I get powdery mildew every year I garden in San Diego. It hits my tomatoes, cucumbers and zucchini badly. I had used neem oil in the past to try to prevent powdery mildew, but I just found this article today with another prevention method. They suggest using a milk and water spray to prevent powdery mildew. I will be using this method on my zucs and cucs this year. I will try to remember to post results. Read More
For anyone interested in San Diego, there is a Cheese Making 101 class in Spring Valley this Saturday at 10am – 1pm. Here is a link to the class: http://sdsustainable.org/event/cheese-making-101/ I wanted to go to this last year but I was out of town when they held the class. Read More
Spring is here in San Diego and it’s time for me to write the wrap up about my first time growing cool season crops. The picture was taken in mid January. The garden was full of nice green healthy plants. The weather was still pretty ‘cold’ in January (I know, I’m a sissy from MN who can’t tolerate cold weather anymore). The chard did really well as you can see, and the broccoli was very productive. Read More
Since I am so far behind on blogging, I decided to post a few vegetable harvest pictures for you. Here is a picture of the main head of one of the broccoli plants. As you can see, it is bigger than my head! All three of our broccoli plants grew these beasts. I had to go to MN for Christmas and had Kelly take two up to her families for Christmas dinner. I watched this video by Pat Welsh on how to grow great broccoli. She says the key to growing any brassica family plants is to add humic acid. I asked my local nursery if they had any, and I ended up buying some soil conditioner that was 25% humic acid. My broccoli plants have done very well and are much larger than most plants in other peoples plots. Read More
Here is a photo of my garden 2 weeks after my last post. You can see that the swiss chard has been demolished by gophers, as well as the carrots and beets. This is when I started to research gopher trapping. I had to go out and buy to Macabee gopher traps. I asked my Grandpa if he ever had any trouble with gophers and he told me that his mom was quite the avid gopher trapper. He explained to me how to set the traps. It’s pretty simple to do. You have to find a fresh gopher mound, and then use a stake, rod, etc and poke in the ground to find which directions the tunnels run. Once you do that, you dig a whole and set a trap in each direction. Make sure you tie your traps together and then stake them down once they are set. This is to prevent the gopher from running off with your trap if it doesn’t kill it. You should cover the whole with a brick or paver once the traps are set. Then all you have to do is wait… Here is a link that might explain this better, it also has pictures. Read More
These pictures are fours weeks after the last post, so around November 1st. You can see that the flowers at the end are dieing, but everything else looks great. Going around the picture clockwise from the flowers, there is cauliflower, lettuces along the border, and a kale plant in the corner. In the bottom left are carrots, above that near the path is the swiss chard, and to the left are some beets. Read More
About a year ago, I moved one block from the Ocean Beach Community Garden. I called to see if there were any open plots but there were none. I was put on the waiting list and finally received a plot in late September. Read More