California - What are you doing this month?

Well, today was 105*F with the air pollution in the hazardous Red Zone, so it was nasty. I got up with the first light and turned the 13-day old compost pile for the 4th time and added some water. It had finally reached 165* so it is moving along. Only 3 or so more turns.

I'm concerned about the garden, well, mainly the tomatoes. After I pruned a lot of dead branches, new green growth started showing up. That is good but some of the branches and leaves are really small and curled upwards. I have lost 2 plants completely, San Marzano and Beefsteak. Probably one of the Snow Fairy. I am wondering if the straw or alfalfa used in the compost piles have herbicides. Just a thought.

So, Audrey, is it time to start the kale, broccoli, etc. in seed pots? Mellon, CN and I are waiting for you to let us know. When do you put in the onion sets and garlic cloves? Carrot seeds? Parsnips?

After another spraying of milk, I am seeing fewer little grasshoppers. Tonight I got 2 when I watered and it only took 5 swats with the fly swatter. I'm getting better. I feel like a SWAT person, but instead of a flashlight with the gun, I have the flyswatter with the hose wand. Peppers are doing good, parsley was and then I found a green worm eating away. Cucumbers have lots of flowers but only a few fruit. Only the Muncher is not bitter. I had such great hopes as the early fruits of Pickler, Muncher and Apple Crisp were perfect. I think there is a pollinated cantaloupe!

The sunflower are 6' now, very fast growers in this weather. [earlier photo under BTE thread] I think there are flowers forming for the neighbors to ooh and ah over when they take their walks. I love working with the Agibon-30 but I have this awful feeling that it fried my KY beans. The top foot or so are dead. The cover was open at both ends but I think it still got too hot under there. That's all for now.

It's been 105 or worse for several days here. Everything, and I mean EVERYTHING has stopped. I have a lemon cuke that got it's first true leaf about 10 days ago and that's still all it has. My banana squash got off to a roaring start but hasn't grown an inch or produced a new leaf since. The list goes on and on and on. Nothing is dying but nothing is progressing, either. I will definitely have to grow some bush varieties in the house during July and August from now on. It's a good thing we have a long growing season because that's obviously what it takes to garden in this climate.

Oh my aching back!   This morning I discovered 3 things: the soil level in my "salad bar" has dropped 2" (not unexpected), we're slowly heading for a heatwave, and the wind dropped about 4 bushels of dried leaves in the yard. That was 2 hours ago. Now 3 bushels of those wonderful leaves are in the garden beds, the 4th is in a handy container to use as needed, and I'm on the couch, moaning.  For probably the last day until October, our high today will be well below 90, so I'm getting everything I can done outside. By the end of the week we'll be back in the triple-digits and I'll be a mushroom again.

I hope to be able to visit Audrey tomorrow (Tuesday) and find out her secrets for successful gardening. I turned the compost for the 5th time so I have Tuesday free!

sanderson wrote:I hope to be able to visit Audrey tomorrow (Tuesday) and find out her secrets for successful gardening.     I turned the compost for the 5th time so I have Tuesday free!

Why don't the 2 of you drive up here and we'll make it a threesome. You could help us install shade cloth over the "salad bar" in preparation for our coming heat wave. 

I looked at the weather forecast and a nasty heat wave is expected by the weekend.

sanderson wrote:   I looked at the weather forecast and a nasty heat wave is expected by the weekend.  

Gotta get our shade cover finished by Friday. Saturday it's supposed to be 106.

Sooooo.... Sanderson and I finally got to meet today.  We couldn't stop talking, what fun it is to finally meet someone who has become a friend.  She got the grand tour of my monstrous and messy gardens and we swapped seeds and talked about the forum and other dear people here and politics and.... Great time!!!  Guess what we forgot to do?  Take a picture   so we can't post anything.

How FUN! Glad y'all had a great time!

After all this time talking about it, we finally got together! And, I got to meet her Dear Husband. Driving up, the first thing I noticed was her huge green plants and fruits in the long compost and wood chip row. The largest orange winter squashes, some about 30 or 40 pounds, watermelons, sunflowers, walking onions, summer squashes, etc. Digging down she showed me what red wigglers and Mother Nature can accomplish with yards and yards of compost and wood chips on otherwise unusable decomposed granite hill. Their shady oasis under the trees. The 4 x 8 SFG beds (jealous!), SFG beds within the greenhouse for winter produce, and seeding set up. And talk about a seed collection! Audrey took some of my purple cauliflower and broccoli seeds, and some Kiss-me-over-the-garden-gate seeds from my one volunteer this summer. Perfect for her huge spread as they get higher than a fence and 4+ feet wide and attract pollinators. I took walking onions from the garden and several duplicate seed packs from her huge collection. As a special treat, I got to see her beautiful art work!

We discussed how SFG has enabled people to garden where traditional gardens won't work. How everyone comes up with the neatest creations and solutions. (neither of us are gossipers, it was all positive!) As I drove away, I noticed the bag of zucchini on the seat. Funny, I don't remember picking any.

I'm so glad you ladies had fun and so jealous that I couldn't be there. 

You must always be on the outlook for sneaky zucchini. They will climb into any unlocked car they can find.

I wish we were all closer but CA is such a LONG state.  I really needed to see her garden and get recharged.  I just feel like I'm not a good gardener.  She perked me up by pointing out how much I have achieved with the limited conditions in my tiny back yard.  Having to work around the infrastructure in place, costly and monitored water, neighbor's tall trees, grasshoppers, lack of pollinators.  I'm going to move away from Heirloom tomatoes and try hybrids that may do better here.  While I love to hear about what others are growing, if they don't grow here or I can't grow them, there's no need to keep banging my head against the wall.     Oh, did I mention 2 walking onions made it into the car?  Boy, they sure do travel.

Supercool you guys met up.  Since I too live in what I consider small California yard, whenever stuff suddenly dies off, I always wonder, did I screw up? Was it pest?  Some blight?  Or some herbicide one of my 200 neighbors decided to use for something.  Or the city/county, saw them driving by a couple weeks ago spraying something from the truck on weeds sticking up in the sidewalks.

I cringe every time I walk thru the big box home improvement stores and see almost an entire aisle dedicated to roundup products target to home users.  Most new development in SoCal thinks a 6000 square foot lot is huge.

NSR,  That's how I have been feeling.  What did I do wrong.  Now I'm feeling like I'm doing pretty good. Well, I did, until I received the lab results.

Yep, 6000 sq ft, that's my lot and it's a one story.

Saw in another thread that you guys are looking forward to fall planting.  It can get so frustrating loosing crops to heat and insects.  Saw the first batch of red spider mites on the cucumbers!  Shoot, or are they scale?  I'll look closer tomorrow.  It looks like this coming heat wave will affect quite a few states.  On the bright side in my little corner, 2 Lilac Bells:

What a gorgeous color........ hmmmmm...... idea for next year!

AtlantaMarie wrote:What a gorgeous color........  hmmmmm......  idea for next year!

I agree, let us know how they taste.

Some updates:  I lost 3 tomato plants but some of the survivors have grown new suckers.  The white buckets are wrapped in aluminum foil which really, really keeps the soil cool in the blazing sun.  


Pepper bed of 14 plants.  Nice deep green area of the backyard
From the other side of the bed, with 2 potted peppers showing.

Tomato sucker trimmings I stuck in the amended ground.  I'm going to heavily amend this fall and plant with bush tomatoes and okra next summer.  That will free up some bed squares for precious plants!

Left over peppers I planted in amended ground.

Sweet potatoes in totes.  The stems are long but sort of collapsed in the totes.  Next year, a trellis.

Three potted Japanese Millionaire eggplants.  The flowers alone are worth it.

The walking onions from Audrey are now in beds and pots. The grasshoppers are fewer. I guess they wanted to make room for the spider mites.

Lookin' good, Sanderson. What you do with limited space is amazing.

We got the shade cloth up yesterday, so now all my babies will have protection from the blazing sun. There's nothing we can do about the heat, but I will bring in 3 potted tomato plants in small containers every day when it gets to 95 and take them back out every evening. I need to find a good place for them to get the morning sun so they don't get puny in the house. I am determined to have tomatoes. So far I've reaped 2 tomatoes from 10 mature plants.

My delicata bush squash seeds have sprouted, so they will go outside in the mulch bed to climb around. If they survive our heatwave (could be 111 by Thursday) we should have 2 varieties of squash for Thanksgiving (banana squash already growing in the mulch pile).

Cucumbers doing okay. Everything else just hanging on. The next 8 days are gonna be brutal. Fingers crossed my little garden survives this heatwave.

headed so on 99 from sac to fresno.  hope garden's okay when get get home after 24 hour trip.

countrynaturals wrote:Lookin' good, Sanderson. What you do with limited space is amazing.

+1 - Considering the heat, pests and space, you have done a fantastic job.

My NZ spinach (thank you, Sanderson) doesn't mind our 110 temps. I have 9 cute little "bushes" looking very happy. These are a real mystery to me. I've never seen multiple sprouts from single seeds before. Actually, the seeds did look like they came from another planet. Where did you say you found them, Sanderson?

Pretty in Green! I bought my own pack from Territorial Seeds. The plant in my garden was from a seed from Audrey.

Boy, you guys really have it rough with that heat! And water restrictions. And fires.

I'm feeling a bit grateful to only have a brown lawn...and 90.

I also have sweet potato envy now thanks to Sanderson. Beautiful plants! Can't wait to see the finished product.

CC

Well... home from my 6 day trip to San Diego.  Where it was HOT and muggy.  Not at all normal for July.  High 90s and I was sweaty and wet all the time (eeeewwwww)

My neighbor did a great job with my yard - I'm sure it wore him out as he has to hike over from his property every time he needed to move the water.  Only lost one plant and that had nothing to do with water.

I harvested my big Boston Marrow when I discovered a gopher/critter hole under one of them and what ever it was had been nibbling on a patch of it.  

I'm cleaning out the greenhouse and starting the plants that will be growing in it this winter including planting new tomatoes.  

My first load of wood chip mulch arrived early this morning.  It's really nicely chipped and has a lot of hardwoods in it which will be nice for paths and around trees.