Gardening/Experimenting in O Rosal

"A banana plant? Planted in the ground, not in a pot?!!"

I remember asking that when we first saw our property. I can't believe how many different species we can grow here in our little enclave of O Rosal. We were both so curious about the citrus, figs, prickly pear and other plants that we had noticed in our whirlwind tour of the property. Once we had moved and noted plants ranging from birds of paradise, protea, jacaranda and so many other varieties, we thought, we can grow practically anything in this zone! O Rosal is zone 10A. We came from zone 5B. There isn't a frost in zone 10A, we don't get snow here (part of the point of the move). Also, the micro climate of this area seems to balance humidity and sun just right. At least the Albariño grapes that are lining every street seem to suggest so.

Not long after our arrival last year we started buying seeds at nurseries and online. Wherever we went there was vegetation and growth, we wanted to get in on the fun and start growing our own produce. We didn't have our vegetable patch planned yet, but with each new sunrise, I was itching to get seeds started and get the process going. What could we grow, where could we grow it? How much would we save on our grocery bill? And more importantly, we couldn't find green chilie's or fresh jalapeños at the store, let's get those seeds started. It was the end of August of 2022, we were at the end of the the planting season, but figured we could experiment and take a chance with planting some peppers and kale to start. The seeds germinated quickly, with new seedlings coming up, but then quickly decimated. The little cotyledon leaves of the plants held so much promise, but the slimy trails and shredded plant matter that remained from the slugs and snails reminded us that growing "all the things" wouldn't be that easy. That's right our first 3 or 4 attempts at growing from seeds were quickly eaten by the garden pests. We weren't completely blind to garden pests, we had slugs in our old Denver zone 5B, but those slugs were nothing compared to the gigantic Spanish slugs and snails that we encountered.

The humidity and warmth is great for planting and growing, but also great for bugs and garden pests to thrive as well. Fallene was quick to research solutions and determine that our slimy nemesis's were adverse to copper, apparently caused by an electrical reaction when they slither over it, so we bought copper tape and lined the outside of the seed trays. It helped somewhat, but was not the cure all we had hoped. Ultimately we moved the seed trays into the cottage on the property and tried growing in the window. But vegetables need a lot of light, the window was not enough light, so we bought a grow light.

Armed with a grow light and a whole host of new seeds extracted from some market fresh delicious heirloom tomatoes, I planted a new seed tray. These seeds were making it past the cotyledon stage and becoming actual plants, so I planted a couple more types of seeds. I tend to experiment. If these tomatoes worked out, let's try these peppers, how about this lettuce? Soon Fallene was giving me seeds from most things we were eating. Butternut squash, red pepper, more tomatoes, beans, etc, I planted them all. As the months ticked by I had added two more grow lights and had taken up most of the floor space in the cottage with all of the experiments. While growing indoors helped with the pest problem and the grow light helped with the light problem, indoors meant a lot more care. I was now manually watering and feeding nutrients to the plants. The meditative process of watering, feeding, repotting, and more was a great way to while away the rainy colder months that the winter brought and I was feeling great about how many plants I had growing and now flowering. We were going to have fresh tomatoes in the winter, sweet! Alas, no, with flowers, we needed pollinators to bear any fruit and growing inside purposely removed the bugs. Which meant most of the flowers shriveled up. After some research, armed with a couple of paint brushes, I tried to manually distribute the pollen between the flowers. This process was hit or miss. We had produced a couple of small tomatoes and one bean pod, but overall, I don't think I was consistent enough to ensure pollination.

In March, we planned out the outdoor vegetable patch and created a couple of raised beds out of lumber from an old fence on the property. While building the raised beds we thought about how big we wanted them, what would we grow in them, and how tall they should be for easy access. But didn't really consider, how much soil and compost we would need to fill these beds, after we built the first two and redid the calculations, we were going to need a lot of compost and even more soil. We ended up filling both of the beds with branches, stumps and cardboard, but we still needed quite a bit of soil. This wasn't going to work for the larger vegetable patch and the ten beds we were planning. We retooled the beds to leverage the soil that was all around. Again we recycled lumber from an old wood shed on the property and we built the beds framing in each patch of soil only one board width high, more of a border that defined each bed rather than a raised bed. Now we had a proper vegetable patch, it was time to fill it with plants!

Low and behold the building of the beds and the continuous up and down took a toll on my knee, so when it came time to free the hoard of vegetables we had cultivated all winter and move all of the plant babies out to the yard, Fallene was a work horse, loading up the wheel barrow countless times and moved over 100 plants from the cottage down to the vegetable patch. There were pots large and small scattered amongst the beds. It was daunting to see how my experiments in growing all the things were now taking up most of the newly created beds. Methodically working, we ended up planting most of the tomatoes, peppers and butternut squash into the garden. Some of the plants from the cottage were just too leggy or at the end of their life cycle and we didn't end up planting them. Hindsight, I should've edited even more. Getting these already sizable plants in the ground in April, we didn't account for the dramatic size increase that this zone and micro-climate would bring. Things really do grow and grow and grow out here.

In addition to the plants that we moved from the cottage, I wanted to plant other vegetables, so many I wanted to try to grow, watch their growing habits and learn from them. Beets, corn, pumpkin, spaghetti squash, leeks, onion, egg plant, zucchini and more. I sewed seeds in a couple of the beds that hadn't been completely filled by the other cottage plants and held out hope, babying these seedlings and watching some make it, like the corn and others quickly gobbled up by the slug/snail monsters like the egg plant and the zucchini. It made for a frustrating process, as the time kept ticking, it felt like we were losing valuable growth seeing the decimated seedlings time and time again. We read how the pests loved the tender seedlings, but larger more mature plants had much more of a chance to grow and actually produce fruit. Ok, should we sew seeds inside again? Should we look to buy more mature plants at the nursery? This problem was solved one Saturday when we went to the farmer's market in Portugal. There were stalls upon stalls stacked with grungy styrofoam trays overflowing with vegetable seedlings of all types. These seedlings or "starts" as we have come to call them are super cheap and save a lot of the overall grow time. So for things like lettuce, tomatoes, cilantro, parsley, zucchini, water melon and much more, we will buy starts and get those in the ground. Of course, Colorado classics like green chilies, jalapeños and serranos are not available as starts, so we are still sewing those directly and I am happy to report, we have gotten very good at this. Do you need some Jalapeños?

The summer was kicking into high gear and we ended up with a couple of very humid foggy days which were followed by a couple of days of light rain. More humidity and moisture has to be great for the garden, right?! Well, yes and no, just as I was feeling so fresh and so clean about it all, the black spots set in on the tomato leaves. WTF?! Google was consulted and a couple of calls to other gardeners in the area led us to believe that the tomatoes had some kind of blight. Early or Late, both types tend to really suck. I ended up ripping out all of the new younger varieties of tomatoes, both from seed or from starts. This was heart breaking. I had varieties like Green Zebra, Tigerella, Tomate Azul, Cherokee Purple and more. I had always wanted to grow and enjoy these tricky heirloom varieties. It didn't mater, this blight/fungus doesn't care, so I tried not to either and ended up cutting or digging up about 30 tomato plants. Now we watch for rain or high humidity days and then spray the leaves with copper sulfate in a low concentration(Thanks Oscar for the guidance and the copper sulfate). We also started to realize the squash had some vines that were very productive but then others that were dying back with the leaves turning brown and the squash blossoms falling off. The pests strike again, me thinks a squash vine borer beetle may be afoot, we continue to look out for them, but seem to just miss them. Just last week it was time to harvest the corn, which we were both really looking forward to. Corn is growing in a lot of areas around our neighborhood, but we have learned that this corn is only for the animals and not the sweet corn that we both grew up with and is revered in places like Mendota, IL at their annual sweet corn festival. So when it came time to harvest, I pulled some of the husk and silks back, only to discover insect damage. The garden pests strike again, so frustrating!! We determined it to be some kind of worm, which ended up wrecking our entire harvest of corn. It really is a balance, with great conditions comes great vigilance. Whether we are organically treating for fungus or manually removing pests, we have to stay on top of the vegetables.

Another challenge that we ended up with is the rampant growth of the plants. Part of building the beds in the vegetable patch included building trellises out of bamboo poles from bamboo we took down when we first got here. I strung twine for each tomato plant. I was determined to grow them up the twine and eliminate the need for a cage or other staking methods. I built bean poles for the white beans and we installed some garden arches where we grew cucumbers, butternut squash and spaghetti squash. The garden was looking sweet!

All the plants were coming up, seeds were growing, and plants were maturing. We were super happy not only with growing our own food, but also with saving some cash on the produce bill. However, we weren't prepared for the plants growing so fast. I was focusing so much on the removing the tomato blight and affected parts of the plants, but the indeterminate tomatoes kept growing and much like the plants of Angkor Watt, taking over and crumbling the temples, the tomatoes destroyed the trellises.

The metal arches with squash and cucumbers growing on them have started to list and lean, buckling under the weight of the veggies and the vines. I am supporting some of the trellises and arches with wood planks wedged into the ground bolstering these structures.

At this point, as the season winds down, I am harvesting the fruits and veggies as fast as I can and working around the chaotic growth of all my experimental plants. We will definitely will be reducing the number of plants in the beds for next season. Regardless, I must say, it is so very cool to see all of the plants that grew from such tiny seeds.

Even with the pests, the fungus, and other challenges, the amount of delicious fruits and veggies we have grown over this season has been very fulfilling. We continue to see the fruits of our labors and have sewed new seeds for autumn vegetables such as kale, egg plant, carrots and radishes, oh and trying corn again as well (gotta experiment and see how it does later in the season and in a different part of the garden). We are looking forward to the Autumn growing season and the associated highs and lows that this new growing time will bring. Speaking of growing, it's time for me to get back in the garden. Until next time.