Garden Number One
Our food garden has been started for 2014. Carried over as existing stock from last year are catnip, strawberries, and radicchio. New plants from seedlings are papaya pear squash, lemon cucumbers, and apple cucumbers. New seeds include red burgundy onions, potatoes, flash trout back lettuce, and catalina baby spinach. New seeds being grown in small pots for transfer to the garden after they are seedlings include kohlrabi, butternut squash, and early dew honeydew.
This is the food garden after we cleared out the eleventy-five billion accursed clovers and their bulbs and prepped the soil for new planting.
This is the food garden after phase one of planting. Note the nifty wooden trellises at the rear of the garden in anticipation of our future melon plants.
Here you can see the starting pots for the kohlrabi, butternut squash, and early dew honeydew. These small pots are designed to be planted directly in the ground when the seeds have become seedlings.
Garden Number Two
Our pottery garden is also a food garden. This year we have two bell peppers that carry over from last year's existing stock - our yellow and red bell pepper plants survived all year and are both showing some good new growth and the beginnings of actual peppers. New seedlings are a chocolate bell pepper, an orange bell, a green bell, and something called a mexibell pepper. Newly planted herbs (from seed) are thyme, oregano, cinnamon basil, and sweet basil. Still to be planted is the romaine lettuce. Satchmo still doesn't quite understand that the leaves of the pepper plants are not for eating.
You can see in the foreground fishy pot one new pepper plant and one pepper plant from last year. What you can't see in this view is the tooth marks and damaged leaves caused by a certain black and white cat.
Garden Number Three
The third garden in our tour is not a food garden at all - it is our cactus garden. No new cactus have been planted since the previous Episode - this is just an update to show how our cactus garden is doing. Note all of the new growth on the right-hand prickly pear.
Garden Number Four
The final garden featured this Episode is one of my favourites - our succulent garden. When we began planting succulents about a year ago we had no idea how well they would do or how quickly they would grow. But do well they did, and grow quickly they did. Once they really got settled in and their roots got well-established they began to really thrive. Here are some pictures - from when we started the succulent garden, and from just a couple of days ago. Can you see the differences?
This first image is from April, 2013, when the succulent garden was still a blank canvas.
Also from April, 2013. This is how the succulent garden looked when it was freshly planted. Satchmo approves.
Just over a year later. This is from May, 2014. That's a lot of growth in just one year.
Another image from April, 2013.
And one more from May, 2014.
Baby Toes number one. According to the label on its pot, each toe has a window that filters sunlight for the plant's photosynthetic processes.
Baby Toes number two.
Asparagus ferns seem to do well in the area between the large rocks and the front of the house.
Backyard Archaeology Update
Although we have not been doing active archaeological work lately, we recently uncovered a couple of ancient pre-Bishopian artifacts while working on our winter-spring project. The first artifact uncovered was another of the common post foundations. This foundation, unlike most of the others we have unearthed, appeared to have been made to hold two posts instead of one.
This is how we found it, sticking out into a dig site.
This is the foundation after unearthing. Notice the shallowness of the post holes - only about 1/2" deep. Because of this shallowness of post hole, it doesn't seem like this particular foundation would have been very useful for holding actual posts, and that may be the reason it was buried deeper than the others we found - its makers were ashamed and wanted to hide it from future generations.
The other artifact we uncovered, in a different part of the back yard, was this mysterious piece of ancient cloth. This cloth had no distinguishing marks, and its coarseness suggests a use other than clothing.
First Latrodectus Of Spring
As I was preparing to water the lawn for the first time this year I turned over the sprinkler to check its underside for spiders. Did I find any spiders? Just one - a big, fat, juicy latrodectus mactans - commonly known as the black widow. No word passed between us; our mutual hatred for one another needs no words. After taking a few photos of the foul fiend I drove her off the sprinkler and onto the concrete so that I could step on her. As she attempted to flee the scene I made a quick end of her with the underside of my sandal-clad foot.
They can hide, but they can't
bIsh
1 comment:
great progress with the plants, looking great. garden space looking good too. You should try some popcorn.
Although it is hard for me to see your photos, through all the rain here, it is hard to remember all the sun from just a few weeks ago.
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