The lettuce has matured and I'm harvesting whole plants now instead of picking off outer leaves for salads. I have to say that this Kalura lettuce is the best I've ever grown, and I've grown many different varieties of lettuce. It resists heat very well, doesn't get tipburn, and tastes really good. I grew the plants in my 34 cm pots using my regular potting soil mixed with compost and rock powder.
They're also the biggest lettuce plants I've ever grown, that's a measuring stick graduated in inches. I had a time rolling it up in plastic wrap and fitting it into the veggie bin in the fridge.
The mustard greens got too old to eat without digestive problems, so I replaced them all with carrot plants. I have high hopes for a good crop of carrots this year, I let each plant grow as large as possible to maximize yield...only one plant in each 34 cm container. I just use them in soups, though I do like shaved carrots with oil and vinegar. Trouble is, the sugar bothers my teeth. So I quit eating them that way. Did you know that the average modern carrot has as high a sugar content as ripe strawberries? Onions are now very sweet as well, though they didn't use to be. Southern varieties of onion are especially high in sugar. I'm convinced that the last batch of onions I bought in Walmart are at least as sweet as fruit.
Which brings me to my next topic...growing onions. I'm growing mostly White Spear this year, a type of bunching onion which doesn't form bulbs. I use the tops as well as the bottom part. The green part is a little chewy sometimes, but it's great in a stir fry. And very important...the root knot doesn't affect them at all. I'm also growing some Broad London leeks for soups.
Air quality has been challenging for me, last night the air was incredibly bad. It smelled like a mixture of burning vegetation, wood smoke, and some kind of pungent and very irritating chemical. Just one breath gave me cough, chest pain, and burning in my nostrils. On a scale of one to five with five the worst, I gave it a five in my journal that I keep next to my recliner. Lately it's been running at two or three in the daytime, so I'm not doing much outside. Here's a link you may find eye-opening to say the least...
http://www.prescribedburns.com/
Did you know that smoke from prescribed burns aka controlled burns can be 20 times more carcinogenic than cigarette smoke? Not surprising, considering that many of the plants being burned like poison ivy and Brazilian Pepper emit very toxic smoke when burned.
I work outside when the breeze comes off the sea for a while, but since there is currently a pollution-driven bloom of toxic algae off the beaches this time of year, that air sometimes makes me sick too. When a strong wind blows all the air pollution away, all my symptoms fade away with it. Since there's a front with strong wind due through tonight, I'll rest up and do my outside work tomorrow.
No planting beds this this year, the ground is very dry from lack of rain and I don't want to spend a lot of time watering them in polluted air. It takes an ocean of water to keep the planting beds moist when they sit on dry sand beneath. The containers avoid all that, and they prevent pine root invasion if I keep them off the ground or move them around now and then. And since my potting soil is now rich in humus, I get better growth in the containers and better texture and flavor in the greens.
I think I might grow a lot of southern peas this year in the beds when the rains start. If I do, I'll have to dig out all the pine roots first. As with all gardening, a lot depends on the weather. This cool season has been well above average in temp again. The current administration doesn't like us to say global warming, so here's my response...global warming, global warming, global warming, global warming, global warming, global warming, global warming.
Just a quick post to outline my container setup methods...
Clean the container well with a hard stream of water from a garden hose. You don't want plant diseases to spread.
Put some wood chips or broken twigs in the bottom to facilitate drainage.
Lay some landscaping cloth on top of that.
Add potting soil, plant seedlings, mulch.
Potting soil mix...garden soil plus compost, ratio about three to two. Add about of quarter handful of rock powder, mix very thoroughly with a shovel or hoe. I'm currently using glacial rock dust for rock powder. I let my potting soil age in barrels for a month after I mix it to discourage plant parasites like nematodes.
Tools needed: wheelbarrow, shovel, trash barrels...sturdy ones, nursery pots 34 or 57 cm. I use a big cart to transport the 57's.The 34 cm pots are set on concrete blocks and poles cut from a stand of Melaleuca saplings. The 57's just sit on a pair of block that are well set and leveled.
I have to say, my greens have been a success so far. I've focused on the containers due to the drought. They use far less water, and the production has been really good.
Currently I'm eating mustard, lettuce, turnip greens, radish greens, purslane, and chives in salads and stir fries. And I've got all I can eat, especially the lettuce and mustard. The heat and humidity have broken or tied records regularly, but my varietal selections have weathered these extremes very well. I've never seen lettuce hold up better in heat than the Kalura lettuce I grew this year. I got the seeds from Southern Exposure Seed Exchange.
Air pollution levels are very high lately, most likely due to brush fires, trash burning, burning of sugar cane fields, and "controlled burns" on State and private land. This severely limits what I can do. Lately all I seem to do is keep the compost going, irrigate, and cut back the brush near the house now and then. Whenever the air clears up with sea breezes or northerly wind shifts, I do get out and clear brush for fire safety. All of the debris will get shredded and made into compost and mulch for the garden...eventually. I get backlogged at times, but when the air improves I clear the piles with the chipper/shredder.
Just to be clear about this...I don't use any commercial fertilizers at all in my gardening anymore. I buy rock powders like granite meal and mix them into my potting and bedding soil sparingly for trace elements, but the soil is fertilized primarily by compost. If you make good compost, you don't need anything else. And the results you get aren't second best, they're better than what you would get with chemicals. What's the difference environmentally between an organic garden and a chemical one? Leaching of fertilizers into ground water from chemical gardens is well over 90% according to studies that have been done on this. Most of what you buy goes into canals, creeks, lakes, and the sea.
The same number for an organic garden?...a small fraction of one percent AT MOST. The nutrients stay where you put them and they stay available for plant roots 24/7. Organic gardens are sustainable, chemical gardens are not. As far as insect problems go, my garden spaces are teeming with lizards, toads, frogs, spiders, and all kinds of insect predators. I don't get massive outbreaks of insect pests on healthy plants like my neighbor does. His pests migrate to my garden sometimes, but those problems are temporary. When I told him that the Sevin he uses decimates earthworm populations, he thought that was a good thing. So he's not a well-read gardener. He sprays his garden on a regular basis with high concentrations of pesticides, bugs or no bugs. I had to give up on a garden patch I had near his property to get away from pesticide drift and drainage of pesticide-polluted water. When I put up a small berm to block his drainage water, someone cut a trench through it.
So that's another reason to grow in containers, they keep my soil out of the polluted water that drains into my property in rainy season. So for now, I'm giving up on the planting beds and just growing in containers. But I'll do OK, I have a LOT of containers...probably thirty or forty under cultivation right now and lots more waiting for recycling of the soil and new plantings. These are almost all 34 and 57 cm nursery pots.
Right now I have chili peppers, turnip greens, chard, lettuce, mustard greens, parsley, carrots, onions, chives, sweet potatoes, radishes, purslane growing in nursery pots...and close to a hundred seedlings ready to plant somewhere. So as soon as the air clears up a bit, I'm ready to go.
