Tag Archives: Gardener’s Supply Company

I built a raised garden bed by myself

Posted on May 11, 2012 | 12 Comments

Those of you who are tool-proficient will think nothing of this, but for this old granny, it was a major accomplishment and an adventure in using my new bag of power tools.

A few months back, I bought a set of cordless power tools so I could dismantle my lovely redwood raised beds at the community garden. But I never got around to it and the garden committee did it for me. My new tools sat untouched.

My plot at the Huntington Beach community garden had nice raised beds made of redwood. This shot was in November 2011, shortly before the beds were dismantled.

The reason why I had to remove my beautiful, one-year-old beds is that the landowner, Southern California Edison, disallowed raised beds. This has stifled my interest in gardening at the community garden so far this year.

My poor neglected community garden plot, full of weeds, with no raised bed borders. This shot was in March.

I weeded my plot, but so far haven’t planted it. I have plans to put in beans and winter squash, at the very least. But right now, all that is growing there is chard, onions, and garlic.

The nice people on the garden committee even delivered the redwood boards to our home, because I don’t have a vehicle into which the boards would fit. My plan was to build a new raised bed where my Garden of Infinite Neglect sat in front, growing no vegetables.

An aside–I work at the Orange County Conservation Corps. The exterior bed borders for our plots were built by my Corps Members last year, and those outer bed borders are allowed to remain. I swear, there is no rhyme nor reason to Edison’s rules, since my inner bed borders are exactly the same as the outer borders.

I had watched my Corps Members build the borders and it didn’t look too hard. My husband built my raised beds at the community garden with a borrowed cordless drill, and I watched him too. I was pretty sure I could do this. I had the corner brackets, the screws, and the redwood already cut into the proper length for me to build a bed in our front yard. And I had a nice cordless drill that I could use to put in the screws.

Now you might be wondering about my last post on saving energy by making sun tea, juxtaposed with this post on using power tools. Hand tools are no longer an option for me because I’m pretty much crippled with arthritis in my hands and knees. I just don’t have the strength any more to put in a screw using a hand screwdriver. However, I was intimidated by my new drill. I had used a corded drill to both drill holes and put in screws, but never a cordless drill. Well, after reading some of Bee Girl’s posts about her Tool Girl, I decided that I could do it. So Tool Girl, even though we have never met, THANK YOU for your inspiration.

Fortunately, my boards were already cut to lengths that I wanted. All I had to do was juxtapose the ends, bracing them with my foot, and drill in the screws. Piece of cake. You can see that these are reused boards by the old drill marks.

My husband carried the heavy bags of compost to the raised bed and dumped them for me.

I filled the beds with a mixture of what Miracle-Gro calls organic garden soil (looked like sawdust and wood chips to me), potting soil, and steer manure, then dug it in well, mixing in dirt from below the bed. This bed is 12 ft long and 3 ft wide.

This is the new bed looking from the other direction. The Lacinato and Scotch Blue-curled kale were left over from last year. Ditto the chard at the other end. I uprooted the rest of the chard and kale and fed it to my chickens.

I drilled deck screws into the tops of the boards at one foot intervals, and threaded string around them to delineate foot square grids. I did this in part to facilitate square foot gardening, and in part (I hope) to discourage neighborhood cats from using my raised bed as a litter box. The cucumber trellises are from Gardeners Supply Company.

This bed is my rejuvenated Garden of Infinite Neglect. It has languished for a couple of years, sadly neglected. I thought for a while about why that is, and decided that it is because the hose doesn’t reach and watering it is very ackward and unsatisfying. Well, there was a solution to that problem. I bought a longer hose! And a nice watering nozzle. Problem solved. (I hope.)

I planted some almost-ready-to-harvest transplants of Red Sails lettuce and Joi Choy Pak Choy (the same as bok choy?). Being an impatient sort and having gotten a late start on the season, I planted basil, yellow crookneck and yellow straightneck summer squash, and butternut squash from transplants instead of seeds. I know, shame on me. Squash are so easy to grow from seeds. The marigolds are also transplants.

I planted seeds of Tendergreen Burpless and Straight Eight cucumbers, Black-seeded Simpson lettuce, Scarlet Runner Beans, Lutz Greenleaf beets, Kyoto Red carrots, and Redhead radishes. I think that I planted some things too close together (like the summer squash), even though I have a string grid to go by. Oh well. I grow a Darwinian garden. Survival of the fittest.

I still have a few more garden chores to do at home, and then I will tackle my community garden plot. Spring is still springing at our house.

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Harvest Monday and Kitchen Cupboard Thursday, April 23, 2012

Posted on April 24, 2012 | 20 Comments

Hoo boy, I got busy and never posted for last Thursday’s Kitchen Cupboard, hosted by Robin. That’s where gardeners blog about what they used from their stored produce or made with their fresh produce. Here’s what I used last week.

Yum, yum, a ham sandwich made with my homemade bread and butter pickles from last summer, and freshly picked Deer Tongue lettuce from my garden.

This is a ham sandwich on Russian Raisin Pecan bread from Schat’s Bakkery in Bishop, CA. The mustard is homemade (thanks, Robin, for the recipe), as are the bread and butter pickles from last summer’s cucumbers. Still have two jars left. The lettuce is freshly picked Deer Tongue lettuce from my garden. Deer Tongue, Black-seeded Simpson and Lollo Rosa are my three favorite letttuces. Oh, better add Red Oakleaf to that list just for the pretty shape and color.

We also had eggs from our hens for breakfast, and some eggs went into a homemade banana nut bread.

I didn’t photograph the rest of my harvest from last week, which was just two avocados. So I’m going to put in pics of the actual garden, which I prefer anyway. I like to see gardens growing. My harvests are generally so pathetically small, that I’d rather photograph the living plants anyway.

Some of the tomato seedlings that I bought developed damping off, a fungus. I cut the tops off above the infection and rooted the tomato tops in glasses of water on the windowsill. They're now ready to plant. I'm also rooting some yams. Note the blue Mason canning jar. That jar is from my Grandma Wilson, and about 80 years old by now.

I'm still excited about my Red Flame grapes making their first flowers this year. I have no idea if these are flower buds or grapes. I'm just watching them grow in fascination, looking forward to my first home-grown grapes.

The Florida Prince peaches are nearing harvest. But I didn't thin them enough and the fruits are pathetically small again this year. This picture makes them look big, but they're not. I'm thinking that they're going to be mainly skin and seed. Time will tell. They should be ready to pick in another few weeks.

Our dwarf Granny Smith apple tree has more blooms on it this year than ever. Our normal crop is 30 full-sized apples. We'll see what the 2012 fruit set is in another month or so.

Couldn't resist posting this pic of a rose. We had a really heavy fog this morning and everything was covered with dense dew. It was gorgeous out there.

This is the view of our backyard looking south. Herb garden is in the foreground, then the chicken coop and the roses, irises, grapes, apple trees, the plum tree, and the Florida Prince peach.

The rest of our backyard is occupied by more fruit trees and three raised beds for vegetables. This is bed #1. It has a few tomatoes, some Brussels sprouts that aren't making sprouts, some Lacinato kale that is at the end of its useful life in my garden, and a giant beet that I'm growing for the "Largest Beet" competition at the 2012 Orange County Fair. I grow mint and thyme outside this bed.

Bed 2 has tomatoes, leeks, Deer Tongue lettuce that is going to seed (it's an heirloom variety and I'll save the seeds), a Black Beauty eggplant that I planted back in 2010 that is still growing, and a row of Super Sugar Snap peas that has just sprouted along the right side of the bed. They'll grow up the metal trellis from Gardener's Supply Company, source of my beautiful raised bed frames.

Nasturtiums and narcissus are growing around the perimeter of the beds. I can hardly get through the tangle of foliage to walk around the beds, but I love the look. We have no lawn at all. Saves water.

Bed 3 with more tomatoes, a row of Blue Lake pole beans that just sprouted, strawberries, some bell pepper plants, a Black Beauty eggplant, and a couple of red cabbages that seem to be making heads. I haven't had a lot of luck with cabbage, so I'm looking forward to actually being able to eat a homegrown cabbage at long last.

I grow peas and beans up a metal pea fence by the deck. These are Mammoth Snow Peas, the second crop of the year to grow up the fence. When they're done, I'll plant pole beans.

I didn't plant this. It sprouted from my homemade compost. I figure it's a pumpkin or winter squash of some kind. I know that I should weed it out, but I just can't. I figure if it came from my compost pile, it must be something that I grew. But I had some mini winter squash that were hybrids, so it could be anything. Hybrids don't breed true. I'm afraid that my curiosity about what it might grow into may overrule my better judgement (OK, THEM. There are 8 of them sprouted.) Time will tell. What do you say, weed it out or transplant it and see what it grows into?

I bought some new orchids this year for the deck. Yep, they grow year-round outdoors in coastal southern California. I really like the three of them massed together.

That’s it for the backyard. Now let’s move on to the less glamorous front.

Our front yards are the showplaces of our properties, right? Sadly, not at our house. I have a vegetable garden right next to the sidewalk, and it never does very well. Consequently, or perhaps because, I neglect it. I call this my Garden of Infinite Neglect. It is so sad looking. I have plans to put in a raised bed here and see if that will improve growing conditions. It's going to rain here on Wednesday, so I am hoping to get that project done in the next two days. Or maybe I'll neglect to get "a round tuit."

I grow potatoes and yams in Gro-pots in our driveway. Here is a pot of potatoes that volunteered from little potatoes that didn't get harvested. I won't know if they're German butterballs or blue potatoes until harvest time. They could even be Russets. I've grown them all in these fabric grow-pots. I just add more fertilizer and reuse the potting soil and pots.

A pot of succulents in front of the Garden of Perpetual Responsibility has flowered. Nice flower.

I see artichokes on the menu for dinner tonight. They were almost ready to harvest on Friday when we left for the weekend, but I didn't want them to just sit in the refrigerator. This one is a bit past prime. But it will go great with some chicken or steak cooked on the BBQ.

My strawberry pot got a bit neglected last year, but the strawberry plants survived. I fertilized and watered them, and am hoping for at least a small crop of berries this year.

Our Fuyu persimmon tree has a half dozen flowers on it. It didn't produce any fruit last year. It might this year, but I STILL don't have it planted. It's in its original nursery pot. I think it would do a lot better if I actually put it into the ground. It's going into the Garden of Perpetual Responsibility, which is always loaded with weeds.

I got some free irises from someone a couple of years ago. They are supposed to be white with ruffled edges. This one is neither. But I like it anyway. This is the first year of bloom for it. The other irises from that source are still small and haven't bloomed yet. Maybe they're the white ruffled ones.

And that is the state of my home garden on April 23. I’ll blog about my community garden plot some other time. On to my itty bitty Harvest Monday.

Fruit

14.5 oz avocados

Vegetables

2 oz Deer Tongue lettuce

Total Produce 1 lb 0.5 oz plus 10 eggs

If you had a harvest, or you just want to see what others are harvesting, visit Daphne’s Dandelions.

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Harvest Monday, November 14, 2011

Posted on November 15, 2011 | 17 Comments

Last harvest Monday, I posted my harvests for all of October. Now I’ll catch up for November. One of these days I’ll be all caught up. Right, like that’s going to happen. By the time I’m 80, I’m going to need a whole new lifetime for all the things that are still left undone. Ain’t that the truth?

But first, let me show you around my fall garden. I just finished planting the last of my raised beds in the backyard, and am quite pleased with them. I still have the community garden plot to take care of. Manana, manana.

Bed 1 has Waltham #29 broccoli, Brussels sprouts, cauliflower, Bloomsdale spinach, Lacinato kale and some quite elderly Chioggia beets.

Bed 2 has broccoli that is just starting to make heads, Black Beauty eggplant that has two eggplants ready to harvest, Blue Solaise leeks, red oak leaf lettuce, Amish deer tongue lettuce, and Cascadia peas.

I’ve not grown Cascadia peas before, and can’t remember if they are snow peas, snap peas, or English peas. They’re starting to bloom, so I’d better look them up so I’ll know when to harvest them.

Bed 3 has a cherry tomato and a beefsteak tomato. I should pull them out, but maybe I'll try overwintering them to get a head start on tomatoes next summer. I also have 6 green cabbages, 6 red cabbages, and some snow peas. Parsley is growing outside the bed. I'll probably add some lettuce and radishes to this bed soon.

See all that dark compost in bed 3? That’s all homemade compost. I don’t have enough for all my beds, despite having two compost bins, so I still buy compost for beds 1 and 2. Bed 3 is closest to the compost bins, so it gets the nice homemade compost.

This red acre cabbage is my most recently planted crop.

This is supposed to be savoy cabbage, but it clearly isn't. Oh well. It's beginning to head up. After fighting off cabbage worms, I'm wondering if the night critters will eat it before it's ready to harvest. That's what happened to all of my lovely spring cabbage. The night critters got every last head.

 

I got this nice metal pea fence from Gardeners Supply Company. Since we're growing Mammoth snow peas next to our deck, it's better to have an attractive fence for them. This is SOOOOO much better than string netting, appearance-wise.

The hens are molting and we're getting NO eggs. Miss Hillary, the barred rock, is in front, Henrietta, our Black Australorp, is in back on the left, and Chicken Little, a Black Sex-linked hen, is in back on the right. She's nearly naked, poor thing.

The navel oranges are ripening earlier this year than usual. We should be able to start picking oranges soon. I have about 45 oranges this year on my dwarf tree, a record crop for us.

On to the actual harvest.

This Komatsuna grew from a mescun mix of Asian salad greens that went way beyond the baby green stage. No worries, Komatsuna goes beautifully into stir frys.

Ditto for this Mizuna. Wonderful in stir frys or soups.

I didn't harvest this California giant garlic in a timely fashion and it has resprouted. I really need to get to the community garden and replant the remaining cloves.

I love the taste and texture of Lacinato kale even more than Scotch Blue Curled. This harvest is the Lacinato, which went into a lentil-sausage-kale soup.

Here is the harvest for early Nov, through Nov. 13.

FRUIT

1 lb 8 oz Avocadoes

8 oz Limes

Subtotal Fruit 2 lbs

VEGETABLES

1.5 oz Beans, Green, Blue Lake Pole

1 lb 4 oz Beets, Chioggia

1 lb Chard

10 oz Cucumber (last of crop)

1 oz Garlic, California Giant

2.5 oz. Herbs (parsley and dill seed)

1 oz Green Onion

6 oz Kale, Lacinato

1.5 oz Lettuce, Red Oak Leaf and Black Seeded Simpson

0.5 oz Peas, Snow (first of crop)

Subtotal Vegetables 3 lbs 11 oz

TOTAL PRODUCE 5 lbs 11 oz Plus ZERO Eggs

If you had a harvest, or to see what others are picking, visit Daphne’s Dandelions.

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Harvest Monday, and fall planting in my backyard garden

Posted on October 24, 2011 | 10 Comments

I am almost done planting my backyard vegetable garden for fall. I specify backyard because I also grow vegetables in the front yard (I even grow potatoes and yams in the driveway using fabric Grow Pots!) and my community garden plot. Here in southern California, we garden year round, growing eggplants, tomatoes, squash and peppers in the summer, and broccoli, cabbage, cauliflower and lettuces in the winter. So, one garden area almost planted out for fall, two to go.

Raised beds for growing vegetables in back.

This is an overview of half of my backyard. You can see that I’m not working with very much space. These three raised beds are from Gardeners Supply Company. My beds are going into their third year, and look as good as new. I just love them.

I added two bean towers and some black metal trellising and pea fencing from Gardeners Supply this past spring. They’re performing nicely as well. I particularly like the black coated metal trellising that I put into the raised beds for growing peas and beans. They are designed to fit perfectly, and the black coating is more elegant than the aluminum-look pea fencing that I have set up next to our deck.

Mammoth Melting Sugar snow peas growing up a pea fence by the deck. I grow parsley, basil and dill in front of the peas, along with nasturtiums and allysum.

The openings are closer together on the black trellising than on the pea fence, which the peas like better. If I were doing it over, I’d skip the zig-zag pea fencing in favor of the black trellises, even though the black ones were more expensive. The black ones just look better.

As for the bean towers, I just love them. I can grow a lot of beans and peas in a very small space with these towers.

Raised bed # 1 has been planted with broccoli, cauliflower, spinach, and brussel sprouts, with some beets and lacinato kale left over from a previous planting.

Raised bed #2 has some eggplants hanging on from summer, plus some lettuce, leeks, one lone red cabbage that is struggling to make a head, broccoli, and some peas starting up the new black trellises.

You can see that I let that eggplant go a bit too long. It turned from glossy black to egg color. No worries. I picked it yesterday, pared off the tough skin, and made an eggplant Parmesan, using the last of my tomatoes for the sauce, plus homegrown onions, garlic, and herbs.

Raised bed #3 has some holdover tomatoes plus savoy cabbage, some peppers that have seen better days, and some peas starting up the black trellis in back.

To make even better use of my space, I plant herbs and flowers outside the raised beds. This bed has allysum and parsley around portions of the exterior. You can see the base of the bean towers in back at the left of the photo. I have a few green beans remaining, but the season for beans is over. The other bean tower has some newly planted Super Sugar Snap peas that haven’t sprouted yet.

My only remaining task for the back is to pull out the spent tomato and pepper plants, add compost, and plant my six-pack of red cabbages. I’m hoping to find room to transplant some deer-tongue lettuce that I started from seed a few weeks ago. The texture of deer-tongue lettuce is fabulous, with great flavor too. I count that as my best new-to-me vegetable from last winter. It’s an heirloom, so I saved seeds from last year’s crop to grow this year.

October has been a surprisingly good harvest month for me, with about 34 lbs of produce. That puts my total harvest for the year up to 196 lbs, with more crops coming along. I’m certainly going to break 200 lbs, and hope to at least equal my harvest last year (without the community garden) of 224 lbs. Maybe my harvest poundage is as much related to the amount of time that I have to garden as the amount of space that I have. I tended to neglect my home garden this year in favor of working the soil in the community garden.

I love being able to go out into the garden to "pick lunch." Yesterday's lunch was a turkey-Jarlsberg cheese sandwich on a croissant with homegrown lettuce, plus a medley of potatoes, whole wheat pasta, homegrown green beans, and pesto made with homegrown garlic, basil, and parsley.

Harvest for the week ending October 23, 2011

FRUIT

7 oz lemon, Meyer

6 lbs watermelon

Subtotal FRUIT 6 lbs 7 oz

VEGETABLES

10 oz bell peppers

4 oz black dried beans

6 oz beans, green

1 lb carrots

6 oz chard

1 lb 13 oz eggplant

5 oz garlic

2 oz herbs

9 oz lettuce

1 lb onions

6 oz tomatoes

9 oz winter squash

Subtotal VEGETABLES (116 oz) 7 lbs 6 oz

TOTAL PRODUCE  13 lbs 13 oz, plus 4 eggs

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Beautiful spring day in the garden

Posted on May 11, 2011 | 6 Comments

It was so pretty outside today that I documented my home garden, mainly “The Farm” in back. Here are some pics of what’s in bloom today plus things that I’ll be harvesting in the future if the critters don’t get them first.

I love it when the orchid cactus are in bloom. This salmon one is larger than my palm.

The red orchid cactus are beautiful too.

This "Thornbird" bearded iris is the second of my new iris to bloom. The colors are a bit muddy, but I like the tan and lavender. This one is a more prolific bloomer than "Clarence", which was a real beauty.

My dwarf Fuji apple tree has more blossoms on it than in the past three years, so I'm hoping for my first real crop of Fuji apples.

My venerable dwarf Granny Smith apple tree has more blooms than it has ever had before, so I'm hoping for a good crop of apples this year. I may even get my first Gala apple since it is blooming too.

I'm racing the birds and night critters to get the Florida Prince peaches before they do. I have lots of peaches but they're really small this year. I should have thinned them I guess.

By the back path behind the house I have my Fuji, Gala, and Granny Smith apple trees, plus a Santa Rosa plum, Florida Prince peach, and Red Flame grapes (which haven't made any grapes yet). This is also where I have my irises and roses, plus a Cleveland Sage (California native for the humminbirds).

The chicken coop is under the plum tree. The hens are enjoying some chard stalks that went to seed. They get a LOT of greens.

My little water garden in back is all filled in with plants. The irises are in bloom now. Maybe the water hyacinths will bloom later.

I don't know the name of the irises that grow in my water garden. They look like Japanese irises, but maybe they're called something else.

My three raised beds of vegetables have an herb garden in the foreground, and are surrounded by nasturtiums and fruit trees.

The red cabbage seems to be heading up nicely. I am hoping for a cabbage harvest in a few weeks.

The blueberries are nearing ripeness. We have orioles in the neighborhood, so it will be a race to see who gets to the berries first.

Construction of the new block wall on the north has given my lime tree more sunlight. The old wooden fence was falling over onto the lime tree and the poor thing has never given me any limes. This year will be different.

This is just one of the little limes that have set fruit and the tree is still blooming.

I bought two nice bean towers from Gardener's Supply Company. Blue Lake pole beans (seen here) are growing up one and Kentucky Blue pole beans (a new variety for me) are growing up the other. I like these space-saving towers so much that I may get another.

This is the season for teeny tiny avocados, most of which usually fall off the tree. Every year I say that I'm going to cut down that worthless avocado and every year I don't because I hope that it will set some fruit. Maybe the new block wall will result in it getting more sunshine and setting more fruit. I keep hoping.

The Katy apricot tree has set more fruit than usual, which makes up for the peach, nectarine and plum trees, which are pretty bare this year.

I don't think I have even six plums on the Santa Rosa plum tree, but they're getting to be good size.

I have only two Snow Queen nectarines (one shown here), and maybe a half dozen Panamint nectarines.

The August Pride peach tree has only a couple of peaches on it and a few more on the Babcock Improved peach. Not a good year for the late peaches.

One of the advantages of an all organic yard is that it's safe for birds, bees and butterflies. I was surprised to find this swallowtail butterfly that had just emerged from its cocoon (or chrysalis?) in the plum tree today.

This Sweet 100 cherry tomato is producing ripe tomatoes already. And boy are they sweet.

Our semi-dwarf navel orange bloomed twice last year. This is one of the later oranges that is ripening now.

I have three dwarf Eureka lemons. This tree is producing, but the other two aren't doing much. They seem to take turns, so it's good to have three trees plus the Meyer lemon.

I sowed green bunching onions a bit too thickly earlier in the year. I kept them all, spreading them out in various pots. I ended up with 110 green onions, many of which have been eaten by now.

The lone Fuyu persimmon on my new tree may actually be fertilized. It's looking promising.

The Garden of Infinite Neglect is looking neglected as usual, with kale, collards and chard going to seed.

I have a dozen strawberry plants in the Garden of Infinite Neglect that may or may not give us some berries. They're sending out runners, so at least we'll get new plants.

The only strawberries I'm harvesting are from my strawberry pot.

I had strawberries and peaches from the garden on my cereal this morning.

The artichokes are coming as fast as we can eat them. I had two for dinner tonight.

Snow peas are growing up a pea fence by the water meter. I make use of every square inch of ground.

These are the best flowers yet on the thornless blackberries, at least on one of the plants. The other plant is looking pretty miserable.

I'm growing these Summertop Japanese burpless cucumbers in pots. I have some Tendergreen Japanese burpless cucumbers growing up a new cucumber trellis in back.

Most of the front yard is planted in flowers. Pink Mexican poppies are in bloom now.

Hope you enjoyed this tour of our yard and garden in early May.

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Harvest Monday and a garden update on Oct. 25, 2010

Posted on October 26, 2010 | 13 Comments

I love this rosebush. It's my most reliable bloomer, still blooming in late October.

Salmon hash with homegrown onions and garlic

Harvest Mondays sure seem to roll around fast. I got my newspaper column done last night so I’d have time to photograph my garden and write my blog today. I want to get my Harvest Monday post done on Monday this week. For a change.

It’s actually been a quiet week in the garden. It’s rained off and on all week so I haven’t been outdoors much. It’s early in our rainy seeaon and I don’t even have my temporary rain barrels set up. The permanent ones are full already, so I need to get the Rubbermaid trash barrels set under the eaves to catch the runoff that the gutters and downspouts don’t collect. Last year I was able to use only rainfall to water my garden from December through mid-April. We saved a LOT of water last season, which is important in this near desert of greater Los Angeles that 14 million people call home.

I made two dishes from the garden this week, the salmon hash pictured above and kale with pecans and dried cranberries.

Sauteed kale with pecans and dried cranberries

Both dishes turned out great. For the salmon hash, I browned diced gold potatoes in 1/4 c butter for 8 minutes, added chopped onion and garlic and sauteed for another 10 minutes before adding 1 T lemon juice, 2 T Dijon mustard, 2 tsp grated horseradish, a T of capers, and 1/4 C sour cream. What a spectacularly delicious dish.

And now for a tour of my late October garden.

Two tiny winter squash, the sum total of my squash harvest.

I don’t know what was with the squash this year, but everything I tried failed. I got a few patty pans before my summer squash up and died. I replanted twice and got nothing more. My Amish pie pumpkins (planted too late in the year and in a Grow Pot) failed to set fruit. And the sum total of my winter squash efforts were those two miserable things above. I put them on the compost heap, too small to bother with.

Potato row, a series of Grow Bags or Smart Pots

I have sunchokes and German butterball potatoes ready to dig. I’m too busy to deal with them this week, so I’ll harvest them next week. The yams are about an inch across, still too small to harvest. The vines are still green and growing, so I’ll wait to harvest them, hoping that they’ll continue to get bigger. They’ve gone from pencil thin to almost edible in the past month. This is my first attempt at growing yams, so it’s an experiment. In  a couple of months, I’ll replant potatoes in these Grow Pots.

Scotch blue curled kale is really perking up with the cool, rainy weather. This plant is from 2007, still growing nicely and producing all the kale we want.

I was going to pull out the collards, but the plants are reviving now that cool weather is here. We'll get at least one more meal of collard greens from them, maybe more.

The chard languished all summer, and is just now looking good.

Aphids are devastating my artichokes, but the green onions and strawberry plants look good. Ginger and horseradish are nearly ready for harvest.

My raised beds from Gardeners Supply Company are a year old and I still love them. They have been amazingly productive. I'll be planting my fall crops soon.

My first Cherokee Trail of Tears beans are ready to harvest. This is my first attempt at growing them. The dried pods are a pretty red.

The navel oranges still have a couple of months to go before I can pick them. The tree set two crops this year, so I may get a later harvest as well.

The valenica orange has a few small fruits set. It will be some time before these are ripe, maybe February.

The Meyer lemon tree set a lot of lemons this year. I'm still working on Meyer lemon marmalade from last year, so I'll have to think of something to do with all that lovely fruit.

Lemons are nearly ripe on two out of three of my Eureka lemon trees.

I plan to make apple pancakes with this last Granny Smith apple.

The Brandywine tomatoes were very late to ripen, but they're still giving us lovely tomatoes for salads.

Our Littlecado avocado tree has set two fruit this year. They don't ripen until picked, but this one is still to small to pick. Maybe in January.

The little water garden that I put in a year ago is looking nice.

Our front yard is mostly for birds and other wildlife. We have a bird bath, feeders, and a pond in front.

I built this pond myself more than ten years ago. I really like it. We keep mosquitofish in it so it won't grow mosquitoes.

An autumn wreath, a pumpkin and a couple cushaw squashes greet our visitors.

Life is good. Get out there and enjoy it.

Harvest for week ending Oct. 24 2010, no fruit this week.

Vegetables

5 oz. kale

1 lb 1 oz. tomatoes

Total 1 lb 6 oz. produce plus one egg. ONE egg. One lousy egg. The chickens are molting. Again.

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Harvest Monday, July 19 2010

Posted on July 21, 2010 | 8 Comments

Three raised beds in our backyard, July 20, 2010

French toast with sliced nectarines and maple syrup

Garden or blog, garden or blog? I’m afraid that gardening almost always wins out, which is why I’m only posting on Harvest Monday these days. Since the garden is producing nicely right now, that also means that I’m cooking a lot. This week’s menus have included a lot of nectarines. And since the hens are laying again, we’re also eating a lot of eggs.

Now that the hens have finished their molt, we're back to three-egg days.

French toast with nectarines and blueberries

I’m also serving on two committees for the Huntington Beach Community Garden (fund-raising and operations), trying to get that non-profit off and running. We are so close to being able to get onto the property that I can almost see my new garden sprouting. Our plots (which are already all spoken for even though we haven’t even broken ground yet) will be 15 ft x 20 ft. Finally, I’ll have some real space in which to garden.

I’m making do for now with three 3 ft x 6 ft beautiful raised beds in my back yard (see photo at top of page), a few Smart Pots in the driveway, and some languishing plants in the Garden of Perpetual Responsibility and the Garden of Infinite Neglect. Despite extensive soil modification, neither of those two gardens produce very much.

In contrast, my three Forever raised beds from Gardener’s Supply Company are the best gardening areas I’ve ever had. They are amazingly productive and easy to care for.

Raised bed #1 has tomatoes, chard, garlic, bell peppers, a cabbage, a languishing yellow squash, and scarlet runner beans.

Raised bed #2 has heirloom tomatoes, hybrid Kentucky Blue green beans, Summertop cucumbers, leeks, chard, Black Beauty eggplant, and savoy cabbage.

Raised bed #3 has Scarlet Runner beans, Blue Lake pole beans, heirloom tomatoes, German white icicle radishes (going to seed), red onions, yellow onions, and purple broccoli.

Some of my vegetables, like the radishes, leek, beets, and chard, are going to seed. I save the seeds of my heirloom vegetables (not hybrids) to grow the next year. Maybe some day I’ll stop buying new seeds. Yeah, right, fat chance of that ever happening.

On to this week’s harvest.

FRUITS

1 oz. Blueberries, Sunshine

2 lb 12 oz. Nectarines, Panamint

Subtotal 2 lbs, 13 oz.

VEGETABLES

3 oz. Eggplant, Millionaire

13 oz. Tomatoes, Better Boy

Subtotal 1 lb

TOTAL 3 lbs 13 oz. produce, plus 14 eggs

If you had a harvest this week, visit Daphne’s Dandelions and post a link so we can all enjoy your harvest vicariously.

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February fruits, flowers and veggies in a southern California garden

Posted on February 17, 2010 | 9 Comments

I built our front yard pond myself. We gave it a "lick and a promise" cleaning last month, but it needs additional work to keep ecological succession at bay.

Spring has arrived here on the coast of southern California. For us, spring is a long, drawn-out affair, with new things popping into bloom every week.

This year, I plan to photo-document what is in bloom each month, posting the results around mid-month. We have a small yard, 6,000 square feet, with most of the ground occupied by house, driveway and sidewalk. Still, I do the best I can with the space that I have, growing food, maintaining habitat for wildlife, and having flowers to lift my spirits.

Spring is an especially fun time for this photo project with my young fruit trees coming into bloom and my raised beds for vegetables seeing their first spring. Come take a peek at ”granny’s bloomers.”

The paperwhites that I planted by the side of our pond and dry streambed have finished blooming, but the snowdrops are in their prime.

Our pink magnolia tree is quite pretty this time of year.

Our August Pride peach is the second of our stone fruit trees to come into bloom, with the first blossom on Feb. 14 this year.

Most of the August Pride peach flowers are still in tight bud.

With three camellia bushes by the front walkway, we should have pink blossoms from January into March.

Pink cobbity daisies carry out the pink theme for February on the other side of the front walkway.

Even the flower buds on the dwarf Eureka lemon tree are pink.

One out of three of our dwarf Eureka lemon trees has set fruit already. The Eureka lemons have pointier ends than the Meyer lemons and are more sour.

The Garden of Infinite Neglect by the front sidewalk is looking less neglected than usual with a refurbished flower border. I have kale, collards and beet greens ready when I want them, savoy cabbages that might ripen some day, hopeful sprouts of yellow onions, and newly planted seeds of beets (Chioggia and Lutz Greenleaf), Bright Lights chard, baby bok choy, and yellow summer squash.

Garden of Infinite Neglect from the other direction.

I have navel oranges bigger than this head of savoy cabbage. Well, it's trying.

The chickens and I have been working on weeds in the Garden of Perpetual Responsibility. I pull them, they eat them. Finally I can see my eight artichokes and 50-plus red onions above the weeds. Someday in the next month or so, this garden should get some sunshine as the sun moves north (or we tilt, however you look at it).

Green onions, strawberries and ginger grow in pots along the driveway. I can hardly wait to see a sprout in my pot of ginger.

I'm not so organized that I have an all pink garden. The first of my freesias opened this week and they're everywhere. They've naturalized in the yard and I just let them grow. They fill the spring air with a delightful fragrance.

These lovely little Epidendron orchids bloom all year long. I have several pots of them. Other year-round bloomers in my yard are Nemesia, allysum, gazania, rosemary, lavender, lantana, and probably some others I'm forgetting.

Whoops, one of my readers pointed out that these are Epidendrons, not Dendrobiums. I was given this orchid by a friend, and misidentified it.

The lavender Scabiosas are doing well this spring.

Pansies grow in the flower border of the Garden of Infinite Neglect. Oh, look, I have a lavender theme going.I want to try making some lavender sugar this spring. Apparently you just pick the flower heads and put them into a sealed jar of white sugar for a few months.

Lavender smells wonderful and attracts bees to the garden.

I'm growing purple cauliflower this year too, a new variety for me called Graffiti.

I'm even growing blue potatoes. Here is the first shoot.

So much for the front yard. On to the back.

I liked the play of light and shadow with this wacky shot of a red cyclamen.

Masses of pink jasmine grow up two trellises and over our deck, filling the air with a sweet, heavy scent.

The first flowers just opened on the Sunshine Blue blueberries.

The first flowers have opened on my tomatoes. This one is an Early Girl.

My citrus harvest is winding down. I have five navel oranges left, and three Valencia oranges (the entire crop from that new tree), which I won't harvest until the navels are gone.

My limes are long gone, but I still have a baker's dozen of ripe Meyer lemons, four ripe Eureka lemons, and more lemons coming along.

I'm experimenting with a January planted zucchini. The first tiny buds have just appeared. Remind me later in the season how excited I am by this.

I am currently growing this Green Oakleaf lettuce, plus Red Saladbowl, Lollo Rossa, Red Sails, and Black-seeded Simpson, in addition to a tray of mesclun salad greens.

I planted these double paperwhites around my raised beds fairly late in the fall, so they're in prime bloom now.

I also grow nasturtiums and parsley around the raised beds. The nasturtiums are just beginning to bloom.

The mint never totally dies back in winter, but it's just now getting its spring growth spurt. I use it for tabbuli.

Those tiny fuzzy things are baby Florida Prince peaches.

Raised bed #3 has been in a state of suspended animation since I planted it last October. It's finally starting to grow now, with lettuce, spinach, radishes, cauliflower, red and yellow onions and Super Sugar Sprint peas.

My three raised beds give me a lot of pleasure as well as food. Bed #2 is featured in this photo, with chard, red and green savoy cabbage, leeks, lettuce, and garlic. Behind it is bed #1 with bell peppers, garlic, mizuna, lettuce, carrots, parnips, and chard.

The three apple trees and the plum don't show up well in this photo because they're still dormant, but you can see our coop where the three hens live.

Spring is such an exciting time in the garden. I hope you enjoyed your tour.

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Planting sunchokes and potatoes

Posted on February 15, 2010 | Leave a comment

I’m trying many new things in my garden this year, and growing sunchokes (Helianthus  tuberosus) is one of them. Also known as Jerusalem artichokes, this North American native sunflower produces knobby but edible tubers that taste a little like artichoke hearts. I’ve never grown them before, so this is an experiment.

Apparently there is no trick to growing sunchokes because they grow like weeds. They look like weeds too, so ideally one doesn’t plant them in a prominent place in the garden. These rambling, branching, spindly sunflowers grow to heights of 6-10 feet, and are best situated in a back corner or other out-of-the-way spot.

Well, ideal and my yard don’t go together. We have very little space in our southern California urban yard and even less sun. The sunniest spot in the yard is the driveway. So that’s where I’m growing my sunchokes and potatoes this year.

How’s that possible, you ask. Isn’t your driveway covered in concrete? Yep. That’s where the Smart Pot comes in.

This 15-gallon Smart Pot container is made of a porous felt-like material. I got them from Garderner's Supply Company.

I filled three Smart Pots with potting soil to within about three inches of the top, then mixed in some E.B. Stone Sure Start organic fertilizer that is inoculated with mycorrhizae and other good microbes. I used one pot for sunchokes and two for some blue potatoes that had sprouted in my potato bin. Those pots are going to sit in the driveway where they’ll get sun all day long.

I got these yellow-skinned sunchokes from the grocery store, 1 lb for $1.99. They were much cheaper than if I had purchased them from a seed/bulb company, and there was no shipping and handling fee.

Sunchokes will grow in just about any type of soil and weather conditions. They like full sun, but tolerate shade, and grow from Alaska to Mexico. The problem comes in trying to harvest the tubers. A loose soil makes it easier to dig them up. But apparently you never get them all, and they tend to naturalize in the soil. That is why I decided to try growing them in a Smart Pot.

After the sunflowers die back at the end of summer, I’ll shift through the potting soil and see if I got any tubers. I planted 5 tubers, a bit over half a pound, in one pot. I have two leftover and may try growing them elsewhere in the yard in another container.

Sunchokes are planted in early spring as soon as the soil can be worked. They’re planted at the same time as potatoes, which in coastal southern California is January through early June. They’re supposed to be planted 3-4 inches deep. I wasn’t sure if that was to the top of the tuber or the bottom, but the way I did it, the bottom of the tuber was 4 inches deep and the top was 3 inches deep. I couldn’t tell what was top and what was bottom, so I just laid the tubers flat in a hole in the soil and covered them up.

In most areas, harvesting is in August or later, or about 4-5 months after planting. I expect to harvest them in July here. The tubers should be eaten as soon as they’re dug up because they dry out quickly, so most people dig them as they want to eat them. I’ve heard that there is no need to replant if you grow them in the ground because you never find them all.

Read more about sunchokes at http://www.hort.purdue.edu/newcrop/duke_energy/Helianthus_tuberosus.html

Blue potatoes that sprouted in the bag.

I also had some organic blue potatoes that sprouted while sitting in the potato bin. I decided I might as well plant them since they were too far gone to eat. Ideally, one would cut up the potatoes with a couple of eyes to each piece, but like I said, ideal and my gardening style aren’t related. I had six potatoes, so I put three in each Smart Pot. I planted them about 3 inches deep.

I only filled the Smart Pots to within 3-4 inches of the top, and will add more potting soil as the plants grow. I’ve heard that potato plants grow new potatoes between the seed potato and the surface and that if you keep raising the surface, or hilling them up, you get more potatoes.

I’ve tried hilling up potatoes with straw in previous years and it didn’t work. I’ll try adding more potting soil to the pots with this year’s experimental potato crop. I’ve never grown them in Smart Pots, or indeed in any kind of container, but I’ve heard good reports about the technique. We’ll see.

(To read more of Lou Murray’s environmental writing, see her weekly column, Natural Perspectives, in the Huntington Beach Independent at www.hbindependent.com /blogs_and_columns

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Connecting rain barrels in series

Posted on February 10, 2010 | 4 Comments

I have to confess that I have no plumbing or irrigation skills. It took me forever to figure out how to connect three rain barrels in series. I knew I wanted flexible tubing to connect them, and that I didn’t want to mess with drilling new holes in the barrels or gluing PVC pipes and spigots.

My water barrels all had male outlets on their spigots. One connects female adapters, such as are found on the end of garden hoses, to the male outlets.

I did know one thing about plumbing. There are male ends and female ends. The male end fits into the female end. If I was going to connect tubing to the male spigot, I’d need some female ends on the tubing.

I bought some female hose connectors at Home Depot. I also bought a Y hose bib to split the flow from the collecting barrel to two auxilliary barrels.

A female hose connecter or adapter. The piece of plastic with the yellow label is just to hold the two parts together. Snip that at a thin spot and your two pieces are ready to use.

The Y-hose bib with three clear vinyl 3/4" ID tubes attached.

I know one other thing about plumbing. Tubing has an inner and outer diameter (ID and OD). Since my hose bibs were 3/4 inch, I got vinyl tubing with 3/4 inch inner diameter. The hose adapters worked for tubing that was 1/2″ to 3/4″.

I cut a length of vinyl tubing and connected female adapters to both ends. First I opened up the clamp and slipped it over the tubing. Next I jammed the adapter into the tubing until it was well seated. Final step was to tighten the clamp. I repeated this for other end of tube. I attached one end to the collecting rain barrel and the other end to the Y-hose bib.

I cut two more hose lengths and attached female adapters to both ends. Then I connected each one to the Y-hose bib and an auxillary barrel. That gave me three barrels in series, which hold a total of 150 gallons of rain water. One good rainfall more than fills them, so I’m thinking of adding yet another barrel.

Here’s what I used:

1 rain barrel with male spigot and an overflow vent to collect water from a downspout (the “oak” barrel cost about $200 from Gardener’s Supply Co.)

2 auxillary barrels with male spigots (the Fiskars barrels cost $98 each from Home Depot)

6 cinder blocks on which to put the barrels ($0.83 each)

1 Y-hose bib connector (can’t remember price, maybe $15)

6 female adapters ($1.98 each)

length of 3/4 ” ID tubing (or an old hose that you can cut up)

Two rain barrels hooked up.

I got my first rain barrel, the one that looks like an old oak barrel with black staves, from Gardener’s Supply Company. It’s made of recycled plastic. Rain goes from the downspout onto the debris screen on top. That barrel has an overflow vent and a clear tube on the side that shows the water level.

The fiberglass barrel behind the fake oak barrel is made by Fiskars. I got two Fiskars barrels at Home Depot. They are designed to connect directly to rectangular downspouts, but our downspouts are round. That’s why the “oak” barrel is under the downspout, with the other barrels connected to it. Here is a link to one of my previous posts, showing how the first barrel was installed.

http://greenlifeinsocal.wordpress.com/2010/01/29/setting-up-and-using-rain-barrels/

If you go to Youtube, you can see videos of other rain barrel systems. Here is a 3-minute video (hope it isn’t copyrighted) that I found on Youtube that shows how to use a trash barrel to make a really inexpensive rain barrel. This one has no debris filter.

Here is a good video of how to hook up a Fiskars barrel to a rectangular downspout.

With the Suncast rain barrel that we put under the eaves, plus several trash barrels set up to collect water from the chicken coop roof, we now have a rain water storage capacity of 400 gallons. A cistern in the ground would give us the best storage, but our landscaping is mature and we don’t want to go that route.

Our Suncast rain barrel collects water dripping off the eaves, with no downspout connector.

I did this project by myself (except for sawing the downspout and setting up the first barrel.) I’m a 67-year-old granny. If I can hook three rain barrels in series, so can you!

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