Photos
Winter Lettuce and Peas
A quick peak under the row cover shows that my lettuce and peas are doing just peachy despite that it was in the low 80's a couple days ago and now it's dipping into the 30's overnight.
Sunset on February 3rd
Saturday, the day before yesterday, the high was 83 degrees. Tonight it's going to bottom out in the 20's. Welcome to February in San Diego. These huge temperature swings wreak havoc on the garden, but, dang... they make for beautiful sunsets.
Keyhole Garden Progress – February 1, 2020
80 degree heat earlier this week forced me to actually water the garden. It's quite full now. Time to start harvesting some of that lettuce and cilantro for Super Bowl snacking tomorrow.
Orange Chicken
Jonesy the rooster standing in an orange tree pretending he's a wild jungle chicken.
What to do with a Cherimoya?
A while back I bought a Cherimoya (Annona cherimola) sapling from a local exotic fruit nursery. At the time, the plant guy said it probably wouldn't produce fruit because it needed some sort of month to pollinate it. Fast forward to today and the tree is doing quite well and it has lots of fruit on it (moths must be nearby). A few days ago it started dropping fruit. They're the size of softballs and quite hard. I swear I almost got a concussion from one that dropped on my head. I'm not really sure what to do with them. [keep reading...]
Still Battling the Aloe Eater
Despite my best efforts to trap the little sucker, the aloe devouring gopher continues his reign of terror. I just came out into the yard to see that he's taken out the last large aloe vera in the bed. This means war.
Tithonia Sunshine Bouquet
My Mexican Sunflower (Tithonia diversifolia) had grown tall and leggy in the shade of the trees in the upper yard over the past few months. It was basically like looking at a forest of sticks with flowers 15 feet in the air, so I whacked the plants down to a couple feet tall. Now it's like looking at a hedge row of sticks, but it'll be green and leafy again by spring. In the meantime, my wife has some nice bouquets of bright yellow flowers around the house.
Chinese Cabbage – “Minuet”
I picked up a packet of "Minuet" Chinese cabbage seed from @johnnyseeds last winter because they described as the "best mini variety." I didn't get a chance to plant it until this past fall and picked the first head yesterday for a stir fry dinner. My plants are closer to 15 inches tall rather than the 9 inches mentioned in the catalog, but they're very upright and grow quite comfortably just a foot apart. Nothing -- cold, rain, slugs, etc. -- seems to bother them, so they're all quite healthy and require almost no care. The outer leaves are deep [keep reading...]
Pozo Blue Sage in Early Bloom
This is Salvia Pozo Blue (Salvia clevelandii X leucophylla) a hybrid of two So Cal natives, Purple Sage and Cleveland Sage. I picked it up about two years ago from La Pilatas Nursery, a native plant specialist not too far from here. It's leaves resemble the Cleveland Sage's leaves, but they're spaced farther apart on leggy stems like the Purple Sage. The smell is a woodsy must akin to the Cleveland Sage. I like the plant because it makes a nice green shrub that requires no care other than a little water now and then. From mid-winter to mid-spring it's [keep reading...]
Is This Pride of Madeira Looking at You?
My wife told me she felt like this stalk from a Pride of Madeira near our front door was looking at her. I didn't see it. So I fixed it. Now it's definitely looking at her.