stopped doing anything. I waited a long while but finally pulled them out today. The roots were so shallow they weren't even absorbing water, yet the small stalks were still alive. I have no idea what happened there. I planted a few sweet corn seeds in place of the failed stalks, just to see if they would sprout and do better. It's a perfect environment in my earth box. They either did not get enough sun, were too close together, or just didn't like to be transplanted. I also planted some more cilantro seeds in their place. If one cilantro seed doesn't do well I will have another.

One corn plant I replanted as an experiment to see if it would do well
away from the others. It got a little taller but then quit.

Here's where the corn was before I pulled it out.
Now there are four seeds in there--three corn and one cilantro.

Tiny cilantro seedling.

The peppers are doing amazing. They are huge plants and have a ton of peppers ripening. Bulgarian Carrot Peppers are really freaking hot. Don't ever cut them without gloves. I learned that the hard way. Everything on the internet says they are mild peppers for some reason. I used two tiny ones in a 1lb ground turkey taco recipe and it was pretty hot. It took me three recipes to use up a large one. I will most likely be giving these crazy things away because there is no way we can handle that many hot peppers.

Bulgarian Carrot Peppers.

Green Bell Peppers.

My cucumber plants had a rough start. Immediately I realized I planted them too close together. One suffocated and died, and I replanted another. The other four grew long and tall, curling around everything. At first I had trouble with pollination. The blossoms were just falling off. Then, when I bought some marigolds to attract bees, and cucumbers were everywhere, the birds started eating them!!! I was so mad. So I bought netting to keep the birds off, and the cucumbers are finally doing well. There are a ton, and they are ripening one by one. Now the only problem is, I am having trouble keeping powdery mildew at bay. I sprayed with milk, which didn't really help, then tried baking soda, which helped, but it came right back. Now I am trying oils, and will see how that goes. The powdery mildew isn't supposed to kill the plant or inhibit cucumber growth, but I'm afraid it will if it gets out of control. The people at the Nursery told me I was watering too much and to not water for awhile. But I tried that and in two days all the plants were wilting. Not a good idea.

First planted.

Tomato plant and cucumbers.
Tomato looked like it was dying, but had a few inedible tomatoes on it.

Corn and pepper plants.

Cucumber and tomato again, after a little love.

Now: Huge cucumber plants covered with bird netting.

See those little cucumbers back there?

Odd shaped cucumber from uneven pollination. 

Valley Carpenter Bee hanging out on my cucumber plant.

Perfect and tasty cucumber.

My single tomato plant, which I planted in the same earth box, never did well in the first place, but once it started to do better and get blossoms, it suddenly dried out completely--seriously overnight. Either I didn't water enough, it caught a disease, it gave up on life, or the cucumber plant strangled it. I'm just not sure. But it's an heirloom tomato, and it's too late in the season for tomatoes, so I didn't expect much from it anyway. I'm just impressed that I got it to come back to life once, even if it was for a short time.

The sunflower seeds were fun. I enjoyed watching them sprout and start out as tiny little seedlings. Now they are huge. I had some issues with snails and birds eating the leaves, but they are strong, resilient plants. It's just so hard to believe that these huge stalks came out of tiny seeds and need zero help standing up on their own.

Today I planted a Meyer Lemon seed from a local lemon I received. I'd love to have fruit trees some day, and since it takes 3-6 years for a lemon tree to bear fruit, I figured I might as well get started. Apparently lemon trees do well in pots. You just keep pruning them so they don't get very large. I hope it grows :-)

There's a Meyer Lemon seed in there.

Italian Parsley.

Sweet Basil.

Tiny lima bean pods (Chihuahua not part of garden).

The birds feasted on these sunflower leaves for some reason.

Tall stalks, still growing.