California - What are you doing this month?

Yardslave wrote: I hope I can find some coarse vermiculite locally. I don't want to have to have to pay those outrageous shipping prices for a 4 cubic foot bag of vermiculite. Last time I bought a bag locally from the Home Despot it was as small as glitter, only suitable for starting seeds. I'm going to scout out a few hydroponics shops and see what they can offer.

Also check out Uline Coarse Vermiculite - they have a warehouse in metro-LA, so shipping may not be too bad to you.  Two 4 cu. ft. bags shipped to me was $23.00, but the warehouse closest to us is in Wisconsin.

You are right about Home Depot Vermiculite - it is listed as Medium, but it is really Fine.

OG, Do you mean you paid $23 in shipping cost for the two 4-cubic foot bags of coarse vermiculite. Not bad.

YS, I also used the Home Depot vermiculite for starting seeds. Regarding finding coarse vermiculite, I have a source at $45 per 4 cu. ft. bag. I also found it at a hydroponic shop.

sanderson wrote:OG,  Do you mean you paid $23 in shipping cost for the two 4-cubic foot bags of coarse vermiculite.  Not bad.

Yes.  Well, actually it was a little more - something like $23.45.   The 4 cu. ft. bags of coarse vermiculite at Uline were $32 each, plus shipping.  So, with shipping it came to about $44 per bag.

I can't believe that it's been a month since I posted here!  In all fairness, I had to get the winter seeds sowed the last days of Sept and first days of Oct so I could go on another road trip.  The road trip was for 8 days with the garden surviving while I was absent, and then came down with a cold that went to pneumonia.  I am on the road to recovery.  I saw the doctor today for a follow up and she said it will take a month or two to fully recover.  

Ken made a compost pile in the 80-gallon tumbler.  Used straw mulch, 33 gallons of horse manure, 2 or 3 mowed flakes of alfalfa hay, 3 large bags of Starbuck's, green lawn clippings from the back yard, and 2 5-gallon buckets of stinky produce that I was trying to compost.  I threw the empty buckets away!  After 48 hours, it is up to 145*F.

Here are a few photos of the homestead:

Oct 24 photos of the 2 covered beds.  The other beds are planted in peas and garlic (just planted 2 days ago) and don't needed the tulle.  "Salad" bed with lettuces, French Breakfast radishes, small carrots, chives and a single snap dragon.  I reseeded the lettuce squares as most of the lettuce seeds dried out while I was gone.  

Kale, Swiss Chard, broccoli, bok choy and FB radishes.

The beds sowed and secured with bridal tulle in preparation for the road trip.

Thinnings from the kale, broccoli and Swiss chard with Olive oil and red wine vinegar.  I missed fresh greens on the road trip!

New fairy lights that Ken just put up for me.    

That's all for now. What are the rest of you up to?

How are your Strike Peas doing.  I picked my first three pods yesterday.  Shelled them and gave the peas to my 17 month old grandson.  He wanted more.  Unfortunately, the plants are not growing as well as they normally do.

All of the peas are doing good, 18-24" tall. No flowers yet. The days have been + / - 80*F, nights in the 50's.

Been down with the flu for 2 weeks now, but finally able to get out to my SFG beds. Looks like the Bunnies and sparrows  have decimated the beans, chard, Kale, and squash-not much left  The eggplants are about done, and I am pulling up carrots, harvesting peppers and hoping to get the last of the season tomatoes vine-ripened. The nights are getting into the low 40's and the days are still in the mid 80's so I will keep my fingers crossed and leave them ripening. Last year i picked all the green tomatoes and stored them nestled in a shoe box until they looked ripe. They were pretty bland- like the market offerings, so I'll keep them on the vines a lot longer into the fall, and see how they taste.

The flu!! That's not fun!

I don't have much luck with ripening tomatoes and have them taste like summer tomatoes. I still have some nice looking ones on the vine but I'm holding off picking them as long as possible. Right now, I'm just piddling in the garden, doing mandatory things. My husband has been a big help. Since I'm close to 70, I imagine he will do the heavy lifting more and more.

Carrots? You can grow carrots in the summer?

I planted seeds that I've collected (9th generation), open pollinated Danvers Half longs, on April 30th. I Soaked them for an hour under direct sunlight to hasten germinating, and planted them 1/4" deep. I kept them under a 50% shade cloth and kept the bed moist. When they reached 6", I removed the cloth and mulched around them to keep them moist as the weather got hotter. I've prepared another bed that I'll plant more carrots in as soon as the lunar calendar gives the thumbs up. Now that I'm feeling better I've got to start my cole crop seeds and try to find some short season onion sets to plant.

I love garden carrots...I really messed up this year.  Got a decent haul, then forgot about them, left them out overnight, and they were literally floppy.  YUK.  Not nearly as forgiving as the grocery kind!  I will (hopefully) never do that again.  I put them in a stupid location, and just (poof) out of mind:roll:

I think there's a new phrase: DISTRACTED GARDENING. I have been known to leave a hand tool, mouse or gopher trap, or handful of fresh picked veggies down and wander off, distracted by  something else, forgetting where I put the darned things down. It's like an Easter egg hunt sometimes around my place. 

The worst thing happened when I'm gathering up kitchen scraps for worm compost and my wife accidentally misplaced her wedding ring. We  decided to replace it (minus the diamond) with a new ring and move on. 

Fast forward 2 years: A pack rat decided to take up residence in the worm composting bin and has begun tunneling through the goo looking for treats. He (or she) has managed to push the tailings out into a nice pile which I have been using to brew worm tea. Well, guess what showed up- there's a shiny gold glint in the pile that caught my eye- after 2 years there's the long lost , but never-forgotten diamond ring  . I cleaned it up, found a velvet lined ring box and dropped it in. I asked my wife to join me outside on the pergola- I had a surprise for her. When she arrived, I was down on a bent knee holding the ring out for her- what a surprise indeed! We both had cramps in our cheeks from smiling, and a bit of mist in our eyes.

What a beautiful story about your wife's wedding ring!

Aww Yardslave, I love that story.  What a sweet h you are to surprise her that way!

I joined the FB page My Job Depends on AG.  It's primarily California.  Notice how I sneaked in SFG!!
 

Sunday --

I managed to do some more gardening today, slow and easy.  The compost hit 160*F last night and dropped to 150*F this morning.  Today I turned and aerated it and it's back up to 158*F.  It's day 6 now.

Three beds ready for winter:

Background near the sweet potato totes is planted with garlic and topped with rough compost.  The foreground bed still has cotton stalks cut short.  I will pull those in a couple days and top with rough compost.

Cantaloupe bed with compost and original 2013 grid. Runaway NZ spinach in the back 2'x3' bed.

Winter squash bed with compost and new grid.

The "post a photo" button is not working so I will finish tomorrow.

Monday --

The Strike peas are flowering!

Broccoli, kale, FB radishes, bok choy and Swiss chard planted by seed on 9-25.

Salad bed, reseeded 4 squares with lettuce and covered with medium vermiculite. I think they didn't sprout because either the squares got too dry while I was gone and / or the seeds are old.  Two squares of carrots on the right and 2 squares of FB radishes in the back ground.  I've been pulling one or two a day and reseeding.  

New Zealand spinach!  It has overflowed the 2'x3' bed.

Walking onions.  Audrey gave me a couple sets in August 2016.  

Winter herb bed.  Runaway oregano 2-3 years old, basil, stevia on the left coming back after I cut it down!!, lavender, perennial tarragon, and 2 cilantro pots from HD.  I planted the cilantro today so now I am through with winter planting.

I'm pruning the tomato plants to see if the energy can go towards the green tomatoes.

Ever optimistic.  The day before Halloween.  

Are these tomatoes you planted in the spring or are these tomatoes planted later in the summer?

Spring planted. I haven't gotten into mid summer planting.

sanderson wrote:Spring planted.  I haven't gotten into mid summer planting.

You are getting pretty good with tomatoes.  All of my spring planted tomatoes died ages ago (August?).

I'm canning the summer tomatoes today! That will free up a bit of space, 2 gallons and one quart worth.

Do you take a sucker and get it started growing roots? The, remove the mother in a couple weeks and plant the sucker? Or, do you have enough room to plant the suckers in a new area? All but the 3 tomato plants in the amended dirt strip have been gone since September. I don't have much hope the green tomatoes will blush so I can ripen them on the counter.

sanderson wrote:I'm canning the summer tomatoes today!  That will free up a bit of space, 2 gallons and one quart worth.

Do you take a sucker and get it started growing roots?  The, remove the mother in a couple weeks and plant the sucker?  Or, do you have enough room to plant the suckers in a new area?  All but the 3 tomato plants in the amended dirt strip have been gone since September.  I don't have much hope the green tomatoes will blush so I can ripen them on the counter.

In my experience, you cannot root tomato plants with fruits on them, or flowers.  I have planted suckers with some success, but shaved it of flowers, etc.  FYI, my sucker late season transplant didn’t deliver much.

Waterbath or pressure canning?  I so want to get into pressure canning....

FYI-that sucker came off that black freebie from Bakers.  It was French.  Vernaise?  Mealy, not sweet, did not like it.

sanderson wrote:I'm canning the summer tomatoes today!  That will free up a bit of space, 2 gallons and one quart worth.

Do you take a sucker and get it started growing roots?  The, remove the mother in a couple weeks and plant the sucker?  Or, do you have enough room to plant the suckers in a new area?  All but the 3 tomato plants in the amended dirt strip have been gone since September.  I don't have much hope the green tomatoes will blush so I can ripen them on the counter.

My tomatoes become diseased so fast that I have to almost use the first sucker that appears early in the summer.  I am afraid if I sucker the tomato plant later in the summer that I will just be transferring the disease from the mother to the daughter.  

So, I take the sucker off very early.  Leave it in a glass of water for a while then transplant it into a small pot.  Once it is rooted, I try to stall the growth down significantly.  Give it bare minimum water, fertilizer, and sun in an attempt to keep it from growing too fast.  What I should do is just plant a second set of seeds at the appropriate time.  But I just never get around to it.
  
This summer it worked out that I had to transplant the suckers to the garden just after I destroyed the mother plants.  I should have transplanted them earlier because there was a gap in time when the mothers were about dead and the daughters had not yet started producing tomatoes.  The suckers are planted in a different area of the garden to try to keep them away from the diseased mothers. Large whiskey pots are used for the late planted tomatoes.  Because I try to rotate tomatoes, I do not want to use a good bed in the garden that may be needed the following year to plant my large crop of tomatoes.

Sweet potato harvest from 2 storage totes.  


Winter tomatoes.  I brought 2 inside that were starting to blush.  The rest are a roll of the dice as the nights are 40*F.

Strike Peas - seeds from Yolos.  I also have Alaska shelling peas and snow peas.  

There are a lot of small oranges this year.  Early orange harvest by Christmas?

While shopping at Lowes, I saw this very appropriate calendar for next year. 2019 Farmers' Almanac   :

My new baby upright freezer.  It seems my indoor freezer compartment has shrunk since I started gardening.    

When you open the door, how do you keep all the cold air from falling out?

I imagine you never leave the door open longer than is necessary?

It certainly looks easier to manage than my big top opening one that is so hard to keep in order.