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.
Rain Barrel Follies Part 3
A couple of weeks ago I was all proud to show off my newly installed rain barrel. However, I forgot to close the drain valve, so when it rained. it dumped 55 gallons of water directly under the rain barrel, causing the ground to sink and tipping the barrel to one side. Then it rained again and re-filled the now heavily listing barrel. I thought I was going to have to dump all that water as well, until I figured out a better method that let me save the water and empty the barrel at the same time. Here's the [keep reading...]
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.
Mid-winter Garden Tasks for Spring
Spring may be a ways off, but there's still plenty you can do to get ready. Here are 8 things you can do in mid-winter to make sure you're off to a fast start in spring.
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...]
Keyhole Garden Progress – January 23, 2020
A bit of rain followed by warmer weather from what I call our "fake spring" (it always gets really warm here at the end of January, then snaps back to cold) has the vegetables in the keyhole garden growing like crazy. All the garlic is now well along and the romaine lettuce, cilantro and dill are getting close to harvest. Maybe another week or so.
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.
My First Rain Barrel
Water can get expensive here in San Diego so I've been talking about getting a couple of rain barrels. Then my wife gave me a couple for Christmas. Nice, big 55 gallon barrel kits with all the hardware needed. All I had to do was hook them up to the rain gutter and, boom, free water. So I cleared out an area under the eaves by the back of the house and got the first barrel set up on some cinder blocks. Then it rained a little the night before last. Not much, maybe 1/3rd of an inch, but, as [keep reading...]
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.
Rain Barrel Follies Part 3
A couple of weeks ago I was all proud to show off my newly installed rain barrel. However, I forgot to close the drain valve, so when it rained. it dumped 55 gallons of water directly under the rain barrel, causing the ground to sink and tipping the barrel to one side. Then it rained again and re-filled the now heavily listing barrel. I thought I was going to have to dump all that water as well, until I figured out a better method that let me save the water and empty the barrel at the same time. Here's the [keep reading...]
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.
Mid-winter Garden Tasks for Spring
Spring may be a ways off, but there's still plenty you can do to get ready. Here are 8 things you can do in mid-winter to make sure you're off to a fast start in spring.
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...]
Keyhole Garden Progress – January 23, 2020
A bit of rain followed by warmer weather from what I call our "fake spring" (it always gets really warm here at the end of January, then snaps back to cold) has the vegetables in the keyhole garden growing like crazy. All the garlic is now well along and the romaine lettuce, cilantro and dill are getting close to harvest. Maybe another week or so.
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.
My First Rain Barrel
Water can get expensive here in San Diego so I've been talking about getting a couple of rain barrels. Then my wife gave me a couple for Christmas. Nice, big 55 gallon barrel kits with all the hardware needed. All I had to do was hook them up to the rain gutter and, boom, free water. So I cleared out an area under the eaves by the back of the house and got the first barrel set up on some cinder blocks. Then it rained a little the night before last. Not much, maybe 1/3rd of an inch, but, as [keep reading...]