December 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.

Today in the garden Dec 28 2019

Today I planted lettuce, radish and spinach seeds in the garden and I also planted tomato seeds inside.

It’s the third time this year when I plant spinach and none of the seeds germinated, hopefully they will this time. I planted the spinach in rows between my broccoli and cauliflower plants.

Spinach seeds in rows next to cauliflower and broccoli

I planted lettuce seeds in a few rows next to the older lettuce plants. I plan to transplant them when I will make more space in the garden.

I also planted more radishes, but I feel that they are growing very slowly this year comparing with previous years. I planted some seeds almost 2 months ago and they are not big enough yet. I’m going to plant seeds every 2-3 weeks to have a continuous supply of them until the weather will be too hot for them to grow. Radishes are among our most favorite vegetables during the winter season.

New rows of radish seeds planted on December 7

I planted a second round of radish seeds between the rows from November 18.

I also planted my tomato seeds inside. I chose 8 varieties: Cherokee purple, Glacier, Cherry red, Cherry black, Brandywine yellow (they were my favorite this year), Brandywine red, Better boy and a small oval yellow one (last year I got some tomatoes from a friend and saved the seeds, but I don’t know what kind it is).

This year I will try to limit my tomato plants to under 20. I’m planing on keeping 2 plants from each variety, so I can have a backup, just in case something happens with one of them. I will most likely not resist buying other new varieties from Costco or Armstrong gardens. But even if I buy 4 more kinds, I will still be at 20 plants max.

Another project for today was to multiply my very young blackberry plant that I received at one of this year’s local gardeners food swap (I don’t know the variety). I saw a video on youtube that was explaining how blackberry propagates and they said that when the tip of the plant touches the soil it will grow root. I took the tip of the plant and I inserted it inside a cup filled with potting mix. I will check back in 1 month to see if it has grown roots.

The red cup with the tip of the blackberry

Today in the garden Dec 20 2019

Today I built a structure around my papaya plant to be able to cover it with plastic foil at night when the temperature will get close to freezing.

I also removed the late planted pumpkin (the experiment has failed, I had probably 2 pumpkins that didn’t grow over 1″ in diameter and fell off). I decided to plant some radishes in its place.

I removed the top 10″ of the soil, I put two 5 gallons buckets of compost in the hole and covered it with the soil. The compost will help feed the tomato that I will plant in the spring in that spot.

Failed pumpkin experiment (the plant got infected with powdery mildew)

I covered the seeds with soil and watered them

Today I also planted more parsnip seeds. I think it’s the 3rd time planting in the same place, because only a few seeds germinated.

Today in the garden Dec 7 2019

Today I took advantage of the fact that the soil was wet and I planted more seeds where I had some available space in the garden.

Here I planted red cherry radishes next to the ones planted a month ago. I like to stagger them so I have a continuous harvest.

I found a spot in the garden with eggplant and pepper plants that didn’t have any fruits on them, so I removed them to make space for radishes. I also pulled out the onion and the weeds and prepared the soil for planting.

I added some compost from my compost bin and mixed it into the soil.

The third project of the day was to plant some beets.
I had a beet plant left in the garden from the last season to flower and attract pollinators and around 2 months ago I picked up the seeds and put them in a bucket (I wasn’t sure what I was going to do with them). After moving the bucket around a few times, I forgot about it and today I noticed that it was not covered and the seeds got wet from the rain, so I had to do something with them.

I also noticed that in one of my broccoli containers, a beet plant had popped out. I researched if beets and broccoli grow well together and after the confirmation, I decided to experiment and planted the beet seeds in the same container with the broccoli and cauliflower.

Soaked beet seeds, just ready to be planted

Prepared the holes and planted the seeds .

The last project of the day was to plant the pepper seeds for the next season.

I like to use the organic potting soil from Costco as my seed starting mix, but they only sell it during spring and summer time. Last year I didn’t have any potting mix left to plant my seeds, so I used a different seed starting mix. I still have some left from last year, so I will do an experiment in a container with 6 squares.

I had enough seed starting mix to fill 2 squares and I used Costco potting mix in the other 4 squares. I planted the same type of bell pepper seeds in all of them and I want to see if there will be any difference between the plants.