Lavender

 I have no idea what type of lavender this plant is. I inherited her from the previous tenant. They had left it out in the shady backyard and it was drying out in it's pot, so I moved it out front by the Studio door and it got a bit more attention. It still wasn't happy, so I dragged it out to the side of the house in the garden. This is now one happy lavender bush! She gets plenty of sun and water - and I just cant help but stop and pinch off a leaf or two and get the benefits of her fragrance.

I cant say enough about the benefits of Lavender. Its so easy to use. I use in in a diffuser, I sleep with it under my pillow. I love it.

Its Officially A Drought.........Even Though We've Been In One - WTF

I think California is generally dry anyway except for an occasional La Nina or heavy snowfall in the mountains. Ive lived here most of my life and there is always some kind of problem with water. Its also true that as California's population continues to rise, the less water there is to go around. People talk about how much water agriculture takes up, but nobody wants to talk about how much water it takes to keep a lawn and golf course green. And all those swimming pools to fill on top of that! Now we have fracking to contend with..............and whatever your opinions and facts are about global warming , the world is in a heap o trouble. I take that back. The world will always be fine without us. WE are in a heap o  trouble. I really don't know what "normal" is because Ive seen dry and wet and in-between, but this year is gonna be bad. So Ive been doing my part to keep my water consumption down. More than usual - except for accidentally leaving the hose running a couple times last year. And by mistakenly allowing a neighbor to work in my garden when he had no respect for water use or my landlord's property. ( I kicked said neighbor to the curb very quickly) Ive been saving all my grey water and using it to flush the toilet and water my garden. This is still winter, so while it is fairly warm outside, the sun isn't drying out the soil quickly. My grey water is doing just fine. I'm finding that aside from some loads of laundry and dying  my hair on occasion, I don't use as much water as I thought I did. Which is good, but I don't know what this will mean for the garden when it gets hot. I do know that produce and everything affected by produce consumption is going to go sky-high in price!

I will have to do my best to keep on with the plan of double-digging and amending the soil. My sister with chickens brought me a bin of chicken poop last week and it is composting nicely in my tumbler bin! Its hot! Ive never had hot compost before! My plants are going to be soooo happy!  But this small amount is not enough. Ive started another pile out by my garden and I'll be collecting more manure and aging it until it can be used. I'll have to go buy a few bags of some organic chicken poop in the meantime. Its pretty cheap.
































 I'll be more selective about what and how much I plant. I'll mulch, and I'll do some kind of bucket irrigation system. I sent away for my 2014 seed catalogues and I drift to sleep dreaming about heirlooms and flowers for the bees.............no, I really do............

Fingers crossed that all of this will work. Of course it will mean more work, but I need the exercise, Hauling that water around is going to be great for upper arm strength!

So far, the backyard has been ok without a lot of water. I give it some now and then, but I keep it to a minimum. So far so good.

 And my peas are very happy. These are Tall Telephone. Flowers, but no peas yet. I'm not sure that I really care as I didn't realize that they are a shelling pea - and I just don't think I'll get enough to even bother. But I like looking at them!

Strategy For The New Year's Garden

The first step in the strategy for a better garden this year is to get more compost - from my compost bin and other sources - and to get a lot of aged chicken manure. And then I'm going to re-dig this garden up and get that clay soil all nice and crumbly. It was better by the end of summer because the top dressing of compost helped a bit, but it really still needed to be mixed into the dirt. I don't have time for all that double-digging, lasagna, and other soil treatments that I've read about. I'll dig as deep as I can and just mix in the good stuff. Ive done some work on this soil already and whatever else I do to it can only make the plants happier. I don't test the pH and all that. I suppose I should, but at this point, I know that this is bad soil - anything is going to improve it.

(I did see this cool LINK on how to run a test to see what kind of soil texture you have!)

I also know that I'm going to have to do something about the cold wind that whips right through this field from off the water on the other side of the sugar factory.  I'll put my cages and stakes in right away when I plant my tomatoes and then wrap some plastic around the cages. That should keep them warm until they can handle the cold. I'm also going to add fish heads, aspirin, crushed egg shells like Love Apple Farms writes about HERE. I don't know how anything grew in my garden at all last year. It must have been a miracle. Now when I look at it, all I see is bad soil.

I do love my garden though, so that probably helped. I really needed to do this. It has kept me sane.

I'll rotate my crops too. I'll be more mindful of spacing and companion planting.

The bugs are going to be a problem again - I can see that already. I have some peas and Calendulas that are still blooming. Ive found some spotted cucumber beetles on them already. We are having a dry, fairly warm winter, and these guys are not dying off. I'm pretty sure they helped kill my cucs with that mosaic virus. I plan to try growing some cucumber plants along side the house this summer. I'll put them in some Smart Pots ( or make my own) and cloche them until they take off. I hope this keeps the bugs at bay. I used to think those little green and black beetles  were cute like I used to think raccoons were cute. 

So the bottom line is that with some amending , better nutrient and bug fighting strategies, I'll get a lot more out of this project. I am bound and determined to make this work.

And I hope to install a drip irrigation system. They are not too costly. And since it looks like we are going into a major drought, I am already cutting back on my water consumption. I save the water from the shower in a big bucket while I wait for it to heat up. Its amazing how much water we waste.

These are some Golden Sweet peas that Ive got growing right now.  They taste ok. They are probably not going to get much higher than 4 feet. But I wanted to see how they would do. The flowers are fun to look at, if nothing else.