Oaktown Oasis Gardens: April 2014

Hello from the
Oaktown Oasis Gardens!

We moved over to Oakland recently and actually had the space and weather to do a little gardening. Our first efforts were just to keep the existing plants alive. "Clean and Green" - watered, weeded and alive. We managed that rather well and are moving on to PHASE TWO now.

We have three major areas going:
• Front yard
• Side strip
• Back yard

The front has a mix of flowering plants, a new small plot with honeysuckle and strawberries and a fig tree. The side had a mix of flowers when we moved in, but suffered from our sprinklers dying on us at the end of last summer and a heavy footed worker doing repairs on our neighbors home, so it was rather bare. The back has a mix as well. Flowers and herbs in three raised brick beds, several fruit trees and a lawn that has seen better days. :) The lawn has a steady stream of children running over it most of the time, so I'm letting it go for now.

Out with the Old

The first thing we took on was clearing the plant areas in the back. The back brick beds got the most sun, so we needed them for our veggies. The plants from the back were moved to the side strip. We replanted and thought about the veggies we wanted in the garden.

The first step was a plan.

Simple sketches and lists in a book made it easy to figure out what we wanted to do, where we wanted to do it and what questions we had about it. The nice folks at the EAST BAY NURSERY http://www.eastbaynursery.com/ helped us a lot, answering our long list of questions and talking us through our plant options. SUPER helpful. I can't recommend them enough. We made our purchases and headed home for a day of gardening!

We mixed in some soil builder to revitalize the soil.

Planting took place in phases. The kids helped. It was a great experience for them. We got the plants in place and put off doing the seeds until the following week.

Seeds

The next phase was planting seeds. We did some seeds outside, but the lady at the garden center said that they may be more successful if they are started inside. So, we did a mix of indoor and outdoor seed planting. I have to say, the indoor seeds do seem like they are doing better.

Other Parts of the Garden

We had an issue with our apples last year. There were a lot of them, but they had small, dark spots on them. They didn't have worms inside, but they were not thrilling to eat knowing that something was going on with them. (My little baby loved gnawing them no matter what they looked like!) So this year we sprayed the tree with a people friendly oil and put up moth traps.

Apple blossoms

Moth trap experts Miss S and Miss T :)

A good friend gave us a sweet pea plant. Another major love of the kids. The plant ran its course and looked a little worse for wear and now we're trying to get a new one going with some of the pods. A great science project for our three year old!

We have another gift tree in front - a lemon tree from my sister-in-law.

Our rose bush is doing really well in the front...

After the First Weeks

And, as the dust settles and the rains taper off, the garden seems like it's rolling right along and taking hold for the most part. We lost some cucumber plants, but we believe they were just damaged during the planting process. We have cucumber seeds sprouting in the house, so we're covered there.

I'll post updates as they come along. Not all the posts to this blog will be as long as this first one was. Follow along if you'd like. Comments are always welcome!