Was doing great on redoing my plot when I hurt my knee. Since then I've been nursing it and not doing much on my gardening. Still watering, and something else regularly. Meanwhile, the plants continue to grow steadily.
This was the final straw for my knee. I'd been pushing it for a month to get a good Taji-100 score. Ended up with 777 miles, a personal record by a lot. Probably would have been okay if I'd taken a week off to heal up right away, but I was frantic to get all the garden improvements done so I switched to working on that. This was MUCH more than I'm used to carrying on my bike and I just wasn't ready for it. Thank you Tim for loaning me the trailer, next time I'll be more careful using it.
The mugwort and rose are doing good! They thrive on neglect. I am grateful.
The Arkansas Traveler is just waking up. Going to try and water it more this year.
That narcissus gave me fragrent blossoms for a week or so. They might have been better with more rainfall, but that wasn't in the cards this year.
That grape ended up giving me quite a few clusters of sweet bright red grapes last year. This year it's starting with a much bigger center stalk. Hoping that's a good omen.
Planted a row of cilantro that Batina gave me right there. That was right when I realized that my knee was shot. Missed my chances to water the infant plants and they died. Sorry Batina!
Garlic is coming along nicely. The parsly and mint are doing well enough on meager amounts of water.
Probably the irises want more water than they're getting, but they're doing okay on meager rations.
To the right of the Irises are some very undergrown garlics. I thought the problem was the garlic wasn't getting water, but then I saw them at the right time of day and realized the iris plans are shading them to.
My kiwi is going into heat. See those little balls at the base of each leaf stalk? They will soon be flowers. Kiwis are sexed plants. The gardeners next door chopped down their male kiwi. I've been asking around looking for a local male kiwi in a pot without success. Feeling bummed about that. It's not over till the petals fall, so I'm still hopeful.
All of these plants have gotten some water.
Kirin gave me the starts for the lettuce late last year. I'm having delicious salads several times a week now.
Planted the kale from seed. One of my better results from that!
This is the shady end of my plot. You can see the shadow of the redwood tree beyond the garden ending at the iris row. A month ago it was shading everything in my plot for a lot of the day. Now The far end gets full sun all day.
You can see that the grape buds at the sunny end are more developed than the ones at the shady end.
This is the chard patch that Elsa and I planted last spring. They are doing well now that they aren't shaded by anything much.
Young kale and all lettuce plants need to be protected from critters. There is bird netting over the tomato cage that's hard to see in the picture but does the job. Wouldn't be enough if the rats wanted to get through, but they're not interested in that.
The raspberries are trying again. People have been telling me that I shouldn't cut them back so much. This year I'm going to try and remember to leave the stalks at the end of growing season!
The big news from my plot is that I've moved the left edge a foot to the left so that my property line lines up with the edges of the other plots in the row. Makes my plot a foot wider, meaning more cropland! It's the biggest land grab of my life. Having measured it, the plot is now 12' x 26'.
Had to pull those collards because they were bolting. Plus I was getting tired of eating them regularly. Plus the kale and lettuce are finally giving me enough leaves.
The saddest news is it looks like the pepino didn't make it through the winter.
This is the best pea plant from the seeds I planted. Part of the problem is I haven't figured out the right way to water peas. Somebody said they was evenly wet soil, and they don't need much water until they're bigger. Still figuring out what that means.
