Happy St. Patty's Day!

The Orange tree is blossoming nicely. 

I've celebrated this day of green this past week by greening my mom's garden. Winter has nearly passed and the weather is heating up nicely here in beautiful southern California, so it's gardening time! Mom's garden needed much help. There were lots of weeds everywhere and many dead things, but I have added some new life this past week.

I've been watering some seedlings I started: Radish Easter Egg blend, Calendula pot marigold, Narcello sweet pepper, Barcarole lettuce, micro greens, Holy basil and cilantro. I also watered the orange tree, the other exotic fruit tree, the Bougainvillea, herb bed, and basically, anywhere that had living plants. I even watered the brown and dried pepper plant, which I'm hoping will zap to life as Spring and Summer roll around. Planting some beautifully vibrant Ranunculus perennial flowers for the two entrance pots into the garden made a world of a difference. Just that small change alone and the garden looks livelier already.

Ranunculus perennials liven up the entrance pots.

I continued clearing out dead plants and weeds, including pulling down the snap pea plant which grew wildly around the tomato cage. It's always a bittersweet feeling to take out a plant. I feel like I'm uprooting an entire life and all the other lives that depend on it, but I know there comes a time for everything. As the time of one plant passes, another's is soon to start. 

New life: seedlings of radish, marigolds and sweet peppers.

The most fun this week was planting sunflower seeds! I planted some mammoth and regular-sized sunflowers all around directly into the earth. I can't wait for them to bloom! I also got some landscaping ideas for the left side of the garden as you walk in. I'm thinking Kangaroo Paws, maybe some Mexican Bush sage, filling up and billowing out of that space near the small fountain. I'm dreaming of Monarch butterflies circling the Milkweed, adding life and the color orange to our green and gray canvas.



Within the next few weeks, I plan to do more shopping around for ideas (window shopping for plants, as I like to think of it). Mom loves lettuce, so I'll sprinkle some directly into the ground in space I've reserved to the left of the garden as you walk in. Of course, that will be after I get my hands dirty and diggin' to amend the soil with some compost and manure mix.

I also began my first of four L.A. Victory Garden Classes on Saturday at an urban homestead in Altadena, CA called Pantheridge Farm. It was great to meet new people of the community, in addition to reviewing sheet mulching and propagation. We planted some plugs of Serrano peppers and tomatoes, both Cherry and a mystery one, into two-by-three planters to take home and grow into transplants! It's great to be gardening again!


*Photos by Tiffanie Ma