Planting broccoli and beans, and a triumphant return

Sunflowers, 10/9/12

It's finally gotten cold enough in the last week for me to feel okay planting broccoli and beans, which I did the day before yesterday.  When I went to write about it, I realized I never caught up after my trip home.  I was supposed to text my roommate to remind her to water the garden while I was away, and I realized, on my fourth day home, that I had failed to do so.  Big oops.  My flight got in at midnight on the 9th, and I had class all day the next day, so I didn't get a chance to visit A4 until around 4:30 that afternoon.  I was pleasantly surprised: not only did nothing die, but everything looked happier, healthier, and bigger than when I left.  Maybe I should ask Cheryl to water the garden more often!  The first thing I noticed (from across the farm, since they were visible on my walk over to my plot) were my sunflowers, now considerably taller and bushier, with many sets of true leaves.  The tallest sunflowers are now about 18" high.

Blue Jade corn, 10/22/12

The nearby corn and melons were also thriving, which they have continued to do since I got back--we've had lots of sun and a decent amount of heat, which they love.  The tallest of the corn plants, at right, is now about 12" high and has started sending off shoots to the side.  Some of the leaves are also slightly tinged purple.  One more melon had actually germinated while I was gone, a few weeks behind its friends, which then all had one or two pairs of true leaves.  They've kept up slow and steady, even languorous, growth, and are starting to sprawl down the south and west sides of their hill.  Even the fragile week-old tomato seedlings were doing well enough when I got back that I could separate them where they'd gotten clumped together.  Now they all have true leaves, and the biggest plant has 3 sets of true leaves.  So far the big problem with the tomatoes is that I marked my rows, but I didn't label them, so I can't for the life of me remember which is supposed to be the paste tomato and which is supposed to be the Gold Medal beefsteak.  Ultimately, I'll find out when they set fruit, and cross-pollination isn't a big deal since I'm not trying to save the seeds from these tomatoes, but it'd be nice to know.

Tomato 10/22/12, with true leaves

Fast forward two weeks, and we're now having daytime highs in the 70s and 80s, and overnight lows in the 40s and 50s.  This is what passes for fall in California.  (Thinking the 40s constituted virtually Arctic temperatures, my roommate turned on the heat last night; I, by contrast, woke up sweating, kicked all the covers off, and opened the window.  I had to explain the concept of more than one blanket, because while she can always put on more clothes and blankets, I can only take so many off.)  I'd been waiting on the cool weather crops, because when I first planted the lettuce and spinach the soil was too warm for them to even germinate.  So when the thermometer hit 42 one night, I decided it was probably time for what I think of as the fall set: kale, late string beans, broccoli, even peas.  My inclination with the peas would be to wait, but some people in nearby plots have successfully started theirs already, so that's the project for the weekend: put up some trellises and plant the peas.

Like I said earlier, I already planted the beans and the broccoli.  The beans are my favorite bush bean varietal, Royalty Purple Pod.  The flowers and pods of the beans are deep purple, while the inside of the bean is kiwi-green.  They are tender, flavorful, sweet without being sugary, and delicious raw or cooked.  Cooked, they turn from purple to green.  My mom has declared this her all-time favorite string bean.  The broccoli doesn't have the same storied history with me; it's a varietal called Romanesco that I'm trying for the first time this fall.  The picture on the seed packet shows whorled, apple-green florets.  I'm curious to see how the broccoli turns out, especially since I've found the best way to get to know a vegetable or varietal is to grow it myself.  I thought I knew what all potatoes, lettuce, and radishes tasted like until I grew them, so maybe broccoli is the same way.

A fairy ring of carrots

Blue jade corn seedling, 10/4/12
(zea mays)

I haven't spent much time in the garden this week, between the scorching heat Sunday through Tuesday, the mysterious cold everyone seems to be getting, and the advent of midterms.  It looks like it's benefitting from my salutary neglect, though.  I'm going home for a few days, having convinced one of my roommates to water A4, and when I went out for one final watering and check this afternoon, I saw some small but important signs of progress.  The four melons all now have two good-size true leaves, instead of the one apiece they were sporting on Monday.  The sunflowers are taller and bushier.  Almost all of the corn I planted has germinated and is growing fast--I never expected it to be this successful!  If anything, I thought my lettuce would be reliable and the corn a possible failure, but the lettuce has been 100% unsuccessful while the corn is leaving everything else in the dust.  Today, the corn seedlings are also taller and leafier, looking less like spiky aliens poking out of the ground and more like the grasses they are.  In the sub-plot where I planted the pumpkins, one or two pumpkins and about thirty volunteer sunflowers have germinated.  Sigh.  I never thought they'd be so successful.  They're growing like weeds!  The pumpkin seedling is all by itself, off in a corner, which should be good--it won't steamroller everything else.  I think I'll point it toward the extra sunflowers.  Fight to the death, where the mighty pumpkin tramples all in its path, or, the long and flimsy pumpkin vines climb up the sturdy sunflower stalks.

Carrots developing true leaves, 10/4/12
(Daucus carota)

Speaking of volunteers and--ahem--sowing one's own problems, the first of the carrots are getting frilly little true leaves.  They seem to be growing mainly in a circular area about two feet in diameter, with a few loners scattered around elsewhere.  Most sources seem to agree that dill, radishes, and parsnips are bad companions with carrots, but I'm not worried, since I'm not planning on planting any of those here in sunny SoCal: I can't really justify growing root vegetables here, given the sandy soil and constant sunshine all the leafy greens and tropicals love so much.  As for dill, I'm one of those rare people who will eat just about everything (no, really--octopus, rutabagas, reindeer, kohlrabi, raw milk, etc.) but is totally impartial to dill.  The carrots will go just fine with everything I'm planning to grow, even if they aren't in neat rows like most of the others.  Whatever, I've never really been big on rows anyway--it's just one convenient way to organize, and when it stops being convenient, it makes sense to use some other formation, even if that formation is a fairy ring of carrots.

I hope everything keeps up this growth and success while I'm away, and doesn't die of heat.  Hopefully my roommate can help in that department.  In the meantime, I'm excited to be getting home to see my family and the original garden that started this.  I'll be saving seeds from radishes and lettuce, harvesting the last of the potatoes, planting garlic, and making hot sauce out of the summer's bumper crop of Thai chiles.  I might also get to try the sugar pumpkin I grew this summer from seed I saved last Thanksgiving.  Should be a fun few days at home!

It's still not cold

Boule d'or melon seedlings
(Cucurmis melo)

Mondays have become my garden work day because my class schedule allows me to be out there working by 3 PM, but as soon as I stepped outside, the oven-like blast of heat let me know today was not my day.  To me, as a child of the North, October means apple cider, sweaters, leaves changing colors and falling, and the weather GETTING COLDER.  A high of 102 is not colder.  Wrong direction.  

I may not like the heat, but the plants all seem happy.  One of my garden books says "Melons love heat," and that maxim has certainly proven true here.  Four of the seven I planted in the hill have come up, and now they are getting their first true leaves.  The plants are about an inch tall, with about a two inch wingspan between their seed leaves.  This is my first time growing melons, so I don't yet have a strong sense of what they need from me.  I often worry they'll dry out, especially after I missed watering them on Sunday, but they seem fine.  

Blue jade corn seedling
(Zea mays)

The corn I planted a week ago has begun to germinate, which I was not expecting--the seed packet said this varietal germinates in 10-21 days.  For me, part of gardening is detective work--many of the plants I grow I have only seen in adult form.  The first time I grew spinach, I pulled up about half of the seedlings, thinking they were weeds.  Oops.  So this time I was patient, and a quick Google search confirmed that the mysterious grassy-looking plants were in fact my baby corn plants.

The spinach and butterhead lettuce I planted two weeks ago still haven't germinated, so I guess the soil temperature is still too high for them.  I'll try again once the weather and soil both cool down a little, in three weeks or a month.  I'm still holding out hope for the tomatoes and habañeros, which haven't come up yet, but they've still got time.    

I thought I spotted pumpkin seedlings today, but nope, those were just more volunteer sunflowers.  All over A4, the sunflowers are doing incredibly well: the ones I planted two weeks ago all have at least two pairs of true leaves, which are small but furry.  More volunteers are appearing every day, and they all seem healthy and vigorous, so I relocate them instead of culling them.  

Sunflowers, 2 weeks after planting

I hate waiting for the seeds to come up, or accidentally trampling what I didn't realize was a seedling, but watching the baby plants grow so fast at the beginning of the season is one of my favorite things about gardening.  Coming back to see the changes happening daily, like with the sunflowers right now.  Back home, much of this happens indoors, in seed flats under banks of grow lights.  The tomatoes, peppers, pumpkins, and zucchini all begin their lives in repurposed egg cartons filled with potting mix. I don't have any grow lights here, and my roommates and I can only eat so many eggs, so I'm direct seeding this first round of plants, hoping that the warm soil temperature will be enough to get them started. Hopefully, after collecting a few egg cartons (or just biting the bullet and buying some seed flats) I can start the next round of tender plants on my sunny southeast-facing porch.  Maybe I should put my musical training to good use and sing to them, to see if they perform any differently, or germinate any earlier.