Garden Transformation

This morning, I woke up early (for a Saturday). I was looking forward to going to the nursery to see if they had any Cabbage and Lettuce plants.

I first went to Walmart and checked the garden center and found a couple of succulents that I liked. One was a Rock Purslane (Calandrinia spectabilis) that I’ve been looking for for a while now. Who knew that out of all places, Walmart would have it. The second was Pachysedum ‘Ganzhou’ which had a cool color. I’ve been checked the vegetable section and found a 9-pack of Bonnie’s Best Cabbage and Buttercrunch Lettuce.

My name is Joel... and I'm a plant addict.

I then drove to Mid City Nursery to see what they had. I ended up with a few plants including:
– Onions ‘Walla Walla Sweet’
– Cilantro ‘Slo Bolt’
– Flowering Cabbage ‘Red’
– Shasta Daisy ‘Goldfinch’

The owner came up to me and ask if I needed any help. So I asked him why my Kumquat plant has dying branches. He asked if I had it in the ground or in a pot I replied in a pot and he said maybe its not getting enough water. So I’m hoping that his explanation was correct and that my Kumquat doesn’t have a disease.

When I got home, I decided to pull out the Zucchini plants because they were not doing well and it didn’t look like they would produce any more fruits. In its place, I planted Portuguese Kale. I also pulled what pot of Swiss Chard that were also not doing well. I added new compost and planted 6 Buttercrunch Lettuce plants.

I also pulled all my Tomatoes in the Self Watering Rain Gutter Grow System #2.

I think the Tomatoes are done for the year... so I'll be pulling them out and planting Cabbage in its place. The green in the photo is Parsley which are starting to bolt.

I planted the new Cabbage into each pot.

I'm going try to grow Cabbage this year. Wish me luck because I have never had good luck with Cabbage.

In the Square Foot Garden, I planted 2 squares of the Walla Walla Sweet Onions.

Busy Gardening Day…

It was a busy gardening day. I started by planting a few Green Onions bottoms with the others I planted last week.

Planting Green Onion Bottoms

I start grafting onto our two Asian Plum trees:
Bubblegum Plum (which I’m really interested in tasting, so I grafted it in two locations)
Plum ‘Golden Nectar’
Pluot ‘Flavor Supreme’

People Watcher

This bird kept watching me as I was grafting scions onto our Plum tree. I thought it would fly away if I moved, but even after I walked around and climbed the ladder, it just stayed there. It eventually flew away.

I wanted to graft some Cherry scions, but I couldn’t find any good sites to graft onto… So I left it, and I’ll check our Cherry tree later.

Planting Swiss Chard, Beets and Mesclun

I had some plant that have been in cell packs since the fall, and they are still alive, so I planted the Swiss Chard into 5 gallon fabric pot and Beets ‘Chioggia’ into a large Daiso pot. I had two leftover Flat Leaf Parsley which I planted into a 3 inch pot for now, until i find a permanent place for them in the garden. Hopefully, these plants will grow big despite being left in their cell packs.

I also did a bunch of seed sowing. I sowed all of the Zesty Salad Mesclun Mix into a medium Daiso pot. I don’t think these grew well in the past and I just wanted to get rid of the seeds.

Sowing Spring Greens/Flowers

I planted the rest into cell packs:
Agrostemma ‘Ocean Pearls’
Agrostemma ‘Milas’
Bok Choy ‘Fun Jen’
Bok Choy ‘Purple Choy’
Kohlrabi ‘Early White Vienna’
Bok Choy ‘Summer Boy’

Kiwi Leafing Out

A couple of the Kiwi plants have started to leaf out. I was worried that they died in the winter at their new location, but they seem to have pulled through. They was a couple dead/dried out branches which I trimmed. The rest of the blue bin where they were was empty, so I decided to plant a row of Super Sugar Snap Peas.

Sowing Sugar Snap Peas

Afterwards, I did a major trim of the European Plum tree in back of our storage. There were tons of dead limbs and limbs that sagged down. I tried to clear the bottom so we had walking space and just get rid of too much of the mass. I think it looks better now and hopoefully will grow better. Unfortunately, the Kirke Blue Plum that I grafted to it dried up.

April 18, 2012 Gardening…

I divided more of the Portuguese Kale (from a crowded cell pack) and potted about seven of them into 3″ pots. There are still a bunch in the cell pack. They sure planted a lot of seeds.

Portuguese Kale Potted Up

I didn’t know where to plant the three Asparagus crowns I bought a month or two ago… so I temporarily placed them into a small pot with soil. They started sprouting and are getting tall, so I potted each one into a separate 5 gallon pot with lots of manure, compost, fertilizer and Azomite. I left about two inches at the top of the pot and will fill it in with more compost later.

Asparagus Roots

My Mom says that her Tuberose has never bloomed, so I am going to repot them and give them a good supply for organic fertilizer, compost and Azomite. Hopefully they will bloom for the first time this year!

Tuberose To Be Repotted

There were a bunch of Bloody Dock seedling volunteers in the Tuberose pot. I’ll divide them up and plant them in individual containers. I think I will donate some to the Vallejo Garden Club.

Tuberose Repotted

I didn’t think the Red Potatoes were going to sprout, but today I saw that they are starting.

Red Potato Finally Sprouting

Finally, I harvested more Red Giant Mustard and Swiss Chard. We seem to have a neverending supply of them (pretty good for a 6 cell pack).

Harvested Red Giant Mustard and Swiss Chard

4 Squares Planted + Big Greens Harvest…

I did a bit of gardening today, since the weather’s finally cleared up. It’s been raining for the past few days and parts of the garden are slightly flooded, but most of the garden got a good dose of water, which is good. I placed out a bunch of empty buckets and plastic storage boxes and collected as much water as I can get. Our rain barrel was filled to capacity and my Mom placed an empty trash can under the rain spout in back for the garage, but we found out today that it had a hole at the bottom. :(

Our Red Giant Mustard are still growing, but they probably just have about 2 more harvests left before bolting… so I want to keep the Mustard as well as some Kale and Mizuna coming. I planted 4 squares (4 plants each) in the Square Foot Garden today:
Mustard ‘Florida Broadleaf’
Mizuna (Red Leafed)
Kale ‘Rainbow’
Mustard ‘Red Crimson’

I then went around the garden and picked a bunch of greens!!!… Mostly from the front yard, but also got some Kale from the back. The greens include: Collards, Curly Leaf Kale, Dwarf Blue Curled Kale, Red Russian Kale, Redbor (G2) Kale, Kailaan, Broccoli Raab, Bright Lights Swiss Chard and Beet greens.

Lots of harvested Greens: Collards, various Kales, Gailaan, Broccoli Raab, Swiss Chard and Beet Greens

Click the photo above to see the annotations on Flickr.

Harvested Broccoli Raab and Bright Lights Swiss Chard

I chopped then up and sautéed them with Onions, Garlic and olive Oil with a touch of Chicken Stock, Salt and Pepper… and they turned out so good!

Sautéed Homegrown Mixed Greens (and Yellows and Reds)

Another Busy Gardening Day…

I started the day off harvesting some Swiss Chard ‘Green’ for lunch… My Mom used it in Filipino dish called Nilagang Manok, which literally translated means Boiled Chicken. I really love Swiss Chard, including the stems which remains firm when cooked. They are not stringy like some Bok Choy stems.

After lunch, I when to the garden and did a bunch of seed sowing. A few years ago, I experimented with winter sowing. I used milk jugs as containers, but didn’t have such good luck. I think the base didn’t have enough soil and it dried out too quickly. This winter, I’m going to use 6-8 inch pots as the minimum size. I also used standard 1-gallon containers. I filled the pots lower than if I were to plant a plant in them. This will leave some protection when the seedling emerge. I used plastic covers with elastic sewn in the edges to cover the pots. These were pretty cheap; I think the box came with 12-18 covers for $1. This will keep the soil from drying out and I think the elastic may even help keep the slugs out… which is another problem I had previously. I sowed the following seeds:

Agrostemma ‘Ocean Pearl’
Alyssum ‘Gold Dust’
Zinnia (Fall 2005)
Mystery Flower (maybe Gazania Daisy?)
Sunflower Lemon Queen (old seeds that I found hidden away in storage)

I wanted to get rid of some really old seeds like the Sunflower above and I also found two packets of Radishes from 1984!!! I emptied the two packets (Radish ‘Red Deveil B’ and Radish ‘White Icicle’) into a 12 inch pot… I don’t really expect them to grow, but if any are still viable, here’s their change to grow.

I planted a 10 inch pot with lots of Cilantro seeds that I harvested last year. I hope the Cilantro grows densely so we can harvest a lot. I then replenish one of the 3-gallon GeoPots that we harvested the Purple Bok Choy from and planted a bunch of Lettuce ‘Wildfire Mix’ that I bought a few days ago. I still had a bunch of seedling, so I potted to into large cell-packs to plant out later.

I’m not sure where to plant the other new plants I got, so I divided the small-packs of Kale ‘Rainbow’ and Kale ‘Siberian’ into 3 inch pots, so they can grow a bit before I figure out where to plant them. I was surprise how healthy the young seedlings were. I was able to divide the Kale ‘Rainbow’ into 17 individual pots!!!… and I’ll give some away to friends and relatives.

I also started grafting, since our Asian Plum tree near the storage is starting to bloom. I grafted four total today and will do more later:

Asian Plum ‘Golden Nectar’ (Graft 2012-01)
Plumcot ‘Burbank’ (Graft 2012-02)
Asian Plum ‘El Dorado’ (Graft 2012-03)
Apricot ‘Canadian White’ (Graft 2012-04)

I hope these take.

Sowing and Potting Seedling Up…

Today I sowed a few seeds:
Florence Fennel
Spaghetti Squash
Black Zucchini

I also potted some seedlings into newspaper pots:
Bok Choy ‘Fun Jen’
Bok Choy ‘Joi Choy’
Swiss Chard ‘Fordhood Giant’

More Dirt Pot Plantings + Tatsoi & Purple Bok Choy Harvest…

I continued planting more Dirt Pots with veggies for the front yard, but first, I finished the Spinach and Elephant Garlic Dirt Pot (that I started yesterday) by adding bark mulch.

Spinach 'Bonnie' and Elephant Garlic

I planted two more Dirt Pots. One with Red Russian Kale and one with Rainbow Swiss Chard that I had left over from late last year’s planting. When I planted the Swiss Chard last year, there were so many seedlings in the cell pack. I only planted the biggest plants, divided the smaller ones left over and planted them into larger cell-packs, hoping they would grow… and luckily they did.

Pak Choi 'Purple Choi'

At the end of the day, I harvested the Gai Choy (photo below) and Purple Bok Choy (photo above) that were both starting to bolt. I have a feeling that the Gai Choi seeds I got were packaged wrong, because this actually looks like Tatsoi. I’ll do another planting and see what I get.

Gai Choi or Tatsoi

In any case, it still makes a good harvest. I saw a YouTube video where this woman made a Korean Spinach side dish, called Sigeumchi Namul. I made this substituting the Tatsoi and Purple Bok Choy for the Spinach.

Sesame Seasoned Tatsoi and Purple Bok Choy

I also saw another YouTube video of a rice substitute/side dish called Cauliflower Rice. It’s so simple to make. Ingredients is just Cauliflower, salt and pepper.

Cauliflower Rice

Bunch of Plants Purchased and Potted Up…

It started to rain last night and for some reason I felt the need to buy some leafy winter vegetable starts, so I visited Mid City Nursery this afternoon. I didn’t find any leafy vegetables, but I got a six-pack of Walla Walla Sweet Onions which contained about 17 seedlings. I haven’t grew big Onions, so this will be good experience.

I also looked for different colored Carrots and found Blend of Colors Carrot seeds which contains 4 varieties: Cosmic Purple, Lunar White, Solar Yellow and Atomic Red.

I also wanted to try Parsnips, so I got a packet of seeds, but when I got home, I discovered they were not Parnips, but Parsley… actually Hamburg Root Parsley ‘Piestruska’ which seems similar to Parsnips, so these will do. I’m interested in trying them out.

Hmm… This just popped into my head… I just realized that Parsnips kinda sounds like a combination or Parsley and Turnips. I wonder if that’s how it got the name. Although, I think they are from two different families. I’ll have to look that up.

I then visited our local Lowe’s to get some potting soil. I also purchased:
Wallflower sp. (six-pack)
Calendula ‘Calypso’ (yellow with black centers)
Spinach ‘Bonnie’ (2 four-packs)
Collard ‘Georgia Hybrid’ (four-pack)
Asparagus ‘Jersey Giant’ (3 bare roots)

When I got home I potted up a bunch of seedlings (grown from seeds indoor under grow lights) into newspaper pots. These include:
Mustard ‘Crimson Red’
Pak Choi ‘Purple Choi’
California Poppy ‘Mission Belle’
Japanese Chard ‘Umaina’
Swiss Chard ‘Witerbi Mangold’

The Snap Pea ‘Sugar Ann’ seeds that I soaked are just starting to sprout roots, so I planted those into about 22 newspaper pots.