missing the plums for the peaches

In my impatience to see the peach blossoms (I check on them daily leaving and returning home), I completely missed the blooming of my new Santa Rosa plum.  I’m ashamed to admit that I’ve neglected it terribly, plopping it in a hole in the backyard last summer and promptly ignoring it.  I believe I had 5-7 blossoms–only 3 are still visible on the tree.  They’re so tiny I can’t even get my phone to focus on them!

I took a bit more time with the bean patch.  Last year’s sugar snap peas did okay, no more than a handful to each tiny harvest, so this year I’m re-using the plot to grow Borlotti beans.  My favorite UK YouTuber, Lavender and Leeks, loves them and they’re so big and beautiful!

I chopped up the dirt and poked them in–pictures later when I install the trellis for them to climb.  Part of the reason why the sugar snaps didn’t do well is because Charlie loved running through them like a charging bull.

While I was wedding the bean bed, I found two little patches of ivy.  These will be perfect for reclaiming the front yard from our cookie-cutter lawn.  I’m shooting for an ever-widening ivy island around our giant maple tree in the front, something like what they have at my sister Sue’s house.  Less mowing?  Yes please!

sweet potatoes

It’s the perfect time to start sprouting your sweet potato slips!  Warm weather will be here before you know it and that’s when they really thrive.  The simplest way to start slips is to suspend your sweet potato with toothpicks over a glass of water, just like an avocado seed.  Change the water frequently and it should start to root if you keep it by a sunny window.

Hold your horses though, that’s not what you want to plant.  When the top starts sprouting stems and leaves, they’re called slips.  Let them get 4-6″ long and then gently twist them off.  Those then go into water to just below the first leaves (an old water bottle is ideal for this) until THEY grow roots, and that’s what you plant.  Here’s a picture of 2 slips rooting and the original Molokai Purple that I kept from last year.  Keep tending the sweet potato until it stops sending out slips…. You only need about 3-4 to get a good yield!

In addition to this variety, I’m trying to sprout a Korean Sweet Potato (yellow inside) and a common orange yam, both from the grocery store.  Good roots so far!  Yay!

garlic greens and a tidy up

If you don’t have garlic in your garden somewhere, you should take a look around and see if you have any that is old or starting to sprout.  You can put it pretty much anywhere and it won’t be long before you have some yummy garlic greens to sprinkle on salads, omelets, and in your stir fry.  I like to use them in place of green onions or chives–they have a light garlicky flavor without being overbearing.

As you can see, the bookshelf garden needed a good cleaning up.  The garlic is doing extremely well and I have plenty of space for my new broccoli seedlings.

A quick haircut and some planting later, the garden is off to a good start!  Yay garlic!

Here’s Charlie guarding the first batch of garlic greens:

the great indoors

I’m ridiculously impatient.  I somehow managed to stave off my enthusiasm by starting a few plants indoors: the potatoes, zucchini, nasturtium, various tomatoes, and all of my figs.  We’re lucky enough to have a double window in the living room on the south side of the house.  Those are the best for natural light and everything has done really well there.

My favorite parts of the squash plants are the blossoms and I’m delighted to see that I’ve already got some buds starting.

The tomato plants are doing well too–these are just the saved seeds from the Sun Gold and I have since learned that they might not be true to type.  You have to be careful of saving seeds with hybrids–many times they revert back to their crossed varieties.

Last but certainly not least, the figs are doing amazing!  I’ve gone from having one in-ground Monticello Marseilles to having over a dozen varieties grown from cuttings traded with other fig forum members all over the country.    I’ve joined two forums, Figs4Fun and Ourfigs–I’d highly recommend them to anyone who wants to start growing figs or just even learning more about them.  This is just some of them, hanging out with the potatoes.

potato update

The potato babies are doing great!  I planted 3 per pot, one 5-gallon, one 7-gallon.  It’s still too cold to put anything right in the ground, so I’m kind of playing it safe.  During the day, they live out on the front step–with an impending freezing night, they’re inside for now.  I’ve also started two green zucchinis (on the right) to get an early start on squash blossoms to fry–yum!

The potting mix is 1:1 compost and top soil and I potted them up about two weeks ago, when each of the clear bags was fairly bursting with roots and stems.

lemony snicket

Indoor citrus trees can be unbelievably sensitive.  Any major change in temperature or humidity can cause 100% leaf drop and you can’t help but take it personally.  I know this from experience, of course, but I set out again to see if I can grow some Meyer lemons indoors.

I got my tree from Hirt’s online.  At $24.99 for a 1-quart plant, the price was right.  It came well-packed in a narrow cardboard box and sprang out into a bushy, healthy plant.  It had many flowers on it and they all smelled heavenly.

Fast forward to two weeks later and all of the flowers have fallen off.  Only a few seem to be developing into lemons, but I’ll take what I can get!