The Jones Garden Blog

So When Do I Eat This Thing?

Posted on March 25, 2014 by JonesGardenBlog

Okay, my experienced artichoke growers. I have a couple of questions for you. First of all, I was VERY excited to have not only my first choke growing, but at least four more right behind it. Wahoo!

Now, when are they ready to eat? It doesn’t look that big yet and it is still a little purple on the bottom. Am I looking at the right things here?

If I let it go and don’t eat it, but instead let it blossom out, will it stop producing?

Any wisdom on this one would be greatly appreciated.

BTW, this is the variety that I am growing.

Posted in artichoke | 8 Comments

Bed 4 Spring Turn Over

Posted on March 24, 2014 by JonesGardenBlog

It was a productive weekend, although the social calendar cut my Bed 4 turn over short and I didn’t get it replanted. It was all for a good cause and we got to spend some time with some great friends.

The is the “before” picture.

I started by pulling some of the carrots, then decided that I was being selfish having all of the fun myself, so I recruited a couple of my sons to come help. Carrots came out, washed them, cut off the tops and fed them to the chickens, who by the way, thought last Saturday was Thanksgiving with all of the food that was being thrown their way.

Post carrot harvest:

Then the salad, most of which had bolted, or was in the process of bolting. A simple taste test showed that they had all passed from sweet to bitter. The chickens didn’t mind a bit.

Then the EPS broccoli juniors came out. These were all of the baby cousins to the massive EPS that came out earlier. The chickens said, “thank you.”

After that a quick clean up of the weeds, amending, and everything was looking pretty good.

I placed the ollas and began digging them in.

When all was said and done it looked very similar to bed 3, which of course was the plan. I love it when a plan comes together. 🙂

Like I said, I still need to finish planting it out, which is actually the fun part. Then the rebar, the trellises, fill up the ollas, and bada bing… all done. That should happen tonight.

I was able to catch a couple of decent snaps of one of the many bees buzzing around my bolted dino kale. Not bad considering it was all taken with my phone.

Posted in Arizona Garden, carrots, early purple sprouting broccoli, ollas, spring garden | 6 Comments

This Weekend… Bed 4 Gets a Makeover

Posted on March 21, 2014 by JonesGardenBlog

It’s a great time of year to be out in the garden. Granted it was a beautiful non-winter, second fall, whatever you want to call it, but the weather right now… is perfect. Mid 50s at night, peaking in the mid 80s during the day. It just couldn’t get better!

I’ve started cleaning out bed 4, it is the next bed to get turned over and converted to the ollas. That means the remnants of the EPS, carrots, and some bolting bib lettuce all need to come out. The giant EPS has been getting stripped of its leaves all week as I’ve been feeding them in bunches to my hungry chickens. The giant stalk came out this morning. Check out the root ball on this thing!

Carrots have been coming out in small batches, but there needs to be a big batch this weekend. I pulled a few this morning and realized there is a lot of work to do here. It’s a good thing, we use the carrots for chicken stock, soup, and just munching with some homemade ranch. So good. I planted 12 square feet of them this year. I’m planning an increase next year up to 16 square feet. Love the carrots.

The last thing in the bed is some beautiful bib lettuce that has mostly bolted and has gotten bitter. The chickens don’t seem to mind much. They munch away on it all the same. They’ve been getting A LOT of greens lately. That’s the great thing about the garden, nothing really goes to waste. We either eat it straight away or we eat it in egg form. J Of course the manure from the chickens goes into the compost and makes it SO RICH. Great stuff!

Are you going to get out and get your hands dirty this weekend?

Posted in carrots, Chickens, early purple sprouting broccoli, ollas | 9 Comments

The Last of the Peppers

Posted on March 19, 2014 by JonesGardenBlog

The last of the peppers seedlings (if you can call them that), have been potted up into one gallon pots and put out to start the hardening off process. I have a small half wall in my front yard that is shaded most of the day. This is a great spot to start the process. After they have been there for a couple of days I put them in a mostly sunny spot in the backyard. This completes the process and they can go wherever I need them. It’s fairly hassle free.

I transplanted the final 16 tonight. That doesn’t sound like a lot until you are mixing up batches of potting soil and moving plants one at a time. Of course no transplanting is complete until the label is made and in the pot. I’ve been bad about this in the past and have ended up frustrated. As I move the plants into the ground the label goes next to them and I have been updating the spreadsheet that contains my garden layout. Redundant documentation. Sounds better. Here’s one.

Yah, that’s a one gallon pot so… obviously I waited a little past what would normally be considered an “appropriate” time. Like I said before, so far… it hasn’t been an issue.

I also transplanted one of the cherry tomato plants to a five gallon pot with a small cage. I haven’t tried this before, but I am just not going to have room in the garden for everything. Besides, I can stash the spots under the trees where they will get partial sun, which they seem to be fond of in AZ. Man, that was a lot of potting soil though!

One of my compost bins is topped off and cooking now. I love the look of it. It’s going to be great! It always cracks me up when I turn it in the mornings and you can see the heat pouring off of it.

Lot’s to do. I hope to get bed 4 converted over to the Spring garden this weekend. It will be a cookie cutter of bed three, except with different varieties of tomatoes, peppers, cucumbers, and melons.

Good times and you really can’t beat the weather right now. At this rate though I probably will not have my corn planted until May. That gives me more than a month to get everything else planted and the corn bed properly prepared. I will not suffer the defeat of last year. There will be CORN!

Posted in compost, corn, peppers, spring garden, tomatoes | 5 Comments

Bed 3 Almost Made and Grandma Comes to the Garden

Posted on March 17, 2014 by JonesGardenBlog

It was a busy weekend. Busy, but good.

I pulled out the already flowering remnants of the last couple of broccoli plants (the good broccoli, not the EPS), transplanted two cilantro and one dill plant into pots, and weeded bed three. Then amended with some well composted manure and some home grown compost. Good stuff.

Then came the ollas. I’m not a video editing guy any more than I’m a picture editing guy, so… here is the first video.

I got the ollas in the ground. So… video 2.

I did get all of the peppers planted. Half of the tomatoes planted. The rebar for the trellis hammered in, and the poles for the trellises cut.

In the midst of all of this my Grandma from Kentucky came into town for a quick visit. When I was a kid she had a MASSIVE garden that grew a plethora of veggies year round (southern California at the time… very nice). My garden is a little pathetic compared to hers and it’s in the awkward in between seasons phase, so it wasn’t looking its best, but she was still very encouraging. You gotta love a gardening grandma!

In all… good weekend. It felt like I got a lot done, but still a ton to do. Feels good to finally get some of these ollas and seedlings in the ground!

Here’s a few pictures.

This is just an example for you inexperienced (ahem) picture takers out there. This is what NOT to do, taking a picture towards the sunrise with no filter or anything. It makes for a bad picture. Don’t do that.

This is a little better.

And a few updates from other things in the garden.

Like the sunchokes which are loving their containers.

This is what happens when you occasionally plant random things and forget about them. Hello little pansy!

And finally, the one I’ve been waiting for… for a year and a half now! From the depths of the most giant plant I have ever grown comes…. the first artichoke!!!! Yeah!!! and there was much rejoicing.