Easy Poppy

When I grew poppies this year, I was unsure exactly what would happen, or where the delicious seeds would emerge from.

This was the first one to bloom, 'Hungarian Blue', after months of waiting.

I had planted the seedlings in October or so. And they took a while to get going.

The gorgeous flower lost its petals in a couple days, after which it looked like this for a month or so. The plant withered and the seed pod began to turn brown.



I had a lot of brown pods at that point, so I cut them all off and got out one of the clean, empty baby food jars that had been waiting to make itself useful (in my cupboard for a few years).

I used a sharp knife to carefully saw off the top of the seed pod. Then I poured the contents into the jar.

About 2 tablespoons worth of seeds came out of the 5 pods I had. One of the pods was still a bit greenish, so the seeds hadn't turned to the magnificent dark grey blue yet. They were still a bit reddish.





It was just enough to make a batch of lemon-poppyseed muffins.

Ready to Plant

It really is a thing of beauty. My final touches: Paver stepstones and mulch for the walkway. About 100 shovelfuls of compost and soil mixed into the dirt/sand that occupies the bottom half of the box. And my bro Nick gave me some compost/worm tea to add to the mix.
Once I get in touch with my gardening cohort, we are going to rock this box! I've got three tomato plants that are ready to be planted, plus about 15 packets of seeds. I'm thinking lettuce, radishes, carrots, broccoli, rapini and strawberries.

Gilding the lily and troubleshooting

Still perplexed that no spinach has sprouted. And something ate the pepper plant baby seedling!

My good bud (and excellent gardener) Lorraine lent me two tomato cages. We visited the raised bed today and she helped me to install them, one over the pea sprouts and one over a newly transplanted pepper plant seedling. (I had started a number of plants from seed -- peppers, lettuces, even artichoke -- two months ago at home when I first learned I would get in the community garden.)

If I am going to be a good gardener, I've got to grow some patience.

So, who's with me?

Now it has been a little more than two weeks since I first planted everything. Notably absent? The spinach and the broccoli.

Spinach should show up almost immediately, and there has not even been one tiny sprout. I'm mystified, because the rest of my greens have sprouted fine. Is my soil too acidic? Spinach (from what I've read) doesn't do well below a pH of 6.0.

The broccoli (or what may have been broccoli) looks like a tiny stalk with its leaves eaten off. For what it's worth, most gardening books say to start broccoli inside and transplant the seedlings outside.

Best so far from seed? The sweet peas (below). So tall and healthy I'll need to make a teepee for them soon.


The transplants (tomatoes, eggplant, strawberries) are thriving. Only issue is spacing: my neighbor's absolutely gigantic tomato plant shades over onto my side. Just look at that monster (below, far right). Harrumph.

Edited to add: Owen and I yesterday replanted the spinach seeds, and I bought and planted a broccoli seedling Nov. 5.

Good (or bad) timing?

So I planted seeds on Sunday, and by Wednesday night 0.62 inches of rain had fallen.

Palm Desert, CA 92111
Almanac Precipitation
Last 24 hours: 0.22 in.
Month to Date: 0.62 in.

Hopefully half my seeds didn't get washed away. I went by late Tuesday afternoon and everything seemed fine. We shall see.

Planted!

Got all my vegetables and seeds into the ground yesterday at my community garden plot! I forgot to take a picture, unfortunately, but I'll take a shot today when I head by there to make sure everything is going OK.

Can't remember the last time a hobby made me so excited and happy.

I'm using the Square Foot Garden method, which my mom told me about. Pretty easy! I checked out the book from the library. The gist is to set out square-foot grids across your gardening area, with one crop grown tightly in each section.

http://www.squarefootgardening.com/

I bought very inexpensive redwood slats that a Lowes guy split for me. The slats ended up measuring about 1/4 inch by 1 inch, with two of them 8 feet long and six of them 4 feet long. I braided them in the raised bed to make the grid. The 4-foot-long ones were a bit long, so I snapped off 4-inch pieces that I'll use later as stakes.

Looking around the rest of the community garden, it will be interesting to see how everyone's plots turn out. Seems I am the only one using this style, so if my experiment doesn't work out, I'll keep track of whose garden does work!