What a sad week for my garden. My harvest last week was three miserable little cucumbers, 8.5 oz. total. And NO eggs. Not a single one. If I were harvesting feathers, though, I’d have plenty. The girls are molting up a storm.
I spent some time today cleaning up the Garden of Infinite Neglect. I was given some free strawberry plants today by a fellow gardener, and I want to get them planted there. She also gave me some gorgeous white bearded iris. I’m picturing them around the edge of my new community garden plot, if it ever comes into existence. The city was supposed to get final approval yesterday, but the item didn’t end up on the council agenda. Again. This delay is getting ridiculous. We’ve been waiting for months and months for Southern California Edison and the city to agree on a lease fee. I hear that they’re only $800 a year apart on the lease fee and they continue to haggle over it. FRUSTRATING! Meanwhile the garden group has collected fees from potential gardeners who expect to begin gardening on January 1st. At this rate, we won’t have the infrastructure installed in time. Well, we don’t have the money to buy what we need anyway. I think big businesses don’t want to donate until we get our final approvals. I can’t blame them. But this is really cutting it close.
Heck with it. I’m going to plant strawberries and irises in my yard tomorrow.
Lou Murray's Green World 
That must be so frustrating. And I’m not talking about the chickens. I hope they put it on their agenda soon. It almost makes you want to run for office doesn’t it?
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Daphne, a little bird told me that the community garden will be on the agenda for November 15 and that we’ll be able to get onto the property on Nov. 16. We’re scheduling our ground-breaking on Saturday Nov. 20. Keep your fingers crossed.
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Sorry your hens are molting up a storm and not laying. Very frustrating indeed. I have a funny little Marans hen who only molts a small patch at a time and has not once in her 2+ year life gone more than three days without laying an egg. Since she’s the only Marans I’ve ever head, I don’t know if it is breed specific or some crazy anomaly, but when I get a new batch of chicks sometime in the future, I’m going to make sure to include another Marans, just in case.
How do you get cucumbers to continue producing into the fall? I have no luck. My regular cukes peter out as soon as it gets hot. (Armenian cucumbers do better for me overall . . ..)
Glad to see another SoCal vegetable gardener. May the force be with you in getting that community garden problem figured out!
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Christina, the secret to getting late cucumbers is to keep planting throughout the season. These were grown in pots and produced only one misshapen cucumber per vine, but that’s better than no cucumbers.
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I’m glad you decided to “pick it” on election day. Ha! Ha!
As you said, some is better than none, so I’m thankful for any harvest that I can get out of my garden. A city council can really drag things out! Why is the power company so greedy as to have to charge for the use of it in the first place? They should be grateful that someone would be caring for the land so it doesn’t become overgrown. To be sure they’re saving money if you use it. Are they applying that maintenance savings to the lease price? Greedy! Greedy! Greedy! Best of luck with it!
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Hi Veggie PAK. About all the caring for the land that the power company does is mow down the weeds once a year. Now they’ll be getting a whopping $600 a year from the city. The agreement is set and I’m hoping that we can start putting in the garden infrastructure soon.
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