September Archives - The Gardening Adventure

September 2020 Harvest

September 2020 was better than September of last year. This month’s harvest was around 38% more than the last year.

The biggest change were the fruits. Pomegranate and persimmons were a few weeks or a month earlier than last year.

As a result the main 3 producers were: pomegranate, persimmons and eggplants, which make up for 72% of the entire harvest for the month.

Also one of the nice surprises of the month were the dragon fruits. They were smaller, but very delicious.

The biggest drop was in the peppers, which were only 12.6% of the last year’s harvest. They fell from #1 place last year to the 8th place this year. One of the reasons being that I have only about half of the number of plants comparing to last year. Another reason is that I planted half of them between the mature onion plants and the soil was depleted of nutrients. Due to this reason, the pepper plants took a long time to grow and develop fruits.

Relocate mature plants Garden journal – September 2020 Part 2

During the second half of September, we had a few days with temperatures in the 80s and I was able to do some work in the garden. I had to relocate mature plants to make space for the cool season plants. I didn’t want to be late with my cool season plants like last year, so I decided to start early.

One of the tomato plants was getting infested again with a lot of spider mites. The spider mites love the heat and low humidity weather that we’ve had lately and they multiplied fast. I removed most of the leaves and sprayed the plant again with neem oil.

The cucumber plants that were in the ground stopped producing fruits for some time. So I decided to remove them to allow more sun to get to the peppers and eggplants.

In order to make space for the cool plants in the garden beds, I removed and relocated a few mature plants. I removed the celery, arugula and strawberry plants from the garden bed where the big tomato plant is. I purchased a new type of garden soil, Amend from Kellogg, and I mixed it into the existing soil. Afterwards, I planted parsnip, carrots, beets, onions and radishes.

Because my seedlings are not ready to be transplanted outside yet, I purchased 6 seedlings of purple broccoli and transplanted them in the same garden bed.

I used the homemade compost in another garden bed. Because it was enough to cover only about 75% of the space, I will use planting mix and manure for the other 25%.

Relocate mature plants

Last year I compromised my cool season plants because I didn’t remove or relocate mature plants and I planted the cool season crop between a few leftover plants from the warm season. Another mistake was that I transplanted seedlings too late in the fall. Hence this year I decided to do it right and start fresh with my garden beds and a little earlier.

Relocate strawberries

As space is always a problem in my garden, I was planing to relocate the strawberry plants in pots. But after I read an article on Greg Alder’s blog in which he had transplanted strawberries next to the fruit trees, I got inspired to do it the same way.

First I prepared the new location next to my apple tree, by removing the layer of wood chips. Afterwards I watered the place a few times to be sure the water gets at least 4″ deep and made holes for the strawberry plants to go in.

Next I removed the plants from the old location and cut all the runners to have only individual plants and placed them in holes in the new location.

Next to the strawberries I had a few arugula plants that needed to be relocated also. I decided to move them into the other bed with homemade compost. I also watered the new location until the water got at least 4″ deep into the soil, and then I relocated the arugula plants.

Relocate parsley

Because I moved my blackberry plants from the 5 gallon pots into bigger ones, I also had to relocate the parsley plants. As a result of that, I moved them next to the arugula plants as the space was already prepared.

Transplanting blackberry

I created the new potting mix needed to transplant the blackberry plants. In order to do that I took the old potting mix from the parsley plants and mixed it with bark, peat moss, perlite, fertilizer and garden lime. The experiment with the potting mix tried during the quarantine wasn’t successful, so now that I could get all the ingredients, I did it by the original recipe.

In the beginning of the month, when we had the record heat wave, I moved the blackberry plants in the shade next to some trees. And surprise, all the tips the touched the soil developed roots. I cut them and placed them in 4″ pots, hopefully I will get more plants by next year.

I decide to transplant the other Blackberry plant directly into the ground, so I can see if it will be a difference between the plants next season.

Blackberry plant transplanted in the ground

Transplanting raspberry

A friend planted a few raspberry plants last year and he harvested a lot of fruits this year. Since my kids love to eat berries, I want to give it a try. The variety that I found is called Willamette.

Next year I should have strawberries, blackberries, blueberries and raspberries if everything goes well. We’re all looking forward to it!

Another project was to fertilize the papaya, dragon fruit and artichoke plants. I finally found some chicken manure at Armstrong gardens.

This month I tried for the first time the air layering of cherimoya and fig trees, hopefully I will have positive results in a month or two.

Garden journal – September 2020 Part 1

This month we had a record breaking heat wave. There were 2 days with 114 F degrees and unfortunately a lot of smoke from the worst fires California has ever seen. The time in the garden has been limited because it was difficult to be outside, and breathe.

In preparation for the heat wave, I built a wall from a tarp to protect the young avocado tree, planted just this spring, and some neighboring fruit trees and plants. Luckily most of the summer vegetables were mature enough or almost done producing, so I wasn’t as worried as with the previous heat waves.

Tarp wall to protect cucumbers and trees

The spider mites attacked to my 2nd generation tomato plants, so I had to remove some infested leaves and treat the plants with neem oil.

I had a few tomatoes that weren’t too pretty and were getting wrinkled, so I blended them and froze them flat in ziploc bags. They will come in handy this winter when we’ll make sups, stews, sauces etc.

Another project was to amend the peppers and eggplant garden bed and since I couldn’t find any manure, I used Osmocote fertilizer and a layer of planting mix on top. I never thought that there can be a shortage of manure 🙂 More proof that we live in unprecedented times.

I also removed most of the first generation of tomato plants because they were not producing anymore. They did a good job keeping shade for the other plants during the hottest heat wave of the year. It was time for them to go and make space for the cool season vegetables.

Garden update – September 22 2020

The heat wave that we had in the beginning of the month, affected a few of the papaya fruits, as it can be seen in the left picture.

The volunteer papaya plant is growing and the squash has one fruit on the vine. I still didn’t move the tomato plant in this space yet.

Vegetables

The spider mites invaded all my tomato plants, even the ones that I kept separate from the garden. I had to trim a lot of leaves and treat the plants with neem oil.

I removed almost all the tomatoes from the first generation and now I have only three left: two Better boys and one Cherokee purple.

The cucumbers from the pots are doing much better than before. They are finally producing a few large Chinese cucumbers.

Flowers

A few dragon fruits are ready to harvest and the plants are getting more buds and flowers at different stages.

The Asian pear is flowering again and the artichoke plants have new growth. Hopefully it’s not too late for a second crop of artichoke for this year.

Trees

After many tries, I finally had my first successful graft!!! I did it with a bud from my cocktail grapefruit tree, and the result can be seen below.

This is the first time that all my fig trees have fruits on them. Some of them are finishing producing, others are just starting to fruit, including one of them for the first time ever.

We started to harvest a few persimmons after we noticed that they were being attacked. I decided that if they are good enough for the squirrels, they must be good enough for us :).

Another battle with the squirrels is for the pomegranate. This year is the best harvest that we have ever had for pomegranate.

This year is so far the best one ever for the majority of our fruit trees. They are doing very well and the branches are on the verge of collapsing because of so many fruits.