FINALLY.

I moved my family down to central California after living in Washington for seven years, and we had to leave our wonderful 1/4 acre garden behind. It's been over half a year since I've been able to get into a new house (we were living with my in-laws while our house was being built), and my wife and I finally got some plants for our back yard...




Seedless "Flame" grapes. I have confirmed that they are delicious. I plan to have four of these vines planted at the four corners of my garden to serve as an edible wall. Yum.




Lemon (top) and lime (bottom). My wife goes through a lot of citrus in her cooking, so we may end up having to buy another one of each of these.

Visible in this picture is a PVC pipe sticking out of the ground. The dirt around here is pure clay, so it's difficult for the water to penetrate deep, which is no good for trees. I took a piece of PVC pipe, drilled some holes into the bottom of it, capped it, and have an irrigation valve running inside of it to water the dirt at and below the roots. Cheap, easy.


Raspberry. You probably never need to buy more than a single stalk. They tend to spread.


Sad little basil plant. We go through quite a bit of basil, so I may need to start a patch from seed instead of spending lots of money on adult plants.

That's all we've got so far. It's a little late to start from seed around here, where it's 95+ degrees all summer long... but I might try some indoor herbs and see if I can get some traction that way. I'm still trying to get used to the growing seasons around here... it's very different compared to western Washington.

Also, it rains in Washington. Not so much in the central valley of California. Irrigation systems are a must, and this is the first time I've worked with one. The whole thing about drip lines and running small 1/4" lines to mini-sprinkler heads and all that... fun! I went to an irrigation shop today and they have all kinds of neat irrigation components to play with. Fun fun fun.