Pollinated spaghetti squash!

There are at least three babies growing 🙂 I hand pollinated them early in the morning earlier this week. I hope they make it! Considering I hav 6 plants, hopefully I can have at least 6 squashes… 

  

  

  

  

  

  

  

 

 

Colourful Swiss chard.

Two days of Swiss chard from two containers.

2013 New pink lemonade blueberry – Winter greens and flowering fruit in containers – kale, Swiss Chard, flowering peach and pink blueberries

Peach is not flowering so much this year. Hopefully I will get some bigger peaches as there’s fewer flowers.
Swiss chard is so colorful! I grew these along with the kale from seed.

My blueberries are flowering too. I feel like everything flowered a month early this year.

The lighter coloured leaved blueberry is a new Pink lemonade blueberry. So curious to see how these will taste.

Last years plants that survived mild San Diego winter.

The rainbow peppers and cherry peppers are coming on three years old! But they don’t look as healthy as the second year plants. Some of these eggplants I only just noticed as I was snapping 🙂

2 year old Container Asparagus

These asparagus are almost big enough to eat! Getting a few popping up but going to let it fern out for one more year, then next year I will start harvesting! There are about five crowns in this pot. It started with six but one wasn’t doing too well last year so I pulled it out, instead of throwing it away, I planted it in with my blackberries. It seems ok in there… Gets a few stalks a season which I let fern out too.

Here is the original pot with five 2 year old crowns.

If you look closely, there is a purplish asparagus head poking out slight left and up of the center of the pic 🙂

I put some fresh potting mix on top. Maybe about and inch. I have no idea what is happening below the dirt, I haven’t repotted in over a year. I don’t think pots come any bigger than this! I wish I had few crowns in there as I am afraid they are strangling each other down there. I have kind of left the pot in the back of everything else so it can just hang out and see what happens. I have done very little maintenance besides removing the ferns when they turn brown.

These pics were from the end of the season 2011. I cut ferns off as they turn brown/yellow. It also had a bad infestation of blackish aphids late summer 2011. When the fern gets long and dangles over the side, a lot of stuff happens underneath that I don’t see and when I finally see it, it’s so severe that I end up cutting the infested stalks off and spraying like crazy with neem and oil spray. I also sometimes find snails inside the thick fern forest. This year I will try to be more diligent with those. Aphids get really bad at certain points of the year esp. if I don’t keep up the spraying. I am still learning and spotting seasonal patterns – all this will hopefully make me a more successful gardener!

Container Asparagus loves the Sun

My potted asparagus thriving in the sun.

 

I had to move my asparagus from my apartment door step to somewhere sunny as during the summer, I do not get much sun right outside my west facing door, which is good for keeping the apartment cool, but not so good for the plants.

So this giant pot is hiding in the landscaping downstairs… I doubt anyone would try to take it as to be honest… The crazy asparagus fern hair isn’t that attractive.

It seems to enjoying the extra sunshine hours. I wish I got some pix of the new spears coming out before they ferned out to show just how close to edible size they are! I’m sure next year I will be harvesting my own edible spears. Exciting!

My potted asparagus thriving in the sun. New spears ferning out

 

My potted asparagus thriving in the sun. New spears ferning out

 

Blanching Cauliflower

I was wondering when to harvest my cauliflower as the little heads are getting bigger – about 2-3 inches across. After a bit of googling, I found out I was supposed to blanch them when they reached 2-3 inches across – How convenient!  Then to harvest a week or two after blanching.

So here are my blanching cauliflowers. Not sure if I’m doing the right thing so any advise would be gladly received! Just post a comment 🙂

This is my first time growing cauliflower. I was pleasantly surprised to see that the plants are producing heads yet are still quite small compared to the Romanesco Broccoli which is supposedly is actually a cauliflower and not a broccoli. The whole plant is about a foot and half across.

Blanching Cauliflower. I used sewing thread and tied up the inner leaves that would cover the little head inside

Here is a pic of the one of the ones growing in pots.

Container Cauliflower

The plant is not as big and there isn’t a head developing yet. All these plant are the same age but there some other stuff sharing the pot with the cauliflower. I have a habit of buying more stuff than I have space for so it ends up like this. I wish I had a giant garden!