California's Seasons

For those who live outside California, you know that the seasons are Spring, Summer, Fall, and Winter. In California, the seasons are Dry (and usually warm-to-hot) and Wet (and usually cool-to-cold-ish). Dry can start as early as February or as late as June. Wet can start as early as October or as late as January. Sadly, the Wet season isn't always as wet as we'd like it.

Well, the Wet season has started. It started yesterday with a bang: an October-record breaking storm! So, I think now is a good time to talk about the winding down of what everyone else calls Summer and the start of what everyone else calls Winter.

Summer Winding Down
A couple of weeks ago I removed the cucumber vines. They were getting bitter, which is a big red flag to just yank them out. They won't get better, only worse.

Also a couple of weeks ago I also started hacking out squash leaves that had mildewed badly. I wanted to see which plants had given up and which plants were worth keeping. I removed about half the total number of squash plants. The remaining ones have decided to put in a little extra effort and are producing more and faster than all the plants together had been producing. (LESSONS LEARNED: If you plant twice as many seeds as you think you need in case one doesn't sprout and they ALL sprout, thin them out straight away.) I harvested four small zucchini this afternoon for tonight's dinner. There are a number of baby-sized scalloped squash waiting for harvest later this week.

About a week ago I finally thinned the beets. (see also note above, but...) The thing about "beet seeds" is that the "seeds" in the package are actually seed clusters. So, when you plant a single "beet seed," you are really planting about five beet seeds. You really need to start thinning the sprouts right away if you plan on growing large, tender roots. In my case, I was growing them for the greens, with the roots of this variety being inconsequential. Still, each cluster that came up had now produced a small beet (regular- to shooter-sized marble sizes), so I harvested a dozen beets while I was harvesting a bunch of beet greens. The beets, including the greens, will continue to grow well into the California version of winter.

The green and purple bean vines are starting to look a little tired and it's no surprise. They are a warm-season crop. However, despite looking tired, they continue to be quite productive and are putting on new flowers daily. I picked a small basket half-full this afternoon.

The tomatoes continue to ripen and will do so pretty much up until the first hard freeze (unless I build a coldframe/greenhouse over them). Sadly, it looks like whoever is stealing my cherry tomatoes has made off with the green beefsteak tomatoes in the last two days. *sigh* I picked half a "strawberry basked" (you know, those green plastic things you get at the store) of cherry tomatoes this afternoon. There are plenty more that are green or starting to ripen.

I need to thin the carrots. It will be a pain-in-the-butt, which is why I've been putting it off. I should also thin the scallions (interplanted with both of the squashes, but only seem to be growing with the scalloped squash). I can use the thinnings as chives.

Oh, yeah. I went nuts about three weeks ago and bough a leftover 6-pack of strawberry plants. Think: Charlie Brown's Christmas Tree. These poor things were put out for sale last spring and left to sulk in their 6-pack packaging. Well, I had one of those wide-but-shallow pots (the kind they sell with too many annuals planted as "Color Spots"), so I filled it with fresh soil, cleaned the dead leaves from the berry plants, and planted them. I had to trim off a couple of runners so the plant would focus on growing new roots into all that new legroom. A week later, one of them was trying to bloom! Wow! Well, I still want it to focus on roots, so I plucked the blossom. A week later, another plant was trying to bloom! Same deal.  Looks like I'll have strawberries next spring!

So, I will still have some "Summer" vegetables for quite a while and some of the vegetables I planted in summer are intended to grow well into or through winter. But I also have started my Winter vegetables, which I'll talk about in my next post.