Plants, Seeds and drippers:

Finished up with seeds and drippers on Sunday. Since our hottest, sunniest weather runs from now through the end of October I'm not worried about starting so late.

I converted one of the old sprinkler valves to run a drip system with a Rainbird combined pressure reducer/filter assembly. Each plant or seed group has emitters. When I get to it I'll also convert the side yard to drip and at that time do some changes to the existing drip system. With the old sprinkler risers there are lots of access points to connect drip distribution manifolds. The sprinkler lines are about 9 years old PVC.

Ideally I will have all the shrubs and trees on an infrequent/deep watering schedule and the annuals/veggies on a more frequent schedule. When the Metropolitan Water District gets more money for their rebate program I'll get a fancy irrigation controller that adjusts based on weather conditions.

Here's the plant list
Non-edibles:

• Bamboo "Alphonse Karr"
• Mexican Feather Grass
• Some shrubs that I don't know the names!

Herbs:

• White Lavender
• Prostrate Rosemary

Trees:

• Lemon Meyer- Existing tree near house
• Lemon Meyer "Improved"- additional tree because they're so good.
  
• Limon/Key Lime / Mexican Lime (Moved from a shady spot where it wasn't growing)
• Pomegranate

Already in the ground or transplanted from starter containers:

• 3 Tomatoes (volunteers from my compost pile)
• 6 Anaheim Chilies
• 6 unknown Chilies
• Zucchini
  
• Crook-neck squash
• Strawberries aka slug food.
  

Seeds in raised bed:

• Beets
• Onions
• Red-stem Chard
• Green-stem Chard
• Kohl Rabi
• Italian Parsley
• Carrots
• Radishes

Only about 2/3 of the raised bed is planted. In about a month I'll plant salad greens and sugar snap peas.

Seeds in front beds (2 hills each)

• Watermelon
• Pumpkin
• Cucumber "lemon"
• Winter squash (name??)

Back and side yards already have:

• 6 tomato plants (assorted varieties)
• 6 zucchini
• 3 crook neck squash
• row of bush beans
• Nectarine tree
• Cherimoya tree
• Hass Avocado
• Fuerte Avocado
• More Strawberries
• Basil
• Mint
  

Drippers in, seeds planted, soil, borders & paths.

I didn't want to "bust sod" any more than was required. Bermuda grass rhizomes and weed seeds lurk down there. My thought was to grow annuals this year above the old sod level, then let the worms till the soil over time.

I dug down for the shrubs and trees, but otherwise my beds are 6-12" of mostly compost. In the areas that I'm planting I mixed about 1/2 compost, 1/4 perlite, and 1/4 soil from where I dug out for trees and shrubs. I used newspaper and/or rosin paper on top of the old Roundup-treated sod to hopefully block weeds for this season. My thinking was that the paper would keep the weeds from growing through this season then break down.

Finally- borders for the beds. At the sidewalk I dug out sod and soil to about 4" depth to feather the raised beds flush with the concrete. Elsewhere there will be some sort of border between 4" and 6" high. My wife and I are still trying to decide on an appropriate edging. The paths will probably stay as dead sod with a thin compost layer for a while. Ultimately they will get some type of surface- Decomposed granite, stepping stones & groundcover plants, or something. Little green flags mark irrigation devices and future path edges, so the photos are a bit confusing.


Right side with raised bed, benches, fountain:














Left side:

Taking Shape

Should have had the compost dumped on the driveway, instead I moved it with about 50 wheel barrow trips.

Here most of the perennials and the raised vegetable bed are in place.

After the compost

Serrano Creek Ranch dropped off 10 yards of compost made from horse manure and the pine shavings they use for stall bedding. Although it's "cured" compost, after the aeration due to loading and dumping, it sure heated up. Three days after delivery the pile was 155 degrees in the middle. In this photo I've started to do some planting on the left side.

(Entry date adjusted to match project time sequence)

Jim's Garden, Post 1

It all started when I realized that the back yard doesn't get as good sun as the front yard. Also the front lawn took lots of water and the kids mostly play in the bushes. So out went the lawn.

Here's the before photo courtesy of Google Streets:












I started out thinking that the project would involve just a few raised beds, but somewhere in the planning it grew to the whole main lawn area. I sprayed Roundup twice on the back half but just once on the front. It will become an organic garden but I didn't have time or patience to kill off the mixed fescue/bermuda lawn without chemicals.


(Entry date adjusted to match project time sequence, entry really posted 7/28/09 actual photo from 2008)