2020 Archives - The Gardening Adventure

December 2020 harvest

December 2020 was much better than last year, every plant produced more and I also had some fruits and vegetables that I didn’t have last year: cocktail grapefruit, tomatoes, persimmon, gragon fruit and radishes.

This month I was most exited about tomatoes, which I usually don’t harvest during the month of December, I harvested 55 tomatoes weighting almost 8 lbs.

Last year 91% of the harvest were fruits, while this year they were 83% of the harvest. That means that the vegetable harvest percentage grew from 9% to 17%, almost doubled. In terms of real weight it looks even better, the total vegetable harvest for the month of December 2019 were 4.29 lbs, while this month they were 20.57lbs, almost 5 times more.

This month was more balanced, none of the plants accounted for more than 50% of the harvest, like previous months.

The most were guava with 43% of the harvest, Grapefruit is second with 13.6 % and in third is Pomelo with 8%.

This month I harvested my biggest cherimoya fruit yet, it weighted 3lbs 1^1/8 oz. Cherimoya fruits are bigger than last year and are ripening earlier in the season, 3 of the 7 cherimoya fruits were over 2.4 lbs.

Garden journal – December 2020 part 2

In the second part of December, I started my warm season plants. I planted seeds of tomatoes, peppers and eggplants.

I also transplanted my 2 globe artichoke plants into 1 gallon pots.

This month was it was guava month, which was the most abundant of all fruits. So it was the perfect time to try guava jam, which came out very flavorful!

Garden journal – December 2020 part 1

My strawberries have multiplied like crazy this year, which is why they didn’t produce as much. Lesson learned: next year I will make sure they won’t be too crowded. This month I finally had time to split my strawberries plants that I had in 1 container. There were probably 60 or 80 plants and I distributed only 12 strawberries between 2 containers. The other ones I gave them to my fellow members of the local backyard growers group.

I created a potting mix from the old potting mix that I used last year, to which I added bark, garden lime and osmocote.

Because I had so many persimmons, I started to look for creative ways to use them. I used them in smoothies in the past, made cookies, delicious persimmon bread and now I decided to make jam from both varieties. The fuyu persimmons jam was very good, but the one from hachiya persimmons was very disappointing. I think a few of the persimmons were not completely ripe and they ruined the entire jam! The consistency was weird and the taste super astringent. Another lesson learned and proof that not only one bad apple, but also one bad persimmon can ruin the bunch.

I’m growing potatoes for the first time. I planted them in the second part of November and now they are stating to sprout. Feeling very excited!

Garden update – December 20 2020

The papaya fruits seem to be taking longer to ripe than summer, but the fruits are definitely bigger than the previous ones.

Vegetables

The purple broccoli plants are very tall but they are not producing heads yet while the green broccoli plants are starting to grow heads, even if they were started later.

This is first time when I try to grow potatoes in pots and they seem to be doing great, hopefully I will have a nice harvest.

The tomatoes are producing fruits just like in spring time, which is awesome! I have more than 60 tomatoes on each of the Better boy tomato plants. I have to keep spraying them with neem oil weekly or every 2 weeks, in order to keep the spider mites numbers down.

The peppers and eggplants are still producing.

Flowers

The transplanted artichokes are looking good and growing nicely.

We are growing monarch butterflies! I moved some baby caterpillars from the milkweed plant to a cage indoors, and I’m feeding them the leaves of my milkweed plant every day. Hopefully they will transform into beautiful butterflies.

Berries

I split the chandler strawberries from one container into 2 containers and I planted 6 strawberries in each one. I shared the remaining strawberry plants with my neighbors.

Trees

Some of the citrus fruits are already ripe. I’m harvesting cocktail grapefruit and satsuma mandarin for now. A few pomelo that my kids “harvested” early while playing in the backyard, are ripening on the counter.

Other fruits that are ready for harvest are Cherimoya and guava. This year I harvested my biggest Cherimoya fruit yet, it weighted over 3lbs. The figs are loosing the leaves, but they have a few fig fruits on them. I expect only some of them to ripen because of the cold weather.

The dragon fruits have 2 more fruits that are almost ready to be harvested.

November 2020 harvest

November 2020 was better than last year, mostly because of the large persimmons harvest. We had almost 2.5 times more persimmons than last year!

Last year 45% of the harvest were vegetables, while this year only 10% were vegetables. I harvested 4 lbs of tomatoes this month and I’m very happy that my experiment worked! The tomatoes that I planted in pots late in the season, extended my tomato harvest season. I also have 2 Better boy tomatoes that I transplanted in March, which survived so far and have a lot of tomatoes on them.

Just like last month, the persimmons accounted for over 50% of the harvest. To be exact, 59% or 83.65 lbs of the harvest for the second month in a row.

The main 3 producers were: persimmons, guava and peppers, which make up 84% of the harvest for November.

Garden journal – November 2020 part 2

My artichoke plant multiplied like crazy, it had a lot of baby plants and I decided to split them. It was hard to figure out exactly how many they were until I split them, I ended up with 10 different plants. I left 2 in the same spot, transplanted 5 in the ground and 3 in pots. Some of them had nice roots, others just a small root or none. I transplanted the ones that didn’t look so good in pots.

I don’t have much space in the garden, so I decided to transplant the artichoke between my mint, they don’t get much sun in that area, but I hope it won’t affect the plants too much.

I planted more radishes in the space were I use to have the eggplants.

I didn’t have enough garlic to fill the entire area when I planted the garlic a month ago, so I got some more garlic and planted it. It’s a different variety than the first one. Both of them were bought from the grocery store, grown in California, but I don’t know the variety.

I also planted mare spinach seeds, since not all the seeds I planted a month ago germinated. This is 3rd round of spinach seeds … fingers crossed!

The squirrels are staring to prepare for winter and are hiding nuts in my garden. They messed up one of my broccoli plants and the arugula 3 times in one week! I had to transplant the broccoli plant 3 times and it’s still alive 🙂

Garden journal – November 2020 part 1

There is not much to do in the garden these days. All the cool season plants are growing nicely and some of them are ready to harvest. We are using a lot of arugula since we have so much growing beautifully.

None of my parsnip seeds planted in the second part of September germinated, so I planted more seeds in the same location.

Walking through the garden I noticed that I didn’t have time to collect the seeds from a dill plant and a parsnip plant. Most of the seeds fell off, so it wasn’t much to collect, but I was able to save a few seeds.

I also planted green globe artichoke seeds to diversify. I currently have purple artichoke plants in the garden.

Below are a few pictures with the current state of the garden. My tomatoes never looked this nice in November. It looks that I will harvest a lot of tomatoes this winter, which is very exciting for my family!

October 2020 harvest

This month I reached 1,000 lbs of harvest for the year!!!

October 2020 was much better than last year. This year’s harvest was 2.5 times more than last year. Total harvest for the October 2020 was 163 lbs.

From the total harvest for the month, only 12.5% were vegetables while last year 53% of the harvest were vegetables.

The persimmons accounted for 69.5% of the entire harvest for the month with 113 lbs.

The main 3 producers were: persimmons, eggplants and pomegranate, which make up for 84% of the harvest.

As it is the case with all the fruits this year, the guavas are starting to ripe a month earlier and I also have a few fruits that I didn’t have last year, like papaya and dragon fruit.

Garden update – November 20 2020

This is the 1 year anniversary of garden update posts, my first garden update post was in November 2019 .

Since then, one of the papaya trees doubled in size and the other one that had the first fruits, but didn’t survive the summer heat. I think that it had too many fruits and could not put that much energy into growing stronger. I removed it a few weeks ago.

Vegetables

The cool season vegetables are growing nicely and are looking much better than the ones from last year. This year I amended the soil and also planted them earlier, which helped a lot.

This month I harvested a few tomatoes also, I think this is the first time I’m harvesting tomatoes in November and the plants are still producing.

The peppers are looking better than during the autumn months, but I don’t have as many as last year. Last year it was my best year for peppers.

Flowers

The milkweed is still blooming. I also split the artichoke plant because I had 10 baby plants growing next to each other. I planted a few of them in the ground between my mint plants and 3 of them I planted in pots.

The last round of dragon fruits is almost ready to harvest.

Berries

I noticed some buds on the blackberry plants for the first time.

Trees

All the citrus trees are changing the color. In contrast with the other fruits trees it seams that the citrus fruits are going to ripe later than previous year.

The persimmons are almost done.

Guava fruits are ready to harvest and cherimoya will be ready soon.

Garden journal – October 2020 part 2

The spider mites invaded about half of my eggplants. I removed most of the leaves and I will wait to see if they will recover this late in the season, usually they have no problems regrowing the leaves and producing fruits during the summer and early autumn months.

Below are a few before and after pictures.

I removed most of the celery plants that were growing between my pepper and eggplants to give them more light now that the days are sorter and the weather gets cooler.

Another project was to remove the leaves that were attached by the spider mites from my potted tomato plants and spray them with neem oil.

I removed the papaya plant which dried out and rotted. I was surprised by the look of the roots and how easily they came out of the ground.

Because this year I had a lot of Fuyu persimmons I dried many of them. I cut the fruits in half, then cut them in slices about 1/4 inch thick and dried them for 12 hours at 135 F degrees. My food dehydrator was very busy this year since it was a very good year for fruit trees.

This month I also planted my garlic between the cauliflower plants.