Getting in the garden before it gets too hot

 

7:25 am

It's a wonderful 63 degrees and quiet for a Monday. Decided to get out and see if the soil needed water and it was dark but definitely will need some water before it gets too hot. Going out for breakfast and some shopping then will water. The bed will be in full sun by then and not ideal but early enough that it will be fine. The flowers on the two plants are doing well, tomato is branching out like crazy which means it's gotten hold of the fertilizer I suspect.

 

One note about using a tomato cage, don't assume it will just stay neat and tidy in the confines of those wire areas. Tuck branches up and in and guide it to grow up to be supported by the cage. Oh and yes, you will need a bigger cage. Better Boy is an indeterminate tomato (covered that when I planted it) which means, if I'm lucky this boy will get taller than the 3' cage I have around it now. It also means that having it fruit this small is okay as it will continue to do that for the duration. 

You can see below that I dug a little in the soil to check the moisture in the soil. The soil was dark but really wasn't even damp so it would need water definitely with our heat wave. 

Pepper flowers!

 

 

Best water meter is at the end of your arm. Your fingers. You can feel how much moisture is in the soil and with experience, know if it will need watering depending on the weather. I hesitated watering but then knew what little moisture was in the soil would evaporate within hours and watering in the evening was not going to be soon enough.

 

 

 

 

 

It is now 10:50 am and it is not peaked for temp at 83. Predicted for my area is close to 90 by 1pm. Yuck. I just went out and watered the bed, thoroughly soaked the soil. Since the sun was blasting on it and it would be most of the day I tried to only water the soil around it. Difficult with how big it's getting and the spray setting I was using.

I was almost finished and another senior lady peeked around the corner and said, 'don't water the lemon' I told her I didn't, she complained that every year someone waters it and the lemons all fall off. So she must be the one that put the sign up. I told her when was it last fed. She didn't hear me and complained again about watering, I repeated, has it been fed yet? She said no but it likely needs it. I told her yes, that's the bigger problem. She didn't want to hear any other reason than someone overwatering it 'every year'. I've only been there for a year so it's not me that's been 'overwatering' it.

 She was dropping off things for the community table and I walked past just as she dropped something on the ground so didn't hear me say I worked at a nursery for 20 years, it needs food.  Wonder who took the tree food then? 

 

On the topic of unlikely places for plants and what they need. I give you spider plant growing at the base of a jade bush and surviving. That sucker gets full on sun all day and here this little spider plant is trying to squeeze out from under that huge jade. No way to get it out so it will survive and it's already putting out a stem with flowers on it (going from left to right behind the overgrown zinnia stem).

Next we have someone's plant, likely from the previous tenant that has left it behind. An indoor palm, possibly Areca and a creeping charlie. Again, look who's the faster grower and that whole pot needs to be in more shade. Yellowed leaves, cramped quarters in that pot... surviving, not thriving. Sad state of affairs really. (oh that's Rocky at the bottom of the picture).

Coriander seeds.

 

Culinary plants with two uses. 

Cilantro aka Coriander aka Chinese Parsley. The leaves are used, as a good number of people know, primarily in Mexican dishes and some Asian dishes. First time I encountered it a friend had used it in sandwiches instead of lettuce or sprouts or normal things that would go on a sandwich. Because of that I said I didn't like it for many years. It wasn't until I wanted to make my own salsa or tasted properly made salsa that I realized it was the error of my friend not me that caused the prejudice. Some people claim it tastes like soap, maybe.. if I twist my brain around it that way but I don't want to spoil my brain on it.

The second use for cilantro are the seeds...commonly called coriander after the actual plant name Coriandrum sativum. I haven't had any recipes that call for coriander but then I haven't had many Middle Eastern or Asian dishes that used it. I think my mom had a bottle of ground coriander in her spice rack but not sure. 

Cilantro grows very quickly from seed and the best example is my former sister in law had a pretty good size raised garden bed that she had thrown cilantro seeds...ahem, coriander in and just let it do it's thing. Subsequently it was a perpetual cilantro bed where the stalks were at least two or three feet high and constantly blooming and seeding through the summer. When I lived with her for a year we would go out and pull whatever leaves we needed off the plants and go make salsa.

She no longer lives in that house but I wonder if the next owners/renters still kept the garden.