Tag Archives: Huntington Beach Community Garden

Home Renovation Hades

Posted on March 5, 2013 | 12 Comments

Man, I can’t remember my last blog post. February I think. Much is going on here at Green World.

First of all, Hubby and I are totally caught up in a whirlpool of home repair and renovation. We don’t do the work ourselves, but dealing with estimators and contractors, researching options, and running to the store to make choices takes up my day.

So far, we have had new sidewalks poured at the side and front of the house to fix dangerously lifted slabs, a trip accident waiting to happen. And we have had the deck repaired, but it STILL hasn’t been sanded and stained.

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This is the new walkway on the south side of the house, and the new redwood fence built by our new neighbors to the south. Our gardener pruned back the jade plants.  I may do something else here, like put in some vertical planters made of old wood pallets (using heat treated, not chemically treated, wood). I might plant some pink jasmine along the fence. I’m also thinking of building a trellis shade structure to shade my office window, the first window along the house. We definitely need a new gate. I think I can build one out of redwood and 2x4s. Which brings me to my next topic: woodworking.

Our garage work area with three new Lou-made drawers in the workbench shelves.

Our garage work area with three new Lou-made drawers in the workbench shelves.

I have taken up wood working. I don’t know why. I guess I have been inspired by Ali’s work on Henbogle and am stumbling along in her footsteps. And then there is Tool Girl. What a cool nickname. I wanted to be a Tool Girl too. But I really blame this new hobby on my garden.

Two years ago, my husband built me some beautiful raised beds out of redwood at the community garden. Construction work was going on all over the garden, so he borrowed a cordless drill to build it. Then stupid Southern California Edison made us remove all raised beds, and I had to disassemble them. I needed a cordless drill. Didn’t own one. Off to Home Depot I went. I didn’t know a thing about power tools, but there was a whole box of Ryobi power tools on sale: drill, circular saw, reciprocal saw, and shoplight, with two batteries and a charger. And it came with a cool carrying bag. How could I pass that up?

This is one of the raised beds that I built for the front yard. Parsley, chard, and flowers are pretty much hiding the wood.

This is one of the raised beds that I built for the front yard. Parsley, chard, cauliflower, cabbage, garlic, flowers and shadows are pretty much hiding the wood.

Well, now I had a drill, two saws, and a lot of nice redwood, so I decided to build stuff. The first project was three raised beds in the front yard, since my tiny back yard is already filled with fruit trees, chickens, and three raised beds. The next project was to build an outdoor plant shelf out of scrap wood from the neighbor’s home renovation project. The low shelves (plant stands) will keep my potted plants off the deck.

Wood Magazine 2013

Wood Magazine 2013

Then I saw this magazine at Home Depot. Look at that cute little tool cart for the workshop. I don’t know why, but that thing spoke to me. I just loved it. I wanted to build it! Keep in mind that I have NO woodworking experience, just a bunch of tools that I had no idea how to use.

My next door neighbor was kind enough to show me how to use a circular saw. I cut the lumber to make my plant shelves (one is assembled, two more to go, none are painted yet).  At that point, I decided that my skills were not up to making the little tool bench on casters, so I decided to make box drawers to go into my existing tool bench. The directions said that the tool cart with all those drawers could be made in a weekend, so how hard could a mere four drawers be? Hahaha!

Step 1 was to build a box drawer with cut-out handle.

Step 1 was to build a box drawer with cut-out handle.

I am now on week 3 of the project and am building fourth drawer. One weekend, my fat fanny!

The box drawers have cut out handles in front and back so i can pull a given box out to get to what is stored inside.

The box drawers have cut out handles in front and back so i can pull a given box out to get to what is stored inside.

Here is a drawer slid out to reveal the contents.

Here is a drawer slid out to reveal the contents.

I hadn’t been able to reach the back of the shelves before because they were so deep (and I’m short, with arthritic knees). Now access is no problem.

I plan to fill the drawer seams with wood putty, and either put on a light stain or oil or polyurethane or something. Like I said, I have no woodworking experience, but I think there should be a finish of some kind on them.

My time recently has been spent in the garage, making sawdust, and turning perfectly nice boards into distressed wood products with nicked and mismatched edges and boogered-up corners. Hey, it’s a hobby!

But wait, there’s more. We are also in the process of interior home renovation. And when I say “we”, I mean contractors. We have had a new shower door put into the guest bath, and new bathroom faucets installed in the master and guest baths. That will hold the bathrooms for now.

On to the KITCHEN. I have have had “range envy” ever since Ali at Henbogle got a five-burner range with convection oven. Lust, lust.

Meet Big Bertha, our new GE range.

Meet Big Bertha, our new GE range.

Turns out that problem was easily solved. I bought a new range. Our old oven was haunted. The darn thing would beep in the middle of the night, waking us up at 2 pm and asking us to turn it on. Sometimes the oven would turn itself on, which of course is dangerous. We had had it with that possessed beast. We replaced it with this beauty, which sadly sticks out farther than the old one. The kitchen drawers won’t open all the way now. ARG!

Our current kitchen with new stove in place.

Our current kitchen with new stove in place.

Home Depot is solving the problem by refacing our old cabinets and giving us all new drawers, new cabinet doors, and new countertop, plus some custom cabinetry.

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I may try to salvage these pantry doors by building a cabinet for the garage and using these doors. Seems a shame to just shred and compost them.

I may try to salvage these pantry doors by building a cabinet for the garage and using these doors. Seems a shame to just shred and compost them.

We have a new stainless microwave-hood combo, but were told to not install it until after the cabinet work is done. So here it will sit until the cabinet work is finished.

We have a new stainless microwave-hood combo, but were told to not install it until after the cabinet work is done. So here it will sit until the cabinet work is finished.

We chose natural maple for the cabinets and drawers. But this isn't the style. We went with double Shaker, which will go with the Craftsman theme of our family room.

We chose natural maple for the cabinets and drawers. But this isn’t the style. We went with double Shaker, which will go with the Craftsman theme of our family room.

This is our Craftsman/Mission/Shaker family room furniture.

This is our Craftsman/Mission/Shaker family room furniture.

We painted two walls of the family room a light green and hung a mirror and some Audubon prints.

We painted two walls of the family room a light green and hung a mirror and some Audubon prints.

 

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This is an example of the craftsmanship of the drawers that we are getting. They have chamfered (rounded) edges, dove-tailed corners, and are made of solid maple. The insides of the drawers are going to be fabulous.

We wanted a quartz (Silestone) countertop, but couldn’t find a pattern that we both liked. We compromised on Corian in Platinum, which is gray with white speckles like granite. We are getting coved corners on the countertop and back-splash, a no-drop edge, and a built-in sink of white Corian. None of those features were available in quartz. It should look gorgeous.

Ah, but the cabinet guys don’t do plumbing. They will leave us with a sink that is not connected to the drains. And since the tile with a subsurface is being replaced by Corian with no subsurface, the countertops will be lower.

We were told that it would take 4-6 weeks to get the cabinet work done. Then 6-8 weeks. They claim that it will take only three days once they start. HA. If you believe that, I have a bridge to sell you. And thus we enter Home Renovation Hell. Maybe we will have the kitchen back to functional by mid May.

Meanwhile, the garden harvests continue. Last week, I harvested:

13 oz Navel Orange

1 lb 4 oz Meyer lemon

5 oz Bell Pepper (in February! Can you believe it?)

11 oz Cauliflower

TOTAL

3 lbs 1 oz of produce, plus 21 EGGS

If you had a harvest, visit Daphne’s Dandelions to share the good news.

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Bummer, I got laid off!

Posted on October 23, 2012 | 16 Comments

I was on my very expensive and unreimbursed photo trip to Yellowstone and the Tetons to improve my photography skills and gather material for my newspaper  columns when I got laid off. Twelve years with the Huntington Beach Independent had come to an end. My husband got the news at home and let me know on the first full day of my trip.  What a blow.

It wasn’t personal. The Los Angeles Times directed community newspapers to lay off all of their columnists except for the one on the front page. And as an environmental and gardening columnist, I certainly wasn’t on the front page. I was relegated to near dead last, right before sports.

Worse, I was scheduled to go to a garden writers conference in Tucson last week. I was able to get my conference fee and hotel refunded, but had to eat the airfare.

I am now busy redefining myself. Now that I’m no longer a newspaper columnist, who am I? Am I still a writer/photographer for pay? Well, yes, I still produce power point presentations for the natural history class that I co-teach with my husband. He does all of the teaching and I provide material for lectures and collect the pay. Pretty sweet deal. And I still work at the Orange County Conservation Corps, teaching young at-risk adults, mainly male Hispanic gang members ages 18-22. So even though I will be 70 in a few months, I’m not retired. Nor do I want to be.

I’m sad to lose my newspaper job. The pay wasn’t much, but I really enjoyed it. Oh well, now on to whatever is next in life. Now that I no longer have a Monday newspaper deadline, perhaps I will have time to participate in Harvest Mondays. There was a harvest this week, but I didn’t bother to photograph it. So much for having more time.

Oops, wrong, I found a couple of photos.

Eggs, green onion, and bell peppers. The conical ones are Giant Szegedi, only they’re not so giant. Looks like breakfast.

Chope the veggies and saute in butter, margarine or bacon fat. Set aside.

Beat the eggs with a bit of half and half and some salt. I used Himalayan Pink salt.

Cook the egg mixture in a covered skillet until almost set. Add a few chunks of cream cheese and the sauteed vegetables. Fold the omelette in half and cook covered until completely set.

The result will be a gorgeous and tasty omelette. I cut them in half with one half for each of us.

Serve with the bread product and fruit of your choice. I used watermelon because that’s what we had from our garden this week. That’s homemade jam on the bread.

On to the harvest for the week.

FRUIT

15 oz Avocados

3 oz Lime

5 lb 3 oz Watermelon (the last one–the others were stolen from my community garden plot while I was on vacation)

6 lbs 5 oz Fruit

VEGETABLES

18 oz Bell Peppers

10 oz Eggplant

1 oz Green Onion

SUBTOTAL 1 lb 12 oz oz Vegetables

TOTAL 8 lbs 1 oz PRODUCE plus 3 eggs (only one hen is laying and she’s beginning to molt)

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

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Catching up on the harvest, July 19, 2012

Posted on July 20, 2012 | 1 Comment

Seems like the farther we get into summer, the behinder I get. I finally got my community garden plot mostly planted. About time. It’s mid July already. I have been struggling to learn my new iMac and new Nikon P510 camera. Too much new stuff at once for this old brain. And so my blog posts fall behind.

I just finished adding up my harvest totals to date. I don’t think I’m going to make my goal of 350 lbs of produce this year, which would be a hundred pounds more than I produced either of the last two years (the only ones where I bothered to weigh my harvests.)

I think these are mostly Panamint nectarines, but there could be some peaches in there too.

At mid July, I’m up to 58 lbs of fruit and 89 lbs of vegetables for a total of 147 lbs. I thought I had 119 lbs of vegetables for 2012 a month ago, so I don’t know what’s going on with my Excel spreadsheet. I’m going to quit banging my head on my office wall and accept that 30 lbs disappeared off my spreadsheet in the past month. I suspect a math error on my part rather than a real loss of produce. Oh, who cares? I’m not likely to get another 200 lbs of produce out of my garden this year, so maybe 250 lbs is all I’m capable of growing. After all, there is only so much time and space. I just don’t understand how people can be growing 1,000 lbs of produce in a summer in their home gardens.

Some early tomatoes from June and some eggs from our hens

My stone fruit crops are all harvested, so the only fruit I’m expecting for the rest of the year are apples, avocados, a few strawberries, lemons, and limes. I might get some watermelon and cantaloupe, but that remains to be seen as there are no female flowers on the vines as of yet. I’ve already equaled my previous two years’ fruit harvest totals, so at least this will be a record fruit harvest year for me. Vegetables are another matter. I guess it will depend on whether or not I get a good harvest of heavy crops like tomatoes, summer squash, pumpkins, cucumbers and yams over the next couple of months.

This is my revamped plot at the community garden. I had to take out my raised beds and make the beds and paths level with each other. Since my pathways were hard-packed gravel and my beds had been raised, I filled in the pathways with concrete pavers. I think it looks nice.

Another view of my plot, looking northeast

My community garden plot, looking southeast

Looking southwest

It’s probably too late in the season to get any winter squash out of my community garden plot, but I may try anyway. I’m hoping that the green and wax beans, peppers, tomatoes , cucumbers, watermelon, cantaloupe, and summer squash that I planted will produce something. We should have a good two months of warm/hot weather remaining.

My home garden isn’t very photogenic right now, but the tomatoes are producing and the pumpkin vines are sprawling. No female flowers yet on my pumpkins, but I have three nice butternut squash in the home garden that promise to be a good size. I may try some photographs tomorrow of my home garden, but the community garden is looking much perkier at present. My home garden has been baking under 90 degree skies, and since it doesn’t rain here during the summer, it is totally dependent upon me for hand watering. Too bad I don’t get to it as often as I should. Hey, I do what I can.

My blue potato crop is all harvested. I got a bit over three pounds out of one fabric Gro Pot.

 

At least I got several pounds of tomatoes processed into spaghetti sauce today, and canned my first batch of bread and butter pickles last week. Little bit by little bit.

 

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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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Blooming Monday, March 12 2012

Posted on March 13, 2012 | 8 Comments

Wow, spring is just bursting out all over in our yard. In addition to updating my harvest, I want to show some pics of stuff in bloom.

Our Katy apricot tree had very few blossoms this year, so I'm not anticipating much of a crop. Actually, the birds and night critters usually get all the apricots anyway.

This is our Katy apricot. There are few blooms on it this year, so I’m not anticipating much of a crop. The night critters generally get the entire harvest anyway, but I’ve been live trapping the possums relentlessly this spring. Haven’t caught one in over a week, so maybe I’ve really been able to move them out of our yard.

This Garden Gold peach is a dwarf. This is the first year that it's had any significant number of blossoms on it, so maybe I'll get to see what this variety of peach tastes like.

The Florida Prince Peach sets fruit really early in the season. This year it set a record number of peaches. I'm really hoping that I have some to can for the first time ever. If not, then we'll have our usual peach pie, peach cobbler, and sliced peaches on cereal and ice cream. I can hardly wait.

Our Panamint nectarine also has a record number of blossoms. It generally gives us a good amount of fruit, but I don't know what to do with nectarines other than eat them fresh. I've heard that they don't can well. I'm wondering if anyone makes nectarine pie or freezes them. I'm pretty sure that they would make good jam, but have never tried it. This is going to be the year!

My three raised beds in the back yard are doing well. The winter crops are nearly finished, and it's time to think about summer crops. Tomatoes! Yeehah!

The back yard raised beds are looking great. Don’t ask about the community garden. The powers that be (Southern California Edison) are still dithering about what we can and can’t have there. I’ve put in three separate fences, put in beautiful redwood raised beds that had to be removed, and a cute little garden flag that also didn’t meet with their approval. I had to remove my first set of vinyl coated wire tomato cages, as well as my fiberglass coated tomato stakes and my bean trellis. They’ve said no decorations, no raised beds, no metal, no trellises higher than four feet (ever try to grow pole beans on a four-foot trellis? Ridiculous.)  I already bought five varieties of pole beans for this year before that new ruling came out!)

I spent $1500 on that garden plot last year, which was really just a hard-compacted gravel parking lot, and got very little produce out of it because of poor soil and rabbits. I’ll be darned if I’m going to waste my time and money on it until they get their stupid minds made up about what they are and aren’t going to allow. Part of the problem is one cranky person whose property backs up to the Edison property. She didn’t want the gardens there, so to appease her, they are saying no decorations and no chairs in the gardens.  She sued the city anyway for allowing the gardens there.

Fortunately, they do allow plastic storage bench seating such as the bench seat that I bought. I’m old and have to sit down between short bouts of labor. That is the ONLY thing that I bought for my garden that is still allowed.  Ah, but I digress. Back to happy springtime in MY yard. For now, to heck with the community garden.

Yippee, our hens are laying again. We get three eggs a day on a good day, but overall we're getting 7-12 eggs a week. I just love having chickens.

Every spring, we get a pair of mallards that hangs out in our yard. They stay about six weeks. We think that our yard is a feeding territory since the female has never nested here. They swim in our little pond and scarf up any bird seed they find. I put out a bit of chicken feed for them too since I enjoy their visits.

Our mallards are "park ducks" that come up to be fed instead of flying away when I open the front door.

I planted a butterfly garden and the butterflies actually use it. We had 10 monarch caterpillars this year on the bloodflower milkweed. They ate the plants down to bare sticks, which is what happens if you're raising butterflies.

This is a monarch chrysalis, with a bit of sun flare in the photo.

My butterfly garden has a variety of sages, lantana, bloodflower milkweed and yarrow in it. We get a number of different species of butterflies coming for nectar, and if any of them lay eggs, they’re safe in our yard. No pesticides or herbicides in our all organic yard. Cabbage loopers and tomato hornworms are not safe, however. I feed them to the chickens or squash them if I find them.

Camellia

Mt Hood daffodil

Kafir lily

Freesias in the marjoram

OK, on to the food section.

Stuffed breast of lamb

We bought a side of lamb a couple of years back, and still had this cut in the freezer, a breast of lamb. I had the butcher cut a pocket in it when we had the meat processed. Finally got around to cooking it. Stuffed it with bread stuffing with onions, celery, raisins and one of the last apples from our fall harvest. I put diced potatoes with rosemary from the garden around the edge, and roasted the whole thing. Delicious.

This beautiful loaf of challah bread uses two eggs from our chickens. I make the dough in the bread machine, braid it, and bake it in the oven. Really easy.

I didn’t take pictures of my harvest this week. Indeed, not for many, many weeks now. But I have had harvests. I’m getting citrus and avocados galore. I’ve been making sorbets with the citrus and they’re coming out really good. I mix orange, lemon and lime juice for the sorbets.

Some oranges went into this pecan-cranberry orange cake shown below. It doubles as dessert or a breakfast bread, since I didn’t bother to ice the cake. An avocado and some cream cheese went into scrambled eggs this morning. Thank you, chickens, for the eggs.

Breakfast this morning was so late that it turned out to be brunch. Homegrown eggs with homegrown avocado and store-bought cream cheese can't be beat.

On to the harvest for this week and last.

Harvest Monday Feb 27-March 11, 2012

FRUIT

12 oz avocado

4 oz lemon, Meyer

5 oz limes

17 oz oranges, Navel

Subtotal 38 oz. or 2 lbs 6 oz.

VEGETABLES

8 oz broccoli

0.5 oz green onions

3 oz kale, Lacinato

1 oz parsley

4 oz snow peas

Subtotal 16.5 oz or 1 lb 0.5 oz

TOTAL PRODUCE 3 lbs 6.5 oz. for two weeks

EGGS 8 + 12 = 20 eggs for two weeks

 

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Last Harvest Monday of 2011 and I have a harvest!

Posted on December 27, 2011 | 13 Comments

This past week hasn’t been too bad, considering that we left for our Christmas vacation on Monday Dec. 19 and didn’t get back until yesterday, Sunday Dec. 25. I headed straight to the garden in back to see what I could scrounge for our Christmas dinner. We had yaki-soba and a key lime pie. Kinda strange, but that’s what the harvest yielded.

Our travels took us to Albuquerque to see the candelaria on Christmas eve and to get in some winter birding/photography. We arrived just as their major winter snow storm was starting, but by constantly monitoring the weather channel on my iPad and planning accordingly, we were able to dodge the bullet on bad weather. I took 900 pics, and will make a post on our trip after I process the photos. That’s going to take some time.

My community garden plot is looking sad. The nice redwood borders have been removed, as per the new garden rules. The nice green vinyl covered wire fence that kept out the rabbits has been removed, as per the garden committee rules. The plastic chicken fencing was completely ineffective at keeping out the rabbits, so I put up some white trellis fencing, but still haven't finished the job.

Meanwhile, back to the garden. My community garden plot gardening area is in the shape of the letter E, with gravel paths. The plot came with compacted gravel since this area had been a parking lot for heavy construction equipment. The kid that I hired to rototill the garden initially didn’t dig very deep, so my plot wasn’t as productive this year as I would have liked. Well, a new season is coming up.

Looking southeast at my community garden plot in December.

I still have beets, carrots, chard, garlic, onions, mizuna and komatsuna growing, plus a couple of tomatoes, peppers, and eggplants that I’m going to attempt to overwinter. If we don’t get a frost, they’ll revive come spring. I hope. Because they sure didn’t give me much this past growing season.

Avocados take about 10-14 days of sitting on the counter to ripen enough to eat. They don't ripen on the tree. Then it's a race to see if we catch them in time or if they go past readiness. This is the first year than my LittleCado tree has set much fruit, about 20 avocados. Most of the harvest will be in 2012.

I need to finish the fencing and put up plastic edging before spading up the soil and adding more amendments. Then I can put in winter crops like broccoli, cabbage, cauliflower, radishes, peas, etc. I have those growing now in my home garden (except for radishes), so those would be a second or third crop for me.

Surprisingly, I had two late eggplants in my garden. I put this one in a yaki-soba stirfry last night.

Here is what I harvested from my home garden this week.

Yesterday's harvest included a lime and a Meyer lemon that went into a key lime pie, plus broccoli and snow peas that went into the yaki-soba. That was our Christmas dinner after getting back late from the airport.

Harvest Monday ending Dec. 25, 2011

FRUIT

4.5 oz. lemon, Meyer

4 oz. lime

Subtotal fruit 8.5 oz.

VEGETABLES

1 lb 4 oz avocados

4 oz broccoli

11 oz eggplant, Black Beauty

2.5 oz peas, snow

Subtotal 37.5 oz or 2 lbs 11.5 oz

TOTAL PRODUCE 3 lbs 3.6 oz, but no eggs

Hey, that’s not bad for late December. After Dec. 31, I’ll add up my total harvest for the year. It’s going to fall far short of my goal. There’s always next year. To see what others are harvesting, visit Daphne’s Dandelions.

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Why I’m behind on putting in my fall garden

Posted on October 20, 2011 | 1 Comment

I have reasons for being so lax in posting to my blog recently, and reasons why my fall garden isn’t completely in yet.

My plot at the new community garden, photo taken July 4 2011. Edison says that my nice redwood borders have to go.

First of all, my lovely redwood bed borders at the community garden have to come out. We are gardening underneath Southern California Edison power lines, and they have decided that while our outer bed borders that delineate each plot can stay, the inner beds must go. They will allow plastic edging, but not wooden bed borders. Many of us have spent an average of $1500 putting in raised beds and filling them with amendments. Too bad. Those wooden beds have to be out by December 31. I’m harvesting my summer crops and letting the ground go fallow so I will have room to rework the soil and put in new borders. Arg, more expense. I’m growing $100 carrots.

My plot at the community garden, looking NE.

The plastic chicken net fence that you see above was completely ineffective at keeping out rabbits. My first fence was a nice wire rabbit fence that kept out the rabbits, but Edison made us remove all metal from the gardens. I had a bunny living in my garden all summer long, eating my crops whenever it wanted. It chewed holes in this plastic netting as fast as I patched them. I’ve since added some white plastic trellis fencing, but I’m not finished with that project.

Each time I have to do another construction project at the garden, it eats into the time available to actually grow crops. What an utter nuisance this community garden has become. It seems that every single thing I bought for it had to be replaced with something inferior to meet their rules and regs, which changed AFTER we put things in. I can’t really express here how frustrated I am, but a lot of nasty four-letter words come to mind. At this point, I’ve put so much money into my plot that I don’t dare give it up. I just have to hope that this process of sinking cash into the ground is coming to an end, and that I can get to actual GARDENING soon, not just spending more time and money on something else that has to be replaced.

OK, enough ranting. Now on to the other reason why my gardening time has become limited.

Our son Scott with his new son, Mike

Our son Scott and his wife Nicole have presented us with our first grandson. After five precious granddaughters from our two sons, we’re happy to have a grandson. We all expect Mike to be our last grandchild, which makes him all the more precious.

Baby Mike, one day old

His three older sisters, five-year-old twins Allison and Lauren and three-year-old Megan, think he’s just adorable. And so do the rest of us.

I’ve been spending a lot of time in San Diego, not in my garden. While his mom and dad take care of baby Mike, the other Nana and I are taking care of the three little girls. I take Megan to preschool, music class and gymnasium, while Nana Maria gets them all dressed, does an unbelievable amount of laundry, takes the twins to kindergarten and helps out with the little one as well. Nana Maria is actually doing most of the work. I just schlep Megan here and there and play with the girls, but that’s important too. Papa Vic helps out with cooking and cleaning on weekends. It takes a village!

Megan loves to cook. So far we've made banana bread and pecan-raisin-pumpkin bread together. I measure and she mixes.

Megan said that she wanted to remember how to make the quick breads, so she wanted to “write down the recipe.” Since she’s only three, she can’t read or write yet. Naturally, I wondered how she planned to do that. No problem for her. She drew pictures of eggs, a stick of butter, a cup of water and the box of mix. Pretty clever.

Megan at gymnastics class

Allison on the balance beam at gymnastics class.

Lauren on the balance beam at gymnastics class.

So I’m busy helping raise grandkids in addition to my garden. One of these days I’ll get the rest of my fall crops in. Somehow.

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A month of Harvest Mondays and goodbye possums

Posted on August 9, 2011 | 12 Comments

Ack, I haven’t done a Harvest Monday blog post since July 4.  It’s catch-up time.

My plot at the Huntington Beach Community Garden in mid-July

Because of all of the raiding of our garden and fruit trees this year, I’ve been more relentless recently in setting our live trap and removing the larger night critters from the home garden. I’ve trapped and released three opossums in as many weeks.

This female opossum is carrying young in her pouch. Note the bulge.

And off she runs, to happily raise her babies in the wilds of Huntington Central Park, not in my vegetable garden.

We also called Orange County Vector Control, and had them leave three bait traps for rats. I plan to set some snap traps soon as well. The rats are running rampant and eating whatever the possums don’t.

My home garden isn’t the only thing being depredated. The bunny continues to plague my community garden plot. It has now chewed 11 holes in the fence. It chews them faster than I patch them. Gotta put up a sturdier fence. Meanwhile, I don’t dare plant anything new at the community garden because the bunny loves new sprouts of anything.

But I can plant at home. And I did indeed plant something–yams. Out of the 18 yams that I planted (from yams that I grew last year that were too small to eat), 16 have sent up sprouts and are turning into thriving vines. I’m hoping that the first pot will be ready to harvest by Thanksgiving.

And where am I growing them? In my driveway! I use fabric Grow Pots, and keep using the potting soil over and over. I just add more EB Stone Sure Start fertilizer. So far I’ve harvested 2 and 3 crops of potatoes of various kinds (Blue, Gold, Russet, German Butterball and yams) out of the grow pots. I get about three pounds of organic potatoes per harvest per pot, nothing like the 50 lbs that the ads claim. Maybe I need more fertilizer?!?!?!?

My 3-year-old granddaughter Megan harvested the last batch of potatoes. She loved digging in the loose potting soil with her hands. She is quite the little gardener and loves picking and eating tomatoes, snow peas, sugar snap peas and even kale.

A mini Red Kuri winter squash from a seed mix from Cook's Garden

Here’s my harvest for the last three weeks of July.

Week ending July 10

FRUIT

0.5 oz Blueberries

0.5 oz Blackberries

5 oz Lemon, Meyer

4 oz Limes

12 oz  Orange, Navel

Subtotal Fruit 1 lb 6 oz

VEGETABLES

3 oz Bell Pepper

12 oz Cucumber

11 oz Green Beans, Blue Lake and Golden Wax

5 oz Green Onion

4 oz Herbs (mint and parsley)

3 oz Peas, Sugar Snap

8 oz Squash, Summer

3 lbs Tomatoes

Subtotal Vegetables 7 lbs 14 oz

Week Ending July 17

FRUIT

Zip, Zero, Nada

VEGETABLES

15 lbs Beet (won 2nd prize at OC Fair for largest beet)

8 oz Bell Pepper

11 oz Cucumber

2 oz Green Onion

2 lbs 14 oz Onions, Red (won 3rd prize at OC Fair)

2 oz Peas, Sugar Snap

8 oz Squash, Summer

1 lb Squash, Winter

3 lb 1.5 oz Tomatoes

Subtotal Vegetables 8 lbs 14.5 oz

Week ending July 24

FRUIT

12 oz Lemon, Meyer

1 lb 12 oz Oranges, Navel

12 oz Peaches

Subtotal 3 lbs 4 oz

VEGETABLES

10 oz Chard

6 oz Eggplant, Japanese

1 lb 12 oz Pumpkin, Amish Pie

1 lb 4 oz Tomatoes

Subtotal Vegetables 4 lbs

Week Ending July 31

FRUIT

Big Fat Zero

VEGETABLES

10 oz Bell Pepper

3 lbs 10 oz Corn (first of harvest, dwarfed and riddled with corn borers– it took three little ears to make a single serving)

6 oz Cucumber

1 lb Eggplant, Japanese

2 oz Mizuna (took 2nd Place at OC Fair)

6 lbs 3 oz Onions

6 oz Radish, White Icicle (took 2nd Place at OC Fair)

4 lbs 12 oz Pumpkin, Amish Pie

2 lbs 11 oz Squash, Winter (Red Kuri)

2 lbs 8 oz Squash, Winter (mini Blue Hubbard)

2 lbs 12 oz Tomatoes

Subtotal Vegetables 25 WHOPPING lbs

TOTAL FRUIT, 3 weeks: 4 lbs 10 oz

TOTAL VEGETABLES, 3 weeks: 45 lbs 12 oz

TOTAL PRODUCE, 3 weeks: 50 lbs 6 oz plus eggs (I lost count of eggs in July, but only one hen is laying right now, so about a dozen and a half eggs)

A mini Blue Hubbard nearing harvest readiness. These were from a mix of winter squash seeds from Cook's Garden

Yippee, bring on August! Visit Daphne’s Dandelions if you have a harvest to report.

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Progress in my community garden plot

Posted on June 8, 2011 | 4 Comments

Things are looking good in the Garden of Weedin’ in the new Huntington Beach Community Garden.

This is the view looking SE toward the Pacific Ocean, which is less than two miles away. My first crops are nearing harvest. Edison made us all remove our metal fencing and replace it with this ugly plastic netting with wooden stakes. So far the bunnies have stayed out of my plot, although they are capable of chewing through the plastic netting.

This is the view looking SW. You can see my winter squash in the foreground. The garden is bordered by marigolds and allysum, and I have a nice bench to sit on in back.

This is my favorite view, looking through my friend Judi's garden at my garden beyond. It makes my garden look twice as big. Her plants are twice as big too.

That is going to do it for now. I’ve been lost in my new garden (which I absolutely love–it sit and stare at it, marveling at its beauty and promise. I  just love watching the new plants grow),  and in working on genealogy, which has left me no time for blog posts.  And then there is the home garden and chickens to take care of, and I’m still working my two part-time jobs. There is really only so much time in the day. If you figure out how to get more, let me know.

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My plot at the new community garden is planted!

Posted on May 7, 2011 | 8 Comments

After two years of work getting a new community garden in Huntington Beach, it’s finally open. Most of us have our plots in various stages of completion, with only a few gardens still untouched. I expect to finish my spring planting today with beets and sunflowers. After that, it will be filling in the spots as things come out. Here is what my A-17 plot looks like.

Plot A-17, looking SE

My friend Judi is gardening in the plot adjacent to mine. We have no path between our gardens, only a board.

Plot A-17, looking NE

I spend a lot of my gardening time sitting on my garden bench. I store fertilizer and tools in the storage compartment under the bench seat.

Plot A-17, looking NW

As you can see, I built my raised beds in a pattern resembling the letter E. My plot is 14 ft x 20 ft. It should have been 15×20, but due to a fence not being where it was thought to be, the planners cut a foot off of a few gardens.  Mine was one of the ones so chopped.

I planted eggplant and bell peppers at first. I came back a few days later to find that bunnies had eaten my eggplant to the ground. With a very big sigh, I put up a wire bunny fence and replanted. Then Edison told us that we couldn’t have wire under their power lines. My wire was vinyl coated because I knew we couldn’t have exposed metal. I’m still waiting to see if I have to replace it or not.

The gravel parking area that I got for my plot was absolutely ungardenable. I built raised beds (and by “I”, I mean my husband), hired a kid to rototill and sift out the rocks inside the beds, then put in hundreds of dollars of soil amendments, mainly compost, redwood compost, and steer manure. I dug most of it in myself with some help from my beloved spouse.

After those of us who are attempting to garden over a former parking lot put in raised beds, Edison told us that we couldn’t have raised beds either. They are letting us keep them until January since they’re already planted. I built mine of redwood because I wanted them to last. Ironic, huh? So far I’ve put about $1200 into the plot, and that’s not even counting the seeds and transplants. I may still have to replace my fence and fence posts with plastic, and my redwood beds with plastic border edging. But my little garden is up and growing. I have poundage envy from those of you who are growing 500-1,000 lbs of produce. My goal for this year is 500 lbs from the community and home gardens combined. That’s counting fruit from the trees too.

I have 41 California Giant Garlic growing at the community garden. That should keep vampires away. Haven't seen any werewolves either.

I'm growing five different colors of bell peppers.

My summer squash seeds were old, so I planted twice as many as I wanted. They all came up, and God help me, I can't bear to thin them out. I have 15 summer squash plants. That should go a long way toward achieving my 500 lb goal.

Only about half of the bush wax beans came up, but I should still get a half decent crop. I'm also growing Cherokee Trail of Tears pole beans at the Comm. Garden and both Blue Lake and Kentucky Blue pole beans at home. I'll plant the scarlet runner beans later, letting them twine up the sunflowers.

The bunnies ate my first two Japanese long eggplant, so I bought two more. When I went back to the garden, I discovered that the eaten eggplants had resprouted from the roots. So I have twice as many eggplants as I had planned.

Tomato Row has Arkansas Traveler (a new variety for me), several Romas, Better Boy, Brandywine, Black Prince, Black Krim and Black from Tula (another new variety for me).

My new Fuyu Persimmon tree at home had one flower on it. It seems to have been fertilized, so I may get my first home-grown persimmon this fall.

I've harvested my first tomatoes already! These are Sweet 100s, a new variety for me. I can't believe all the tomatoes on that plant. I'm glad I only have one plant of that variety. I also have an Early Girl at home, and quite a few mystery tomatoes that came up from the compost pile.

Just to show that my first cauliflower wasn't a fluke, here is a second perfect head. This one weighed in at 1 lb 14 oz.

The mint is growing rampant and I still have several Meyer lemons, so I made some tabbouli.

Henrietta and Chicken Little are really earning their keep, giving us 10-13 eggs a week now.

Also at the community garden I’m growing winter squash (mini red kuri, mini green kuri, and mini blue hubbard), Amish pie pumpkins, radishes, mizuna (a delicious Japanese mustard green), rainbow chard, 40 onions (about 20 each of Southern Belle and Texas Sweet), moon and stars watermelon, Crenshaw melons, and both bicolor and white corn. The corn, Crenshaw melons, watermelon, three varieties of winter squash and Amish pie pumpkins are all new varieties for me. I don’t have space in my home garden for those veggies, so I’m excited to see if I get anything from those plants or not. Our community garden is really close to the ocean, so it may be too cool for some of those crops. Time will tell.

That’s a quick and dirty recap of my new community garden and urban home farmlet. Happy gardening to you all.

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