It's time to give the garden a Spring evaluation

Good planning is key in a productive urban farm, especially when you want enough food to feed yourself and a little to sell at your local farmers market but even the best planning can well, not go as planned. It's important to take a look around and adjust where needed and you'll almost always find that you need to add items to your list of things to do. In San Diego when you garden year-round, the list will never get completed. 

It's a good idea to take a walk around your garden and evaluate on a very regular basis. 

I discovered that our peas are getting mildew so I added spraying them with an organic fungicide to my list

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Fortunately my lemon blossoms are looking wonderful so after a quick sniff I moved on.

We leave clover growing in the rocks around our garden during the winter for the bees.

The clover in the winter is one of the few things that are blooming in the garden so we leave it until there are other blooms for the bees to enjoy and then we pull it. I imagine people walking by the garden think I'm just too lazy to pull my weeds but I've never been one who cares much about what other people think.

The bees have the stunning lemon-rose geranium blooms among other things to snack on now.

Gidget asks, "Did you see that City Farmers has chicks for sale?"

A true sign that Spring is here, there are chicks at City Farmers Nursery and they are completely adorable. If Gidget would just build a coop then maybe we could bring some home without Farmer D noticing.

The banana tree is looking incredible but it has some white fly so I am going to try some traps. Add that to the list.

This was broccoli fabulous for dinner last night. I tried some earlier in the year that didn't do as well so I'm making a mental note to start broccoli in late January next year. 

Our African Blue Basil is a fantastic performer, it's been here almost a full year. I am going to try to start some plants from cuttings - Add that to the list. 

No matter how much I want the sun to shine directly on this raised bed, it just doesn't before late May.

I haven't had much luck getting things to grow here over the winter. This broccoli and cauliflower is leggy and pitiful. This bed will get full sun in a couple of months but until then, I am going to pull this sad stuff out and try Swiss chard and kale in the partial sun to see if I have more success.

Our side yard is used as a dog run and overflow for ornamental plants that will do okay in the shade.It's also become a storage location for my extra rice straw. This area is always shady.

Weed eating is Farmer D's job but he's so busy at work and our weed eater needs repair, so he hasn't gotten a chance yet. Gidget loves having a jungle to play in though. 

This Swiss chard on the roof is just about worn out, it's going to get replaced with tomatoes and peppers very soon.

We're out of avocados for the season so we will have a more limited selection of food at the market until the tomatoes and other warm season crops start producing their fruit. We will have lots of starter plants to choose from though. This week we'll have some tomatoes, cucumbers, peas and peppers. The avocados will be ready again in late September or October.

Mulching the leaves under the drip line of the avocado tree is a fabulous way to give the tree some extra nutrients and it seems to be thanking us with incredible blooms this year. 

Well, time to quite talking about it all and start doing some of it. Happy gardening - it's a beautiful day.