January spring

It's early spring here on the homestead. Around the central coast, we generally get a long spring and long summer, and late January is generally when we start seeing our first hints of spring. Fall and winter are both extremely brief, which people either love or hate, depending on their general temperament. I'm in between, loving the long spring but hating the long summers. And missing a good fall every year. Someday we will retire and do something about that, but for now, there is plenty here to love. And it seems appropriate to have a lot of green inside, too, to match what's outside.

Anyway, even though the first almond blossoms are starting to appear and the hills are turning emerald green, you don't dare plant anything yet, as frosts and even freezes are still probable.

If summer is the time to be inside in the air conditioning (while all you midwesterners and easterners are outside loving the sunshine and your garden) then late January and February is the time of year for us to be out and about outdoors. It's cool enough to work (65 degrees F this week as a high temperature), sunny enough to be pleasant, and a great time to get things done before the heat comes. Because it's coming. Of that there is no doubt.

Today I pondered what's going to go into my big raised stone flowerbed, other than irises and milkweed. Such endless possibilities! Building this wall was very easy. Now we just have to add the back and fill it up with good soil.

I added some beach pebbles to the metal agave plants and their colorful pots. Decided the gazing ball belonged with its similarly colored siblings, the pots. So now I have some color and interest where I needed some but did not want to add any more plants.

Found this Enrico Coveri scarf at Goodwill for $1.75. Score. Wore it to work last week at the winery and got tons of compliments on it.

We have salads galore and have been using a dressing of Mandarin Orange Oil and Fig White Balsamic to go on them from our local olive oil company, Olivas de Oro. So delicious and refreshing. I planted some more lettuce and spinach this week to keep the greens coming.

All in all, it's been a lovely January spring so far.

Winter Salads and Sunsets

Buttercrunch, with baby onions on left.

We can't grow much lettuce in summer here because it's so hot (although I try anyway), but autumn/winter lettuce is another story. We are currently enjoying lots of fresh-picked salads, even though we do have to provide some bird deterrents (they hate the black pots and green tape for some reason, perhaps because it gives that part of the garden a decidedly trailer trash look) and frost protection (white row covers, raised during day to allow sunshine in). So exciting to have some delicious and easy-to-prepare greens. Pop them into a bowl and eat. Like breakfast cereal, only healthier. Gotta love that.

Red Leaf.

The late afternoons also take on a more golden hue in winter. And the cottonwood branch we bought with us from our last home has turned into a six-foot tall, lovely tree, which will hopefully get even bigger and wipe out our view of the neighbors' ugly shed and RV. At that point we'll also lose our views of the northern hills, further proof that you can't have everything, at least not at the same time.

Golden afternoon.

Golden Cottonwood.

Even nicer at sunset.

Lettuce and late summer

I keep an informal crop notebook where, each month or so, I give a brief synopsis of what I've done in the raised beds and down in the pasture, where the orchard, vines and berries are. It can be helpful to see exactly what month you put in your lettuce or tomatoes last year, how it fared, as well as when you fertilized and what kind of bug pressure you faced. Notes are a good thing, and a good way to assess how things are going compared to years past on your property.

I consider it a gift to myself in the future, this written documentation of all my successes and failures, and it's all penned with an eye towards hopefully learning from my mistakes as I go along.

Notes to myself.

It's been helpful for every crop except my late summer/fall lettuce. This is my trickiest crop, because if you plant it too soon and it turns hot again, it bolts or turns sour quickly. Since it's much too hot to grow lettuce here in summer, I confess to being a bit anxious to have summer-type salads after a few months before the weather gets cold. So I plant early. Sometimes it works out. But the last couple of years it has not.

And because of this I find myself, for the third month running, attempting to plant lettuce that will last more than three weeks in the ground before bolting. The other issue with warm-weather lettuce is that it needs watering often -- sometimes three times a day when it's above 90 degrees, which its been most days for the last few weeks.  And about this time of year, I'm honestly kind of done with standing around outside in the heat of the day with the hose. I'm wanting Mother Nature to take over at that point with some much-needed rain. Hasn't happened yet, but you know Hope, like star thistle and other weeds, springs eternal.

Out with the old, in with the new.

So I have another set of transplants sitting out on the patio right now and all I can do is hope that the 90 degree temperatures will finally be over...weather forecasters are saying by the end of the week.

It can't come soon enough, I'm tellin' ya.

Cycling Through

Here on the Central Coast (and probably in other places where weather unpredictability is the name of the game), you learn to go with the weather patterns rather than fight against them.  We had our first heat wave of the spring season last week, with temperatures hitting the 90 degree mark.  It was also the week my cucumbers, which I grew from seed, were due to be planted. No go. Instead, I moved them outside into a shady spot to acclimate and held off on planting.

Can't wait to get these cukes in the ground. Mama needs relish.

Our weather tends to come in waves or cycles, and this week was a heat wave.  We also get "wind waves" which are possibly even worse for young plants than heat is. Most places around the country get "cold snaps" which are extremely cold temperatures which are temporary in nature. We get those sometimes, but extreme heat is usually what Mother Nature chooses to "bless" (!) us with.

And it all runs in cycles, for everyone. There are small cycles, such as heat waves/cold snaps, and larger cycles, such as drought/rainy cycles and possibly completely new cycles occurring due to global warming.

Success in growing things means learning to flow with the waves and snaps, not fight against them, whatever their reasons. It's, literally, the same thing as waves on the beach.  Fight the waves and the waves will always win.  Go with the waves and you can usually navigate within them to find your way either out to sea or to the shore, wherever you need to be.

I'm not saying to necessarily lay down and accept climate change without taking political action.  But in the garden, you can't fight it without losing your crop, so best adapt to what's happening and just get on with it. That also gives one a sense of productivity instead of helplessness. Work with what's happening and do what you can with what you have.  There's peace of mind to be had within that, whatever is going on.

So next week will be the time for planting not only my cucumber transplants, but also getting some pumpkins and summer lettuce started, because of course the heat wave also sent my spring lettuce into bolting. But next week the heat cycle breaks for a few days and we'll have seasonal temperatures once again.

In other news, one GOOD thing about the heat wave was that it gave us an advance start on killing most of our back lawn and kicked our baby squash plants into high gear.  Less water on the lawn means a bit more can be applied to the food crops. So, again, working with what's going on rather than against it, the heat does have at some advantages.

Global warming may NOT mean a world covered in water, but instead.....giant squash!?!

Buddha in the land, crops in the ground.

It's been a weird weather year; I think most of us citizens of Planet Earth can agree on that much, if nothing else.  Here on the Central Coast, it feels almost like the end of spring already.  We had our first 90 degree day last week and the hills are still green but have a brownish cast to them now, as no rain and hot weather has put an end to new growth. It's sad,  but there's not much I can do about it so it's just something to accept.  Very Buddhist of me, I know.

But with this very warm weather, I'm wondering whether to push up the schedule for spring planting. The lesson I learned the hard way in years past is to never plant much outside before Mother's Day, as both crazy late freezes and punishing winds can destroy tender plants before that date.  

But things seem to be very mild, and so I'm mulling over what to do...take a risk and plant, or wait?

Right now I have a lovely crop of spring lettuce, green onions, and red onions in the ground -- typical winter/spring crops that don't mind the cold or wind.  But I also have cukes and zukes sprouting in the conservatory, and will sprout my tomato seeds tonight. And pumpkins will need planting next week as well.  

And so the endless dilemma....when to plant all these lovelies once they're ready to go outside?

In other news, Big Ag has a week off between jobs and will probably be putting in fence posts in the pasture so we can keep livestock on a rotational-grazing basis.  My only dilemma is that I absolutely love the spring wildflowers, and want to make absolutely sure that we don't graze the land to a point where these beautiful flowers don't come up in spring anymore.  

There is, literally, no property around here that has the wildflowers we do, and so it's a serious concern. I am torn between cute sheep and beautiful wildflowers, and I know which one is native and belongs here.  So the livestock question is still that -- a question -- but fencing is a good investment that does nothing to destroy the seasonal meadow, so we'll get that far and see how we feel.

This stewardship thing sometimes feels like a heavy burden, and I am sure others don't worry about it like I do.  But I feel a deep sense of responsibility to pass this land on, someday, in at least as good condition as we got it in.  Which means spring grasses and wildflowers.  

So I will say what I say about all the potential projects around here we could jump into, which is....we shall see, my friends. But I have to err on the side of compassion, which means having compassion for the natural landscape as much as any animals we could care for. So in my very best Dalai Lama voice, I say, we shall see. 

P.S. We have a landscape designer coming this morning to help us with extending our patio area and removing another good swath of grass, all in the name of water conservation.  I'm excited to see what we can imagine together! 

Undercover Lettuce

Undercover Lettuce (background) and radishes (foreground).

Last week it was quite hot -- 96 degrees in the daytime, and my spring lettuce is just about perfect.  This is, of course another lesson in Murphy's Law, because when it is that hot it becomes very common for lettuce to turn bitter, and even bolt prematurely.

Luckily last year I bought some white shade cloth, so this gave me the chance to try it out.  In addition to providing shade, it also reflects quite a bit of light, making the lettuce cooler and not as stressed.  I also made sure I watered plentifully, in order to keep the roots (and therefore the leaves) as hydrated as possible.

This week we are back to seasonal temperatures (the 70s) and so my lettuce and I survived the first heat wave of the season.  I take my lettuce crop very seriously, as it gets too hot to grow it here in summer. For us, therefore, it's a fall, winter, and spring treat, and I'm always aware when "lettuce season" (which is in reality three seasons) is coming to an end.  I miss those salads in the summer, but there will be other pleasures once the hot weather really takes hold, like cucumbers, squash and of course tomatoes.

Rainy Day Tasks

After the storm.

We got a good soaking of rain this last week -- four days of it -- and we're now in the post-rain fog that always seems to come up until the ground dries out a bit.  Right now it's too wet to dig in the ground, so I am left with attending to other tasks.

But as astronomers have books for cloudy nights, surely farmers have tasks for rainy days.

I'm lucky that since spring is here, it's a great time to start this summer's seedlings.  Today I will begin with some spinach and lettuce, and move on to tomatoes later this week. I love to freeze spinach for casseroles, dips and lasagnas, and since last year's crop was destroyed by roly polys and I had to use wild mustard greens in spinach's place, this year I'm determined to get a good, healthy crop into the ground. Which probably means putting them in as transplants, when they're too large for the roly polys to destroy.

 Since I'm going to adhere to the local admonition not to plant my transplanted tomatoes before Mother's Day, my Mortgage Lifters and Brandywines will, likewise, have plenty of time to sprout and get sturdy between now and then in the protected comfort of our solarium.

I can't believe I just said, "in my solarium."  We didn't put it in, people.  It was the lady before us.  And what she used as a lounge area/art studio, we use to store Mason jars, dry fruits and grow seedlings.  Guess we've hillbillied it up a bit, but sometimes usefulness trumps aesthetics.

And as if the news couldn't get any brighter, Wednesday is when Farm Supply gets in a new batch of Bared Rock and Americauna chicks, so we' should be positively springing forth with new life by week's end.

It's funny, no matter how long and how hot summer is, once February is done, I feel done with winter and ready for the inevitable punishment summer usually turns out to be.  I'm sure many of you with harsher winters feel the same way.  I will certainly not turn down any rain we can get at this point, but fast-moving, water-dumping spring rains, not freezing winter storms is what I'm hoping for.

All snug in their beds

The raised beds simply are not growing at a rate I'm happy with.  I'm all for nature setting its course, but the fact is last year we were knee-deep in salads by this time, and this year the freezing nights have kept that from happening.  So from now on, come evening, my lettuce will be tucked into their beds to keep them from hitting the freezing mark, and then uncovered as soon as the sun touches the edge of the yard each morning.


Sleep tight, little lettuces!