Lady Cat Lady

Good Morning/Afternoon/Evening Folks!

You know what time of the week it is! It’s time to saunter through our gardens and have a look at what nature with a little help from me has brought forth.

As a reminder, I grow organically in Zone 9b year round. I started late in life and just began my fourth year gardening. I learned almost everything I know from Youtube, blog posts, and some gardening friends I’ve made along the way.

Starting in the front yard, the lilies have bloomed!

This is a swamp lily, scientific name Crinum Bulbispermum from the Amaryllidacaeae family from South Africa. We have these all over our front yard because they are super easy to maintain. In fact, I don’t have to do anything and they reproduce new bulbs all the time.

The roses bloomed and looked great, now the sun has bleached them to this interesting mauve color.

The Pentas, another low maintenance plant, are also looking lovely.

Harvest transition. I ate these two blackberries yesterday and they were soooooo good.

Cat transition. (Yes, I do think I’m funny😂 ) Wonton decided to “help” when we were dealing with our nematode issue.

Now, to how we’ve begun dealing with our nematode issue. One of the things that was most commonly recommended was to add more compost. This way the root knot nematodes (which are parasites that eat at the roots of your plants) get overwhelmed with good nematodes. See, Bow, I’m not taking away their rights, the other nematodes will do that for me. 😀

This is what root knot nematodes (which are very common any place with short winters since the cold kills them off elsewhere) will do to your roots. Focus on the area I circled in red, do you see the bulges in the roots? They shouldn’t look like that.

What we did was pull all of the affected plants, take brown and green garden detritus (no weeds, just tree leaves and palm fronds), and place those on top of the composting material. Then, I watered it down, and we covered it with a tarp. That should help with the compost process. I will continue to water it every third day until it’s broken down enough that I can place new, fresh soil on top of it.

This is how it looks three days later. There are sunflowers, banana, and blackberry on the right and wildflowers in the foreground.

I also weeded and refreshed the soil in a few of my containers to plant more cucumbers, tomatoes, lettuce, Swiss chard, and flowers. Like I did here in the kiddie pool. Note it is surrounded by the plastic fence to keep the ducks out.

Don’t worry, I didn’t take a bunch of pictures of empty looking containers, I’m only showing you that one.

I will show you how well this snack pepper is producing, though.

This beefsteak tomato is super close to ripe enough to eat, I’m leaving it on the vine one more day for maximum flavor.

The pineapple is still hanging in there and looking good.

The strawberries have perked back up again. This one is close, one more day to let that white part ripen and it will be in my mouth!

Still getting tons of papaya, that one ripe one will make for an excellent smoothie ingredient. Hell, even the unripe ones make great smoothie ingredients to be honest. Just two different flavor profiles.

This is the last of my lettuce, which is why I planted so much more.

The dragon fruit is putting on more sections all the time.

And, finally, look at how spectacular this dune sunflower is. It’s sprawling and constantly blooming. The bees and butterflies love it!

Thank you for joining me on this tour of our gardens!

Happy Friday Farm Day