California - What are you doing this month?

sanderson wrote:My jaw dropped when I saw your garden area!   

And then there is the great view!  What a wonderful place to garden.

Love it, Joy! It going to be fun watching your garden grow!

CC

Had a great score from today's mailbox!

Very well done sanderson. That's quite a haul. Should keep you out of trouble for a while.

Our last storm wiped out the cover on my greenhouse.  It had only lasted a single year in solid condition, but we had limped along for another 2 years.  If you have 110 degree temps, one of these covers won't last in that kind of intense sunshine.  We bought some 6 mil greenhouse plastic and will recover it in the fall.  



Here are my 2 week old seedlings:


Our potatoes that are popping up from last year's crop - obviously I missed a bunch of them when harvesting.  I have covered them with about 12 inches of loose hay straw and cow manure.  


I have worked "winter sowing" this year - I didn't know what it was called until recently, I had just noticed that my wide mouthed plastic containers worked like mini greenhouses and allowed my squash to get a much faster start.  We eat a lot of nuts from costco and the containers are perfect for this purpose.  The trellis on top is there to weigh them down so my stupid dogs can't dig them up, lol!

Thank you all for your compliments. This piece of property is really our dream come true. I pinch myself so often! We moved to Arroyo Grande from Pasadena with dreams of country living.   So far we have a small orchard (on swales) with artichokes, and I've been doing container gardening (stupid gophers). We have converted most of our house to grey water for the orchard. Sanderson, we actually made the cement pad double sized and hope to install a 5,000 gallon rainwater tank along with our well tank. Last spring we got 12 chickens. We got the wood chips for Christmas!   Though I am regretting that now that I will have to rake them all away to put down the weed barrier! I plan on using most of the big containers to try out sweet potatoes this year, since my daughter loves them. Also, we have yet to put up a deer fence around the garden, which will hopefully happen on Easter weekend. I'd better hurry because the sweet potato slips ship early April! But first I need to mix up my Mel's mix this weekend!

Also, can I ask a probably silly question? I always thought that green houses were for places where it freezes and snows and gets blizzards and such, but it seems like all serious gardeners (yeah, that's right, you all are serious!) have one. Why, if it doesn't freeze? Or if it doesn't freeze much! 

By the way, your seedlings are beautiful! Which makes me think I should do something with these seed packets sitting here! Haha!

Joy, not a silly question at all :-)  

We are zone 8a-bish which means we can get down to the low 20s during the winter.  My winter crops do just fine outside without protection, however I have observed that they grow even better with a covering.  I have 6 mil plastic that I have loosely draped over a couple of beds, not even closed up tightly.  It seems the warmer day time temps under the row cover also warms the soil enough to make a difference in the plant's growth that I think it's worthwhile for all my garden spaces next year.  

As to the greenhouse.  A light weight one like mine makes about 5 degrees difference, but keeps the freeze off of the actual leaf surface which means a lot for many of the plants growing in there.  I have a system inside the greenhouse where I have a second covering for the coldest nights.  I use metallic survival blankets that have been sewn together to make a larger covering and cover each of the beds inside the larger greenhouse.  It works like a dual pane window and the survival blankets hold in the heat that the ground gathered during the day with the sun shining into the greenhouse.  I barely used a heater this year.

I have a small heater with a very low temperature thermostat that goes inside of the 5' x 10' bed cover and runs for a minute or two whenever necessary to warm up the covered bed.  It only runs intermittently and doesn't add appreciably to our electric bill.

Under the interior covers I can grow bell peppers, 6 types of tomatoes, hot peppers, eggplant, herbs and other plants that only generally grow in the summer.  We will have tomatoes all year round for the first time this year (normally we have a couple months that we don't have fruit that ripens.  

The key to winter growing is to have large plants that are ready to fruit in the fall and then they will very slowly ripen over the winter months.  It isn't the cold so much as the lack of sunshine (energy for the plants).  As the days grow longer the plants start to grow more quickly and ripen their fruit.  We even had 6 red bell peppers over the winter!

Ahhh... tomatoes in winter! I get it! Thank you!

joy.cheri wrote: We got the wood chips for Christmas!   Though I am regretting that now that I will have to rake them all away to put down the weed barrier!

Someone may comment on this also.  But, I think you can just put cardboard down where you want the boxes (over the hardware mesh/cloth), set the boxes down, line with weed fabric and fill with Mel's Mix.  

I plan on using most of the big containers to try out sweet potatoes this year, since my daughter loves them. Also, we have yet to put up a deer fence around the garden, which will hopefully happen on Easter weekend. I'd better hurry because the sweet potato slips ship early April! But first I need to mix up my Mel's mix this weekend!

Something I am learning about deer fencing is they want a nice clean place to land on in inside of the fence.  If you put the boxes something like 2' from the fence with some scattered pots, they won't want to chance the jump.  I think it was Jimmy Cee who pointed this out.

Audrey gave me some seeds for Snow Fairy tomatoes.  They are more cold tolerant and she has them in the large green house.  I loved them.  If you want some seeds, just PM me your address.

Audrey,  Just a thought.  Use the 6 mil plastic during the winter and install Home Depot sun shade on the roof [and west side] in the summer.  That should double the plastic's life time.  I took down my mini-greenhouse yesterday.  The extra tomato buckets and sweet potato totes will go there for the summer.

Haul from the mail box!

Sanderson;
That's already the plan.  The cover that came with the greenhouse was too difficult to even think about taking off in summer, but we're trying to think of how we will install the 6 mil so that it can be removed, extending it's life.  We already have a professional grade shade cloth that we bought for the top of the greenhouse and we install it usually by late April when we start heating up.

What's that pink and black thing? Is that a slug flashlight?

CC

Actually it is a rechargeable stun gun I ordered at the Home and Garden Show. It is a good deterrent against threatening dogs. Also has a wrist-attached safety plug in case a 2-legged dog wants to grab it and use it against you. Won't work without the teeny plug.

Wow, it was a Bonanza before I knew that the pink thing was not a flashlight! How cool is THAT? Rechargeable stun gun! With safety features no less!

Those stunners are becoming very popular, SR.

Stopped on the way home last week to get a Coke & the local stop-n-rob was carrying them. One of the clerks was saying she was planning on getting one.

Sanderson, 

I think I actually want to rake back the wood chips and put down weed cloth on the whole area, so I don't have to worry about it. If I'm going to do it, I want to do it right! Also, the wood chips aren't as thick as they appear in the picture. The only reason there aren't weeds there is because my daughter's third birthday was last weekend. Between my husband and I we probably spent about five hours weeding! We were really just mulching the weeds. 

That is so good to know about the deer. I am actually going to put the fence down below the terrace so it will really deter them. They will have to jump over a six foot fence and onto a slope. But we don't get much deer traffic anyway. I really want to grow things up the fence, which I might try and see how much they eat. Maybe we can share!

I like your SFG shirt! And thanks for the offer of seeds. My eyes were bigger then my... green thumb? And I have way too many seeds at the moment. And 24 sweet potato slips coming! 

joy.cheri wrote:That is so good to know about the deer. I am actually going to put the fence down below the terrace so it will really deter them. They will have to jump over a six foot fence and onto a slope. But we don't get much deer traffic anyway. I really want to grow things up the fence, which I might try and see how much they eat. Maybe we can share!

Atlanta Marie found out the hard way that putting her 2' deep beds up against the fence makes it really hard to keep the weeds out.  But if you put 1' or 2" deep beds a foot or two away from the fence with lots of wood chips between them and the fence, and lean the trellises against the fence, it may give you room between crops.  OR, dump at least 2" of horse manure and cheap compost on the plain dirt along the fence and top with at least 2" of wood chips, then can plant sunflowers, corn, sorghum, okra, or any other tall plants all the way around inside the fence.  If you make the compost belt 3' deep, you can put summer squash, roaming cantaloupe and water melons.  You have such a big area that you can have lots of tidy beds and built up in ground areas.  Take a look at Boffer's website.  He has a real nice set up.  Green house, table tops, and a long mound for summer squash.  Oh, shoot.  Look at me running away with your new garden.

Joy.cheri, I have to agree with Sanderson. I've got an absolute MESS right now because I'm right next to that darn fence.

We've got weeds, grass, & TREES (from our neighbor) growing in-between the fence and the beds. Thankfully DH has agreed to help me get it all out.

What we're going to do is pull the small rabbit fence down (it's inside the chain link between it and the beds), get out all the grass, etc., then put down a couple of layers of 6 mil plastic. We'll attach it to the beds and run it under the fence line. Hopefully that will do the job.... I REALLY don't want to have to move those beds....... And I'm hoping I won't have to spray weed killer since I'm right next to the beds.....

I love all your help and ideas, thank you! That's why I'm here. So I was thinking of putting some containers along the fence and planting pole beans. Do you think that would work? They will die, and I can move the pots...  Also, I will have access from the other side of the fence. Does that make a difference? Here is the fence we will put up using t-posts. 

http://cdn2.hubspot.net/hub/10240/file-331035808-jpg/images/deer_orchard_fence_-_lg-resized-600.jpg?t=1456773715641&width=600&height=391

When I think of the fence I just see an unused trellis space, and I'd like to cover it anyway. I really cannot plant in the ground. The gophers will eat everything. Seriously, everything. The fence will also go around the water tank, which I would like to hide, so I was thinking of making a 1' wide raised bed along the fence and growing malabar spinach.

What about putting down weed cloth, wood chips and then setting the containers on it?

How do I see Boffer's website? I found his profile but don't see a website... I love looking at others' gardens!

At the top, select Members.  Enter boffer.  See his Contacts.  See the little "world' globe?  Click on it.

Weed fabric, chips, then the containers along the fence is fine. The fence looks good.

Nice fence, Joy.cheri...! That will be great as a trellis...!

joy.cheri wrote:And thanks for the offer of seeds. My eyes were bigger then my... green thumb? And I have way too many seeds at the moment. And 24 sweet potato slips coming! 

Welcome to Seedaholics Anonymous! We had to buy a bigger fridge coz my seeds were taking up so much space, and still bottom shelf of the new fridge is packed.

CC