Esoterica's garden

I lost 6.2 pounds this week, so obviously last week I was just retaining water. Now I'm only about three pounds up from when I left for the British Isles, so that's not too bad. I am not going to forget my diet while I'm on vacation this time!

Well, I kept up this journal about as well as I kept up the garden. Maybe I was a little better with the garden.

- The mixed annuals-herbs boxes didn't really work that well. I planted too much stuff, probably, and the annuals crowded out a lot of the herbs. The tarragon died completely, and the basils and sage never really got very big. The mint took over everything. I just transplanted it to its own container. And I took out all the overgrown annuals and replaced them with some new herbs, and added mulch, and the boxes look very tidy now.

- The lettuce boxes were a success, though my carrots and radishes failed once again. Radishes are supposed to be one of the easiest things to grow, and yet somehow mine never develop beyond little strings. The lettuce has blown now, and when I get back from Seattle I'm going to take it out and replant those boxes with more cool-season stuff for winter.

- The tomatoes were a success. The varieties that we got (Sweet Million and First Lady) are a good size--they haven't gotten taller than the cages I got for them. They produce plenty of fruit for our family. The Anaheim pepper also did well but the Hungarian Yellow died from lack of water early on.

Last weekend I planted two tomatoes (both hybrids, a cherry and a regular, I don't remember the varieties just now) with marigolds surrounding them, and two peppers (an anaheim and a hungarian yellow) and planted bush bean (in seed form) around them. It's been so hot, though, that the tomatoes and the peppers are seriously wilting despite the daily watering, and the bush beans may never even sprout. Today I moved the pots into the shade until the heat wave has passed.

Yesterday I planted pole beans and nasturtiums in my last long box.

The roses are still being eaten by the caterpillars. Insecticidal soap did nothiing. I don't think I have a large enough garden to sustain a population of ladybugs and they'd probably all fly away, so I think I'm jsut going to use some insect poison on them. They're not edible so they don't NEED to be organic.

Today I did a big spring cleaning of the deck. I scrubbed down the table and chairs with bleach solution and they look much better now. I think I probably need to oil them, too. I fed the roses some rose food (Osmocote) and fed all the other established plant a balanced liquid fertilizer (Dr. Earth, 3-3-3). My Ortho dial-a-spray is very cool. I forgot to feed the salad garden seedlings, but that's probably just as well since they're planted in brand-new potting soil with a fertilizer built in.

I should find out how often I need to fertilize containers, and put it on my calendar. Since they're watered every day, I should probably feed every two weeks.

The little caterpillary things are definitely still eating my rose foliage. I've got to find out what they are. It might be ladybug time.

Next step: putting up the trellis and getting my peas and nasturtiums planted.

I noticed earlier this week while I was watering that some of the rose leaves have little grey spots. I thought they might be burn marks because I've been spraying the roses with water in the morning to wash off the gallons of oak pollen that are pouring down on us from above. But today, on further inspection, I discovered little green wormie things on the undersides of those leaves. I squished all the ones I found, then I decided to snip off all of the affected leaves. Hopefully that got rid of most of the bugs, and now if new spots show up I'll know that I still have a problem.

"Oklahoma" was the worst, and if I remember correctly, it was the most badly eaten last year too. Could the green worms be aphid larvae, I wonder? It seems to me that aphids were the problem last year. My rose book shows aphids but not the larvae, or what the damage they do looks like. Could be some kind of caterpillar, I guess. The grey spots look like they're caused by the bugs gnawing off the outer layer of the leaf.

It's much easier to get plants into strawberry pots if you put them in the pockets first, then fill the center with dirt. I didn't realize this until after I'd filled my first pot; then I had to dig out each of the 2" pockets and try to cram strawberries from 4" pots into them, which resulted in a lot of root tearing. On the second pot, I inserted the plants from the inside out and then filled it, which was substantially easier even with the PVC pipe* in the way. In both cases I had to shake all the loose dirt off the roots. I labeled the pots 1 (outside in) and 2 (inside out) so I can compare which method caused more trauma: cramming the roots or cramming the stems and leaves.

In the top of each pot, I scattered scallion seeds. I wanted to put chives but it turned out I didn't have any
chive seeds, but nevermind, scallions are close enough. Once they grow, they'll hide the tops of the PVC pipes.

I also planted a Spanish lavender and a Santa Cruz oregano that I got at Filoli this weekend. The only herb I think I want to add is dill, which can go in the back of one of the flower/herb boxes.

Highest priorities:
- get everything fertilized
- transplant orange into larger pot, and get a dwarf lemon
- lattice, peas, and nasturtiums for last pot
- two more strawberries (I had 16, but 18 pockets) and a dill plant

Lower priorities:
- peppers and bush beans in two remaining wooden boxes
- tomatoes and nasturtiums in large (probably plastic) pots

*Each pot has a 1.5" PVC pipe in it, with holes drilled in about 3" intervals. According to The Bountiful Container, this allows water to go sideways, where the plants are, instead of straight down.

Today I planted two of my wooden boxes with herbs and flowers. I was disappointed by the selection of herbs for sale at the nursery I always go to. I got the only sage and thyme plants, and they had no oregano. I had difficulty finding the basil (turns out it was in a different aisle, under the shade).

In the end, I got:

sweet basil
lime thyme
sage
marjoram (I've never grown this before)
mint
Italian parsley (curly)

This leaves mainly oregano, which I intend to plant in a separate pot as it is a rather bushy perennial, and would take up too much space in the boxes. I planted rosemary beneath three of my roses, and the other two have another variety of thyme planted around them. I thought about doing chives, but I already have scallions; besides, chives, like grass, end up spreading and taking over the pots with their root networks. Maybe I'll get a small box to devote to a field of chives. Something that can sit on top of the table maybe--I'm sure I've seen round pots that can go around the umbrella pole. That would look nice with chives.

Behind the herbs, I planted tall, annual flowers that like the same full-sun/partial-shade mixture that (I hope) the herbs do: snapdragon, cosmo, and salvia.

For the time being, I've rolled the boxes to the sunny part of the deck to get the plants established. The days have been sunny and warm, but the light's still not as intense as it will be this summer. Once they've grown a bit and are thriving, I'll wheel them back against the living room windows.

Sprouts have appeared in all three of my salad-garden boxes. It's almost time to thin the mustard, I think. There are a ton of radishes, but no carrot sprouts that I can see. I'm skeptical that this planting-radishes-and-carrots together thing can work, but we'll see.

Future projects:
- table-top pot of chives
- strawberry pot (requires both pot & pvc pipe for watering)
- LARGE terra cotta pots for tomatoes, with marigolds growing beneath
- if Sylvia ever gives me her two terra cotta pots, replant orange and buy a dwarf lemon
- attach scaffolding to third wooden box and plant peas, nasturtiums, beans
- in remaining three (?) round wooden pots, plant bushy vegetables: japanese eggplant, cucumber, pepper?

Now that I'm getting into this, I'm realizing the potential of all the space we have on the deck. Unfortunately, I also need to have the deck worked on this summer. That's going to be a logistical problem.

This morning I noticed the first sprouts. I think they must be the radishes--they're were I put the radishes and carrots, and they have four seed leaves. I think carrots have two.

They're all up awfully close to the edge of the box. I wonder if they got washed there when I watered. I should have left the nozzle on mist.

I'll try to remember to take a picture of the setup this weekend. I think I'm going to plant some herbs this week, while my mom is in town.

For my future reference:

Lettuces: thin when 1/2" tall to 6" apart
Spinach: thin when 2-3" tall to 2" apart
Mustard: thin when 1" tall to 6" apart
Scallions: leave as is for scallions; for bulb onions, thin when 2" tall to 2-3" apart
Carrots: thin when plants have 3 leaves to 2" apart
Radishes: thin when plants have 3-4 leaves to 1" apart

The carrots and radishes are all mixed in, as per the instructions in my Bountiful Container book. Hopefully that will work. I've never had much luck with carrots, probably because I let them get too dry.

I'd better at least mist the boxes every day, as long as the weather is dry.

I have three long steps leading from my patio to the sliding door of my bedroom. I never use the door, so it seemed like the perfect place for some plants.

I scoured the nurseries yesterday, looking for planter boxes that were only about 10" wide and at least 8" deep, and either two or four feet long. I wanted to get some of the new faux pottery that looks real, but I couldn't find any that A) wasn't more than a foot wide and B) didn't have some crazy looking Grecian decoration. They don't just make just plain faux pottery, for some reason.

The real pottery was way too heavy; I need to be able to move these things when we get some work done on the deck later this year. The redwood was way too expensive; it would have cost about $200 just to cover the steps. The other boxes I have on the deck are redwood, and maybe I should have splurged so that it would all match, but it just seemed too expensive for something I may not need next year, and that won't last more than five years in the long run.

So, I got plastic. They are plenty ugly, all right. Maybe I will put some mismatched pots of flowers on the ground level, and then when the plants grow, all the ugly plastic will be hidden.

This part of the deck is partially sunny. It gets too little for fruiting veggies, but I think it will be just perfect for a salad garden.

Today I planted the first three boxes.

Box 1 (at the top): a combination of lettuces:
Leaf - Oak Leaf
Leaf - Red Sails
Butterhead - Marvel of Four Seasons

Box 2: Spinach and mustard greens

Box 3: Scallions in the back, carrots and radishes in the front.