Spring has sprung!… I think?

Well so far all that El Nino has meant for Southern California is an early spring.  We have had temperatures in the mid to upper 80’s, so it feels like early summer.  All winter we have worked on various projects.  Our daughter Rebekah got married so we converted our garage into a studio apartment which resulted in a huge clean up of the garage and yard.  We have built a herb spiral and three new planting boxes in the front yard.  This February we planted six grapevines two blackberry and one apricot.  I hope to find another avocado tree to plant before summer.  I had a fun time planing a box with my grand-daughter Belle, we enjoy gardening together.  Now she has her own little planting box, but very big aspirations.  In a 3′ x 3′ box she has planted giant sunflowers, a watermelon,  green beans, lettuce, carrots and a tomato.  We shall see how it goes!.

I have added some important ingredients to my soil preparation this year.  We have been getting the free mulch that the city offers from their free-cycling centers.  To the free much I have added CBC rock dust, Elemite rock dust, Mycorrhizae inoculate, perlite, my home-grown mulch and worm castings.  I use the not till method, so I add the soil on top of the existing soil in the garden beds.  In the container beds I refresh the beds because the tend to sink about one to two inches each season.

I continue to have some broccoli, rappini, cabbage, kale and cabbage in my beds.  It is a little heart breaking to have to cull most of it to make way for the spring/summer planting…. but oh do I love those flavors that will come out of the garden.  I have chosen heat tolerant species for the back yard this year.  The long hot summer last year was stressful for everything except my pumpkins, corn and green beans.  This year I have expanded the garden to the front yard as well which gets dappled shade during the afternoon which will be helpful for the veggies that don’t like it too hot!  I am going to post details on the products I am using as well as the seed choices for this year in upcoming posts so stay tuned!

Donna~