Notes from the Garden - February 2013

February is the time we begin to have spring-like weather, if only for a few days. The first three days of February were so beautiful, a warm and balmy 72 F perfection. We are back to cooler weather, with rainstorms potentially through the weekend, but I believe that the worst of the cold weather (frost/ freezing in particular) is over. 

February also begins to show signs of new life in the garden. The nasturtiums, true to form, are beginning their bloom; the sweet peas are climbing their trellises, and the roses are turning out new leaves. The deciduous trees are still bare, but there are birds in their boughs picking at bugs. The signs of life pique my interest in the garden and help me mentally plan for the coming spring. Here are some of my signs:

Nasturtium blooms are popping up - not sure what causes the striations, but so uniquely lovely!

My first camellia bloom (planted last winter)

Snowdrops and pink heather are the harbingers of spring.

My first lemons - no more purchasing at grocery store!

Mother of Pearl rose tossing out new leaves

Early spring vegetables: Brassicas and lettuces

Blooming apple and butterfly flowers

Attempting to grow roses from cuttings - so far so good!

Climb little sweet peas, climb!

Calla lilies

Artichokes coming back from dormancy

But Darlin, we can’t eat flowers

My wife, Sweet Tomato, and also sometimes known as Darlin Girl thought it would be nice to grow flowers in one of the raised beds I have traditionally used to grow tomatoes.  Now the garden and growing tomatoes has been my passion and responsibility for many, many years.  I am the one that pours over seed catalogs in the winter, digs three foot deep trenches with a pick axe to remove clay that is the naturally occurring soil in San Diego and spends hours caring for my tomato plants through the summer.  Sweet Tomato maintains an herb garden conveniently located at the edge of the raised beds in our garden.  She helps me can tomatoes during the harvest and generally is supportive of my obsession. 

So when Sweet Tomato brought up the subject of growing flowers instead of tomatoes, I was understandably aghast at the thought of flowers replacing tomatoes in my garden.  In the early years of our marriage, I thought I was the boss.  When our children were born, I realized I was not the boss, and never had been.  I saw the boss’ job, and truth be told, I didn’t want it.  So, after my obligatory wailing and gnashing of teeth, I asked Sweet Tomato what kind of flowers she wanted to plant and where she wanted to plant them.  That is when Sweet Tomato added insult to injury and whipped out one of my own seed catalogs, turned to the back page and showed me several flower garden offerings for butterflies, bumblebees, hummingbirds and songbirds.  I was mortified.  One of my own seed catalogs used against me, the indignity of it.

Sweet Tomato decided that she would like the butterfly habitat which we ordered from John Scheepers Kitchen Garden Seeds catalog.  To quote from the catalog’s evil propaganda: “…colorful mixture of happy summer butterfly camps full of yummy nectar and friendly host plants.”  ‘Yummy nectar’, what is ‘yummy nectar’, as if I was going to eat the dang flowers. The catalog goes on with a whole list of flowers, none of which I had ever heard of before.   So we ordered the butterfly flower mix and planted it this spring.  I had some sunflower seeds lying around, so I planted those as well.

Here is the flower mix we planted.

Here is the flower bed in June, before the sunflowers sprouted.

Here is the flower bed in July with sunflowers beginning to tower over the original flowers.

As much as I hate to admit it, the flowers do add beauty to the garden.  Sweet Tomato and I especially enjoy watching the small birds and finches in the evening that flock to the flower habitat.

May, the Quick-Grow Month

I love May in the garden. The plants are vibrantly alive with flowers and the beginnings of fruit. Lovely scents permeate the air and loud colors demand appreciation. May also brings a slight turn of season for I have removed the majority of my early spring flowers: the pansies, violas, nasturtiums, and early wildflowers. The sweet peas have been removed to prevent the spread of mold to the vegetables. Their scent is replaced by white jasmine, that unmistakable May fragrance. We have been fortunate to have more sunny days than "May Gray" days and I hope that means "June Gloom" will not send too many overcast days our way. The garden is off to a great start and we will whether the clouds (if needed) with mildew spray and field trips to the Eastern (and sunnier) part of the county.

Butterfly Garden with Yarrow and Sage

Large tomatoes were planted 4/1, the smaller ones on 5/6. Staggering ensures fruit through the season.

Testing my green thumb with Japanese eggplant

Peppers in supports, lettuce, and cucumbers

Wildflower bed making way for future pepper patch

Patio flower bed with jasmine, lemon verbena, kangaroo paw, lavender, and purple hibiscus

Alternate view of patio

Pomegranate blooms

Artichokes are coming in!

Artichoke patch under the pomegranate tree

Sugar pie pumpkins grown from seed

The site of the future pumpkin patch

My first Hot Coco Rose

 

Weeds Are Us

I have been reading a wonderful garden memoir by Michael Pollan called Second Nature, A Gardener's Education. In it he muses that "weeds are us." Every gardener who has prepared the spring garden for planting knows the headache of fighting the weeds. I am blessed not to have to deal with some of the horribly invasive weeds (bindweed, pigweed, kudzu, et cetera) but I have discovered some strange universal truths of weed behavior that Pollan outlines as well. Weeds take purchase in empty soils and many times they do not seem to care if it is good soil or bad soil:

"Weeds, contrary to what romantics have assumed, are not wild. They are as much a product of cultivation as the hybrid tea rose . . . The do better than garden plants for the simple reason that they are better adapted to life in a garden . . . weeds have evolved with just one end in view: the ability to thrive in ground that man has disturbed" (Pollan 109).

A garden is thus a responsibility; if you wish to tend garden and plant glorious flowers and delicious vegetables, the price you pay will be to weed, and continue to weed until you can hardly see straight anymore. After my first spring/ summer season of vegetable gardening, I was exhausted and let the vegetable beds go completely fallow: no ground cover, no cover crops, no nothing at all. My lack of foresight was rewarded, or rather, richly punished. Through the rainy season, the weeds germinated and grew, some so large that their trunks were thicker around than my wrist! At my wits end, we hired some temporary help to pull them out and in the process, removed a portion of our rich topsoil. Talk about adding insult to injury!

The next fall, we tried the cover route, covering the beds with newspaper and mulch. This seemed to work reasonably well, although we had a few cracks in the cover that resulted in weeds. It was better than doing nothing but it was a heck of a lot of dirty and back breaking work. (Shoveling mulch off the back of a truck and bending over to paper the ground didn't strike me as fun.)

This past rainy season, I let go of the complete laissez-faire approach and stayed in the garden throughout the winter. I had made some decisions that kept me from becoming burned out over the summer, so I still had energy and drive to spare going into the fall. Like the previous year, I choose to keep 2 of my 7 beds fallow, but instead of covering them with paper and mulch in the fall, I planted wildflowers: johnny jump ups, daisies, California golden poppies, purple lupine, nasturtiums of every possible hue, and a mismatch of others. After carefully weeding out the winter weeds: the grasses, dandelions, nettles, and other pernicious plants, I have a gorgeous blanket of bold and color clashing flowers - and they needed no tending except some occasional weeding and a dash of water when the rains were insufficient.

Only two of the beds were given over to the wildflowers. Another two were left in cultivation of winter vegetables I have been using in recipes. The final three were left to their own devices. Hubby used the electric trimmer and decimated the weed population while I raked up their corpses and seeds. He will double dig these beds later this month to kill any remaining root systems and I will add the compost and pasteurized manure to amend the beds for spring planting.

Consider weeding a on-going meditation; it will never be complete, but neither is prayer. Some chant, some pray rosaries, some read inspiring passages. I spend the time on my knees (like so many of the devout) pulling weeds with gloved hands. It remains my meditation and my penance, for if I want a tamed garden, this is the price I must pay. Pollan says that "Weeds are not the Other. Weeds are us." And perhaps they are, for we provide the spaces and the means for them to flourish and travel across our landscape. But if I am going to be called a weed, let me be one of the omnipresent nasturtium, flowering on the urban hillsides in the early spring sun after receiving the nourishment of the winter rains.

Cultivation (cabbage in foreground) and untamed color (wildflowers in background)

I have no idea how this nasturtiums became striated, but it is a beautiful effect.

I have every possible color of nasturtium

Detail of nasturtiums

I allow nasturtiums to grow as "weeds" under my roses.

Dandelions and sweet peas side by side, both uncultivated.

Dandelions bunch up against  my plumeria.

Weeds aren't all bad - their seeds feed the birds.

On the Cusp

This past weekend, I sat in my garden drinking my coffee. It was still early, the cool morning air gently pushed by the breeze. The sun peeked through the clouds and began to warm the air and earth. The garden is truly coming alive again; spring is on the cusp! I can smell my new pink jasmine and my burgeoning sweet peas. The yellow flowered Aeonium spikes pierce the vista of the garden. And the birds: I hear the squawk and song of the mockingbirds, the chirps and tweets of the finches and sparrows, and the twittering of the hummingbirds. This is my own little piece of heaven.

The garden is coming into its own with only the smallest guidance from me. My nasturtiums and wildflower mix has filled in my two fallow beds with a blanket of orange and purple blooms. The orange and purple reminds me of California hillsides in early spring with their California poppies and purple lupine taking over the landscape. Hopefully, my poppies will bloom soon; I am still waiting for those happy flowers to show up!

I planted the last round of cool season vegetables focusing on carrot and parsnips. The savoy cabbages are large round globes awaiting harvest and the radishes are close to going to seed. I plan to harvest all of them through the month – recipes forthcoming! I also planted some more butterfly bush as a nursery for monarch caterpillars. Sadly, I did not have enough for the little ones to eat this winter and I don’t think I successfully hatched a single butterfly this year. Also in the mix: more butterfly nectar plants grown from seed planted under my Anna Apple. I hope to have sprouts in a couple of weeks!

Nasturtiums in red, orange, and yellow

Purple lupine and daisies

More Flowers!

Sweet peas!!

Savoy cabbage ready for harvest

Pink Jasmine - Love!!

Yellow Aeonium blooms next to butterfly garden

I hope my butterfly nectar flowers fill in soon.

My relaxing patio - I will be adding more pink jasmine for more fragrance!

Mind-winter blooms for the Mid-winter Blues

Life always finds a way, even in mid-winter. I am heartened that I can see signs of growth, of season, of change in my garden. They remind me that however dark, cold, and miserable the mid-winter blues can be, the end is on the horizon - this has reason and this too shall pass. "To every thing there is a season, and a time to every purpose under heaven" - Ecclesiastes 3.1.

Ornamental kale's beautiful color and texture

The Purple and Green Aeoniums did not break in the last storm.

Detail of Aeonium blooms

Christmas Cyclamen continues to bloom

Snowdrops are the first harbinger of spring.

Fertilizer helps keep the Gartenmeister Bonstedt fuchsia flowering for the Anna's Hummingbirds

From flower to potential fruit - Anna Apple