Welcome to my Garden Blog and stuff!

 

 It has taken a lot of years to get to a point where I have even a small space to be able to garden again. I have over twenty years experience in telling random people how to keep their plants alive, how to design a garden, why they are killing their plants and what to do.

Now is the time when I can dispense that knowledge from the safety and security of my home and not have to risk life, limb and sanity in a retail setting (mostly sanity and blood pressure). I will be making comments open on this so there can be a question and answer for my weekly topics on gardening. 

I will be focusing on gardening in Southern California as that is where I have lived for the past twenty five plus years. There are many many more people out there with published books, radio shows and such that have similar experience but they dance around the edges and skirt topics that people should really know about or have questions on.

Right off the bat is going to be a renovation project where I live. No help from contractors, no support from local home stores, just me, a couple of broken down tools and working with what is there and maybe some additional products and why I use them. I get no kickback from vendors or products (unless they want to sponsor me by chance). Oh and permission from the apartment manager and maybe a little help from the landscaping guys to move those logs.

My situation: I live in a senior complex in South East San Diego, CA (El Cajon) in a tiny one bedroom appartment with my fiancee Jon and my three year old cat Rocky (who I take for walks most mornings on a leash and harness). Due to cramped living spaces (and a cat who likes to chew on anything green) I don't own any houseplants. Our location is one of the hotter areas in the county which last summer got up to 102 outside and inside was a toasty 85. This makes gardening outside in full sun not so good but depending on what happens in the next few months, I will be attempting it. Right now it is comfy and breezy outside and I am prepping a bed. Attend to my photos:

This is facing south (ish) from the entrance of the area around 4 pm. Lemon bush is in front of me, at the far back is a jade bush.

This is a Jade bush at the very back with some old tomato cages laying on it. The corner on the right is, from the smell, a stray cat litter box. That will definitely be getting taken care of.

Looking from the back wall to the front of the area. No one has really worked this area at all in I don't know how long. The standing tomato cage on the right... is in the middle of a small mint patch. No amendments have been made to the soil at all. Reddish colored sandy clay soil typical of the area.

Wood from a Liquidambar tree (Liquidambar styraciflua aka Sweet gum tree) that was cut down somewhere. Can we say rat, mouse, termite home anyone? Against a building? The small window sticking out is the kitchen of one of the apartments. Most of the units have one and it is unfortunate this is right near where my bed is.

My bed after cultivating and hoeing then giving it a water. Nice loose composty stuff but dry as a popcorn fart (thanks Dale!). Stinky and not in a good way from cats also using this as a litter box. I had watered it for about a minute or so and the water only went down about a quarter inch. More on that later.

Oh and that aloe in a five gallon pot as well as the dilapidated planter behind it will have to go. I suspect the bed at one time went to the wall with a small board for a spacer but that is long gone so I'm only working with about a 2 x 5' bed right now.      

So that is what I am dealing with at the moment. Working about fifteen or twenty minutes maybe half hour a day at this point just working that bed and keeping it moist to keep the kitties out. In the summer that area gets a full on six raging hours of essentially desert sun. I haven't plotted the exact direction but from the sun position it's roughly south south east. Goodly amount of sun for growing just about anything and if that little lemon bush is surviving with only occasional water, it's a good spot to grow stuff. 

So there is your intro to me and my garden project. Not your typical garden work up, but not everyone has lots of space and a good size garden to play in (nor the budget!). In closing I will now answer any readers with my previous comment about the water.

When organic soil gets to extremely dry  conditions and is not treated with anything, due to the chemical and electrostatic conditions of water, the soil will actually become hydrophobic. It will repel the water laterally instead of going down. I watered for a good minute or three then put the hose down knowing this and when I got the cultivator in there, sure enough the water had only gone in about a quarter inch despite creating a few puddles and feeling like I thoroughly soaked it. Luckily the base soil drains very well being mostly sandy clay so I worked the wet into the dry, leveled what I could and left it.

More pictures about what I did the next day and what the bed looked like around 9 am.

Questions? Comments? Ideas? Shout at me like I owe ya money!