Watering, passing time, #zucchini

 I think this is mentally the hardest part of gardening. Just passing time while things ripen and watching plants age every day. Zucchini likely will miss a pollinating window oh and I trimmed it back a little, odd plant that.

That hole in the middle was a smaller clump of growth that really wasn't doing anything. A few flowers but that's about it. That shade is what it is getting from about 11 am on. Have to try and get out there earlier in the morning and see how much sun it's getting. Literally the sun is setting on this plant hahah!

Latest of the #tomatoes on the shady side of the bush, lots of flowers and some small tiny fruit coming on, only saving on this is they are still in the sun. Zucchini I think is going to come out soon so I can start fall stuff that likes warm shade.

Oh and someone was repotting something and saw where my leaf pile is and decided to dump it there. Well then, good start to a compost pile for sure!

Didn't notice until I was watering

 

I'll mix it up eventually, got soil, dry and green ingredients, it's a good start. Not too many topics have come up lately to talk about. I think the summer heat has baked my brains too much and can't pull a topic out. One small thing though, there are a ton of weeds in that corner as well and my brain said, 'hey, free compost material' my knowledge kicked that to the curb, 'no you don't want potential seeds in a compost pile to spread all through a garden.' So there is that topic. Be careful of what you put in a compost pile or bin. No protein based things like fat or meat (yikes!) bones are good but need to be clean and crushed (calcium!) weeds are okay as long as there are no products sprayed on them or diseases and evident seeds. Kitchen scraps, thoroughly shredded paper with no shiny paper or colored ink (trivia, some newspapers now use soy ink so it's safe to put in compost!), small bits of bark, wood, green stuff all that is good.

I think I covered #composting before so won't go into it again, the information is out there on the internet in many many forms so go for it!

I am not the end all and be all of garden info just doing this as a hobby and spreading what little knowledge I have. I feel it slipping away every day though and it saddens me that almost a half lifetime of a career was all 'use it or lose it' and it's on the downslope of losing it now. Without having it in front of me 8/5 (8 hours a day 5 days a week) to keep it fresh my rolodex of plant knowledge is losing cards.

Such is life and aging and all that jazz. 

Just passing time and the doldrums of late summer

 The pepper is still wilting by the time I get out there after 10 am due to the heat. The zucchini plants are just spreading out like crazy and still not a whole lot of fruit coming in. Haven't cooked the last three and need to do that asap. As much as I love zucchini I don't have a family of five and a full on kitchen to do proper cooking, and don't really want to heat up the oven when it's already 82 inside. I suppose I could leave them out on the table for people to take but reluctant due to the heat.

So this comes back to 'what do you want to eat?' when planting a vegetable garden. Peas I can eat, you get more of those per fruit than a zucchini. Beans yes, both of those can be frozen without any problem. Zucchini has a lot of water in it like cucumber so makes it harder to freeze without damage. As for winter crops like peas, there's all the root crops but the soil needs to be 'just right' in many different ways to be successful with them. 

Speaking of soil, when I first looked at the bed I wondered why the person who had it before just left the compost on top. Welll that's not exactly the way it happened. The compost isn't getting dug deep enough and is floating to the top and washing to the front of the bed.

That's also a picture of two small tomatoes growing on a branch close to the bottom. But you can see the compost is piling up due to watering and the angle of the soil away from the building. So when this gets finished i'll dig it in again, throw more fertilizer on it and dig it in even more. That is the sunnier bed so likely will do oh maybe root crops there, peas could certainly improve the soil. May just take some pea seeds and throw them behind the zucchini actually since that's mostly shade now.

Next #tomatoes

This one is almost ready but you can see the green on the top. I'm having to use the tree stake to hold up the branch so it doesn't break. There are small 'corky lesions' all over it and am hoping that it doesn't split like the others. I watered today again even though I watered yesterday, because it is so flaming hot and I dug with the trowel around the plants a few places and not enough water in the soil to last the whole day.

 

    And flowering to beat the band as they say. Here's some reasons why it seems to be going gangbusters now. It is sensing imminent death, as I pointed out in an earlier photo, when plants sense a threat to their continuing situation the go into survival mode, 'we're going to die make fruit to continue the species!'. That happens with fruit trees as well as other plants. A wonderful story that I heard was a coworker went to a friends orchard to see why the trees at the end of the rows weren't doing as well. They tested the soil, checked the watering, everything was good, the consultant said 'threaten it'. Say what? Yeah, threaten it, take a baseball bat to the trunk and make it think it's going to die. Well, as funny as that sounds, that's what they did, not enough to damage it just to make it feel threatened. The orchard owner called him up the following year and said those trees were doing as well as if not better than the rest of the trees. Go figure.

The days are shortening and the heat is increasing, it's finishing up it's cycle which is another form of 'abandon ship' tactic. Unfortunately all those flowers at the very tip of the branches may get pollinated but the branches are so weak and flimsy they will either put on small fruit like the last batch or break the stems under the weight (see previous picture of the larger tomatoes I had to prop up).     

    This is a situation some gardeners don't understand, it's called culling. In order to give more energy to more fruit you need to pick smaller, less well placed fruit or if you  have a very young plant that doesn't have a root system completely developed and needs to save it's energy to grow. 

    I told a customer to do that for the health of the plant, they came back about six months later wondering why their fruit weren't big enough or it wasn't looking good (it was a lemon tree). Turns out they didn't have the heart to pick most of the fruit off and the plant suffered for it and oh they didn't give it any fertilizer either, just the soil they planted it in. Leaves were yellowing, some dropping off, the fruit wasn't coming in but it was trying to flower... yeah it does that.

The analogies I give are like a brood mare or a puppy mill. They breed and breed without giving the mother a rest and both the subsequent offspring and the mother suffer. Another analogy that a former coworker used is, 'your fruit tree is like a teenager, just because it can reproduce doesn't mean it's a good idea'.

So I may well see what develops in this case and continue to wait for cooler weather...eventually...any week now....

Anyway, that's all the pictures I have today. Still flaming hot and breezy which isn't a good thing necessarily as it's a hot wind. This weather is supposed to last until mid next week. Bleh.

Some forgotten details and ending season

 I took pictures of my 'compost pile' and forgot to talk about it. There's several different  methods of composting, the lazy way and the working way are the major divisions. This is the lazy way.

You can dig a hole or not and just start piling cuttings, leftover bits and stuff and let it sit. Water it down occasionally (as I've been doing) and just let it decompose on it's own. Lazy, takes longer for it to break down (sometimes years) and no guarantee of viability. I didn't want to cart the leaves and clippings all the way across the complex to the dumpster so here it is. If I was really next step more ambitious I would use some of the tomato cages to create a frame of sorts. Nah. 

I picked two tomatoes today that were really cracking and figured they wouldn't get much bigger anyway. Test how ready they are by tugging firmly on the tomato, if it breaks off it's ready, if you have to put more effort into it then it's not ready. These, despite coloring, came off easily.

The two in front are from today but you can see how badly the heat is affecting them. I have two more that are on the shady side of the bush that are going to be closer to regular size and show no signs of cracking so far, but it's early yet. Barely coloring on the bigger one (didn't get a picture)

It is now 84 degrees at 11 am and this weather pattern will continue to the weekend. Yuck.

There are a few itty bitty zucchini coming on but again, whether they get pollinated is chancy, stupid bushes. Those are also getting more mildew spots due to it being shadier now for them, humid and warmer. Prime conditions for powdery mildew. Do I care? Not this late in the season, which by the way, late summer and fall is fungus season! Yes indeed, all those images we remember for depicting fall, mushrooms, orange leaves, spiders, yep that's all for a reason.

And of course the tomato bush is showing signs of winding down as well.

Nothing to see here folks, perfectly normal yellowing, could be something but again, this late in the season I'm not going to worry about it. There are also tons of flowers coming in on the tips of the upper growth. Not going to worry about it right now really, this is a first year garden and I know now to put the zucchini over here and the peppers in the other bed, tomatoes can go anywhere but hope another bed opens up by next spring.

The cilantro didn't survive sadly it got baked really bad and not sure the bell peppers are going to come up either, experiments rarely turn out successful the first time. So another sign of late summer/fall are different bugs. This one is an oleander bug.

It's got it's wings open and was walking up the fence, since I was walking Rocky it was difficult to get my phone out and take a picture one handed and in focus. I had to adjust this a great deal just to see it in the photo. Again, nothing to worry about with this one, they are seed eaters and show up when the oleander starts putting on seed pods. It usually look like this:

And on that note, things to do today so that's going to wrap it up for now.

Hawks, a tomato and other stuff

 The hawks have returned. There is a Eucalyptus citrinus (Lemon Scented Eucalyptus) on the other side of the back fence that has a nest waaaaayy up in the topmost branches. This particular type of Eucalyptus isn't very full and bushy so the branches tend to look more Dr. Suessian with the leaves all clustered to the ends and droopy. Very nice tree but back on point, there is a nest up there that I originally thought was a hawk nest but when the hawks went away the crows/ravens (still can't keep them straight) seemed to have moved in.

So now that the hawks are back I suspect it is their nest and the crows were taking advantage of a dead chick maybe? From what I've researched it's probably a Red Shouldered Hawk and last year it was a pair so hoping they're coming back to the same nest again. As much as they are a top predator and people complain they kill birds, rabbits and mice...excuse me..what would you rather have in your backyard? Birds know to sit in a tree and be quiet if they know there's a hawk around, the mice and rabbits, snakes too, are mostly evening/daytime foragers. Natural pest control.

Now on to the garden. speaking of shoulders, the tomatoes are still cracking on the tops (called the shoulder) and you can see in the pictures it still shows a little green. From what I remember this is, believe it or not, sunburn on a tomato.

Still tasty, just have to cut the top part off. It looks like a hole on the top right one but that's just the stem part left over after I tried to pull it off just tugging on the sepals (the green collar leaves).

I decided not to water because it was cooler this morning but will try and get out there in the evening. The zucchini is still growing thankfully and an example of how the male flowers are taller to catch the pollinators for the infant female flower below.

Still growing good!

It is very obvious the male flower will open long before the female flower. This is on the right hand, smaller bush so I may even cut some of the leaves away to make room for it. Need to find a tiny container and get my paint brush out to collect the pollen when it opens. I looked it up and the pollen can be good for up to a month. Need to find out if I should keep it cold or just cool somewhere. 

This certainly has been an adventure in vegetable gardening. Wish I had the space and supplies to do more justice for veggies. Fall is coming so we will see what happens. I think for sure I'm going to harvest what I can from the jalapeños then yank it. It isn't doing very good, wilting in the morning after only a few hours of sun. Green as all get out but the fruit is puny. Need to bulk up the nutrients ore my bell peppers are going to suffer the same fate.

It's going to be hot again today with a trend of cooling down over the next week. Still insufferable in the middle of the day. Time to go do errands, grab lunch and scoot on home with AC and fans.

Quick post but not much to update

First, the weather report:

 

So if you don't have anything done by noon, fuhgeddaboudit. We're already buttoning up and will start the ac before we do our short errand for today.

Tomatoes are almost ready, a zucchini is still an infant but looks like it is viable and a gift from above.

Not quite ready

A tiny one behind this one

The days are getting shorter, the shadows are shifting so the zucchini bed is now getting half shaded by now. I don't have to water that bed as often as I thought due to so many leaves shading it and now more shade from the wall. The tomato/pepper bed on the other hand... the leaves didn't do much to shade the soil.

After uncovering

Before uncovering

Not much difference in the soil moisture sadly so watered this bed and you can see that here it was 10:30 am and the sun was blazing hot and plants were wilted despite being watered yesterday. I pulled away the leaves and tossed them over on the makeshift 'compost' pile. Didn't bother checking the peppers, most of them are still too small. 

I have discovered three new mosquito bites so that little twit of a bug yesterday wasn't the only one. Grrrrr.

I am looking forward to cooler days enough that I don't feel like I've run around the building when I come back in from gardening. That dry dusty clay soil is going to be a slick muddy mess when it really rains. Need to look into gravel or something with permission.

And on to the gift from above, I told you we have parrots:

 Lovely iridescent green body feather just happened to be hanging out on the tomato plant. Tiny thing no bigger than my fingernail but it made me smile. Hoping to get some fertilizer today and give them all one last boost of the season. Budget is going to be tight after the next two weeks due to extra money dropping off. Again that is another story but it does affect what I do and get for the garden in regard to more important things. 

 

Stay cool and trust in science.

Goodness the days got away from me!

 Well, another zucchini, some tomatoes coming along and a creative mulch substitute.

September 2

September 3

I picked it yesterday and it was bigger than the previous one I had picked. There's another forming even now because I pollinated it yesterday. I ate the older and smaller one today just sliced it up, put it in water to boil, salt, pepper and garlic powder, added butter when I drained it. Yummy! Now looking for the best recipe for tempura fried zucchini. Might have to get the recipe out for deep fried artichoke hearts and use that.

I also pruned a few of the larger lower leaves off so it was easier to see the flowers,  still fewer females than males and the other bush just isn't coming along as well as the other.  Then there's the tomatoes

Same tomato different angle, should be ready in the next day or two. There's cracking showing on the top already and as I said, dual problem of irregular watering and excessive heat. I came up with an idea though after I watered to use the large zucchini leaves as a short term mulch. We're in the 90's again for a few days and this may help.

They will be wrinkled and dried up by the end of the day but it will still cover the ground and keep the moisture in. I put one over the miniscule cilantro seedling that I almost drowned as well as the small patch I threw the bell pepper seeds. I won't leave them much longer than a day or two because I will have to water again even if that does help. By then I hope the heat wave is over.

I also had a fly by from a Swallowtail checking out the lemon tree.

She was flitting all over the place and I had to take about six or seven pictures before she stopped long enough to not be blurry. I don't think she landed long enough to lay any eggs and frankly if a caterpillar did grow it would decimate about a third of it.

Speaking of decimated, let me see if I can upload those photos of the other beds this time.

Dead and dying mint

Looks like spittle bug

What's left of the spurge

 She pulled all the grass out finally leaving the very weak and spindly spurge. She continues to water but that's what happens when someone is doing it out of habit and slightly less mental capacity, that sounds unkind but it is a sad truth. When you live around people that are surprisingly older than yourself and I'm considered old!  So at some point in time it would be lovely to have that much more room to plant things, maybe even a flower bed. The large task ahead though is digging out my existing beds at the end of the season and adding more compost. Am not looking forward to that at all but it should be cooler by the time that happens. Still hard work.

Oh a reminder about leaving plants in a saucer that holds water. Please don't! I found out where I was getting mosquitos from and turns out one of the downstairs neighbors has just that. Those little buggers love standing water. I was walking Rocky this morning and saw something flying around my knees, shooed it away and then realized what it was. I waited, let it land on my shin then smacked the hell out of it. Looked at the flattened remains and sure enough, mosquito. 

So dump your catch basins, dump and refill your birdbaths, look for puddles that hang around for more than a day and fix it. Pools and ponds don't usually have a problem due to having fish and small fountains have moving water which they don't like to lay eggs in. There are natural products on the market if you have a situation that collects water and is not disturbed. Mosquito Dunks/Donuts or Bits, they are a corn gluten I believe or something like that but is mixed with BT, same bacteria that kills caterpillars. Non toxic for birds, pets and people. 

Size difference

I'm out there checking every day so I can catch them before they get too big. Still not sure about why they aren't nice and cylindrical, likely has to do with either the variety or pollination. If I left them on long enough to get evenly shaped they'd be as big as my forearm. Still tasty and I ate the small one, the big one hopefully will be fried if it's not too hot, in the kitchen that is.

So not too much else happening, as far as I know I didn't get the job at the nursery but oh well. I'm enjoying having less stress, or the only stress is dealing with less than insightful people when I go out. That is another topic for another blog.

 

It's aliiive! And weed, plant and growing issues 'next door'.

 So the zucchini took thankfully, should be ready to harvest in a few days due to the weather slowing down a bit due to a storm down in the gulf. 70's, humid and overcast, possible thunderstorms 'in East County' which is where I am, likely further east into the mountains.

Success!

Baby one coming in, ummm.

Not a good shot in the second picture but baby female zucchini look rather...suggestive. Hahahaha!

Also a comparison picture between the two plants that are side by side, started out roughly the same size and look what they are doing.

They should both be looking like the one on the left. The one on the right is stunted and weak looking, that's the one that's been producing mostly male flowers. This is why we have no clue why two boxwoods died in the middle of a twenty foot hedge. Soil, watering, vertilizer, grade of the land...all makes enough of a difference to have two plants look so different. That picture on the right looks like one plant and yet, they aren't.

I hope by the end of the season to stitch together all the pictures  I took of the tomato and pepper over time. I tried to take a picture every time from roughly the same angle to do that. Also a close up of the mature plant on the left compared to the one on the right down inside.

It isn't exactly a bush, nor is it a true vine. it grows along a main stem along the ground which as I mentioned way back when I planted it, some people train it so that stem is upright. I didn't have the right tools or supplies to do that so this is it. The other one is barely even spreading and I wouldn't be surprised if it died much sooner than the other one. Meanwhile, in the other beds, the mint is dying a horrid, lingering mealybug infested death. The spurge that was taking over is no rotting and dying as it is supposed to do and the lady pulled all the grass out thinking that would help. 

I am having technical difficulties with blogger uploading photos for some reason. Will keep trying so I can show what a mess it is.

 

Spring annuals finish up within three to four months, depending on care and weather This is September 1 and I started my beds end of May, so we'll call it June 1. That's three months and a booming garden is happening for me but not so much for the other bed. I will hopefully be able to edit this so I can add in the pictures. Really kind of important to see the difference.

So, like people, plants need care and feeding, regular attention in order to be healthy and thrive. People would come to me and ask why their plants are not doing so well, I ask if they fed and watered them. 'Food'? what is 'food'? Fertilizer.. plant food...you took a tomato plant home and just planted and watered it expecting a bumper crop? Watering too much, only  used manure in the soil because 'that's what my father did'... the soil said it has fertilzer for three months....sigh ::facepalm::.

Same old story too often told.

Oh I can tell it's moving toward fall, the hawks are back in the morning and the parrots are migrating back and forth in morning and evening. Wonderful way to mark the change of the seasons, though I'd rather have something other than parrots, I'll take what I can get.

Parrots? In California? Oh yes most definitely, there are wild parrots that have moved in over the decades from Mexico. Either Green or Red Fronted Amazons, the nursery had two of them over the years and in a closed space, the screeching is deafening. Dozens of them squawking and screeching flying overhead is different.

The job I interviewed for is a 12 acre nursery that, despite being in the 21st century still does not have a labeling system, barely functional computers and three times during my interview one of their employees came to the door asking for ID and price on something. Reminds me of when I started at Andersen's 20 years ago. IF they decide to hire me I need to pass a walk around plant ID test, crossing fingers if that happens. My recall on plant names isn't what it used to be and I tried to be positive and let her know I still had it but am a little out of practice. I did let her know that a passion vine was mislabled and was able to find the possible correct name for it. They even asked me what variety of aloe that a customer wanted and I admitted succulents were not my strong suit. I could tell you it's an aloe but that was it.

Off I go into the wilds of concrete and steel jungle.