April in the Garden

First iris to bloom in the yard

I love this time of year, when some of my favorite flowers are blooming, iris, lilacs, roses, apple trees... It seems the garden is bursting at the seams these days!

I have so many old bearded iris in the yard, these plain white ones and some plain dark purples are the early bloomers; later there will be a tall yellow and a two toned purple and lavender.

lilacs in bloom

I love my lilac bush, it smells heavenly. The scent of iris and lilacs reminds me of when I was a kid and mom would put vases of them around the house.

apple blossoms

While that late snow browned the edges of some of the petals, the apple blossoms seem to be ok.

the terrace garden

On the hillside terrace garden the poppies, cilantro and wild flowers are getting a good start.

patio garden, west side of house

The patio still needs some cleaning up.

Princepe Borghese

But the Princepe Borhese tomatos are blooming.

Sweet Magnolia, a purple snow pea

Between the crazy weather and some rabbits, there are only a couple of Sweet Magnolia plants left, but they are making peas.

Sweet Magnolia pea blossom

And their flowers are pretty too!

Bleushokker pea blossom

There are only a couple of Bleushokker peas left too. They were in the coldest spot in the back garden and the Dec. snows did most of them in. They do have pretty flowers and they are the yummiest soup pea ever!

weedy spot in the back garden

I tried to get this silly picture to be vertical, but Blogger doesn't want to do it so it's sideways. This is a corner of the back garden, on the east end. This is a narrow trellis bed where I had planted Sugar Snap peas. there were only a couple of plants left in there and they were pretty sad looking with the crazy weather we've had this year, so I pulled them out along with all the weeds and fed them to the chickens.

Most of the weeds are gone.

Most of the weeds are gone now. I will probably plant either beans or cukes here, haven't made up my mind which one. On the right of this picture you can see the Mammoth Melting Sugar peas, which just started producing. More about those on Harvest Monday!

brassicas

This is one of the two brassica beds. on the right side is the purple sprouting broccoli, in the center are the Romanesco and on the left are either De Ciccio or Waltham, the tags got lost so I'm not sure which. I weeded out all the hen bit and discovered the bed was pretty dry; perhaps that's why they haven't done as well as they should have. Either that or I'll blame it on poor soil, late planting and crazy weather! Behind this bed is the one with the Mammoth Melting Sugar peas and behind that, the trellis bed that I weeded out.

Red Pontiac potaoes

The Red Pontiac potatoes that I planted in January are sprouting up and looking good. Some of them were just breaking ground when the snow came a couple of weeks ago; I just piled a little dirt over their tops and they didn't get frost bite.

Cecile Brunner Rose

The Cecile Brunner climbing rose that I planted a few years ago has grown quite large. I spotted the first blossom this after, after catching a whiff of it as I walked by. While the blossoms are very small, they are very fragrant. I hate that modern roses have so little scent and refuse to buy them. I want roses to smell, what use is pretty if there is no fragrance?

bolting celery

In the greenhouse the celery is bolting. The cilantro is already there. I let it bloom all over because it's small fine flowers are good for the beneficial insects.

Cilantro/coriander blooming

snapdragon

The snapdragons are blooming in their wall pots. The ones I planted around the yard are a bit behind since the air and soil outside are cooler.

tomato plants on the shelves, peas in the background

The greenhouse shelves are loaded with plants; more small fruited tomatoes, Snow White, Currant, Princepe Borghese.

baby tomato plants

The large fruited tomatoes were started later and so are smaller; Amish Paste, Italian Heirloom, Black from Tula.

basil seedlings

Lots of Classic Italian and Lime Basil seedlings.

green strawberry

There are some green strawberries in the greenhouse bed.

old seeds sprout!

The greatest thing though, is those Hale's Best Jumbo cantaloupe seeds that I saved in 2003 had almost 100% germination in the greenhouse under their cute little Victorian cloche!

Chickens!

And here are all the chickens, my four hens and my young Buff Orpington rooster, standing tall in the center. He isn't crowing yet but I have seen him getting after the hens, so I think I'll set aside some money next month for an incubator. I'd like to hatch small lots of chicks at a time for meat.


These chickens are not as tame as my previous ones. My other chickens I raised from chicks when my grand daughters were with me all the time and the girls were always petting and playing with them so they were very tame. These were in a large pen with about 50 others and while not exactly wild they don't come sit in your lap either! In fact they are just now getting the idea that when I come up to the fence and call them they should come because it means I have a treat, either scraps, weeds or worms.

Busy Busy!

Victorian style cloche

Spring is always a busy time of year in the garden. This year I'm busier than most because of the rapid warm up. We are hitting 80 degrees this week and things are growing fast.

In that greenhouse bed I cleared the other day I planted some more Hale's Best Jumbo cantaloupes, an heirloom variety. To help keep them even warmer for good germination I've covered them with this Victorian style cloche that my daughter gave me.

In the space around them I've planted chard on one side and Strawberry spinach on the other. Strawberry spinach is related to regular spinach and the edible weed called Lamb's Quarters. In fact it looks like Lamb's Quarters but in addition to edible leaves it has a strawberry like fruit. The seeds I have are a bit old, so we'll see if they do anything.

New Greenhouse Door

Last fall when I finished the greenhouse I didn't have any really good scrap lumber to complete a door on the west end, so I just covered it with plastic. It's been getting way too hot in there even with all the windows into the house open to pull out some of the heat. But I haven't wanted to pull the top of the plastic off yet, it is still under 50 degrees most nights. But it definitely needed more ventilation during the day. So I scrounged through the piles and found some wood and built a new door, covered with chicken wire. I also pulled the plastic off the other door. Now I can keep critters out but still have ventilation during the day. If the weather turns fickle I can tack the plastic back on both ends.

potted potatoes and celery

While I was working in the greenhouse, I pulled out the potted potatoes to live on the patio. Here you can also see some of the celery plants. This batch is in an old ice chest and apparently the soil isn't so great. They are stunted and yellow and not doing very well, so I'll probably feed them to the rabbits and rework the soil and plant something else.

Recycled storage containers and ice chests

I have a number of old storage containers that while they were in good shape, their lids are long gone. So here they are as planters, along with an old ice chest. I spent some time planting Snow White cherry tomatoes and Princepe Borghese, an Italian heirloom tomato for drying. I loosened up the soil in them, added some organic fertilizer and some fresh compost. Here on the stone patio it's a bit warmer at night than in the open garden, something I discovered during a late freeze one year. The tomatoes in the garden froze to death while all the tomatoes on the patio survived.

I'm linking up with Harvest Monday, a blog hop sponsored by Daphne's Dandelions. I don't seem to have taken any harvest pictures this week, but I've been harvesting my usual salad along with greens to cook like chard, red mustard, spinach and lamb's quarters. (super good with diced bacon and onions fried together then put the greens in to wilt) Also peas and of course eggs from my new chickens. I've seemed to have mis laid my calculator but a rough count looks like some where in the neighborhood of 30 pounds of produce picked and eaten in the month of March and a total of 20 eggs since 3/24. All four of the hens are laying now, so I'll probably be over run with them shortly.

Daffy & Tulip Update

Spring is here!

Last fall I did a little yard clean up and planted some daffodils, tulips and pansies, which you can see in this post

Now the bulbs are blooming brightly and the pansies of course have bloomed most of the winter. As the weather gets too warm they will fade out. I will probably replace them with small marigolds along the edge of the bed. In this photo to the far left you can see the artichoke plants I put in last fall have survived the winter quite well. Hopefully they will make some artys for me pretty soon.

In the fore ground, this clump of bearded iris is a lavender and purple tall bloomer. I got starts from a house down the road, I have no idea the variety but it is probably one that is at least 50 years old as my mother remembers them being there when she was younger. They will bloom later in spring.

Tulips

baby plum; it's really only the size of a pea

In another area of the yard it looks like the plum trees escaped any damage from the snow as there are little plums on them. This picture is magnified a good bit, the plums are really only the size of a little green pea.

Arugula blossoms

And all over the garden the arugula is bolting with the warm weather. Some I just cut down a few times to feed to the chickens and rabbits and others I let go for volunteer seed and to provide blooms for bees and butterflies.

In the Greenhouse

Greenhouse Bed before clean up

Yesterday I did some work in the greenhouse. First this patch of peas, well apparently were not all Little Marvel, but mixed seeds (mmm thank you grand daughters!) Also since the side of the greenhouse curves a lot of them were growing up against the plastic and were impossible to pick and were getting frost bitten. I decided just to pull them out and feed them to the chickens. Here you can also see the Mexican Honeysuckle bush that is blooming. It was a volunteer and needs to be moved. I'll keep the onion, It's a Florence Red Bottle, the last of a clump that bloomed and seeded last year.

Greenhouse bed mostly weeded

Here you can see I'm almost done. Those are a couple of stunted celery plants behind the onion, which I cut and fed to the rabbits. In front of the Mexican Honeysuckle is some Giant Red Mustard. It doesn't get to be giant sized here because I'm always picking it.

Greenhouse bed ready to plant

After weeding and loosening the soil I added some fresh compost and the bed is ready for a new planting.






I tried to get the Mexican Honeysuckle out with all of it's roots but that didn't happen, part of the main root was broken off. So I cut the top back severely and put it in a pot. If I didn't kill it and it shows signs of life I'll plant it  out on the hill garden.

Mexican Honeysuckle cut back and potted up

Mexican Honeysuckle blossom

Peas in tubs in the greenhouse

At the far end of the greenhouse the Dwarf Grey Sugar peas are going strong. The birds got all of the peas planted outside in Feb this year and most of the Sugar Snaps and Bleushokkers planted in the fall didn't make it through the crazy weather, so these are about all the peas I have this spring.

They are however billowing out into the pathway a bit much and I look like a contortionist getting around them to the pots of lettuce, red mustard and potatoes down there.

Speaking of potatoes, my order came from the Seed Savers Exchange last week. After sitting around the living room a few days they were beginning to eye up so I went ahead and got them planted. I have a bed out front that does not have the very best soil but it's 100 square feet. So I've been getting it ready for several months for the potatoes. It's been double dug a couple of times in the past so basically I loosened up the soil and added some potash and blood meal, then 6 inches of leaves. A couple of weeks later about 25 pounds of coffee grounds, after than I added some more potash, blood meal and some Dr. Iron, an organic iron product and mixed it all together. I'm hoping that all of these amendments will help out that poor soil, which started out as streaks of caliche interspersed with layers of sand and gravel. We shall see.

Harvest Monday

Barred Rock

Another Harvest Monday, this blog hop is sponsored by Daphne's Dandelions and is a lot of fun, go check out all the gardeners sharing their harvests and gardens all over the world.


mmmm I don't seem to have taken any harvest pictures this week, but it was mostly more of the same, salad with many kinds of lettuce, chard, chickweed, lamb's quarters, arugula. Some more yellow turnips and a few ounces of peas.

More exciting is that I went on Sat. and picked up 4 pullets and a rooster. The rooster and one pullet are Buff Orpingtons, the other three pullets are Barred Rocks. Actually I suppose two of them are hens now, as I found 2 eggs on Sat. evening.

The chickens settled into their new home just fine. They even laid those eggs right in the nest box.

Hawk

Of course don't you know that as soon as I get chickens, look what shows up. Actually there were two of these hawks circling the canyon making their eerie sounding calls and sort of playing with each other, perhaps getting ready to mate. I haven't had time to look up and try to identify them, anyone know? I"ll be adding some wires over the top of the chicken run and draping some bird netting over them, to try and discourage the hawks from striking at the chickens. Because there are way too many rabbits around here for them to eat instead!

bean seedlings

On March 10 as an experiment I planted some Royal Burgundy bush beans in my new cold frame. Despite freezing and snow last weekend, they are sprouting.

While going through my seed box I found some Hale's Best Jumbo Cantaloupe seed, home grown from 2003. I planted about 50 of them in the cold frame, expecting, if I was lucky to get one or two to sprout. Many more than that are sprouting and I"ll have to thin them out or transplant them. Actually I'll probably just thin them out, I have a lot more seed!

Urban Farm Handbook

Carrots from my garden

It continues to amaze me how when I am calm, centered and serene, how many synchronicities happen in my life. Awhile back I joined a free online course in Urban Farming. I already know how to grow plants of all sorts. I mostly was looking for information on how to turn gardening into a business, how to figure out how much to grow of each thing and how to market. The course has been pretty cool so far, with a facebook page and an online forum, there are also email homework assignments. One of the books recommended for the course is The Urban Farm Handbook, which I have not bought or read yet.


Then, I entered a book give away on one of my favorite garden blogs, Northwest Edible Life. One of the picks happened to be The Urban Farm Handbook. Imagine my surprise this morning when I recieved an email that I was the winner! So I am doing the happy dance! Thanks so much!

Now you should also go visit Northwest Edible Life because she has developed a terrific resource for you, a wonderful gardening journal that has tons of options. You print out the pages that you need from the downloadable PDF, in the quantity that you need for your garden and put them in your own notebook. I'm still working on getting mine put together, but this is a great resource for record keeping. By keeping records of what you planted and where, along with how they grew and yielded, you will be able to fine tune your garden plans to get more produce from less work. You will also discover which varieties of plants and soil supplements are best for your garden.

The Chickens are Coming

Future Chicken Area

Well I have really been missing my chickens. Fresh eggs, composting, insect & weed controlling chickens. So I've been working on this area, even bought a solar powered fence charger to add electric wires to the fence setup to keep out the dogs.

Watching Craigslist for Buff Orpington chickens, I found a lady reducing her flock, she had 6 BO pullets, just coming into lay, for sale. I was so excited I committed, even though the chicken house wasn't moved and the fence wasn't built. Heck I had a week until I would pick them up..... Then they messed with my schedule at work and now I'm hard pressed to get finished before Sat. morning.... I'm waiting to see signs of life at the neighbors then I'll walk down and see if someone can come help me move the chicken house. In the meantime back to work on the fencing.

I took this picture last week. The stone wall is where the steps are down into the creek bottom, then it continues as a retaining wall around this area. There's part of an old pallet fence which is staying put until the retaining wall is finished. You can also see my new cold frame here, made of a couple old glass shower doors and scrap lumber. Well, back to work.

Fickle Arizona Weather

Well our weather has certainly been crazy this year. Yes I know I'm not the only one, I'm seeing this from gardeners all around the world.

The back garden on Sat. March 17, 2012

Saturday was a very nice day for working out in the yard and getting things done. Then the rain started. Actually that was a very good thing. It filled up the water tanks, so now I have a little over 400 gallons reserve again. In the past couple of days we've gotten 1.6" so I'm not complaining about that.

Early Sunday morning the rain turned to snow and we had some hard hail. The rain has been alternating with snow ever since. Although we did have some bits of pretty blue sky today, they were short lived.

Back garden under snow, March 19, 2012

Of course such wild temperature and weather swings are very hard on the plants. I have a feeling that the Mammoth Melting Snow peas might not make it. They just had their first blossom on Saturday, too.  It's been about 36 degrees all day today. But it's supposed to be back up into the 70's by Thursday.

Harvest Monday

lettuce & other greens in the greenhouse

Well, another Harvest Monday rolls around. This blog hop is sponsored by Daphne's Dandelions and is a great way to connect with gardeners all around the world.

Most of this week has been more of the same; more lettuce, chard, spinach, lambs quarters, chickweed, and sorrel in the salad, with two additions some days.

Claytonia and Mache

There is a little bit of Claytonia, aka, Miner's Lettuce, and some Mache, also known as Lamb's Lettuce. Miner's Lettuce is a crunchy succulent plant, basically an edible weed native to California. Lamb's Lettuce is a winter weed in grain fields in Europe. It has a soft filmy texture with an unusual sweet taste. Both volunteered in a bed where they were grown in 2009.

Dwarf Grey Sugar Peas with rat damage

The Dwarf Grey Sugar peas in the greenhouse are really coming on now. However, as you can see some dead branches in the picture. This is caused by rats chewing through the stems low down, killing the whole branch above. I have now trapped 11 rats in here since January 1. I think Ratatouille's whole family is living under my house!

Snapdragons and peas

Here are a couple of snapdragons in a hanging basket engulfed by the pea plants. I grew the snapdragons from seed last fall. I really like the darker pink/red/maroon ones and will take cuttings of those later one to make more of them.

Society Garlic blooms

The Society Garlic in the greenhouse is blooming again, a lovely mild addition to a salad.

Besides all of these things I pulled the last of the orange carrots and replanted the bed to lettuce and radishes and harvested some cooking greens.

It's been quite warm, in the high 70's here and I"ve had to keep the greenhouse open as much as I could so it wouldn't overheat. Then today I woke up to heavy rain, which turned to snow and then into pea sized hail! What crazy weather; we're expecting freezing lows the next 2-3 nights so I've brought all the tomato and tender herb plants into the house from the greenhouse to keep them safe.

Front sidewalk in the hail storm

In less than five minutes the ground was white. I'm hoping it didn't do too much damage to things outdoors.