Tag: Fig

Garden journal – August 2020 part 1

This month I removed 2 of my best producing tomato plants of the season: the red cherry tomato and the 2nd year beefsteak tomato plant. I harvested 779 cherry tomatoes weighting 20.5 lbs and 161 beefsteak tomatoes weighting 46.5 lbs.

We had a few heat waves and I was afraid I will lose the 10 feet tall cherry tomato plant due to the heat, so I ended up watering it too much. I think I accidentally drowned it.

I cut the beefsteak tomato almost all the way down and left just a little bit in case it will decide to give new growth for a 3rd year.

  • Cherry tomato
  • Cherry tomato roots
  • 2nd year beefsteak tomato
  • An unwanted visitor (tomato horn worm)

The seeds from the radish plants that I pulled out in second part of July were ready to be removed from the pods.

  • Dry radish plant
  • Radish seed pods
  • Radish seeds

The dragon fruit started having a lot of flowers recently and I pollinated about 30 flowers in 3 days. This year I started collecting the pollen in a small container and used it to pollinate other flowers. I store it in the freezer between pollination sessions for the next wave of dragon fruit flowers. This technique was suggested by the local gardening group and it improved my success rate immensely. I have been using the same pollination technique for the cherimoya trees for the past few years.

The flowers open only during the night time and stay open just for a few hours. They must be hand pollinated during the night time, between 10 PM and 12 AM.

  • Dragon fruit flowers at night
  • Dragon fruit flowers in the morning

I moved the pots with 2nd generation of cucumbers from the temporary location next to the avocado tree and dragon fruit because they were getting too big.

  • Cucumbers in pots

We were lucky to have a lot fruit from our fig trees this year. I have been drying them using our dehydrator and I also made another round of jam. This time I mixed the figs with small peaches from our tree and this is by far, one of the most amazing jams I’ve made!

  • Fig and peach jam (in progress)

I harvested more peppers (Gogosari) than we could eat and made some pickled peppers, one of my favorites, so we can eat them during the off season. I also saved seeds from the peppers for the next year.

  • Peppers(Gogosari)
  • Peppers cut for pickling
  • Pickled peppers
  • Pepper seeds

Garden journal – July 2020 part 2

In the second part of the month of July I harvested the radish seeds. They were dry and ready to harvest.

This year I had a lot of celery plants that sprouted from last year’s plants seeds everywhere in my garden. I removed around 70% of the plants to make space for the next season plants. I pulled them out with the roots and gave to some neighbors to transplant them in their gardens.

  • Before
  • After
  • Celery with roots

The second year tomato plant was fully infested with spider mites. I removed most of the leaves and I will remove the plant in a week or two. I want to wait for a few of the bigger tomato to be ripe.

  • 2nd year tomato before
  • 2nd year tomato after

The figs started to ripe a few weeks earlier than last year. We dried most of them and also made jam twice. Second time we added some peaches to the fig jam.

  • Fig jam

I don’t have to worry about saving some cucumbers for seeds. Every time a few hide between leaves and I discover them when is already too late to be harvested. I leave them on the vine until they are ready to collect the seeds.

Cucumbers ready to collect the seeds
Cucumbers ready to collect the seeds

Drying figs and herbs

This month I decided to try drying whole figs in the sun for the first time, since my dehydrator doesn’t have enough space for the fruits to be dried whole. I’m not happy with the results, because they started getting bad before they were fully dried, so I don’t think I’ll use this method again. I will continue drying figs cut up in pieces in the dehydrator I did before.

  • Figs drying in the sun
  • Figs 3 days later
  • Figs drying in food dehydrator

The basil and chocolate mint that I had in pots were getting too big and I cut some it so I can dry it. After I washed them, I put them in trays and placed them in a darker place in the house. I also dried some oregano.

  • Basil plant before
  • Basil plant after
  • Chocolate mint
  • Mint
  • Mint 9 days later
  • Oregano
  • Oregano 9 days later
  • Basil
  • Basil 9 days later

Today in the garden Jan 18 2020

Today’s projects were to remove more eggplant and pepper plants, adding manure to the trees and grapevine and transplant seedlings to larger pots.

I decided to leave a few pepper plants for the next year as an experiment This is the first time when I’m trying this with peppers. I tried doing this with tomatoes in the past and unfortunately they had spider mites and powdery mildew, which transferred to my new plants in spring.

Just a few pepper plants left in the ground
Pots drying in the sun after I washed them
I labeled the pots
Potting soil left from last year from Costco

I had to purchase potting mix from Armstrong gardens because my local Costco doesn’t have the potting mix yet as it’s too early in the season .

March 10 update: the mix was not good for the seedlings, they started growing after a few weeks. You can read more about it in the seedlings update post

I filled up the containers with soil and prepared the holes.

Then I transplanted the seedlings.

I filled up 3 large trays with pots.

I added steer manure at the base of my fig trees, mixed it with the soil and then watered thoroughly.