Still cold and damp but good

 Actually took advantage of a break in the weather and direct sowed some seeds. Skies are still cloudy-ish and not warm at all. 

Blogger being stupid with photos again.

The liquid amber trees are all changing except that one. I mentioned previously about how three in a line were all at different stages. Not sure whether it's an original age when planted thing or what but it sure is fun to look at. Mostly cloudy today with a light sprinkle overnight so the last few days have been mostly damp and cold. Bring it on!

    

The clouds are beautiful when there's gaps and the sun shines through on the distant hill. This is what Fall weather should be like, not 80 or 90. Yes, that happened a few years ago and a different year it rained like it did last week. So yeah, vagaries of weather in California.

I brought down the last of the Chantenay carrots and mixed lettuces which I did my best to plant behind the onions in the west bed. The lettuces all came out mostly at the far end so had to kind of sweep them along a line. 

There was a perfectly good little wire wastebasket on the table when I went down and snapped it up because it's useful in the garden. The holes are about ¼ inch so not good at fine sifting but works just the same. I dumped some of the compost into it and then shook it all over the west bed where I had planted the seeds. Perfectly fine cover with a few larger bits of eggshell unfortunately but still good. Yay for new tool!

Never underestimate nature and one person's trash is another's new garden. Apparently one of the two other gardeners just dumped a good clump of green onions in the compost and they started to sprout. Sooooo, not on my watch. Drilled and dug holes and plopped them all down, a good two dozen, maybe dozen and a half. Still plenty of room for the potatoes. The last little one that I had missed is actually a purple so I cut that up, put the pieces in a safe place to dry and will try and get those in the ground in the next week.

And it seems that the bucket lid wasn't exactly water tight because there's at least an inch of water in the bottom of that bucket. Oh well, nothing tragic really and will dump it out another day.

Will see how long it takes for the seeds to sprout, the cilantro is coming along in the south bed along with a multitude of small weed seedlings. I pulled a few fingerfuls and will keep doing that mostly around the cilantro plants. If it weren't for the cilantro I'd spray the whole bed with vinegar, but I just might rig up a shield and still do that. 

So that's all for the garden today. Oh the seeds in the little pellets are going very slowly. The cauliflowers are very leggy unfortunately due to lack of bright light and the romaine are just poking along. I need a little mini greenhouse with a light...... and just realized I have something that might work. A flea trap I bought! It's small, maybe six inches square but it has a single lightbulb in the center.... hmmmmmm.

Will see if that works or not. 

 

    

Seed planting redux and lemons

 The weather feels like it's shifting cooler, still a bit too warm in the sun though but am not covering up the cilantro today. I watered really well last night so even at 1:30pm the soil was still very damp looking on the surface. Lower angle of the sun means less intense full sun exposure on the soil and not drying it out as much. This is a good thing.

I mentioned before not seeing any ripe lemons on the bush, well here they are. Not quite ready but they are ripening very well. Because it gets more shade than it should, it's a bit delayed but also I think that food it got earlier in the year has made a difference.

 

I decided to go through my assorted 'containers' and see if there was this one from when we got strawberries. It has lots of holes in the sides and is a perfect planting container. I dumped the soil in one of the black ones into this and then planted assorted lettuce seeds again in two rows. Will see how they come up. Covered them lightly but didn't water.

I then got one of the taller cups and put the soil from the other black tray in it, sprinkled a good half dozen or so cauliflower seeds in that one and lightly covered. Everything goes back in the shade and now I wait. 7-10 days for the cauliflower and about the same for the lettuce. Not expecting anything for another week from the onions and sweet peas since I did those on Nov 1 conveniently.

  The potato that's coming up still looks great, nice deep green and the leaves are unfurling well. Those zinnias just will not stop flower, it's kind of funny. I could cut some more and bring them upstairs but let some of the older ones go to seed to let the plant get the signal to shut down.

Any cauliflower or lettuce seeds that come up and I don't use will be nurtured for trading. I don't know why I grabbed the mixed lettuce instead of the romaine but there's still time for that. Fall has only started and given the weather, many days ahead of warm sunshine and cold nights before winter sets in.

Spring is the infant of the garden, learning and growing one step at a time. Summer is the youth of the garden, growing fast and much to do, everything moving and doing. Winter is old age, fruits harvested, plants are pulled, then the long wait until the renewal of spring.