Category: plant

Even though its still in the upper 90 degree range here in the valley, it’s still Fall and things have run their course. All the water and sunlight won’t make some things live any longer than they were meant, and the time to collect seed has begun. I had already started drying the last seed heads for the carrots about a month ago and have been waiting to collect them until I have other seeds to pull and the sunflowers are ready. I only grew 4 sunflowers this year since I wanted to give more space to the other things in my planting boxes. One of the sunflowers was planted in square container pot and actually did the best, growing to about twice the size of the ones in the planting bed. I think next year all the sunflowers will be in containers. The largest one was actually good sized for a ‘dwarf’ Sunny variety.

Once I cleaned the dried flower parts off of the seeds I could see that there was a fair amount of good sized hulls, this year might be a good harvest!

It takes a few minutes to get all of the seeds out of the flower, but it was a Saturday afternoon and I didn’t have anything else too pressing to do. I got this one cleaned out, and the other three smaller ones which were this size…

And I ended up with a enough to fill the bottom of one of my water buckets like this….

Not a bad haul for 4 little flowers. I went and got my paper envelopes to put the seed in and decided to do the carrot seed also. I had a bit of a time with the carrot seed since it grows in bunches and isn’t nearly as easy to strip from the plant as sunflowers. Thats not even mentioning that the seeds are a bit prickly and cling to everything like small burrs. Who knew carrots were such a pain. I ended up with this much seed before I gave up on just put it in envelopes.

If you enlarge the pic by clicking on it you can see the prickly parts on the seeds. I also took the time to harvest the ‘ugly’ peppers from my pepper plants (bell pepper and hot peppers) and set them out to dry. I will usually leave the sun blemished peppers on the plant to make seed and give the ‘pretty’ peppers to friends and family. They look nice laying out in the sun, can’t wait to get the seed from these.

We had a huge (for the central valley) thunderstorm last night. I was happy because my plants got LOTS of rain and every little extra bit helps. So the next morning I got up and the first thing I want to do is see how my plants are doing, expecting them to be all perky and happy. Instead I find this…..

All my lovely zucchini plants flattened and ‘nests’ made in my vegetable bed. The destruction was all through the bed, not a single plant left unsquashed.

I try to be a nice neighbor, and those who know me know my version of ‘nice’ is open for discussion. But this is beyond what I am willing to put up with. I went to the neighbor whos dogs are always in my backyard and let him know that his pets will no longer be safe in my backyard. I have a gopher problem now and will be putting out many gopher traps of the vicious two pronged flesh piercing variety.  I would hate to see anything bad happen to them…….

Bottom line, DON’T F*CK with my garden.

I mentioned the tomato plant has followed the usual course of tomato plants in my back yard by taking over all the available space it can. So, while I was out watering this morning I thought I would share a few more pics of just what they like to do. First a general pic of the plant as it now grows.

Yup, that sprawling mess is a tomato plant. It has overgrown its bed out onto the ‘lawn’, over the side of the box to the greenhouse, and deeper into the bed climbing the helpless carrots. If you click on the picture you get a larger pic so you can see just how bad it is. In previous years the tomatoes overgrow the whole 3′ by 8′ bed and still get into the lawn and neighbors yard, killing off everything they overgrow EXCEPT the carrots.

That doesnt mean that they leave the carrots in peace. Oh no, that wouldn’t do. Instead you take over their space and use them to your own purposes. I swear tomatoes are the original evil supervillain. Lol. Squeaking an existence out between the carrot/tomato and the fence are a few of my dwarf sunflowers. They just started to bloom yesterday and are opening up nicely this morning. I can’t wait till they start to turn up to the sun and really get going.

I have another dwarf sunflower from that sprouting that I put in a pot to see if it would grow as well as the ones in the ground. It has gotten more light since it isn’t hidden under the shadows of the other plants and has done surprisingly well. It’s almost double the size of the sunflowers in the beds and has really healthy fat leaves.

That flower is in a 14″x14″ pot, I think I will grow all my sunflowers like this next year.

Its been a little bit since I posted. Im doing the Couch to 5K (c25k) program to get my butt back in shape. I’m starting week 5 today and if I survive then I’ll keep posting. Also, I’m getting things cleaned up and organized out in the shop (garage, whatever) and plan on getting elbows deep in some restoration projects that I can post also.

The garden is coming along. I pulled some goodies off the vines to take over to my parents this weekend and took a pic to show what I can pull after a week of watering and tending. It looks like this.

Overall I’m pretty happy with it. I don’t pull ‘orange’ or even ‘orangish-red’ tomatoes, only the really ripe ‘red-red’ tomatoes. Everyone I have given some to comment on how sweet the tomatoes are. If anyone is interested the type is S100 Super-Sweet. I have to admit, I’m not much of a tomato eater, but these are damn good.

The bell peppers have been coming alive and producing like crazy over the recent hot weather we had. I’m curious to see if they will taper off on production since this last week the temps dropped back 10-20 degrees. Yes, it really dropped that much, from 105 highs to 85 or so. On the bright side, the lower temps have allowed some of my other plants like the mints some needed relief . I have noticed that one bell pepper plant doesnt yeild the usual bell pepper shape. Instead this one grows what looks like a overly large jalepeno, but it still smells and tastes like a bell pepper.

About now you are probably wondering about those giant carrot plants from previous posts. The flowers are starting to go to seed and I have put plastic bags over the flowers to capture any seed that falls from them. Even the seed on these things are huge compared to ‘normal’ carrots. I don’t know what I did, or how they got this big, but it’s going to be fun seeing what grows from these seeds if they sprout. Till then my plants look goofy with all the plastic on them.

Did you notice in the lower left corner you can see the tomato trying to take over the carrot plants? It has started using the carrots as a sort of trellis to climb for more sun. Crazy plants. Speaking of sun worshiping, I didnt have much hope since I have never successfully raised a watermelon plant, but my sugar baby is giving it a heck of  a try.

So far it looks healthy and happy with plenty of flowers and little watermelon buds. My real concern now is the damn ‘possums that my neighbor INSISTS on feeding cat food and treating like they are something special. Did you know in Cali it’s illegal to kill a ‘possum? Frickin’ ridiculous. And now that I finally have one of these to look after….

So, if I see so much as a ‘possum track in my backyard the gloves are coming off. My great grandad had a way of dealing with cats on the farm, seems like it would work well for ‘possums too.

This is what happens if I don’t pick tomatoes for a day or two. Gotta love summertime.