Girl’s Garden throughout the Season

This was the second year that I grew Milkweed in the Girl’s Garden. It really took off. I had no idea that it is propagated by not only seeds, but also by root cuttings. It began to grow all over the garden!

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

The milkweed was one of the best plants I have grown in a while to attract pollinators. I had bees and butterflies that I normally would not see visiting specifically because of the milkweed. In the garden we also grew sweet potatoes, potatoes, some sunflowers and the beginnings of a fig tree.

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

While I loved the milkweed, it does take over. I will likely be pulling out a lot of the plants this next spring as they come up. Otherwise, I felt that the girl’s garden this year was a success.

Growing at an Organic Olive Orchard

A friend of mine, Mike Wilkinson, referred me to a grower named Nick at a local Organic Olive Orchard in Suisun Valley in the Fairfield area. He made room for me to grow some cucumbers in the spring of 2023. The area is incredibly fertile and beautiful. He made a row of land available for me to grow on.

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

Over the season I grew one kind of regular cucumber and two overlapping varieties of cucumber-melon. The season at the Olive Orchard took a lot out of me and by the end, I was pretty tired out.

The Girl’s Garden in 2023

I have given my younger daughter plenty of choices concerning what to grow in the girl’s garden plot. We usually grow tomatoes and potatoes as well as some sweet potatoes. She likes sweet peppers, so we almost always include some of those. Additionally, we generally try to do something new each year. This year we tried some butterfly attractants, such as Milkweed and Pipevine. 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

My girl grew peas earlier in the season and, with effort, we got some Milkweed and Pipevine. Unfortunately, not much did really well this year in the girl’s garden. I don’t know if it was due to some overcrowding or if it was just that we didn’t manage it very well. She is the type of gardener who enjoys just sowing seeds and forgetting it. But my daughter did help me with the sweet potato harvest later in the season. 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

What didn’t do well in our garden was the new native plants. Perhaps they need a section just for themselves or perhaps we are not providing them the right conditions? The tomatoes, potatoes and sweet potatoes did alright, but the peppers were a little overcrowded by the sweet potato vines. With my  teenage daughter getting older, I only have a few more years before she is no longer around. I’ll definitely have to get more of her input concerning what she would like in her garden plot this year.

The “6 bucket” hydropic basket gardens (Dark Armenian, Tar Kadki, Scopattizo, Faqous)

Without enough gardens, it can be difficult to determine where I can grow my plants. This last year, I had too many varieties for myself to handle in the three gardens that I had. While I did acquire a garden at the community college over the winter, I had no idea how to manage a 20x20’ plot consisting primarily of weeds. After looking at what a farmer would be willing to grow and what I wanted to make a priority for my main gardens, I decided to grow two varieties that I had low seed stock with and two new varieties that I had recently acquired seed of. The two established varieties were the Dark Armenian (Tortarello Barese) and the Scopattizo Barese while the two new varieties were the Tar Kakdi (a snakemelon variety from India) and the Palastinian Faqous.

 

 

 

 

I decided that I needed at least six plants, so I would have each host care for six buckets of one cucumber-melon variety. Then I went about trying to find people who would be comfortable with me growing plants in their yards. The owner of the chicken garden was willing to host a set of buckets, two friends at church were also willing. Finally, I found one woman from the community college who was willing to host a set of buckets. With the hosts determined, I then went about starting transplants and transplanting each soil block into the buckets. The most important part of this was labeling. At one point, I had to pull out some transplants because I accidentally forgot to label which variety was which and I accidentally put some of the transplants together.

So here is how each variety did:

The Faqous was my most important variety. For this variety, I found an expensive organic soil business that would deliver a whole yard of high quality growing mix. I had this mix delivered to my friend’s house, then we used a pallet jack to bring it to the correct place in his yard. Then I transferred the hydroponic baskets into the soil. The plants did very well, but the plants went from fruiting to setting seed so quick that the plants quickly died immediately afterwards. It was great that the plants were so efficient, but how quick the plants produced seed caught me a little off-guard. I thought that the plants might last a little longer.

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

The Tar Kakdi grew for a little while, but turned out to not be the variety I was looking for. So instead of trying to fight the heat of the summer, I just gathered all the buckets from this friend and came home with them. My hope for this variety was that it would produce very long thin cucumbers. Unfortunately, it produced misshapen cucumbers with some variations in color.

The Dark Armenian was grown out by a friend of mine who manages a nursery in American Canyon. The plants did relatively well, then started to go downhill. I harvested a little bit of good seed from the fruit that we grew on his property.

 

 

 

 

The Scopattizo Barese were grown on the plot of a friend of mine who, with her husband, does a lot to care for the garden plots at the community college where my new garden plot was. She had some extra space, so transferred some of the struggling hydroponic baskets into the ground, where they did much better than in the buckets. They produced well, though I have yet to harvest all the seeds from these plants.

 

 

 

Lessons Learned: Growing plants in buckets using hydroponic baskets is definitely a short-term solution. I am lucky to get one or two fruit if I am growing in full sun in Northern California. That being said, starting in hydroponic baskets and transferring the plants into a garden or larger plots works relatively well. I will likely see if I can utilize the connections that I have made and grow in one larger container in each garden I am able to next year.