Spring has Sprung

Time to just shut up, sit back, and enjoy some of the fruits of all this labor...

This year's best cymbidium.

It's a cross between cymbidium devonianum 'stewart' crossed with stargold 'lucky strike'. Six pendant spikes just filled with beautiful flowers.

Mr. Lincoln shows what a classic red rose should look like.

Double Delight

Peace

Angel Face

Bletilla orchid

Darryl
Copyright 2016 - Darryl Musick
All Rights Reserved

Deacon Blues

"They got a name for the winners in the world, I wanna name when I lose. They call Alabama the Crimson Tide...call me Deacon Blues."
Deacon Blues
Steely Dan

Last week, I showed you some of the winners of the garden. This week, it's the losers' turn. Luckily we didn't have too many. Last year was an almost complete lost season. This year is much, much better.

I'm not complaining at all but let's see what didn't work this year.

At the top of the page is our grape vine, which is always a challenge. One year I got 50 pounds of grapes. The next, all the local animals ate them before they ripened. In the years since, I've tried various methods to keep the animals out and have had limited to no success.

This years, I kept the animals out by wrapping the clusters in nets but the resulting fruit was tiny and cracked.  Not nearly as good as the grapes I got at the farmers market for $2 a pound.  I'm just going to let the plant alone next year and see what happens.

The zucchini, usually the most prolific plant in the garden, only produced two very small fruit over the season.  I'll try a different variety next year.

I believe the corn was a victim of an unnoticed clogged sprinkler at the beginning of the season. It never came back.

The severe drought we're experiencing also hit some of the plants. These roses have no blooms because the deer have been coming down from the dry mountains in search of food. They found a taste for the flowers and eat them up as soon as they bloom.

Maybe next year we'll get that El Nino we keep waiting for and the deer can return home.

This rose just gave up the ghost.  I think I'll replace it with a Saint Patrick rose.

The biggest victim is the lawn, which is really a victim of the law. We're mandated not to water it more than two days a week, 15 minutes at a time.  With no shade at all, it just couldn't handle that diet so dormancy kicked in and it's just straw now.

I'm hoping we'll get enough water this year that I can overseed with a heat-resistant blend for next year.

Darryl
Copyright 2015 - Darryl Musick
All Rights Reserved

Battling at the Barricades

This is our plumeria. It's a beauty. In fact, we've caught strangers coming up and plucking bunches off for their bouquets. It has nothing to do with this post, just thought I post something nice to mitigate the ugliness that's below.

After 20 years, gophers have finally found my lawn. Strange, because it's surrounded by pavement and concrete, which should have kept them out. I'm guessing they got desperate since my nextdoor neighbor stopped watering her lawn and they must have struck out from there. Since the first hole showed up at the edge of the lawn closest to hers, that's my working theory.

Not too long after I first noticed the mounds, a dead gopher showed up on our driveway. I figured the local cats got it and left it as a trophy. Our lizards and other scavengers took care of the body before I got a chance to dispose of it.

I'd hoped this took care of the problem but more mounds appeared a few days later. It was obvious that they were headed across the lawn and to my garden. I had to take action before they decimated it.

There comes a time in every serious gardener's life where deadly action is necessary. It's either our garden or them. You can try as hard as you can to dissuade them but not all of those pests will take the hint.

So, finding the freshest mound, I put a garden hose in and turned on the water. About two minutes later, the soaked rodent popped out.

I dispatched him with a hoe.  I'll spare you the gory details and photo.

In other lawn news, I've planted feverfew in the deer buffet rose garden to deter pests of an insect nature.  They do seem to keep the aphids, mealybugs, and the like away (the deer are immune, though) but they tend to get out of hand once in awhile.

Before mowing, I rip off the longest bunches and throw on the lawn to be sucked up by the mower.

Once mowed, I've got the gopher holes flattened...

...and the deer buffet rose garden has it's feverfew back under control.

Darryl
Copyright 2015 - Darryl Musick
All Rights Reserved

The Weekly View

It's springtime in Southern California. Last year we had nothing you could call winter at all. This year, well, maybe a couple of weeks. We did have two nights of freezing at the beginning of January.

Now that we're in March, however, the cold is just a memory. Flowers are bursting out all over (see our orchid bench, above), veggie seedlings are coming along fine, and now the concern is making sure everything gets enough water for the 90+ degree heat wave we have coming this weekend.

Mr. Lincoln, our bellwether rose, has some fine maroon foliage popping up after pruning.

Grape clusters are already showing on our vine.

The bletilla orchid has not only awoken from its dormancy, it's now in bloom.

Unfortunately, the bougainvilleas can't get their blooms synchronized. Only the red is showing off, while the others are only green.

I'll live with it somehow.

Darryl
Copyright 2015 - Darryl Musick
All Rights Reserved

Surgery for a Rose

This years I've decided to push my garden chores back by a month. Last year, I pruned the roses over New Year's weekend. This year, I've waited until now. The Moonstone, pictured above, got tired of waiting and started the season without me.  He'll just have to start over.

The same with Angel Face, which already put out a bloom.

Time for me to fish out my loppers and finish off the job.

That's it. Job done.  All the roses front and back are now ready for another season. Hopefully the deer got their fill last year and they'll leave them alone for this season.

 

Darryl
Copyright 2015 - Darryl Musick
All Rights Reserved

This Vine Needs Our Support

It's time to start gardening again in our back patio. I let it go a bit fallow this fall, we had some home improvement projects we needed to get done, and now it's time to get back into the dirt.

While we were successful in keeping the birds away from a good portion of our grape crop this year, the trellis I built for it years ago is straining under the weight of this now mature vine.

It's listing a good 20 degrees and the crossbars have become detached.  The wood is still good thanks to the decision to use redwood when I originally constructed it. Redwood is pretty resistant to rot and I use it when I can, especially in a wet gardening environment.

Pretty simple in execution, I just pull the wood out of the ground, trim up the grape vine a bit, and use a mallet to hammer them back in as deep as I can get them. Then, just screw in the crossbars and I'm done.

The plumeria is a great grower but it goes in some directions I don't want it to go.  I've trimmed them up and tried to point out the way I do want them to go. We'll see what they look like this summer.

I've already pruned the front yard roses. Easy job as the deer have been keeping them in check for me. I've only got a little room left in the green waste bin so I can only prune one of the backyard roses this week. It'll be Mr. Lincoln.

That's it for this weekend, next week I'll see about tilling in some amendments for this year's vegetable garden.

Darryl
Copyright 2015 - Darryl Musick
All Rights Reserved

Hit Hard by the Drought but Not Quite a Knockout

Driest year on record. That was 2014. Already in January and February, we've had just about as much rain as we had all last year. Still, we're under mandatory 20% reduction and orders not to water our lawns more than twice a week.

Luckily, there are some plants in the garden that thrived even without all that water. The plumeria, at the top, bloomed better than ever. We even had strangers sneak up and pick the flowers.

Cherry tomatoes came alive in their hanging basket.

The chiles produced way more than we could ever eat and are still going strong.

Put them together and I've got a great salsa to use as a base for making chilequiles and eggs.
 

Orchids are a lot tougher than people give them credit for...

...and, of course, you can't really kill bougainvillea.

Mr. Lincoln proves that roses are also a great drought-tolerant plant, although the deer coming down from the dry mountains found the blooms irresistible.

Darryl

Copyright 2015 - All Rights Reserved

The Rosy World of Our Patio

While the front yard roses are just starting their first bloom of the year, the backyard blooms are done.

It's time for the first deadhead of the year.

At the top, 'Moonstone' and it's unknown yellow companion display dozens of spent flower. Chop! Off the go.

Mr. Lincoln is also looking a little peaked. Much better after a much-needed haircut.

Not to be outdone by the roses, our spicy hot red chiles are getting a little rangy. Cutting it back to the new growth with help it produce another bumper crop...we've still got hundreds of dried chiles from last year waiting to be used.

Darryl
Copyright 2014 - Darryl Musick
All Rights Reserved.

Everything's Coming Up Roses

The first bloomers are here.  Just a quick post to highlight those roses pushing the boundaries.

 

While there are still some in the front yard that have yet to bloom, almost all the roses along our hot, sunny back wall are in bloom. 

That's 'Angel Face' at the top of the page...the very first to bloom this year.  This one, just above these words, is an unknown variety we got cheap because it had no name tag.

'Moonstone' is beautiful but flawed. The flowers get very heavy and break the stems. It's also a magnet for earwigs.

'Double Delight' lives up to its name...

...and 'Mr. Lincoln' is the elder statesman in our garden.

 

Darryl
Copyright 2014 - Darryl Musick
All Rights Reserved

Shearing and Sanding

Continuing the pruning of the roses highlights this weeks chores. 

Above, you can see Mr. Lincoln halfway through the process. That dead-looking plant next to it is a pot of baby's breath. It comes back each year but I doubt there's any mix left in that pot.

Yep, pretty empty. I just pulled the whole thing up but I bet it will come up anyway from the roots that grew through the bottom of the pot.

Here's our Peace tree rose after pruning.

Another project I started is to sand, stain, and varnish this little table my wife bought for $5 at a yard sale.  

My neighbor, Scott, is a mosaic artist and he's coming up with an insert that I'll install in the middle. It'll become a cocktail table on our patio when done.

Darryl
Copyright 2014 - Darryl Musick
All Rights Reserved