Back home!

I was out of town for 3 weeks so not too much was going on in the garden. Juna helped care for the garden in my absence--watering, weeding, adding soil, harvesting.

Had a good day today. Rodney fed all the fruit trees in front with Fish Emulsion and iron. Then he pruned one of the overgrown lavender plants. Still need to prune the other lavender and two rosemary plants. He also pulled out two bougainvillea plants on the hillside. I am going to use that area for fruit trees. I will probably transplant the plum and lemon trees on the south side of the house.

Two new gardeners today--Dasha and Rubie. They helped Juna clean up the whole hillside of pine needles, pine cones, roots, etc. Then we worked on the main two gardens. I pulled up all the stakes and thread marking the rows. Pulled out all the radishes and broccoli that never quite matured. Harvested spinach, Batavian endive, Royal Oak leaf lettuce, peas, green onions, kale, mint and rosemary.

It was a warm and wonderful day! Will start planting the seeds for the garden in the next few days.

Saturday. Wasn't planning on working in the garden, but Rodney came over to work, so we worked. Used up the last 4 bags of topsoil, covering the potatoes and adding soil to the wisteria and raspberry. boy, those bags of soil go fast. Looking forward to ordering those 4 - 6 cubic yards of soil in April. I bet they get used up a lot faster than I'm imagining. And that's A LOT OF SOIL!

Worked in the garden today, but there wasn't too much to do. It was a beautiful day, sunny and close to 80 degrees. Gotta love that Southern California weather. Rodney poured a 2 sq ft bag of topsoil on the potatoes. I will have to buy 6 - 10 more bags tomorrow. Probably 10. Have to cover those potatoes. Spread one bag of topsoil among the four wisteria plants. I think I am going to have quite a few blossoms this year.

It's supposed to rain Sunday night or Monday. Haven't turned the automatic sprinklers back on yet.

It wasn't sunny today, but it was a great day for gardening. I started out by adding soil around a potato plant whose potatoes were appearing on the vines above the earth. Then I cut out a large portion of mint that has been crawling from its corner in the raised bed, in an attempt to take over that part of the garden. Mint is wonderful, but very much like a weed in that it's insidious, and creeps all over with its vines and roots. I want to keep it in the corner.

Juna came today and so did two new gardeners I met through Home Grown Culver City: Barbara and Romaine. How appropriate for Romaine to be gardening.

We turned the soil in all the gardens and around the trees where the vetch was pulled up and dug in from last week. Then we watered all the areas well. I dug up the earth around the strawberries on the hill. The ground is still very clay like. It's supposed to rain tonight. That will be good for helping the vetch to further decompose.

We added soil around the three areas containing potatoes, and added another bag to the area I had already worked on. We are going to have a heck of a lot of potatoes this year.