This is absolutely perfect growing weather- mid 50’sF at night and high 70’sF during the day. Some clouds but definite afternoon sun. Overall, the whole place still looks green and beautiful (after Dave mowed almost the entire property!). The raised bins are on the southwest side of the house and get a lot of sun. Plus, Matt put in in drip lines for water and the soil stays nice and moist. Once the plants are bigger, we will put a straw mulch and they are good to go! There is a reason the Central California Valley is prime ag land!
The plan is that we will put in 6 raised beds- but due to the $#&**%#@! delays in getting the ADU permits, we decided to just put up 3 along the driveway where access to water was good. That is 96 square feet of raised beds for my annual summer garden plants. It is a lot but this is the experimental year to see if I can actually grow some of our food and what everyone really likes. For example, I’m tempted to put in more carrots- all of us like them. We have a lot of squash ( varieties and number of plants!) though and they’ll be eating all that. No squash for this princess! And a fair amount of tomatoes (again not eaten by me but…they like them) from beefsteak to green stripe to chocolate cherry tomatoes. It will be fun. I love seeing these things as they grow even if I don’t eat them!
The orchard is also going to town right now. There are a fair amount of bees but I haven’t really seen any near my bee tubes. The citrus and apples continue to flower. Plums and apricots are set and I have already had to thin them! I took over 50 apricots off the tree and there are so many more! Hopefully we will get better and bigger apricots than we saw last year when we were viewing the property. I have fed all the fruit trees in the orchard and now am “reweeding” each one and putting down straw as a mulch. Should have done that from the beginning! The crows really appreciated me putting out straw for their nests too. Straw everywhere!
The permanent garden is getting organized and ready for planting and trellis making. We got our 3 prolific kiwi plants which make a grape sized fruit. We also have 3.2 blackberry bushes- one lost its water drip line right when it got hot last week and is rehabbing at home. Maybe. We also have 3 raspberry bushes and 1 boysenberry vine. We planted 2 artichokes also. All we are waiting for are the 2 huckleberry bushes from Territorial Seeds! And maybe strawberries if Matt can get the watering system for them.
The other things going like crazy are some of the perennial flowers. The roses and snapdragons are blooming. Carnations too.
So all in all spring has definitely sprung and summer is coming along quickly. It is so fun to be all around these growing plants!