What Remains?

The year has been, overall, a good one, with both successes and failures, of course. All raise beds afe now framed, in either redwood or cedar. This is a must to keep our front yard kitchen garden tidy looking. About 70% of the beds are on drip irrigation, the rest to be done over the fall winter. Perimeter flood lights, to allow working after we arrive home during the winter, are mostly complete, but I like it so well I may ad a few more on the other side of the garden.

Failures? Learning to fully utilize the greenhouse comes to mind. Tomatoes were only so-so this year. Still not starting enough of my own seedlings, so expenses for purchased plants still too high. Also, purchased organic materials such as baggd compost and manures way too much. Finally, not saving my own seed yet, but that will be remedied.

Today is Sunday, Oct. 26. Yesterday, I attended a garlic-growing workshop at UCSC, co-hosted by the director of the AgroEcology program, and one of his former students, Pete Rasmussen of SandHills Farm in Utah. Pete brought my 4 lbs. seed garlic I purchase from him, and this a.m., it went in the ground. Also managed to plant some Nero di Toscana Kale. Early a.m., I had picked up another huge terra Cotta pot intended for another of my dwarf citrus  trees. Thought I might pot it up, but as the kids are coming for Sunday dinner, I am happy to have gotten done what I did. Will do tomorrow, I hope.

Planted four hardneck varieties of garlic. Rosewood, Siberian, Corona Music, and Chesnok. Most of what is grown in California - and California grows LOTS of Garlic - is of the softneck variety, generally very reliable, but mostly uninteresting stuff. Harnecks are the true gourmet garlic, with wide assortment of flavor profiles. As a rule, hardnecks are best in northern climates, softnecks in the warmer southern climates. Here on the central coast,coastal  Santa Cruz is just about as far south as hardne ks can be reliably grown, so I am told, but that varies year to year with the severity of the weather. Since I am in the mountains inland of S.C. by twelve miles, and our mountain valley climate is quite a bit colder, hopefully  these superior flavored hardnecks will thrive for me.

Living where we do, there are many microclimates, giving places only a few miles apart, widely different temperatures and conditions. For example, I am on the valley floor, and thus can frequently get light frosts from about Dec.- Feb., with the odd heavier frost, and a light dusting of snow only once every couple years. A gardening friend, - only a few miles away as the crow flies, but a few hundred feet higher in elevation - seldom gets frost. I will thus, on the coldest nights, have to wrap my five dwarf Citrus trees with Agribond, and probably plastic, removing it in the mornings. During those months, winter temps may be 20's at night, 40's/50's during the day. The most difficult citrus to grow here is grapefruit. Time will tell.

A Drop Of Rain

...but just barely a drop, this past Wednesday.Much ado about nothing, really, but it was the first of the rainy season, and allowed me to forego watering for one day, at least.

Now, sitting out in my driveway, are many bags of organic compost and manure. Those, along with other soil ammendments, will be added to the three beds we framed up this past weekend. The beds are for the aproximately 200 onion plants I received today, awaiting me inside the front gate after work. They are from The Natural Gardening Company, in Petaluma Ca., the oldest organic nursery in the U.S. . To my shame, I failed to start my own onions from seeds, so I'm hoping the added expense is worth it. After a early a.m. trip to Santa Cruz this Saturday, I will work the beds and plant the onions. Garlic next weekend.

It is not light out till almost 6:45 these mornings, and is dark quite early in the evenings, as well. I installed low-voltage floodlights along some of my fence, at about 6 ft., and this makes it possible to do a bit of work in the morning before I start my commute to work.  But really, they are for working in the garden after I get home. In the depths of our winters, it is dark by 5:30 p.m., just one hour after arriving back at the house. I leave when it's dark, and get home when it is nearly so.The weather may be fine, but without light, what's a gardener to do, except look at seed catalogs, read, and get fat! Now, with a greenhouse equipped with electricity, and a well-lit garden, I can do something at night.

Before & After : 200 Onions In Less Than 36 Sq. Ft., 40 Each of Five Different Varieties

Great Expectations

The disappointment of not getting done everything that you set out to do , well, you learn to live with it. It was easily doable, had I pushed myself harder.But, you see, it's Sunday, and I don't want to push myself . So, I reconcile myself to the fact that I'm going to get an acceptable , but not optimal, amount done . I'll get it done during the week... sure.

Today, it was over 90F again, but still it was nice, especially in the shade. I managed to clear, prep, and plant two beds, one to leek plants ( King Seig?), the other to onion sets, a red torpedo type, and a yellow variety. That's 60 leeks, and 142 onion sets, plus a couple six packs of lettuce, and two of cabbage. More onions, this time plants, should ship out to me this week, and may be here by the weekend. I have much more prep work to do this week, and that's after the ten and a half hours I am gone each day. We'll see what happens.

Each bed was cleared, the residues going into the compost pile. After forking over the soil,  I added aged horse manure, compost, a bit of steer manure . The top of each bed is dusted with a combination of blood meal, bone meal, fishbone meal, greensand, and poultry feather meal. All is then incorporated into the top 4" of soil, raked smooth, tamped down with the back of the rake, and finally planted. 

This is pretty much what I do to my beds each time I replant, changing the amounts of each amendment according to what I have on hand. The greensand, which adds necessary trace elements, need only be  added every 2-3 years. In the future, I fully expect that I will be planting more and more of my small kitchen garden to green manures, or cover crops, in winter. The soil, very sandy, is improving each year, as I up the organic material. My production is getting better. Additionally, we are fine-tuning the quantities we grow, deciding what we really like/dislike, what we can grow lots of, what we 're really wasting time on. 

My greatest costs are for commercial composts, and those expensive organic soil amendments. My sandy soil seems to dissolve organic matter. That's where growing my own compost crops will help, as purchasing bagged compost is expensive. But it is difficult to produce compost in the amounts my soil uses it, so making my own  means I need to grow the raw materials. Unless one saves seed, starts their own seedlings, and produces as much compost as possible right on ones' own land, it is not really either cost efficient or sustainable. Might as well buy expensive food at Whole Foods. 

The End......Is Just The Beginning

As I simultaneously look forward and backwards at my gardening season, I'm also trying to focus on what needs doing now. While many are wrapping-up their gardening efforts , I'm pondering whether this is the year I finally keep my promise to release the year-round grower that lives inside me. In our climate, it's certainly possible, with planning , excellent timing, and a bit of hard work, to grow veggies right through the winter. It's mostly the timing, I think.

There are still summer crops still to be picked and enjoyed - a few tomato and pepper plants , both in and out of the greenhouse. Salad crops are still being successionally sown.The Brassica beds, planted over the last three weekends, need feeding.  I have fall/winter stuff to either plant, or get ground prepped for. A box of Leek plants arrived in the mail yesterday, gotta get them in the ground today. My onion plants - four varieties -  should follow towards next weekend. Later this month, I'll attend a Garlic Growing seminar at UCSC, and collect the 4 lbs. of garlic seed from the man giving the seminar. He farms 30 acres of garlic , at over 5,000 ft. elevation, in the Wasatch Mtns. of  northern Utah.

We're about ready to leave now, to get another load of horse manure, then visit Common Ground  in Palo Alto which sadly, is closing down. Two sixteen foot , rough-sawn redwood 2 X 12's , to be used as borders for a raised bed, await installation, allegedly today, also. Two other  growing beds need cleared of their summer crops and then will be refreshed with manure and compost, and immediately replanted. Seeds need starting - spinach, chard, lettuce, beets, and turnips.Gotta see why the row of Oregon Giant peas that  I planted last weekend aren't showing themselves just yet, maybe need to replant. Damn! And I want to see my new grandson today, if I am able to guilt my daughter into bringing him around. I'm gonna give him something he's not supposed to be eating yet. Well, at least according to my daughter. But this is her firstborn, I've raised three already, and believe I know at least as much as the experts in her childrearing books do. I know that I do. Chocolate for Conner today, maybe, when Mom's back is turned. Ahhh, grandparenthood.

Late this week, summer returned, over 90 F daytime temps, though still cooling to the mid-forties at night, perfect for sleeping. We need rain, but I dread what winter brings, namely shorter days, more time spent indoors, more weight on my body. Gotta break that cycle.