now just waiting for the party

squash seeds went in the ground - table queen acorn, table king acorn, butternut and yokohama; the last one came well recommended from baker creek seeds.

from japan in the mid 1800's.  not a variety you would find at your local nursery.

so the garden is pretty much done, just the last layering of straw to finish it up.

we will see how once a week watering works for squash.  coir has been added to the soil and with the layer of straw, i hope 2016 proves to be a water efficient year in the vegetable garden; just as 2015 proved it could be.

2016 season begins

second year of no-till.  pleasantly surprised that it results in less work and even better - successful plants.  weed mgt during the off season with a weed torch helps stay ahead of any issues.  i would think folks with a heavy clay type soil that benefit from working in organic matter, might feel differently - but us fluffy store bought soil guys can actually make no-till a way of life.

4 beds had their soil level augmented with a multitude of g&b chicken fert bags and the first four tomatoes went into the ground on 4/26.  4 more plants will hit the dirt in a few weeks when they get bigger.

on deck for the tomatoville mudhens:  cherokee purple, black zebra, celebrity and super fantastic!

first tomato for 2015

and the winner is..... cherokee purple.  i have had a few sun golds, but according to farmer fred's rules - those dont count.  no worries.  so far watering once a week has worked out OK.  the coir and alfalfa mulch seem to be doing their jobs and we have had a string of very hot days.

who says you cant have a garden in a drought.  next year, maybe 6 tomato plants!

the lady and the apple

if they grow as planned, these little apples will be my first ashmeads kernels since i planted the tree a few years ago.  its espaliered on the fence.  nice little bug keeping an eye on the garden for me too.

for your viewing pleasure.

yup - i am a weather geek

finally ponied up some bucks for a high-end weather station.  my buddy alan has had one for years and i had to have one.  it is wirelessly linked to the console in the house so i can track temp, wind, humidity and rain totals.

dont know why, but i love watching local weather on TV, been a weather geek for years and have enjoyed the best channel 3 has to offer in weather - shelly monohan, mark finan, angela buchman (i got a bday card from her back in the day - had a weather chick crush), eilene javora (who i saw at the local placerville safeway).

one day i will get it linked to the internet so the entire world will know what the weather is like in my tiny portion of the world.  until then, this is all you get....

i am now no-till

i have been a tiller since i have been a gardener.  its just the way its supposed to be.  so every spring, i would rip out the weeds and use the mantis to roto-till a bag or two of chicken poo into each bed - to prep for the impending growing season.

an example of my typical roto-tilling task:

well after listening to farmer fred http://farmerfred.com/ for years and hearing him and steve zion chatting about the lack of need to roto-till, i figured 2015 would be the year i give it a try.

i am always up for giving up an unnecessary chore and with last years re-set of the raised bed, this was the perfect time to give this no-till method a shot.

each bed was topped with gardener and bloom chicken fertilizer (essentially high priced mulch) this winter.  the poo was watered down with the 13 or so inches of rain we have seen this winter - so the beds are ready to go.  no-till should make for few weeds and the few that have popped up have been either pulled or torched.

so this week, 4 tomatoes were planted - 1 per bed; and when the hole was dug, it was apparent that there was good water penetration as the bed soil was nicely moist.  i buried the tomatoes deep, added dr earth vegetable fertilizer, coir (as explained in a previous post) and some azomite to add trace minerals and back-filled.

time will tell how well this no-till method will work - but i will keep you posted as to weeds and productivity of the tomatoes.

no-till beds with tomatoes and alfalfa bales:

grafting made simple

i have been a grafter for sometime now, albeit - not active.  my grandpa taught me how to graft in my learning orchard at my old house.  it was successful.  i grafted a wild variety of apple as a bud graft and also with the typical end of the limb type grafts.

fast forward 20 plus years - pa is gone and so is my learning orchard, and now i had a new challenge.  i am espaliering apples and pears on my fence at the new house.

the challenge?  fill in gaps on the espaliered trees so i can get more apple varieties and more horizontal growing branches.  if you have ever espaliered, one of the challenges is not enough lateral branches sprouting from the trunk or sprouting in the wrong place.

well obviously i cant be the first to come across this issue.  luckily the folks at Lee Valley have a tool that solves the problem.  The Plugger Bit allows you to drill a hole directly into the trunk - so you can place the scion at the exact spot you need an additional lateral branch.

so how do you fit in the scion?  simple - quickly run it thru a pencil sharpener and you have an exact geometric match for the hole the plugger bit created.  you still have to be sure you match up the cambium of the trunk and the scion, but based upon this years success, it works pretty darn good.

here is an example of honeycrisp scion grafted to the trunk of my ashmeads kernel:

you also need to seal the ends and the insertion point on the trunk and then support it.  i chose grafting wax for the sealer and good old electrical tape to hold the parts together until its all sutured up.

this my hosui asian pear that i grafted additional hosui scions to, to fill in gaps:

tomato endeavor 2015

drought continues to plague california  and our local irrigation district is now requiring 25% mandatory reduction in water use (compared to 2013 usage).

if you recall last year they were looking for 30% voluntary reduction.  steps i took last year was to reduce turf watering - the lawn took a beating, but survived.  front landscape plants made it ok (for the most part) - although i lost 3 or my flowering plums to borers - but the maples are doing fine.  i reduced my orchard watering regime by 30% and i had no vegetable garden.  we used 2014 as the year to line the garden beds with gopher wire.

2015 rolls in, the drought continues.  how do i sync that with the need for fresh home grown tomatoes and maintain a 25% reduction in water usage?

well, only 4 tomatoes helps, and a few tweaks of the irrigation, the addition of coir and a thick mat of alfalfa is my hope to make watering the tomatoes a once or twice a week endeavor.

i have further reduced my orchard watering schedule.  prior to the drought, my trees were getting roughly 48 gallons of water per tree per, per week.  last year, i reduced it to 32 gallons of water per tree, per week.  this year i am reducing it to 20 gallons of water per tree, per week.  thats a pretty substantial drop.  last years change had no noticeable impact, so i am hoping this further reduction is met with similar results.  in el dorado county, water is gold, if i can keep some of that gold in my pocket - yay,  for me.

my goal for my garden beds from the start was organic and the use of omri certified products if i needed to add anything.  looking for something to improve water retention in the beds led me to coir - the outer husk of coconuts.  suggested by Farmer Fred (http://farmerfred.com), i found coir at the Front Yard Nursery and it was omri certified.  coir absorbs 9 times it weight in water, so the hope is it will help hold the water over a longer period than the soil in the bed - thus reducing my water needs.

to add even more protection, i have added a layer of alfalfa around the tomato, this should reduce evaporation and working with the coir - make water needs significantly less.  like i said, my goal is to water twice a week - once a week is a stretch goal.  in the center of the alfalfa chips (circled in red) is one of this years tomatoes.  and those end of the season alfalfa chips will shred nicely right into the compost pile.

come mid august, we will see.....

as usual, the phantom blogger makes a quick run thru and calls it a season.....  well really, its just that i get focused elsewhere and as i get older i realize time is what i am truly short of.

however, blah, blah, blah..... i can say that my fishing days are down too, so this blog isnt the only thing thats not getting proper attention.  the upside?  my oldest son is nearing completion of his eagle scout rank and i did get this project done this summer:

drum roll please.....  i lined all of my raised beds (12 of them) with a heavy metal fabric to keep out gophers and moles.

many of you may know that california is in a severe drought.  my county issued a voluntary 30% reduction in water usage, in hopes that mandatory controls can be avoided.  i have 12 raised beds and the soil is the nice fluffy kind one can buy in bulk.  it doesnt hold water like a clay soil will and as a result i use quite a bit of water for my vegetables.

i did not want to lose my turf, my nice front yard maples or 50 or so fruit trees.  so i made the supreme sacrifice and decided to forgo the 2014 vegetable garden and take advantage of the fallow year and line the beds to keep out the gophers.

i did cut back on water to the fruit trees by abut 25%, followed the mandated turf watering days and had an audit by the irrigation district - based upon the water meter, i exceeded the 30% by a wide margin.  although the lawn took a beating, its at least not brown.  i also discovered that my fruit trees are doing fine on 25% less water, so i can save there going forward, might even be able to reduce there more.

believe me, my 16 year old son did not appreciate being tapped for the dig-out-the-dirt task, but he survived.

as you can see, i overlapped the metal fabric and stitched it together with wire and also provided a tack strip up under the keister boards which locked in the wire to the beds.  and as of 9/5, i have one bed left to complete (out of 12) and plan to have #12 completed on 9/6.  my hope is there is not a hole large enough to let in a critter to munch on my vege's - i can tell you, however, if they do find thier way in, they can have what they want, they earned it......

as for my gardening in 2015 - if the drought is still on, and chances are it will be, i do plan on planting 4 tomato plants:  sun gold, cherokee purple, black zebra and super fantastic.  this will cover my bare necessities and leave the other beds fallow.  this may be the future of my vegetable gardening, at least until mother nature decides to send us the water we need.

flavor supremes start to show

pluots - specifically - flavor supreme is now being harvested in the back-forty.

an interspecific - engineered by zaiger.  no its not gmo.  this guy actually used mother natures way of cross pollination to get a plum/apricot

cross.

it is a green skinned, purple centered fruit.  very juicy, no tartness - but also not overly sweet.

balanced is an apt description.

 this is the first year we got these.  the tree has a good loading of them, so we should see more of these over the next few weeks.

#2 and #3

this year just might be a good year for fruit in my orchard.  pictured to your right are the second and third nectarines i picked.

#1 was eaten the other day - with no thought of taking a picture to show you.

plums, apricots, apriums, pluots, pears and apples are all on tap too.  cherries, however, are a bust. 

as i am a disciple of the ed laivo backyard orchard culture method of pruning, and i do cut them back pretty hard every year - it has been a long haul to get into fruit production.  i will give the cherries a couple more years.  if no production - they will be pulled and other tree varieties be planted.

1 month into it

well - post #2 for 2013 is in the books.  i just doubled last years production.  how's that for setting a low bar?

all is well in the garden - no failures.  tomatoes are finally seeing some sets.  we have had quite a range of weather over the last month - from 37 degree morning temps to 105 this weekend; the fact that all is well, is indeed a miracle.

this years menu is a bit more limited than in previous years.  only ten tomato plants.

yep - thats right only ten.  and that is from the guy who planted 41 plants 4 years ago.  i also did away with beans, radish, corn, melons.  its not that i didnt enjoy them, but rarely got to the garden to pick them when ready.

so this year i decided to be a better judge of what i could do, save some water and effort and hopefully still have a good year.

here she is 1 month into the growing season.

well, well, well - he decides to show up

yup - i have been a bad blogger....  bad, bad, bad.

but what really gets me going on this blog is when the new growing season starts.  and start, it has.

all of the beds have been planted and seven yards of bark has been spread in the walking areas around the beds.  the 2012/2013 winter was a dry one for us in northern california - so my reduction to only 10 tomatoes is a good thing.  over all things are looking up for the garden, i seem to have a pretty good population of ladybugs and their larvae roaming around.

some of last years challenges were cukes and squash which were being devoured by sowbugs/pillbugs as they seedlings emerged from the soil.  i am preemptively spreading OMRI certified iron phosphate and hopefully that will solve the problem.

so heres essentially day one for the 2013 garden.  i do have hopes of keeping things updated here. 

heres hoping you have a green year too!

and it starts now....

early saturday morning saw me out in the garden, roto-tilling the beds.  2 bags of chicken poo per bed  and 10 minutes with the mantis tiller and these beds are ready to grow.  11 of the 12 beds were raked smooth and ready for planting.

the twelfth was a little too close to the bee hives and the ladies werent in the proper disposition to allow me at the bed to finish it up. ah - another task for an early morning visit to the garden this week.

picture #1 - garden in flight, weeds piled up, beds roto-tilled but in disarray.

picture #2 - ready for seeds.

tomatoes go in - starting tonight.

#7 - picked up in rescue

got the call from a friend in rescue and was able to grab this swarm before i went out on a date with my wife.  nice swarm, i have the perfect spot for it.

and yet a couple more

picked up a swarm last friday in folsom and another yesterday in diamond springs.  they arent not big, but they were added to the inventory.

this should just about do it for the year.  i am plum out of swarm boxes and i havent had time to combine them.

i wonder if there is anyone out there that has room for a swarm to adopt? 

bill?

a couple more swarms

my hives let loose with a couple more swarms this weekend.  fortunately, they landed in a pine tree on my hill - not too high, so they were reachable.

the top picture is actually the smaller of the two - the bottom one was a nice fattie that dropped easily into the nuc hive.  these are text book swarms, which make hiving up real easy.

first you squirt them up with sugar water - this gets thier attention directed to cleaning themsleves up and being wet  - there are fewer flyers to contend with.  place the hive directly under the branch, a quick shake and usually the swarm drops right into the box.

i gathered a third swarm late sunday   - yes, they were from my hives also and my neighbor called to report the wayward girls partying on our common fence.  they were hived up too - but i failed to get a picture of that one.

i am about done for swarms in 2012.

2012 swarm season has started

received a few calls - picked up a swarm in shingle last weekend and this one in my backyard the same day.  i know of two other swarms issued from my hives - didnt see them take off, but saw the aftermath.  both - they were fatties - 30 feet up in my neighbors pine trees.

hoping he didnt see them before they took off to thier new home.

always a challenge, but for some reason i like the bugs; stingers and all....

they are getting bigger

tomatoes continue to do well, really looking forward to getting them into the ground.

2012 tomato seedlings sneak peak

they have sprouted!  2012's tomato dream-team is working hard to be ready for planting in early may.  flatlanders know official tomato planting day is april 28 - but at 1800 foot elevation, its a crap-shoot even in may.



this year will see 14 tomato plants.



what?!?

yep, remember when i had 41 in the ground.  well that has dwindled over the past 3 years, as i found out more isnt necessarily better.  i have 12 raised beds and used 6 for the tomatoes - and i did cram in 41 plants.  year 2 saw 36, last year was 25.  i found cramped plants, rotting tomatoes i couldnt get to fast enough - and really, i think i will have more than enough with this number. and to top it off, water isnt cheap and i need to be a better steward of it.

its going to be 14 going forward.  here is the list of 2012 varieties i will be planting:

cherokee purple - a great heirloom, in my garden every year

first prize - new variety i am trying - hybrid

black pear - new variety i am trying - heirloom

Japanese black trifele - first tried in 2011 and was great, should be planted every year - heirloom

black prince - new variety i am trying - heirloom

boxcar willie - new variety i am trying - heirloom

carbon - new variety i am trying - heirloom

early girl - my usual go-to for an early variety, some years isnt as early as planned - hybrid

sun gold - no garden is complete with out this cherry variety, its sweet like candy, a must have - hybrid

black zebra - my all time favorite. - hybrid

black zebra - so good its the only one i have two of in my garden - hybrid

super fantastic - good consistent producer, planted every year - hybrid

champion 2 - good consistent producer, planted every year - hybrid

Frontyard Freebee - variety for 2012 unknown, but this comes from my favorite local nursery and who doesnt like a freebee?