New garden

So it's been about a thousand years since I've done a garden post. I was looking back at some of my first posts on the this blog and it was all about the garden. I guess that's what babies and winter will do... In any case this post is all about my new garden. This new garden is filled with such beauty. The owners of the house from whom we are renting are Chinese and they put a lot of time and effort into creating a beautiful garden. We have 4 fruit trees: lemon, peach, grapefruit and fig. I think there is another fruit tree as well but I can't tell what it is as it has no leaves at the moment.

The owners had previously planted a garden in three separate spaces. They had created raised beds from the porch. The soil in these beds is so rich and dark. I hardly need to amend it all. I'll just be adding top layer of mulch. They had planted a lot of Asian veggies and melons that I can't identify but look forward too seeing what pops up come summer time. Best of all they installed an automatic drip system to all the trees and raised beds. No need to worry about watering, just change the timer as needed!

Back in October, I planted 30 cloves of garlic in my raised beds at old house not knowing we would move. Then in January of course we moved to this new house. Having already put in 3 months worth of growing time in these heads of garlic I really didn't want to leave them behind; so I did a crazy thing and dug them all up and transplanted them. Just in case you are wondering how to move garlic, you'll want to dig a deep wide hole around the bulb and remove it dirt and all. I placed my garlic into plastic grocery bags, four heads to a bag. This seemed to work well as the limited space held the soil closer around the roots. I then brought them all to the new house and let them sit over night. The next afternoon when it was warm, I transplanted them and watered deeply. Amazingly enough they all survived and I have a thriving bed of garlic! I can't wait for the harvest in April or May.

Recently, we've had a really warm spell bringing temperatures into the mid 70's. This has caused the peach tree to blossom and it's so beautiful. It brings me joy every time I look out the back windows.
These warm temperatures also gave me the itch to plant something, so I planted peas and carrots as they are cool-warm weather plants and can tolerate a bit of drop in temperature.  the picture above shows where I planted the peas. There was already a trellis set up for some melons and since it's better to rotate crops I thought it would be perfect for peas!

I'll keep you up dated as I plant more crops!