Saving Seeds

Saving seeds from the spring garden. I just dried them for a few months. Now that I'm sure that they are dry,  I'll put them away until later, although I think that I could plant the marigolds, lettuce and cilantro now. I also saved and dried grean beans, but I can't remember where!!!


Lettuce




Marigold




Morning Glory




Cilantro



Santa Clara University Visitors

Earlier in the season Anne and Dennis from the President's Staff at Santa Clara University came to visit a La Mesa Verde Garden. They are visiting programs in the area and ours was one of them!

It's Broccoli!

This is what I have been most excited about. How broccoli grows seemed like such a mystery, but there it is! I had thought that without all the leaves on the trees we would have much more sun in the winter, but I forgot that the sun is in a different position in the winter. (Forgot or never knew!) Let's just say the beds are sun-challenged. The broccoli was planted September 30 so it's been just about 4 months. It was under attack by cabbage worms at first. Once my gardening mentor, Carolyn Kameya, showed me how to spot and remove them, the plants have done well.

Cabbage Worm

First Snap Peas!

This is the first flower of the first snap peas this season. So pretty!

Unwelcome Garden Pests!

 Imported Cabbage Worm!! These are on the red cabbage, I also found them on the bottom of the broccoli leaves. You may have to look really hard to find them but if your leaves have holes and/or are chewed up, this is probably the problem. Look for the white moth/butterfly with a black dot on the wings in your garden and get rid of it and any of it's green velvet worms!

Cool Weather Crops-A Whole Different Garden!



Peas after one week.




Red Cabbage




Spinach

 The winter garden is a whole different experience from the spring garden, so far. There's a lot said about delayed gratification, but I guess cool weather means slower growth. That's ok, it's just different.

And...let's talk about pests. Slugs, birds,squirrels and clover. All have attacked and it's only been twenty-four days!

We've added an "overflow" area. In the few weeks before the winter planting we dug up an area by the fence and added in food scraps to prepare the soil for extra plants. It's flat, not like the raised beds. Evidently that's an open invitation to slugs. I tried beer in a shallow pan-didn't work. The next night I went out with a flashlight and picked them out-Gross! I have tons of oyster shells because I can't throw them out (hoarder?)so we added an oyster shell border, knowing that they don't like sharp edges. Can't really tell if that's working because they ate all of the lettuce and most of the chard in 3 nights. the next thing that I'm going to try is replanting the lettuce and bordering each plant with pennies, since they also don't like copper.

I can hardly wait for broccoli, cabbage and peas!!!

Ok my bird loving friends, please help me identify this gorgeous predator visiting (I hope he's just visiting) the garden. Hopefully he'll scare off the squirrels and not snack on my hummingbird friends!