May started off with a warming trend getting into the high 80’s (low 30’s for our metric friends), then dropped to high 60’s (around 20 Celsius) as our May grey settled in. It’s a typical pattern here where May and June get a strong marine layer bringing low clouds and overcast mornings, usually burning off later in the day. Overall it is pleasantly cool. We will appreciate this when our hot summer arrives soon!
The Shirley poppies are showing lots of color all around the garden. They have reseeded themselves and pop-up showing brilliant shades of red, white and pink. Golden California poppies are still bringing their sunny golden color as well.
We finished planting, mulching and installing the drip irrigation for our drought tolerant side yard project. The cool weather has been great to help those plants get their roots down and in a few weeks we can already see new growth. The seeded wildflower section is filling in well with lots of flowers starting to bloom.
The garden fragrance this month is dominated by the jasmine flowers sharing their sweet scent. The privet adds a more musky aroma to keep the nose from getting too spoiled.
Garden songs are dominated by the trills of the spotted towhee and song sparrow. They are competing for top honors. The mockingbirds add their varied collection of songs and the house finches provide a nearly constant background chorus of chattering. We recorded some of them for you to listen in. To listen, see the Visitor Log section below.
The cool season veggies are enjoying the weather with sugar snaps in full production, lettuce in abundance, arugula and cress to add some spicy notes. Transplants of tomatoes, eggplants, peppers and sweet potatoes are getting us ready for the summer season, but they are hoping for warmer weather to really get rolling. Garlic scapes have been harvested and the garlic bulbs will be coming out of the ground very soon.
We also published a post about plant families in the vegetable garden. It includes information about the most common vegetable plant families, their characteristics and who is in which family. You can check it out at this link.
Contents of this Post
Here’s a summary of what’s in this post along with links to each section for quick access.
- Harvesting Now – What’s ready for eating
- Flowers and Herbs – Wildflowers in full bloom
- Coming Soon – Summer planting is in process
- Visitor Log – Who’s been hanging around
Harvesting Now
Sugar snaps are now producing well. We are enjoying their sweet taste nearly every day. Beets are still on the small side. We use the greens for steaming, soups and stews along with their cousin chard.
Fava beans are ripe for us to enjoy. We’ve been using fava greens already, see our recipe for Asian style fava greens for an example. Now we are getting those nice big fava beans. They take a little extra work to prepare as the beans need to be shelled from the pods, then they have a leathery skin to remove. Once that is done they are tender and tasty. We combined the fava beans with our garlic scapes to make an easy tasty dish. Check out our recipe here with info on how we easily skin those beans.
Lettuce, kale, arugula, cilantro and cress are giving us tasty greens. Salads are in season here! Adding fresh sugar snaps and chopped garlic scapes gives a sweet and savory/spicy crunch to salads.
Flowers and Herbs
The sweet perfume of jasmine fills the air these days. It is a great garden addition. Ours is growing in partial shadow of the lemon trees and requires very little care. Just some trimming once or twice a year as the vining branches stretch their arms 4 or 5 feet in one season.
A diverse array of flowers are blooming. The photo above is a sampler bouquet that includes: Shirley poppy, California poppy, chives, feverfew, cilantro, arugula, jasmine, Mexican primrose, pomegranate, bachelor’s buttons, chocolate flower, and desert bluebells.
Desert bluebells (also called California bluebells or desert bells) are a California native plant that, as you might expect, grow in the dry deserts of Southern California. They are part of the mixture of wildflowers growing in the drought tolerant landscaping we just completed. Their deep indigo blue is a colorful addition.
In early May we finished all the planting, mulching and drip installation for our drought tolerant section of the front side yard. The plants are quite small in the photo above, but in just a few weeks the plants are growing well. The green wildflower section was seeded and many of the wildflowers are quick to pop up and bloom. Many of them are adapted to sprout and bloom quickly to take full advantage of unpredictable rainstorms.
A couple hollyhock plants have taken off with stalks of flowers reaching 10 feet tall (3 meters). We planted seeds last year and they grew large leaves over the summer but no flowers. This spring they decided it is time to get blooming and they sent up their tall stalks filled with flower buds that are just bursting out.
Coming Soon
The larger summer vegetables (think tomatoes, eggplants and peppers) have been transplanted from their paper pots to their summer homes. They are growing well, but they are waiting for some good warm weather to really take off.
Garlic scapes have all been harvested, with a few left just to see what they do. One sign it is time to harvest garlic is when the scapes uncurl and point toward the sky. The German extra hardy garlic above will probably be ready for harvest in a couple weeks. June will be a big garlic month!
For those growing garlic, another sign it is time to harvest is when the bottom leaves start dying off and there are just 5 green leaves at the top of the garlic. Before harvesting, stop any irrigation for a week or so to let the soil dry out to make it easier to remove dirt from the garlic roots when harvesting.
Sweet potatoes have been getting ready as well. We start by putting sweet potatoes in moist potting mix then keep them in a warm place with good light. On warm days they go outside. They start sending up multiple shoots from each potato after a few weeks to a month, with a lot of variation between potatoes!
Once the sweet potato shoots get 10 or 12 inches (25 to 30 cm) tall, they are ready to pull off the potatoes. They break off the potatoes with a good pull and there may be a few roots already starting as well. If no roots, they will grow soon.
The lower leaves are taken off and the pulled shoots are put in water. They quickly develop roots. When the roots are 3 to 4 inches long (8 to 10 cm) they are ready to transplant into the garden. Usually only about a week or two and they are ready for transplanting.
Visitor Log
We see and hear our regular bird friends around. This includes the mockingbirds, towhees, ruby crowned kinglet, ravens, hawks, sparrows, finches and juncos.
Here is an audio sample of birds in our garden. The program for this concert with timestamps for first entry of major singers is below:
- 0:01 – House Finch
- 0:09 – Spotted Towhee (continues through most of the audio)
- 0:19 – Northern Mockingbird
- 0:26 – Allen’s Hummingbird
- 0:36 – Bushtits
- 0:57 – Song Sparrow
- 1:02 – Goldfinch (sounds like a young one)
- 1:14 – Mourning Dove
- 1:24 – Acorn Woodpecker
Our raccoons are still semi-regular visitors. We don’t often see these night visitors, but when they dig in the garden we see the results. See our March 2023 post for more on these critters. In the photo above, these early Italian softneck garlics are probably not what they are looking for. However, it is interesting to note that some critter repellants include scents such as garlic that are supposed to deter varmints. So much for that theory! These garlic plants also show those bottom leaves dying off, indicating they are getting ready for harvest. Maybe if we offer those raccoons some juicy worms they will dig our garlic for us!
Find Peace in a Garden
Find time to get out in a garden, a park or a spot where nature is on display. Listen to the sounds, observe life, find peace.
If there are topics you would like to hear more about, let us know in the comments below, or send an email to Zanganeh.Garden@gmail.com.
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