bananas, mulberries, tomatoes, a drip
irrigation system for your fruit trees
and a lot more and today's episode of
California gardening today's episode is
divided into four sections we will begin
with the garden tour we you look at the
harvests we made this month we'll look
at what's growing in the California
garden this month and then we'll have
some things for you to do in your garden
so let's begin with the garden tour our
garden is in Southern California in the
city of Irvine zone 10 and it's been
pretty warm to pretty hot here in
Southern California and I will be on
vacation next month in the month of June
so I'm trying to automate as many tasks
as possible for my garden like watering
and some other things in the garden tour
for the first bed we have some onions
growing these are the spring onions
followed by some pepper plants and some
more onions these are the large onions
the bugs are growing now and it's been a
while since they've been growing some
waiting to harvest them followed by the
tomato jungle here the tomato plants
have grown really well in the last month
and you can see here there are some
tomatoes growing as well already and
this is a great season to grow tomatoes
your tomato plants would be well
established by this time and the okras
have germinated and are growing very
slowly though I am not very happy with
the progress of my okra this season and
moving on to the next side we have some
more tomato plants the plant that you see
here right now is the San Marzano with
some fruits growing as well we have some
asparagus beans plants that will grow on
this trellis right here I just set up
this trellis with some rebars and some
wire we have taro root plants and the
sweet potato plant that grew out of the
compost bin and I have some more pepper
plants here different varieties of
peppers that are growing in this raised
bed
we have some more onions on the other
side these are again the large bulb in
type onions and finally we have our
eggplants if you remember these
eggplants these are overwintered from
last year and they've been growing
pretty well and producing a lot of
eggplants as you can see here so these
two year old eggplants are pretty strong
and that completes the tour of our
garden
now let's look at the containers that we
have we have some lemongrass we have
mint growing here this is the sweet mint
from Israel
and we have a couple of strawberry
varieties now I didn't label these
varieties but these are either the
Sequoia
or the Chandler variety followed by
one more pineapple plant and hopefully
that grows well as the season gets
warmer
and some more strawberry plants
on the corner you see the Meyer lemon
plant is quite dwarfed by this huge curry
leaf tree in the spot
and we are also growing a couple of
tomato plants in this container
in fact the tomatoes have started
forming and this plant is actually
falling down as you can see
you see these Tomatoes being formed here
this is the big boy variety of tomato
and it's growing pretty well
followed by the other mulberry tree we
have we have two mulberry trees growing
this is the other one and you'll see the
other one very soon in the harvest
section we have one more tomato plant
this is the San Marzano once again
already fruiting in this container this
is a seven gallon container the sixteen
inch container followed by some more
peppers these peppers have also been
overwintered from last year we grew this
pepper plant last year and then
overwintered it to this year and finally
we have one more curry leaf plant in the
corner as you can see here so that
completes the tour of the container
garden and we have one more section to
cover for containers and those are the
containers which are on the side of the
raised beds which are these we have a
pineapple plant growing here followed by
some onions these are again the large
bulbing onions growing in a whiskey
barrel container and followed by some
cherry tomatoes as you can see here that
have been growing very well and growing
pretty well
and these hot days you need to make sure
that they are well watered all these
tomato plants that you see and I do have
the drip irrigation line for all these
containers
and these are the Jupiter peppers a
peppers variety I'm going for the
first time this year and we did hardware
some peppers as you can see here lots of
peppers growing in this plant
it's a good paper variety to grow
and finally we have our kale the kale
plants have been growing pretty well we
haven't been harvesting a lot of kale
but so far it looks good
so those are the containers we have on
the other side just before the raised
bed and that concludes the tour of all
these containers and I hope you like the
container garden tour let me know what
you think
and moving on to the harvest sections we
harvested cabbage we have harvested a lot
of cabbages this season and as you know
we grew our cabbages in the spring
season and this is the round Dutch
variety of cabbage that grew very well
as you can see here large firm heads and
the only problem with cabbage is that of
slugs so as long as you use a slug
repellent you should be able to harvest
very good quality cabbage in your garden
and now let's look at the Chili Peppers
harvest this is the one that we
overwintered from last year and which is
growing very well this is the hot chili
pepper variety
and as you can see here it's producing
very good pods
and this chili pepper variety
that was given by one of my friends
and I'm growing this in this container
and I'm pretty happy with the results
the Jupiter peppers have also been yielding
some good quality peppers as you can see
here this pepper is a little small but
we eventually harvested some more
peppers from this plant which were
pretty decently sized now once again
when you're growing at home don't expect
very large sized harvest from your
plants because it's still way better
than what you get at the grocery store
they're fresh they're nice and they're
homegrown produce now let's look at
eggplants the overwintered eggplants have
been going very well so far as you can
see here we are harvesting some nice
eggplants here medium to large-sized
some of them a little small as well but
that's okay because they are very
flavorful when they are of this size and
this eggplant variety has a led a lot of
eggplants so I'm pretty happy with the
way they've grown
and these have been growing on the
raised bed and I've been growing a lot
of eggplants for the second year now and
moving on to the garlic harvest we had
these garlic bulbs growing in this
whiskey barrel container which is a
pretty good way to grow garlic by the
way if you're planning to grow garlic
all you need to do is just have this one
whiskey barrel container with a wide
area and just plant your garlic bulbs
and as you can see here we harvested our
garlic and we are washing them I usually
like to wash my garlic and then just dry
it a little bit before I store it so I'm
just gonna Sun dry it for about 30
minutes or so and then once that is done
what I'm going to do is just tie them
together and then keep them in a well
ventilated area and keep them open and
let them cure now let's move on to mint
we did have a lot of mint that we
harvested we're growing a lot of
varieties of mint and containers and I
hope you've seen my video on growing
mint I have covered all aspects of
growing mint in that video and to harvest
mint all you do is just trim the leaves
and once in a while you should just trim
all your leaves and stems from your mint
plant so that the plant comes back and
grows very healthy and gives you fresh
leaves now I know a lot of people who
have problems with their mint plants
where they see diseased leaves or leaves
that are not really growing very well
and for them what I would advise is just
make sure you trim your plant completely
once at least every season and at spring
or the summer time is a good time to do
it and then let the plant grow back with
new leaves and that will give you really
good quality mint and one more thing you
can do is add some fertilizer to your
mint plant some liquid fertilizer during
this time or some compost tea and that
way you will get very good quality mint
from your plants
and now let's move on to Mulberry which
is very interesting we got some
mulberries on a tree
and as you can see here these berries
are pretty small but they are absolutely
delicious a great tasting fruit in my
experience
the green onions that we are growing in
our raised bed are now growing a lot of
onion greens and as you can see here we
are harvesting these greens
these onion leaves can be harvested
right through the growing season and
they are very flavorful and they're very
tender at this stage so good time to
harvest your onion leaves while the
bulbs grow and eventually this bulb will
grow to a medium size because these are
the spring onions and once the bulbs
grow we can harvest them as well
and then moving on to our strawberry
harvest we have been growing these
strawberries in our small containers
these are the 12-inch containers and as
you can see here that's enough to grow a
couple of strawberry plants
can see here these strawberries just
hang out from the sides and then you
just harvest them and homegrown
strawberries are just so delicious if
you have kids at home they just love to
harvest these strawberries and eat them
moving onto Tomatoes we finally
harvested our first batch of tomatoes
and these are the yellow honey Gold
tomato variety and we harvested a few of
these tomatoes from the ones growing in
the container we also harvested some
cherry tomatoes as you can see here
these are the cherry tomatoes and they
were growing very well and we were able
to harvest them as well
and now let us look at what's growing in
the garden this month we have grapes
growing this is the flame seedless
variety of grapes and as you can see
here it is growing very well on this
trellis that you see here and producing
these large clusters of grapes and in
this season it will keep growing and
producing larger bunches of grapes as
you can see here they're all hanging
down from this support and it's a pretty
sight and they'll be ready to harvest
once they turn red
the Pineapple to plant is growing very well
and producing side shoots despite the
frost the raja puri dwarf banana is now
producing flowers as well as bananas and
as you can see here this is a great
dwarf banana variety to grow at home and
is something that i would recommend if
you don't have a lot of space or even
otherwise this is a wonderful banana
variety it grows to about 5 feet or so
maybe around 6 feet and we are
harvesting the banana flower here and as
you can see the bananas have been
produced and what happens now is the
flower just continues or the bud just
continues to hang from there so it's
better if you harvest the bird and the
flowers and you can eat them they're
very edible the flowers are very
delicious and what remains after that
are the bananas which will continue to
become big and then continue to ripen
after that
now let's look at the tomatoes that are
growing we do have a lot of varieties of
tomatoes this season that we planted and
as you can see here we have some in the
container as well so we have different
tomato varieties in containers as well
as in raised beds you can see here some
of the fruits are being formed as well
and we did harvest some cherry tomatoes
this season
so about five tomato plants in a 4x4
raised bed is pretty ideal here you can
see some more Tomatoes being formed and
Tomatoes will form fruit if the
temperatures are not too high so
currently the temperature is a pretty
ideal for growing tomatoes and this was
the one in the whiskey barrel container
one plant per whiskey barrel
and now let's look at the things to do
in your garden this month the first
thing we did is we set up the drip
irrigation system for our trees
I didn't want to take a chance and let
any of the trees die so I set up a drip
irrigation system for all the fruit
trees as you can see here we have about
45 feet of area to cover and I will show
you how I managed to do that
so the first thing was to use an
existing sprinkler line that we already
had and then use a Rain Bird
retrofit system for a sprinkler system
that already exists and what I'm doing
is I'm just taking an elbow to take the
PVC pipe to one side so that I avoid the
roots of some plants and then I'm
attaching the retrofit assembly to the
top
once that is done you will have your
retrofit
as you can see here which brings out two
main lines of half-inch tubing and this
half inch tubing can be laid across the
entire length of your fruit trees and
that go into this retrofit assembly
so it's pretty simple you just attach
the main line and then you attach the
quarter inch tubing and emitters as you
can see here I have many videos where I
have detailed how this works
and as you can see here there are two
emitters the fan bubbler actually sprays
out more water than the other emitter
and this is the other way to set up the
drip irrigation for your fruit trees
what I'm doing here is i'm using this
manifold which connects to a sprinkler
line and then the emitter is connected
by a quarter inch tubing to this
manifold so whatever way you do it you
should set up drip irrigation I have set
up drip irrigation for my containers as
well this is in my front yard now
pruning is another important activity to
do in your garden this month are putting
the trees have grown pretty large and
we're going to be pruning our Moringa
tree as you can see here it's producing
these small long branches and by pruning
them you make sure that they grow in a
more bushy fashion don't be afraid to
prune your curry leaf plant as well we
are pruning this small plant so that it
grows in a more bushy way and tomatoes
they need to be pruned as well
especially if you're growing them in the
ground or raised bed and this is
completely optional I'm just showing you
how to prune these suckers that come out
of the tomato plant and it's a good
thing to do this month in your garden so
there we have it folks that was our
episode on the California garden for the
month of May and I'm not going to be
here next month I will be on vacation so
happy gardening and we'll see you soon