...and Away We Go!

Time to plant the seeds for this year's vegetable garden. My son helped me pick out this year's crop and we're going start them in this biodegradable seed tray.

We'll make a thumb print and a hole in each one and put in two seeds.

Two types of corn, bell peppers, broccoli, tomatoes, squash, and Tuscan melon...just because I've never been successful with sweet melons before.

Water them in...

...and wait for them to sprout.

Darryl
Copyright 2016 - Darryl Musick
All Rights Reserved

Giving the Green One More Try

About a month and a half ago, we overseeded the front lawn with a new heat-tolerant strain of grass seed.

Winter rains have been coming in regularly at a rate of about 1 storm every week and a half.  This provideds a great soaking and the first one came right after I seeded the lawy.

I've added my own water, via a ten minute sprinkler session, about once in between each storm.

This is how the new grass is looking now, I think it will be ready for its first mowing this weekend.

I haven't started my lawn mower since September, since the grass went completely dormant after I stopped watering due to our water rationing restrictions.  I just hope it will still start.

After that, I'll need to work on de-thatching those brown spots of St. Augustine grass.

Darryl
Copyright 2016 - Darryl Musick
All Rights Reserved

Deep Sixing the Seedlings

OK, 4 weeks in the nursery is enough. Time for you kids to go out and earn your keep.

At two weeks, they were poking their tiny, little shoots above the mix.

Three weeks, they were starting to show their differences.

Now at four weeks, they're about to bust the pots...except for the onions, whose leaves still look a little weak.

Tilling the ground with a little Amend and then popping those seedlings into their slots for the season.

The roots are very healthy, as you can see in this pot of corn. They're biodegradable...in fact, already dissolving...so I just pop 'em in the ground.

I need to find something to repel the pests. For now, I'm covering with some chicken wire, watering in, and then tend until harvest.

Darryl
Copyright 2015 - Darryl Musick
All Rights Reserved

This Year's Model (Crop)...

I've decided to start my vegetable garden a month later this year. Instead of planting in January, as I have in years past, I'm starting at the beginning of March.  You can see the crop selection up above.

Last year's garden was the most unproductive I've ever had. The main culprit was the extreme and prolonged drought California experienced.  While the lack of water was one thing (a 50% surcharge was added to the water you used over your allotment), the critters were another.

We live right up against the mountains. The very, very dry mountains.  With no food and little water, the animals were pushed down into the residential neighborhoods below.  This meant deer would eat my roses. Rabbits and squirrels joined the mocking birds and jays, taking turns eating the fruits of our labors, or most often just chewing up the tender new growths of the plants.

They killed our zucchini, decimated our chile plants, and took all our tomatoes.  

Only the tomato plant I had in a hanging basket and our grapes gave me any meaningful crops, and not much at that.

Let's hope I can come up with some strategies of pest repellance if the dry weather makes a comeback.

In the meantime, I'm starting my seeds.  It's a rainy weekend, so this is a great project to do indoors, in the garage.

I got this little 7 pot seed starter kit at Lowe's.  The pots are biodegradeble, so I can just stick 'em in the ground when I'm ready.

My wife has this bag of potting mix for her euphorbias and I'm going to use a little for my seeds.

Filling up each pot with the mix, I tamp down on the soil with my fingers, pushing it down to good seed depth.

I put a few seeds in each pot, cover with mix, tamp down and water in.

Finally, I'm leaving them indoors until they're strong enough to transplant and repel the invaders. They're sitting in a sunny, southern window until then.

Darryl
Copyright 2015 - Darryl Musick
All Rights Reserved

Beyond the Bell Pepper

Picture courtesy of Leslie Seaton

under CC BY-SA 2.0 license

While I will get around to planting bell peppers this season, first I wanted to plant some pasilla chile.

The pasilla chile is a large pepper, usually used in dishes like chile relleno.  It's a very mild pepper and, where bell pepper seems to generate a lot of stomach acid even though it has no heat at all for me, the pasilla leaves me without any indigestion afterward.

I was about to go to our local Latin supermarket to buy one and get the seeds out of it but my wife said she already had one so I scooped some seeds out of that.

I keep a few egg cartons on hand because our local egg ranch sells beautiful, loose jumbo brown eggs. Or they did, Friday was their last day in business so suddenly, I don't have such a pressing need to keep the egg cartons around anymore. I'm using one as a seed tray.

Fill it up with potting soil...

...put a couple of seeds in each compartment...

and water in.

I really hope these do well because I'd like to use them in place of bell peppers in many of my recipes.

Darryl

Copyright 2014 - Darryl Musick

All Rights Reserved

Old Man Winter Never Got Old

OK, I guess I have to admit we're never going to get a freeze this year. Our winter turned out to last all of three days, maybe four if you push it, and it never dropped below 45 degrees (F).

I'm sitting here a week before the official start of spring, temperatures should hit 90 by tomorrow. Like the governor, I'm officially declaring the end of winter and an early spring.

Time to get back to work...

I've cleaned out the west wall and dumped a bag of Amend in it. This is an organic soil and soil amendment. How can you tell it's really organic? Just follow your nose.

Now that I've got that wonderful barnyard smell worked into the soil, let's plant.

I had a tough time with the tomatoes started from seeds last year. This year, it's a couple of buck-99 hybrid seedlings from Lowe's.

They pop in easy enough.

I will be growing most everything else from seed, though.  My wife found this little seed starter kit somewhere deep in the garage. It even comes with a free sample of fertilizer.

Each cell is a biodegradable square with a pellet of dried potting mix.  I water it and wait for the mix to expand.

Today, I'm planting onions, zucchinis, and...for the first time...I'm going to try some cantaloupe.

The onions are on the left and I'm putting in 2 zucchini seeds in each cell. Let them duke it out and I'll keep the best 2 or 3 plants to transplant.

Same with the cantaloupe.  Once planted, I'll put it on top of the whiskey barrel where I plant to transplant it later.

One last test of the sprinkler pattern then I'll count this job as done.

Darryl
Copyright 2014 - Darryl Musick
All Rights Reserved

The New Kid Gets its First Haircut

Now that the new grass seed has had a good four weeks to get established, I think it's time to give it its first trim so the neighbors don't think I've let my yard completely go.

With a month untouched, it seems weeds...like this dandelion...have taken over about 10 percent of the area.

I'll give the lawn a couple of good feedings, starting today and another one in a couple of weeks, with some winterizer fertilizer and see if the grass can crowd out the weeds. If not, I'll hit it with some weed and feed.

After I'm done, it's time to put the clippings in the green waste can and call it a day.

Darryl
Copyright 2013 - Darryl Musick
All Rights Reserved

The Last of the Lawn Job...

It rained early this morning. Luckily, it went away by mid-morning. I only had today to get this major fall chore to it's conclusion.

After months of preparation, today is the day that I lay in an overcoat of seed for my poor, very pitiful lawn.

Here is a before picture. I hope to have a good "after" picture to add later.

I've aerated and dethatched the grass repeatedly over the last couple of months, trying to loosen up the soil and break the grip that the St. Augustine grass has on it.

Last weekend, I did one last run with the aerator to loosen up even more and provide some nooks and crannies for the see to fall into.

Today, I started off by shaving the lawn. This is simply lowering the blades on the lawn mower a notch or two to cut down and break up the current grass at a level that's a little uncomfortable for it and give the new grass some more room to poke through the current sod.

I got a bag of drought-resistant seed from Jonathan Green to help combat the extreme heat and dryness of our summers. In the spreader (picture at the top), I put a generous covering on the front yard.

Spreading a little mulch over the top, I also stomped the seed in as much as possible.

Now, just to water in. I've set the sprinkler to water three times a day at 12 minutes each time.  

I must bid you adieu for now, I will leave this lawn and the garden to fend for themselves for 10 days while I work on some other projects. We'll see how well it looks when I return on Thanksgiving.

Darryl
Copyright 2013 - Darryl Musick
All Rights Reserved

The Grass is Greener...

...well, hopefully this fall's big chore will help it to be.

Today, I'm running my aerator/dethatcher (picture at top of post) over the lawn one more time. 

It's a huge chore but I need to break up all the compacted soil and thatched St. Augustine runners to make room for my new grass to grow.

I've already aerated the entire lawn a bit by bit every weekend since September. Today, it's just a quick (so I thought) re-run over the lawn. Still, it was two hours of back-breaking work.

One thing left to do, shave the lawn (put the lawn mower on one setting lower and mow) then reseed. After that, it's do not touch the lawn for two weeks to let the new seed establish.

Wish me luck!

Darryl
Copyright 2013 - Darryl Musick
All Rights Reserved

Falling for a Speckled Lettuce...and Spinach too!

My next fall project is to make a salad. I planted some lettuce last spring but the local wildlife gobbled it up as soon as the first tender shoots broke ground.

I've also had my share of tomato problems but I'm not ready to throw in the towel on my home-grown salad yet.

I've got some cool weather heirloom lettuce and spinach that I'm going to plant for fall. It's a slightly less than 2 months from sowing-to-harvest variety so maybe I can have that salad for Thanksgiving.

I'm putting the soil into the seeding tray. Funny how the hardware store doesn't sell them with drain holes in them already, first I had to take a nail and poke a bunch of holes in the bottom.

I'm putting the lettuce on one side and the spinach on the other. After sowing and covering up the seeds with soil, I tuck the top of each seed packet into the side of the tray so I can remember which side is which.

Water in...

...and cover with cling wrap (more to keep the animals out than anything else). Once I've got some good, healthy little plants, I'll transplant into the space that the onions and bell peppers were growing in during the summer.

Darryl
Copyright 2013 - Darryl Musick
All Rights Reserved