suburban sharecroppers

Perhaps starting a garden blog in Oct. was not the best idea.  Perhaps I’m not nearly as scintillating a writer as I thought….sigh.   Either way,  this has been a good start to our budding business and we will now be on a blog  controlled by us….whew.  By all! 

Too lazy to post twice about this (hey it’s almost Christmas)….read about our freezing weather and how it affected our garden  here ….thanks!

Our dear daughter came running into our room at midnight to inform us that it was hailing outside.  Her desire, as is all our kids, is to have it snow here….something it has not done significantly for ten years.  Every once in a while we get a bit of frost that lingers in the morning and if you squint and turn your head just the right angle you can imagine what it would be like to have snow on the ground here in the Central Valley.  But snow to the degree that my children would appreciate comes maybe 2 or 3 times in a lifetime.  The last great snowstorm of ‘97 closed down schools (all 2 inches of it:).  We drove around town taking pictures of snowmen and kids skiing (ok, being towed by their parents) on their front lawns.  Great day!

But I digress.  Last night it was hail and the suggestion of snow….today its sunny and the dream has disappeared.  Oh well.  The garden has survived and tho things were a bit droopy first thing in the morning…..

…all plants are alive, upright, and thoroughly enjoying the sunny afternoon….yippee yahoo.

The little broccoli peeking it’s way thru the green leaves is our first sign of winter veggies and I am thrilled to finally see some of our future harvest.

Kind of wonderful to be out picking salad greens after a hailstorm….aint life grand!

Yesterday was the first of December (son’s birthday…yea!) and I planted another pkg. of lettuce seed.  This is the first time I’ve sowed a second crop of greens and tho it is quite foggy and a bit chilly outside I’m hoping that some of what went into the ground will germinate and we can have a few more baby green salads this winter.  Our other beds of lettuce and mixed greens are doing well, the black-seeded Simpson and Romaines are about 6 inches tall and still quite tender.  The Asian baby leaf (in photo) came up fast and got tough fairly quickly.  Next year I will plant those more sparingly, we couldn’t eat them fast enough and they were much more tasty as babies.

Well, we are having a bit of an issue with powdery mildew on our ornamentals. These are our little calendulas growing by the broccoli out in the front yard garden.  We have had such a warm fall (see garlic post :) and powdery mildew is especially prevalent in these particular situations…..

 Warm temperatures and shady conditions encourage the fungus to grow and spread. However, the spores and mycelium are sensitive to extreme heat and direct sunlight.

….from green guides

Unfortunately, the spot where these are planted is still shady because our deciduous trees haven’t lost their leaves yet.  I’m trying 2 different solutions as sort of an experiment….one I learned about on the organic.period blog using a milk and water mix and the other is the standard organic defense using baking soda .  Maybe the baking soda or milk mix combined with a bit of sunlight will take care of the problem.  It is still pretty sunny and the leaves are falling as we speak, plus the condition is not fatal. So I guess I’m not going to worry too much at this point.

It shouldn’t spread to the broccoli, tends to keep to just a few plant species in our area and I knew calendulas were susceptible.    The only other advice I could find was to pull up all the infected plants….which is all the calendula plants in the garden, so that’s not happening.

I’ll take my chances with soda and milk.