The garden is producing some herbs, a few tomatoes, parsnips, and carrots. Herbs include basil from the late winter planting, self seeded dill, parsley, oregano, marjoram, one sorrel plant, and a few sage plants. They can hold on alive, until conditions become right for their growth, when they begin to flourish.
A couple of major setbacks this year have been snails, big time, and tent caterpillars, both of which eat a lot.
The tent caterpillars demolished the foliage on the mulberry tree which had graced the tree on the other side of the fence. You can see how the elephant ears are returning after I cut them back last fall. These are very prolific here, and grow by themselves, needing only control from time to time to keep them in bounds when their spot suits them.
These plantains have come back to the point that one hardly sees any of the portions which died in the frosts last winter. There is at least one small bunch of plantains. The die back did not affect the very centers of some of the plants, and the corms are always producing new plants. It is supposed to take one quarter to one and one half years for a plant to produce plantains
. We’ll see what happens this year.
Lettuce grew well at times and one fourth of the green cabbages grew well at some point. Red cabbages never grew fast enough, and neither did radishes or beets. Nasturtiums did well for awhile, and then dried out. Plants from seeds generally did not do very well. Plants which I have bought already started seem to generally do better than plants from the seeds which I have bought, and may be a more cost effective way to keep the garden planted.
I learned that citrus plants are considered high maintenance. It was recommended that they be sprayed weekly. I will have to investigate organic ways to control their problems. It seems that snails had eaten any initial fruits that I had from the flowers which appeared on the lime tree and the lemon tree, so we will not get any harvest from these this year. I ordered copper foil, which may be effective in keeping snails off of certain plants.
One thing is sure. It takes a lot of special knowledge to produce maximum crops, organically in particular patches of soil. I need to learn a lot about the soil, timing of planting, and light. So far, plantains are our most successful crop, needing little attention, and growing like weeds. Vegetable have not grown very well for us. Noo peppers came upat all. Neither did eggplant, cucumbers, nor okra. Lettuce, cabbage, radishes, and broccoli did not do very well.
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Trimmed plantains at the beginning of the summer. I like their filtered light. We have just two small clusters so far this year.
A lime growing on our key lime tree. Last year we did not get any limes. The tree has grown quite tall, so we will not be able to reach all of them from the ground. They will become available starting in about six weeks, if all goes well.
Our garden, in which the herbs of the spring are going to seed. Still I could get parsley, oregano, and some pictures. This is along the lines of what I originally wanted, a kitchen herb garden. Right now it is rather hot, and these kinds of things do not grow so well here. I haven’t planted anything here. Some things came up from self seeding last year, and I expect some will re-seed themselves for next year: cilantro, marjoram, parsley, dill, even oregano, and maybe carrots and parsnips. The sorrel leaves are not really usable, because now the “hungry, hungry” caterpillars can eat them.
