A visit from a cat and a solution.

 So yesterday I saw the manx cat (I call it Max) come running from the garden area as I was going in. Well this is evidence of what he was doing when I wasn't there in the last twenty four hours..

Nothing solid luckily

I dug around just to be sure there wasn't any solids and smoothed the soil out. I don't want to go out and buy mulch at this point as much as I've been saying I need to. There's this pile of wood against the wall you see....

Homemade cat deterrent

I put a few more in front of the plants and a few between that aloe (still haven't moved it dang!) and then watered it all down really well. They needed watering anyway so it worked well. Luckily the two little marigold seedlings survived and water was caught between the sitcks so it worked out.

The zucchini is still chugging along well.

It has grown, the flower shows

It's almost two inches long now but far from picking size. None of the other flowers are fruiting type. Sadness. A reverse harem? A stable of...naaah. But it does show how fast this plant grows! The last picture from yesterday showed the bud was green and only about an inch long, today it's already bloomed and closed up again! This is how people get football size zucchini in a day.

Getting bigger!

I found another tomato hidden under the leaves so that makes three out of that entire bush, if it had the right nutrients I'd have double that I suspect. I might have to go out and water it every day now given the heat. I also picked three more peppers so this is my harvest so far:

A pinch of peppers

 

I'm sure they taste fine but I'm picking them small (maybe inch and a half long) to give more energy to the plant to make more flowers. That's how it works you know. 

When a plant is producing flowers it's reproduction (I covered that before) so when it produces fruit, all the energy goes into that fruit for continuing it's lineage (whatever). If it's a long season plant, like peppers, you pick some of the older ones off no matter the size in order to signal the plant it can produce more flowers and extend the season.

The same goes with roses and ornamental flowers. Some rose bushes are already forming rose hips (seed pods) which for them means it's the end of the season, I'm done, time to go to sleep. Problem is in San Diego our rose season is at the mid point right now and you can get another crop of flowers if you do a half pruning, a little shaping and take any rose hips off. Give it a good supplement booster and you'll have flowers in October.

I also took another soil sample from the zucchini bed and it is currently settling. As you can see it is mostly clay particles with some organic matter and heavier clay at the bottom.

This is going to turn out very similar to the last test I suspect.  More organic amendment is definitely needed.

Science again!

I'm wondering if potatoes and carrots would do well with a bit more amendment. They like silty sandy soil but with rich nutrients. I wouldn't plant potatoes in the ground, too much work, but might do a half hole then build up from there. The zucchini bed might be good for that, or maybe the pepper side of the bed. 

In the winter the wall is going to be shading the south and east side more so that might be better to grow herbs and peas. Herbs, I think the only one I would grow is cilantro, which I tried picking some of the seeds this morning while walking Rocky and he started running before I could get them in my pocket. Any cilantro that might come up in the lawn is going to get mowed down. Forgot to grab more seeds on the way back from gardening. Oh well.

 

Variegated ivy

 So I'm sure you've seen the small pots of variegated ivy at garden centers in small post, sometimes displayed indoors with the houseplants. Well guess what grows just as well in an outdoor situation? It doesn't grow huge like the standard ivy but still covers the ground well. Nice touch for a partial shaded area as long as you can keep on top of it. 

Oh, did you know that ivy flowers and has fruit clusters when it is mature? That's not mature ivy you say? Why no, it isn't! Ivy actually doesn't mature until it has grown vertically for several years and then the leaves change shape and it starts to flower and fruit.

 

English Ivy leaves and fruit

 I've seen this myself at the nursery and around town on various tall walls and palm trees. In fact there was some growing on the back fence of my apartment when we moved in and about six months later they did something to it and it all died. Possibly cut it off at the base but there's a problem with that. They now have dead wood growing on a wood fence. So many problems with that too numerous to talk about right now (besides I already covered some before).

Sounds like I'm repeating myself here so time to close it up and look for new topics for next time.