The Bloomers Are Loving Our Weather

Stupendous sweet peas!

Beautiful breadseed poppies

Albuca

Single-petal rose

Leonitus Leonurus - Lion's Tail, Lion's Mane

Hollyhock

The rainstorm knocked down the white nicotiana, so all the stems just turned to face upward.

Purple variations of Brunfelsia - Yesterday, Today, Tomorrow - and pink alstroemeria and orange nasturtium and yellow/orange bulbine

Pink crinum

Blue-purple Iochroma, beloved of hummingbirds

Euphorbia

Spuria iris

Tatsoi bolting - going to seed - but the foliage is still nicely mild tasting and perhaps a bit sweeter

Amazingly, harvesting when the outer petals are standing a bit far out still results in a minimal - if any - choke, and a good deal of flesh!

The purple variation is just beginning to enlargen enough to harvest.

First tomatoes set on Celebrity plant

Crookneck squash is starting! When these first appear on my first planting, I sow another batch so that when these quit I'll have the next batch beginning to harvest! I'll repeat this through the summer for a continuous harvest through fall, unless the heat makes them quit sooner.

Bush and pole beans are starting to come up. Bush beans on the east side of the trellis, and pole beans on the back side.

Peter's Honey fig setting fruit.

Mulberry fruit set. To harvest only the ripest ones, I "tickle" the fruit, and whichever automatically falls into my hand is ripe.

First harvest. Yum!

Arctic Star nectarine fruit set. Time to tie up the fruit with netting to deter the birds and squirrels!

     The flowers are blooming their hearts out in my garden.  Everyone is providing its own version of color and pattern and height and spread.  It’s truly glorious to walk around and relish everyone doing their part in beautifying our gardening world.  That brief but intense downpour of rain a couple of nights ago really enthused the plants to perk up and unleash their colors.  And the again-mild air temperatures during both days and nights certainly helps them expand their delights.
 
Keep Sowing and Transplanting
     The mild weather continues to bode success for both sowing seeds and transplanting seedlings. 

• Make sure seedbeds are moist before and after sowing. 
• Fill planting holes with water and let it sink in before inserting the plant.
• Massage rootballs to gently loosen the root system, and combine the loosened soil and container’s potting medium to provide a soil mix that combines them both – so the roots will have some of each as they extend into native soil.
• Water transplanted plant three times right then to make sure that the surrounding soil a foot beyond the plant is equally moist.  This also encourages roots to reach out into the native soil to establish extensive root systems.

 
Establish Watering Patterns For Summer
      Keep plants thriving into our coming hot weather by matching your watering practices to plant needs and the weather.  All plants will need more than an evening sprinkling when you come home from work – it’ll satisfy you but potentially be a problem for plants that they won’t be able to overcome when our summer heat blasts our gardens.  So start “teaching” your plants now to be able to withstand the heat onslaught that will surely come.

• Water each plant to just below its natural root zone, depending on variety and your soil. 
  • Some plant roots are naturally shallow, going only to 1 foot in depth – like lettuce, radish, celery.  Others go to 2 feet deep – like beans, cucumbers, peppers, squash.  The deep growers, to perhaps 3 feet – include asparagus, artichoke, tomato. 
  • You’ll water this deeply every time you water, regardless of what time of year it is or how hot or cold the weather is – the point is to get the water to satisfy the needs of the plants’ entire root systems.
• Weather will determine how frequently you water. 
  • Mild weather like during our spring and fall means watering perhaps every other week.  Warmer weather, like that week of above 85 or 90 degrees, requires watering just before the heat hits and again after. 
  • Consistently hot weather like during our summers where the temperatures are consistently above 90 or 95, requires watering perhaps once a week – and more for large plants like tomatoes that do a lot of transpiring. 
  • Of course, you’ll water individual plants more that appear to be struggling.  But be aware that – like people – plants may be droopy at the end of a long hot day.  Best to check the soil moisture before automatically watering, since they may recuperate overnight.  If the soil is dry 3 inches down, or the plants are still droopy in the morning, then water immediately.

For more monthly tasks, go to May.
 
For major-topic articles by season, go to Homepage.