January Archives - The Gardening Adventure

January 2021 harvest

The harvest in January 2021 was 70% better than the last year’s one.

The most exciting thing this month were the tomatoes again. I’m very close to my dream of harvesting tomatoes all year round. In the past 12 months, the only month without tomato harvest was April. January was the 4th best month for tomato harvest after June, July and August and only by 20g better than September.

This year 80% of the harvest were fruits, similar with last year when they were 82% of the total harvest. 22 % of fruit harvest were the cocktail grapefruit, which is one of the fruits that I didn’t harvest last year.

The most were Pomelo with 27% while second and third were guava and cocktail grapefruit each with 17.6%. This is the closest i had for top 3 monthly harvest.

Garden update – January 19 2021

Papaya is very busy setting flowers and fruits, it’s a full time job :). The fruits are taking longer to ripe because it’s winter, but I’m waiting patiently as these will be the biggest ones yet.

Vegetables

Purple sprouting broccoli is still growing, but no flowers yet. I already harvested some of the green broccoli, they seem to be ready much faster than the purple variety. The cauliflower grows very slowly under the purple broccoli shade.

Potato plants are doing great above the surface, hopefully they will have a lot of potatoes in the ground.

The tomatoes are still producing a lot of fruits and I’m also harvesting a lot. I didn’t harvest that many tomatoes since the summer months!

The tomatoes from the pots are done producing and look very bad. I will only keep them for a few more weeks, just to wait for a few tomatoes to ripen.

At the beginning of the month, I removed all my eggplants and planted more radishes and spinach in their place.

The peppers are almost done and I will probably harvest all of them and remove the plants by the end of the month.

Flowers

The artichokes are looking better every day, it seems that all of them have transplanted successfully.

Berries

I have a few very exciting additions to the garden!!! A few days ago I received raspberry and blackberry plants from a friend. I also received a mature raspberry plant in a 15 gallon pot that I split into 2 pots of 27 gallon each.

I also noticed 2 strawberries, this hot weather is giving us some berries off season.

The blueberries are already blooming, which is very exciting, but I think it’s too soon.

Trees

This month I’m harvesting the last cocktail grapefruits and guava. I’m also harvesting pomelo, mandarins, lemons, cherimoya and guava.

I still have a lonely dragon fruit that is ripening very slowly. I will probably harvest it in a few days and see if it’s ready.

Today in the garden Jan 25 2020

Today I made more space in the garden to plant more radishes, lettuce and for the 4th time spinach. These are my last seeds and this time I decided to soak them in water before planting. Hopefully the seeds will germinate this time around.

I decided to remove the existing parsley, parsnip and carrot plants from the garden bed.

After removing all the weeds, I added some composted steer manure to the soil.

I planted radish, lettuce and spinach seeds in the new rows.

I also planted a row of kale and lettuce in a different spot.

January 2020 harvest

First time when I have peppers in January

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

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.

Today in the garden Jan 11 2020

Today’s project was to make some space in my garden and use most of my compost, as the bin was overfilled and was starting to tilt. I decided to finally pull out some of my pepper plants and prepare the soil to feed my future pepper and eggplants during the summer. I also planted more radishes and lettuce seeds.

I temporarily transferred the top half of the compost bin to a different container. I used only the bottom half, which was ready to be mixed with the soil. After I used it all up, I transferred back the compost from the container to the bin. It usually takes about 6 months to have good compost.

This is one of the 2 garden beds where I decided to put my compost. This bed is about 4′ x 8′.

I removed the old plants.

I dug up 8-10″ of soil from one half.

I filled up the hole with the compost.

I covered the compost with the soil and did the same thing with the second half.

I replanted the garlic on the side and prepared new rows.

I planted lettuce and 2 types of radish seeds.

I did the same thing with the compost in a portion of the second garden bed: removed 10″ of soil, put the compost in the hole and then covered it back with soil.

I planted more radish seeds in the newly prepared soil.