Ogier, Ogier, how does your garden grow? - 2019

[Ryrin - Club Leader]

I love spaghetti squash and lavender.

[Juan Farstrider - Member]

(Hi.  I'm new around here, but jumping in on this thread anyway).  I am glad this thread exists, as maybe it will serve as some peer pressure exerted on me to keep up with my garden tasks.  I'm pretty sure for most of us here it is time to get beds ready for next spring or to be planting things that like to out in the winter, like the garlic I have yet to put in the ground.  

[Jaimelai - Club Leader]

Never planted garlic, maybe I'll give it a try.

 

[Juan Farstrider - Member]

The thing for me was having room to cure it.  I am in the north where we get a good winter and we have to grow "hardneck" garlic.  I can't speak for warmer climates like SoCal where they grow softneck.  Basically hardneck goes in the ground in well-drained soil (raised beds are great for garlic) in October or November with a good watering.  Keep it weeded and fertilize in the spring, cut off the scape for a bigger bulb, and depending on how much rain you get you might not really have to water it very much.  When the leaves turn to brown, around late july or august, you take it out, shake loose dirt off it, and cure it.  I put it in my attic where I usually have an attic fan running to cool the house.  It wants air flow, to help form the skin.  After two weeks it should be cured, when you can clean it up better, cut the burly beard at the bottom and cut the stems off of you haven't already.  

I'm not a particularly good gardener at all but seems pretty fool proof.  The only person I know who had trouble with it had some pretty consistently soggy beds as the problem.  

[Jaimelai - Club Leader]

Guess I'll have do some reading on the softneck variety.  I had no clue about raising and curing garlic.

 

Planted an unknown sprout today that we had found growing in our compost pile. Thinking maybe a zucchini squash.  Tough little thing.  I'm planing on little plastic green houses this winter, so maybe it'll make it.  I had a neighbor that swore by these little greenhouses for his winter tomatoes, so we'll see.  My son got his green house up and running - and it survived last week's Santa Ana's winds,  so maybe I'll finally get mine going as well (been planning on these winter tomatoes for years).

 

[Juan Farstrider - Member]

There's someone in my town that has a very sturdy looking green house, well a passive glass structure, but it doesn't look like he does anything with it.  I had a tall narrow light cheap thing that I would roll out of my garage a little after sun rise and roll back in when the sun was setting.  It got hot in there.  But where I am, it is really windy.  It is strange in that it seems to come in years.  Some years are windy, some aren't.  But the year I tried this, it was windy.  It was blown over more days than it wasn't.  

[Jaimelai - Club Leader]

We've had very bad "Santa Ana" winds this year.  My son's little green house has survived fine, so far, but we lost the patio canopy.  Had the legs weighed down with sand bags, but it blew so hard one night that it got flung across the yard finally ending up impaled on my roses.  Good thing too or I'm sure it would have landed in the neighbor's yard.  The cloth part was punctured and ripped and the metal supports twisted into pretzels.  Oh well.  Have an enclosed outdoor workout area that took a little damage as well, but I was able to buy replacement parts for the shades and we replaced some screws with larger screw/washers the hold down the roofing before that went flying as well.  Now the rains are supposed to start tomorrow, finally ending our "fire season".  I still have piles of ash from all of the fires around here to clean up.   And don't get me started on the earthquake "swarm" we have a couple weeks ago.  About 100 quakes from magnitude 1 to 3.6 over the course of the week centered about 2 miles from where I am typing this now.   Fun times!

[Duadhe Wansho - Member]

Doesn't sound like much fun at all. Sorry for all your trouble with the extremes of nature. Hope yhe rainy season goes better.

[Jaimelai - Club Leader]

Well, my little winter green houses weathered their first storm OK.  Here are some pics:

 

 

We'll see how the tomatoes do this winter.

 

 

 

 

Edited December 16, 2019 by Jaimelai

[Duadhe Wansho - Member]

Good that your greenhouses survived. Growing anything else 8n them besides tomatoes?

[Jaimelai - Club Leader]

Well, it has been a couple weeks and my little green houses are still there and doing pretty well:

 

 

 

Besides the tomatoes, there is a spaghetti squash, thyme, chives, an old zucchini, and a mis-labelled pepper (I think). 

 

Edited January 1, 2020 by Jaimelai

[Jaimelai - Club Leader]

It's been a couple months -  harvested one nice zucchini and have some tomatoes, but they are not ripening  😞

Maybe I'll bring some inside.

 

[Ryrin - Club Leader]

We put some lettuce and red onions in.

[Jaimelai - Club Leader]

Well, my winter greenhouses didn't turn out all that great.  Ended with only one zucchini and a handful of tomatoes.   I'll have to rethink things for next winter, but for now it is time for summertime planting.

Putting in tomatoes, zucchini, peppers and what ever catches my eye.  I'll post some pics when I'm done. 

 

How is everyone else doing?

[Duadhe Wansho - Member]

Hi Jaim. 

 

How is your summer planting growing? Everthing should have grown quite a bit by now.

 

We tried a few herb pots, but only the thyme has survived. The corriander wilted and died almost straight away. The basil, rosemary all got some kind of milldew which I couldn't get rid of. (One of the stalks of the basil recovered and we harvested that one.)

[Ryrin - Club Leader]

We have a great garden. I’ll need to post some pics.

[Jaimelai - Club Leader]

Tomatoes went nuts with all of this hot weather we've been having in SoCal.  We made a batch of salsa with a basket full last week.   Turned out pretty tasty.  Other plants not doing so well, but hopefully will recover after I repaired a major leak in the irrigation system.  The weather has cooled down quite a bit this week with all of the smoke in the air (a bit of a "nuclear winter" going on), but I could do too much as the air quality was so poor.  Maybe things will settle down this coming week and I can get back out there.

Edited September 21, 2020 by Jaimelai

[Duadhe Wansho - Member]

Glad to hear about our food crop of tomatoes Jaim. They are always a favourite food of mine. 

 

But the air sounds shocking. Hope it improves soon.

[Ryrin - Club Leader]

My latest harvest:

 

 

 

[Duadhe Wansho - Member]

Looks good. Well done Ryrin. Are the pale green ones at the back some kind of pepper?

 

 

[Jaimelai - Club Leader]

Looking good!  I went out to take some pics, but all I saw were weeds. Guess my little green houses were too hot for use during the summertime.  Oh well.  My other little garden is going strong though with daily batches of tomatoes coming off.  And it looks like we have enough for another batch of salsa as well.  I'll try to take some pics of that one soon.