Vegetable Garden for 2015

Another great year of gardening is upon us.  
Tomatoes
This year, I am going to try to grow some tomatoes again, even though

I have failed for many years.  Right along the coast of California there is a difficult problem: the air coming off the ocean is much cooler than the ground heated by the constant sunshine (sounds horrible eh?).  I also seem to have the tomato blight fungus or virus in the soil, so the plants die right at harvest of the first tomatoes.  A solution passed to me from friends is to make a silo of clear plastic for each plant.  That keeps the heat the plants love, and protects them from the frigid ocean breeze.



Squash
This year i am starting early on the "butter" squashes: buttertop, and butternut.  They make the most incredible soups, I also am trying to grow Ginger to complement the soups.  Zucchini and crookneck are standard issue here too.

Cucumbers

Last year I got some Persian Cucumbers from a local hardware store.  They turned out to be 14-18 inch long wonders.  We had so much, I couldn't give enough away.  This year, I am trying Telephone Post Cucumbers (never had them, but great writeup on the package).  I'm always a sucker for pretty things in pictures.  As many of you know, I grow many veggies vertically to save square feet.  I use concrete reinforcing sheets from the lumber yard with 5" squares; I weave a few long sticks through the openings and pound the ends into the ground.  This provides a great climbing wall, and provides easy removal at the end of the season.

Harvested already

Cauliflower

The winter crops of cauliflower, broccoli, and lettuce have already been harvested.  I'm going to try a 2nd season of cauliflower because the first was so successful.  Giant heads of great tasting cauliflower. They don't like the heat, but we usually have a cool April through July, with a lot of June Gloom (foggy days). This should translate into "cool weather" planting.



Well that's it for today,  More to follow soon