See Week 4 here



Stories from someone who is learning to grow
See Week 4 here
Yesterday, I decided to harvest the first pea pod off of the pea plants. I only have two pea plants growing, and there are a grand total of 4 pea pods on them.
Do you remember the aphids I had on my mustard greens and kale?
I tried removing the most affected leaves and then spraying them with EndAll. It seemed to help in the short term, but I didn’t repeat the application of EndAll, and the aphids came back in full force.
A week or so after spraying the aphids, though, I happened to be listening to an organic gardening podcast (I won’t say which one), and they were talking about aphids. They said that we shouldn’t be spraying aphids (with organic chemicals or otherwise); aphids are part of the food chain, and if you leave the aphids be, they will attract aphid predators (birds and other bugs), which will take care of the aphids for you and contribute to a more diverse ecosystem.
Okay, great!
I left the aphids be…..
….several weeks later….
….the aphids were still just as vicious and my mustard greens and kale were looking a bit sad.
But I persisted…I didn’t spray or do anything to remove the aphids. Those aphid predators were supposed to arrive any day now, right?
I finally threw in the towel last weekend. The mustard greens were skeletons of what they once were, and there were still aphids.
The aphids weren’t as abundant as they were a few weeks back, but they had decimated most of the mustard greens anyway, so they probably moved on to greener pastures.
The raised garden beds in Portland, which were there when we bought the house, are planted fairly close to a black walnut tree.
That sounds nice…… but, the issue is juglone.
Continue reading “Can I Grow Vegetables Near a Black Walnut Tree?”See Week 3 here
This is a half-hearted update on the Palo Alto garden.
I’m leaving in a little over a month, so I really haven’t done anything to this garden. I’m slacking on watering too. But nevertheless, things are still growing….
Tomorrow I will have a (hopefully) more exciting update on the Portland garden.
I’ve been seeing a lot of this flower around lately, so it’s finally time to put a name to a face.
When I was in Portland way back in February, my croton houseplant was looking pretty sad.
Many of it’s leaves had dropped, and I didn’t think it had much time left in it. I wondered….is it not getting enough water? Too little sunlight?? No amount of water seemed to help, and I can’t do much about the sun in Portland in the winter.
Continue reading “Tovah Martin on Crotons”