Hello VEGheads,
February is here, love is in the air, Spring is around the corner! February is where it's at. Seeds planting indoors, according to the ground hog, Spring will be early this year. In Zone 9, our last frost date is expected to be February 15th so toward the end of this month we will be transplanting and sowing seeds outside. I do love this month. So much new life happening.
Sowing: This month is HUGE for planting. I will be planting pretty much everything that I want to grow in my garden. My classics that will definitely be going in are Zucchini, Tomatoes, Carrots, Lettuce, Spinach, Dill, Basil. Some seeds I'll be trying are watermelon, cucumbers, eggplants and green beans. Cucumbers and Green beans have shown unfruitful for me in the past so fingers crossed we will be able to get something growing. Another pretty new thing to me is flowers, I'm not a huge fan of flowers, but I think some flowers in the cylinder blocks around my garden would look appealing and bring more pollinators.
Read more about my seed collection and how I organize it here.
Growing:
Newest Addition! Lisbon Lemon tree that my mother picked up for mine and my husband's 5th year anniversary. The variety she picked as an homage of my recent trip out of the states to Lisbon, Portugal. I'm excited because upon research this variety is one that will produce many crops throughout the year. The main crop being in Spring. They grow to be a large tree, but we will be dwarfing it by planting it into a container like our other trees.
Carrots: Little finger carrots planted around our pomegranate tree we planted in September 8th, 2018. We continue to check on them. They are STILL not ready. I have been mentioning how they should be ready to harvest since November's What's Growing On post. I'm very much impatiently awaiting their peak. I believe at this point we are waiting for warmer weather for the roots to swell. In due time, they will be ready.
Nasturtiums: The vine is growing like crazy. I've mentioned before that this is my most successful Nasturtium so I was unaware how vigorous it got. I was also shocked when I saw the vines rooting into the soil. You will see the Nasturtium in many of the photos because it is attempting to overtake the whole bed.
Strawberries: They have yet to go dormant and are still sadly trying to produce with flowers that blacked from cold damage. I try to clip buds off when I see them. I'm tossing back and forth the idea of removing the mulch. I've been seeing many little black gnats and weeds are still popping up through the mulching.
Herb bed: The herbs have seen better days, The chives and cilantro are the real stars in the barrel. The chives have very healthy new growth. The cilantro is a cold weather annual and is thriving.
Garlic: The roots should be well set by now. They look very good. The mounds they were originally planted on have diminished quite a bit.
Carrots: Giant Market, Amethyst, and Nantes the green tops look far better than the Little Fingers and were probably about a month later in planting. The fun thing about roots is that I have no idea if the carrots themselves are doing better than the Little Fingers. There are larger carrot varieties though so that may be the reason. Other than that I believe the soil in my garden bed is more nutrient dense than that of the container.
Unknown pepper: There was some frost damage to this plant last month despite my efforts of trying to make sure that it was protected. It looks like it will be pulling through. This month I will be treating it will some Soil Diva Plant Stimulant that was generously sent to me from the company.
Leeks: Still just little sprouts and I'll be honest. I'm not sure they are going to make it. I will likely be pulling them out before they become anything. Maybe I will transplant, but I believe they are a cool weather crop and wont be fond of California's heat. This is my first year growing them so, I probably will take the if it grows it grows route.
AeroGarden: I'm enjoying this so much. I've had it for 1 month now and have started harvesting Dill. It regrows so fast. I've got to start cooking with it or I will just need to start drying it. I'm pretty sure that I got a dud Basil. I've grown Basil before traditionally and it actually grew faster than the Dill did. Parsley looks like its doing well.
Montressat Tomatoes: I'm way too excited about these. I thought I killed them in the freeze, because I sowed them outside and 4-5 days before we got a hard freeze. Now I have them inside next to my AeroGarden to get the light off of it. These are the only tomatoes that I'll be growing for a little bit because 1: My mother is growing Romas for sauce making and 2: I want to save the seeds for this rare heirloom.
Harvesting*:
Buttercrunch Lettuce: Our lettuce is doing great we've harvest some for sandwiches and salads. This is a heading kind of lettuce, but I always prefer leafy lettuce and this variety can be harvested either way which is nice.
Chives: I've been harvesting chives here and there to cook with, most recently I combined this and the dill to make egg salad sandwiches.
Dill: The dill from my AeroGarden as previously mentioned is producing prolifically.
Peas: My peas have done far greater this year than previous years, plus I have 5x more plants than I've planted in the past. I have tons of flowers and the flowers quickly turn into pods. I have yet to harvest any, but will be searching out to see if I have any pods this month. My goal with my peas is to can some or at the very least freeze some to make my own stir fry mix.
Spinach: We have been harvesting some spinach here and there for omelets and salads, but with the crazy peas and nasturtium, they haven't been getting much sun.
Broccoli: I almost forgot about this guy. I had started cauliflower, cabbage and broccoli and they stayed in little transplant containers (I still have 4 in the container) because I ran out of room. I had planned on getting more soil to make a container for them, but it never happened. I pulled out my bean plant that wasn't doing to well and transplanted on of the brassicas, but I wasn't even sure what plant it was until I went out today and saw. It's definitely a broccoli. Look like he's happy right where he's at too.
Preparing:
I will be prepping a second bed. I mentioned this in my last What's Growing On? It just hasn't happened yet. I'm planning on making a 4x4 garden bed and turning it into a Spring Salad garden. Later in the year it is where I would like to plant corn.
Our compost is just about done, we're really just waiting on some warmer weather to finish it up and then we'll be topping off our fruit tree containers.
Working on getting a hold of a couple more wine barrels so that I can transplant my citrus trees and my friends that I picked up for her for Christmas.
*Some of the link above are affiliate links, meaning, at no cost to you, I will earn a commission if you click through and make a purchase.
*The exterior of the overhang above the upstairs apartment which hangs over our backyard was just hanging. Maintenance came in an it looks like just forced it to drop. It threw rubble in every container and fell directly onto our peas. I'm only seeing the evidence of this, we were not home when all this took place. Because our building was built 1968. I did some reading about the asbestos contaminates seeping into crop plants and the soil making them toxic. This is obviously, a large concern for my husband and me. We've collected some of the samples and will be sending them out to have them sampled, just to make sure that there is nothing that could contaminate our garden. Until we get results back, we will not be harvesting anything from our garden.
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