My Bay Area Garden

Keeping my archive alive!

2025-09-01T10:52:00.000-07:00

Blogger is starting to mark inactive blogs for deletion and so I want to save my archive. Thus this meaningless post until I can find a way to port my content out.

2018 Garden Plan

2018-02-27T20:00:00.002-08:00

It's that time again! As I get ready to start all my tomato, eggplant, and pepper seedlings next weekend, I have to diagram everything out to make sure it will all fit! Since I garden more or less by the Square Foot method, I made these garden templates when we built the raised beds. I copy them into a new file every year and mix it up, trying to keep crop rotation in mind.

The short bed (4x4) has been the eggplant and pepper bed for two years, so it's time to mix it up. I'm going to put my block of corn there. I have seeds for Hopi Purple and Jimmy Red, and am waffling on which to plant. I am leaning toward the Hopi Purple, because I found a mill in the south where I can buy Jimmy Red corn flour and grits. I don't know of any place to buy Hopi Purple corn meal, so making it appeals to me. I wasn't thrilled with the corn flour I ground from the Painted Mountain flour corn I grew last year, but maybe I had dried it for too long. It didn't have a strong "corn" flavor to me.

I'm also going to try again with okra this year. I have never had good luck with it. One year we had a bed of it in the Master Gardener area at Charles Street Gardens and it was doing great-- and then suddenly we had a MASSIVE aphid infestation that caused us to lose 99% of the crop and ultimately have to pull the plants. I console myself knowing that even if the okra doesn't do well, I can add flowers to fill the space. And that's the bed you can see down the driveway, so flowers will be great there. The okra itself is very showy, it's a red heirloom variety with creamy white flowers, so I'm keeping my fingers crossed.

This past fall, we cut the fig tree back substantially, so the far left hand of the long bed (4x16) should get more sun. The far back edge is still a good location for greens that like partial shade, so I plan to have chards and mustard and pak choi there. The squashes will be able to vine into the 2 - 3 foot wide path between the long bed and the back fence-- I will do some vine arranging to get them to go there rather than bothering the peppers and eggplants in the front.

I'm rotating tomatoes out of the long bed this year and into the medium bed, which grew corn and squashes and a few beans last year. You'll see a lot of the Capitano yellow roma type beans in my garden plan-- we LOVED them last year, buttery and tender even when the beans are large. We could eat them for a meal by themselves!

The tomatoes get pretty crowded in the middle bed. I try to keep them trimmed down but they always get out of control by the end of the year. I am not starting an Early Girl seedling because they are so prevalent in the garden stores, and may omit it and only grow 3 tomatoes to give everything more room. I am waffling here because I love the Early Girl true tomato flavor. I may scatter some cosmos seeds among the sunflowers, since those can work around the summer squash.

Last and pretty much least is my problem child bed, the narrow corner bed. I thought it would be perfect for vining crops to train along the fence. In practice, it gets neglected later in the summer and kind of just gets by. I'm going to put easy care crops there this year-- peas along the corner in the spring, and a spaghetti squash that can ramble all over the bed and the fence in the summer. I'll try some carrots and lettuces too, as an experiment.

I hope it will be a good gardening year! We'll see how many of my grand plans actually are put into action. :-)

What a load of ...compost!

2018-02-11T17:37:00.000-08:00

Part of the responsibility of having a bumper crop is replenishing the soil. I fertilize veggies when I plant them, and also try to remember to do supplemental fertilization around mid-summer. That's not enough to keep from gradually depleting the organic material and nutrients in the soil, though. That's where compost comes in! And now is a great time for composting.

In the picture above, you can see my main raised beds, freshly mulched with 2 - 3 inches of compost. I still need to rake it down and make it more tidy... or let the rain do it for me. :-) The main reason I made time to compost this weekend is that we should get at least one more heavy rain storm this spring. I wanted to have the compost down in time for that. Compost can absorb a lot of water, so I'd rather have the rain water it. Also, the rain will bring nutrients from the compost down into the garden soil. That lets me avoid doing a lot of mixing of the top soil layers with the compost yet still get the benefit of composting.

If you live in Santa Clara county, like we do, you can visit the SMART Center once a week and pick up a load of compost for free. We use a bunch of huge rubbermaid bins and a couple of clean plastic garbage cans to keep from making a big mess. When we were there today, we saw folks re-using potting soil bags to fill up, which is a great idea too. Here's a list of where to get compost in Santa Clara county.

What's that green stuff in the middle of one of the beds? That's a lot of volunteer cilantro, from where I let my spring cilantro go to seed last year. I composted around it, in a compromise move. If I had composted in January, as I had meant to, I could have composted over the whole bed and the cilantro would have come up anyway. Oh well! Sharp-eyed folks will see an obvious weed or several in that patch, which I need to deal with too.

By the way, do be sure to weed before you mulch with compost-- a heavy mulching won't kill most weeds, sadly, so you'll just be fertilizing them and encouraging them to grow strong roots. Right now the garden soil is dry, so pulling weeds is easy, and a lot of the roots come right up with them. So go forth and weed before the next set of rains!

Spring Seedlings

2017-03-15T22:31:00.000-07:00

Spring is springing up in the garden-- my first set of seedlings, the baby bok choi "Green Fortune" are up. Since this picture was taken a week ago, something has been nibbling them, and they are quite raggedy. I will seed another set tomorrow or Friday. Just above the bok choi, out of the picture, my cilantro has started to sprout and show the first true leaves as well.

I planted my indoor eggplants, tomatoes, and peppers on March 5th, and by March 12th I had all of my tomatoes up. There's a heat mat under the containers which is speeding germination. In the 3 days since the first sprouting, some eggplants and peppers have come up too.

The tomatoes have spread our their cotyledon leaves and you can see the nubs of the first set of true leaves at the apical meristem. That's a great sign that I have the light at the right height. If the light was too far away, the seedlings would grow tall stems first in an attempt to get more light. The stems would be weak and spindly and the seedlings would probably fall over and fail. But instead all is well.

The lights in question are a pair of full spectrum fluorescent tubes in a white reflective hood. I'm following the suggested spacing for fluorescent lights (via the Upstart Farmer's blog). The plant stand has a pair of rails on each side, allowing me to adjust the lights as the seedlings grow upward.

I'm growing duplicates of some things, in case there are accidents or the germination rate was not good. I'll share seedlings with gardener friends, there are always homes for wayward seedlings! The light stand has two levels, and in a week or two I'll start my squashes and cucumbers on the bottom shelf under the other light hood. They get to transplanting size much faster than the tomatoes and peppers, so I start them later. If the chard I sowed last week outdoors hasn't sprouted by then, I'll start some chard too. It's always good to have a backup plan.

Three Sisters by the Square Foot

2017-02-15T22:58:00.000-08:00

In my old space in the Charles Street Gardens community garden in Sunnyvale, I grew corn, beans, and squash in the Native American "three sisters" style. Hills of corn are also planted with beans that vine up the corn stalks, and squashes ramble between the hills. I'm not positive my backyard here gets enough sun for corn, but I'm going to give it a try. I'm gardening by the square foot method, so I'll do three 2'x2' squares of corn. That should give me good pollination, on a per square basis, so that I can stagger the plantings to spread the harvest out over the summer. While I say "week" in my garden plan, I'll probably use 10 days as my spacing.

I'm planting "Painted Mountain", a corn developed from multiple Native American corn strains. It can be roasted or steamed fresh, though it is not as sweet as the modern supersweet corns. The real fun is that it can be dried to grind for flour. I have a KitchenAid grinder attachment that can handle corn and beans, and I hope to get enough corn to at least bake a batch of cornbread from the corn flour.

While the squashes I am planting in the three sisters garden are heirlooms, they are not Native American, rather they are compact Japanese squashes. To make up for that, I'm making sure to use heirloom Native American beans-- "Hidatsa Shield", "Repokob" (also known as Tiger Eye), and "True Red Cranberry". For the latter two, I'll be planting with seed saved from previous plantings of these beans, from my earlier three sisters garden. That feels like tradition!

My biggest worry is about the raccoons who visit our yard every year to feast on our fig trees. Raccoons and corn are not a good combination-- at least not for the gardener. When I grew "Mandan Red" corn in the community garden, I didn't have raccoon or squirrel problems, while folks growing sweet corn in nearby beds had issues. Here in my backyard where it will be the only corn to choose from, well, I just hope that it's not as appetizing as sweet corn. I've read that if you have a small corn harvest, you can wrap duct tape around each ear from the tip to the corn stalk. Raccoons pull down on the corn to break it off the stalk, and are allegedly not strong enough to break the stalk. We'll have to find out if it comes to that. I might try covering the corn with netting too, though that's got its own problems.

2017 Garden Plans

2017-01-15T22:47:00.000-08:00

I did my garden planning in December and ordered seeds in December and January, but I got so absorbed in it that I forgot to blog about it-- horrors! So let's remedy that and get into the fun of the garden! Here's what I'm planting this year. I keep a Google sheets spreadsheet that I update annually so I can remember what I grew and change it up to try new things.

Items in yellow need to be started inside and then transplanted. I've included the source I used for the seed where I had to buy seeds this year. Seeds without a source are left over from a previous year or two.

I use the square foot gardening method, so while I grow a lot of things, I don't grow a lot of each thing. Every year things end up shifting-- I'll grow something I didn't plan to grow because I saw a seedling I liked in the store, or someone will give me new seeds that I want to try. Things end up in different spaces than planned. It's a loose headlong fall into chaos as the season goes by, but we have fun and vegetables, so it's all good.

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Beans, Bush	Capitano yellow roma	Gold Rush? (Botanical Int)
Beans, Pole (fresh)	Red Noodle
Beans, Pole (dry)	Hidatsa Shield	Tiger Eye	True Cranberry	(3 sisters style)
Beets	Chiogga	Boldor yellow
Bok Choi	Fortune tiny
Carrots	Kuroda (KitchenGarden)
Chard	peppermint stick
Cilantro	Slo-Bolt
Corn	Painted Mountain
Cosmos	Sensation mix
Cucumber	Persian
Dill	Dukat
Eggplant	Japanese white (rareseeds )	Listada di Gandia (Kitchen Garden, rareseeds)	Ao Daimaru (Kitazawa or ebay)	Ping Tung Long (rareseeds)
Flowers Misc	shirley poppies in the alyssum bed	? clarkia?	spider flower cleome (kitchen)
Lettuce	Forellenschluss	Batavian Nevada	? mesclun mix sprout?
Melons	Ginkaku (Kitazawa)?	Tigger Asian? (Kitchen, rareseeds)
Peas	Taichung (Kitazawa) ?	Super Sugar Snap? (Kitchen Garden)
Peppers	Yellow Bell (buy seedling)	Jimmy Nardello (buy seedling)	Corni di Toro yellow (rareseed)	Corni di Toro red (rareseed)	Alma paprika (rareseed)
Soybeans	Envy (rareseeds)
Squash Summer	Romanesco / Med	bennings green pattypan blue pot (rareseeds)
Squash Winter	Naguri Kabocha (small, compact vines)	futsu or chiringamen	Honey Nut mini trellised? (Kitchen)	honeyboat delicata (rareseeds)
Sunflowers
Tomatoes	Aunt Ruby's German Green	Hawaiian Pineapple	Choc Cherry	Speckled Roman Plum	(all botanical interests)
Tsatsoi
Turnips	Golden Globe yellow	japanese ping pong white

Last of the Peppers

2016-12-11T13:48:00.001-08:00

I had put posts at the corners of my pepper-n-eggplant bed, with floating row cover over the top, to extend the gardening season. While I only got a couple of eggplants, which are much more cold-sensitive, I got over a gallon of peppers today!

This was the last harvest-- I pulled the plants, and put cocoa shell mulch down over the beds. The dark brown areas are where I mulched earlier in the year. Rain darkens the shells to a deep brown. Note the enthusiastic growth of the volunteer ground cherry at the edge of the pepper bed-- I had cut it back to the ground about 6 weeks ago, and it's come roaring back. It's much healthier and happier than the one I have in a pot, I think I'll keep it.

The Last Few Harvests

2016-11-03T19:30:00.001-07:00

It's gotten to be Fall, and Winter is just around the corner. I've managed to bring in a few more colanders of tomatoes and peppers over the past few weeks. I covered my pepper and eggplant bed with some floating row cover in the hopes of coaxing one more pepper crop out of it, but the cover has partly blown off even though I keep clipping it back onto the poles. Oh well. Some things work, some don't.

I got a surprisingly good harvest from my volunteer Peruvian Ground Cherry. I had to take it down because it was taking over the pepper and herb beds with its shade, but I got about a quart and a half of fruit from it. Also called Poha Berry, the husked fruit has a sweet-tart tropical taste and makes a great sauce for fish or an unusual salsa. I take it out of the husks and freeze the berries. They are slightly waxy to the touch, and freeze well.

I grew one of them in a pot this year, and it's quite a large plant-- I'm going to try to keep it going through the winter, though I may plant it into a half wine barrel for longer term growth. We've had them overwinter in the ground as perennials, and get unmanageably large-- I'd like to have one around but don't want to sacrifice 9 - 16 square feet to the huge bush it becomes. We'll see if this works out.

I've had a fabulous year with peppers, and a good eggplant year. The yellow bell pepper plant was incredibly prolific, so much so that I had to harvest peppers early from it to keep branches from breaking. I was using the v-shaped eggplant/pepper ladders from Gardeners' Supply for the first time this year, and had mixed results. I had several branches of both eggplant and pepper break off due to heavy fruit loading. The open side of the v has no support, so it's necessary to use twine to tie off to the frame and support vulnerable branches, which I realized only after a few losses.

Pre-Spring Cleaning

2016-09-25T16:05:00.000-07:00

Today I brought in some veggies, and threw out some dreams. But it had to be done.

Let me explain.

I have maintained an extensive seed collection for many years-- many more years than some seeds stay viable for. Today I sat down and went through the whole collection, and tossed out (almost) everything older than 2013. The discards filled a full-size paper grocery bag. I am ashamed at the waste.

I've shared seed and gone to seed swaps and done my part to help bring the joy of organic, open-pollinated seeds to friends and neighbors and garden club members. But I bought more seeds than I had room to plant, and hung onto them. I thought "I could plant this next year!" but I ended up planting something else. Or I planted it, and enjoyed it, but because I have a small garden there was half a packet left, even if I planted it two years in a row. And because I like to try new things, it's unusual for me to plant the same variety more than two years in a row. This went on for many years.

I had seeds that were packed for 2003 in my collection. I had winter cover crop mixes that I put together in 2009 and 2011. I had half and third and quarter packets of this and that from 2005, 2006, 2007, 2009, etc.

I've learned the hard way that while older seeds often germinate, the plants can be less vigorous and the yields poorer than expected. In addition, they can germinate sparsely, leaving holes that need to be filled in with replanting. If I'm going to all the trouble to try to have fabulous organic garden soil and spending precious water on the plants, why would I want second-best?

The seeds I discarded also told a story of my maturation as a gardener-- the varieties were more practical and the packets more used up as the dates got newer. Many of the 2011 & 2012 discards were 3 - 5 seeds in a clear ziploc bag that I had gotten at a seed exchange. Not all were practical-- how would my 2-person household use a 12 - 15 pound Queensland Blue Hubbard squash, and what percent of my garden would the vines take up? I don't have a mill that will crack corn, so why did I collect Native American flour corn varieties, and in quantities too small to plant out for pollination? And so on.

Taking a year or two off from gardening due to the drought has been a good thing for me. It's renewed my interest in my garden, and refocused my intentions on what's practical. The squashes I've selected for my 2017 garden are 1 - 2 person portion sized, for instance. But I'm growing a 3 sisters garden with dry shelling beans on my cornstalks, despite the fact that I'll get maybe a pint of each kind of bean. It's still fun to grow beans that you can't buy, or can rarely buy affordably. The beans' primary job is to fix nitrogen for the corn, getting dry beans to eat is a bonus.

I've organized this year's seeds into a single bin, and sorted them by what time of year I'll plant them. A bunch of seeds are still incoming, orders from Kitazawa, Baker Creek, and Kitchen Garden seeds. They'll have a place to go where I can find them without rummaging through the bins.

More seeds? Yes, but. They're things I'll want to grow for a couple of years-- and I'll do more outreach to my local community garden to share them out before they get too old. No more seed hoarding. Now if I can just do the same for my fabric collection....

Figs Aplenty: Jam Time!

2016-09-10T15:24:00.001-07:00

Most of the past several years, we've had a spotty fig crop. We've picked some, and left some to the birds and squirrels and raccoons. This year, the fig trees came into their own, and we had ZILLIONS of figs. I brought figs into work, gave them to neighbors, ate lots of them fresh, and still had oodles and skoodles of figs.

So, fig jam! I adore the fancy fig jam that they sell at Whole Foods and thought I'd try to make my own. Since I wasn't sure whether it was made from green calmyrna type or brown turkey type figs, I figured (you see what I did there) that I'd try both!

Step one, get a big basket of figs. These are the violetta brown figs with strawberry colored insides.

Cut the figs into quarters and put into a large pot. Add orange juice, and olive oil flavored with orange and lemon oils, and about 3 cups of sugar. I used a combination of palm sugar and white cane sugar.

Bring to a slow rolling boil, and skim off the seedy foam that forms. Cook until reduced in volume by a third to a half, and will coat a spoon or gel up when you put a half tsp on a small plate in the fridge.

I poured the jam into pint rubbermaid containers and froze it. You could put into canning jars and water bath can it to store outside refrigeration/freezer space. Or you could put down paraffin on top, as my mom used to, and store at room temperature, but I'm not positive there's enough sugar in this recipe for that-- best to be safe and do freezer or water bath.

I did a batch with the green figs as well. The brown fig jam is more solid and richer, with orange and clove notes. The green fig jam is more uniform in consistency and tastes of the lemon juice and cardamom.

Simple Fig Jam

1.5 to 2 gallons of ripe figs, cut into small pieces

1 cup coconut or palm sugar (dark sugar)

2 cups white sugar

1 cup lemon juice or 1 cup orange juice

1/4 c meyer lemon infused olive oil or 1/4 c blood orange infused olive oil

2 tsp ground cardamom or 1 tsp ground cloves plus half tsp cinnamon

Bring to a slow rolling boil, then turn down to a simmer. Skim the foamy seeds off the top multiple times. Reduce to about half the volume, or until the thicker mixture coats a spoon or gels up well when you put a teaspoon on a small plate and put it in the fridge. I got 7 pint containers worth out of this volume.

Summer Bounty

2016-08-07T20:07:00.002-07:00

This is the time the garden goes into overdrive, yet also some things go by and need to be taken out. Most of the squashes have succumbed to powdery mildew and senescence, and I've harvested a number of winter squash. And of course, LOTS and LOTS of tomatoes.

Clockwise from top left: Hawaiian pineapple tomatoes, Early Girl tomatoes, Emerald kabocha, Sungold cherry tomatoes, Black Kim tomatoes (that white patch is sunscald, cuts right off) Harvested 7/30/16.

A couple of Kamo Kamo mature squash I missed on the vine that intertwingled with the tomato cages, and another huge colander full of Early Girl, harvested 8/6/16.

One happy part of the tomato overload is that combining them with basil and mozarella for a fresh caprese salad is easy and delicious.

Drizzle with olive oil (I used Meyer Lemon olive oil) and balsamic vinegar (I used Fig Balsamic) and enjoy!

Speaking of figs, the green-skinned amber interior Mystery Figs are ripening at a tremendous pace. Why Mystery Figs? Because when I ordered my Violetta fig tree, the nursery had some half-priced saplings whose tags had been lost-- nobody was sure what variety they were. But at half-price, I said, sure, and got a second fig sapling! I picked about 5 pounds of figs today, on the bottom third of the tree which is as far as I can reach, and they are simmering on the stove making (I hope) fig jam. I added 1 cup of coconut sugar (for richness), 3 cups of white sugar, some orange juice, some lemon juice, some Blood Orange olive oil and some Meyer Lemon olive oil. I also added some cardamom and cloves. Here are the sugared figs before I added more liquid; some of them were squishy-ripe, so they had some liquid already:

I haven't made jam since making blackberry jam as a kid with my mom. I know to reduce it until it clings to a spoon, and that this jam doesn't need pectin because the figs have enough of it already. It's going to be refrigerator and freezer jam, I'm not doing the whole paraffin sealing thing or the water bath canning. Wish me luck!

Harvest Time!

2016-07-23T11:32:00.004-07:00

It's been, eek, over 2 months since I posted here. Life has been busy, the garden has grown insanely well, and the harvest has been starting to come in. Aside from the occasional GIANT zucchini, the theme is primarily tomatoes, with a secondary note on eggplants and peppers. Here's how we've been doing so far:

Tomatoes: OMG, drowning

I have 6 quarts of early girl and black krim in the freezer,
and two gallon bags of sungold cherry tomatoes.

Peppers: doing great!

none of the italian types are producing yet, though some peppers are on the vine
but the yellow bell has yielded two yellow and 5 green bells, all as big as a fist or bigger.

Eggplants: galore!

Several softball-sized rosa bianca,
several large ping tung long and japanese long,
and a double handful of fairy tale.

Beans: not so good

oops, I didn't pick the gold of bacau pole beans in time, so I've let them dry on the vine for dry beans
the golden wax beans got buried by squash growth and were deemed too hard to pick because of that
the roma beans yielded very well, but because I'm not used to them I didn't realize to pick them small and white, not large and green, so they were tough and they didn't all get eaten

Turnips: meh

white ping pong ball salad turnips produced well, but were bland, mostly tasted of salt, pepper, and butter when eaten
yellow turnips didn't do well (probably a better fall crop) and had a bitter aftertaste

Zucchini: we're keeping up

A number of large and a couple of GIANT WE BLINKED zucchini
The spiralizer has been helping tame the giant ones, we've had sauteed zuke "noodles" in pesto a couple of times and really enjoyed them

Winter Squash: promising!

Several sunshine kabocha on the vine, small compared to store bought ones but likely to weigh in at the promised 2 - 3 pound average
Two large emerald kabochas ripening
Georgia candy roaster: only one so far, but it's about two and a half feet long and 4 -5 inches in diameter; I'm eagerly anticipating it being ready; it's doubled in size since the picture!
Kamo kamo: I haven't seen any of these ripening, and it's gotten powdery mildew something fierce. Going to pull it out soon and put in a second bean crop I think.

Flower Time! and Pinching Basil

2016-05-03T21:23:00.000-07:00

Things are starting to flower in my garden-- the alyssum has expanded to fill all available space, thwarting my hopes for zinnias to come up between the clumps. On the right, the dark foliage is my lone dahlia that survived the ravages of the snails this spring.

In the neighboring planter, the feathery foliage of the cosmos can be seen, with a few catch-up planting zinnias peeking out between the cosmos. That bare patch on the top right needs another catch-up attempt at zinnias.

The Japanese long eggplant has started making flowers, and I'm really excited to see them! It's the largest of the four eggplants that I planted around the same time.

The Sungold cherry tomato is also flowering prolifically, and I look forward to sprays of delicious orange cherry tomato! The other tomatoes are also flowering but not so spectacularly as the Sungold.

The lemon basil is also flowering, which we don't want, because then it will get all woody and make seeds instead of more yummy basil for cooking with. All of the tops were turning to flowering stems like the one on the left, and I pinched them off. Pinching off makes the plant get bushy by encouraging side stem growth. Pinch or snip right between the next set of leaves, as you can see in the picture on the right. I had to pinch off the Genovese basil and the lettuce-leaf basil as well.

Our first strawberries are starting to ripen! They're small but we hope they'll be extra sweet and delicious.

Last but not least, the rhubarb-- it's really taking off! From a fist-sized lump a few weeks ago, it's gone to a huge leafy plant. New leaves are coming up from the center as well-- I might dare to pick a single stalk if this keeps up. No heavy harvesting until the 2nd year though. I will probably transplant into a half wine barrel this winter, to give it room for next spring. A friend suggested I save the first handful of strawberries and cut a single small stalk of rhubarb to make a teeny tiny strawberry rhubarb tart. I just might!

Garden Update: April 17

2016-04-17T15:09:00.001-07:00

"Look, look, garden growing! ME SO HAPPY!!!" Ahem. Now that I have that out of my system, we can have a nice calm mature chat about the garden. Oh, who am I kidding. I feel like a little kid growing my first bean plant-- stuff is coming up, the transplants are taking root, and the garden is really coming together.

The short bed is now fully planted out with the five peppers and four eggplants, as well as beneficial marigolds (repel flea beetles). If you look closely you'll see a six-pack of sunflowers in the back, from the Master Gardeners' Spring Garden Market where I volunteered yesterday at the Info Center. I planted a pair of them in the back of the pepper bed this morning after this picture was taken. That bed can be seen from the street when both of our cars are out of the driveway, so I want it to look nice.

In the corner bed, the peas are somewhat diffidently bonding with the trellis. I regularly go out and twine the lagging peas into the trellis and gradually they are taking hold. The big squash is from the Spring Garden Market, an Emerald Strain Buttercup that I got to replace the Sweet Dumpling squash seed that never came up (it was several years old). The tiny one behind the blue sign is my Sunshine kabocha that I grew from seed.

The herb bed is now fully populated, and is doing well. From the top left, Biergarten sage, golden sage, curly parsley, English thyme. Bottom row from left, sweet marjoram, tarragon, savory, spicy oregano, dill.

The medium bed is mostly tomatoes and basil, with some small stuff planted in between. On the right side, the Gold of Bacau pole beans are looking good behind the Sungold cherry tomato. Lettuce leaf basil is growing well in front, with a Hawaiian Pineapple tomato in back. Between them, too small to see in the picture, a red and green scallion combo has been coming up. The bare spot next to the beans was seeded a few days ago with Gladiator parsnips.

On the left side of the medium bed we have our Black Krim tomato in front, Genovese basil next to it, lemon basil and fennel behind, and then an Early Girl tomato. I found out this weekend that I will need to give up my beloved Early Girls in the future-- EG is owned by Monsanto, and I boycott anything from that company whenever I can. The blank space in the back was seeded with carrots about 3 weeks ago, and they often take 4 - 5 weeks to come up, so I'm still hopeful. If I haven't seen any carrots by mid-May, I will try again. For this seeding I put the seeds on the surface as suggested by the package. If I seed again, I will try surface seeding but then sifting about an eighth inch of soil over them. And maybe floating row cover to keep them moist. But I have been watering every few days. Ah well. We'll just have to see.

The long bed has beans and tiny stuff growing, that is mostly too small to see. The rightmost side has golden wax beans at the top and some Roma beans at the bottom, and my Kamo Kamo squash in the middle. My six packs of cilantro and dill were finally big enough to transplant today, so they are now along the leftmost board. Teensy weensy Forellenschluss lettuces are coming up in the damp foreground.

The middle section of the long bed has my Beit Alpha cukes at the top, and also the other sunflowers from the six pack, planted after this pic was taken. The Georgia Candy Roaster squash is still just a pair of cotyledon leaves in the middle. In the front, next to the Roma beans, tiny green dots are Japanese "ping pong ball" type sweet turnips. I seeded golden turnips next to them that are not up yet, and Catalina baby spinach ditto up near the cukes.

On the far left of the long bed, we've got a couple of big transplants-- a Romanesco zucchini in the middle and Persian cukes up in the top corner. Turns out my Persian cukes finally came up, but I don't need them now and will give them to a friend at work next week. The zucchini was an impulse buy from Summer Winds, but now I'm glad that I bought it-- my Ramipicante seeds were older and didn't come up.

What's all the little green stuff? Glad you asked! All along the front of the bed, it's beets. Chiogga beets on the left, and golden beets on the right. My golden beet seed was from 2010, and only about 20% of it came up. I just reseeded yesterday with new 2016 seed, and filled in 3 or 4 places where the Chioggas didn't germinate. I also filled in 4 spots each on the golden wax and Roma beans with fresh seed. The little square of green things on the middle left is Green Fortune baby bok choi. I seeded a new square to the right of it. Too small to see but coming up well along the top left board are Renee's seeds "European Summer Lettuce Bouquet" with a mix of green, red, and speckled lettuce. We'll see what comes up, there was no guide to telling the seeds apart. I bought that blend specifically for the Batavian Nevada in the mix-- I've had great luck letting that go to seed and saving the seed, and getting volunteer lettuce in the fall and spring. Finally, in the middle along the top are the Bright Lights and Peppermint chard seedlings that I've transplanted. They're too small to tell which are which.

Naturally I can't do all this gardening without help-- here is half of the helper team, Jasper, lounging under the birdbath. So far they haven't helped themselves to anything in the garden beds, but they are getting bolder. I only let them out into the backyard with supervision!

How is your garden growing so far? Drop me a note and share!

Seed Starting Redux

2016-04-05T08:35:00.000-07:00

Things are starting to come up! Yay! The quickest is the baby bok choi "Green Fortune" from Renee's Seeds, up in under a week. I planted a square foot of 16, with 2 or 3 seeds in each space. Once the seedlings get a bit bigger, I will snip the smaller one(s) and let just one plant grow in each space. Always always always snip your seedling thinnings with scissors. If you pull them out, you will disturb the roots of the seedling you want to keep!

Pole beans "Gold of Bacau" are starting to come up, of seeds sowed Sunday 3/27. I'm surprised they have taken that long, but it's still cold at night. It may be that the warm days we've had this week spurred them into action. With respect to bush beans, I saw one bean each of my Roma Italian and of my Golden Wax just starting to break the surface this morning in the garden. Those were planted March 29th after work.

My Beit Alpha cucumbers are up, and just this morning, so are the Persian cukes (photo further down with the squash). I actually found a 4-inch pot of Persian cuke seedlings at Yamagami's Nursery last weekend and snagged it-- I figured I could always have extra cukes or give them to a friend. My Persian seeds are a few years old, so they might have been slow. Hard to see, but I have some chard up in the six pack in the front and one or two in the back.

Squashes had me worried, as I hadn't seen any for the longest time (ok, really, just a week or so), but now they are starting to come up. Sunshine kabocha are up this morning (with the Persian cukes), so I moved them outside. Kamo kamo came up yesterday, and ditto.

A tour of the garden this morning revealed that I have about 10% of my chiogga beets up, and maybe 5% of my golden beets. I'm excited to see more beets come up!! No carrots yet, but they can take 21 days to come up. Meanwhile, the bare-root strawberries are starting to flower. Of my 10 plants, 3 of them dried up despite watering-- the roots just didn't take. When the current plants start to send out runners, I'll ease those into the spaces left by the 3 that didn't make it, so that I'll have a full planter box of 10.

The rhubarb crown has put up 3 big leaves so far, and I peeked down at the base-- more leaves coming. So tempting to pick just one stalk, but I need to let the plant establish itself and get strong.

Still need to start my lettuces, plant nigella seeds, replant some of the zinnias that don't seem to be coming up-- I've had good luck with the cosmos, and have a number of seedlings in the planter box, but only two zinnias so far. My dahlias started coming up, and were promptly eaten down to a num by the snails, ARGH. I don't know if the dahlia will regrow or not. I might seed zinnias in that bed too, between the alyssum that I planted there (you can see the dahlia bed behind the rhubarb).

Seed Starting Fun

2016-03-29T22:08:00.001-07:00

I have a nice older seed-starting rolling stand on the porch, with two deep tray shelves and adjustable fluorescent lights. It's served me well in the past. If I could figure out a way to keep two extremely energetic 9-month old kittens out of it, yet still have easy access to tend my seedlings, I would use it!

Having come up with no practical ideas (easy access for me and no access for them) I'm going to use the dryer top and just bring seedlings outside for the day to get sunshine, bring them back in at night, until they are big enough to transplant. Instead of growing my own eggplants, peppers, and tomatoes this year, I'll buy seedlings of those. Next year when the kittens are older and hopefully less zany I can see about using the seed-starting stand.

Last night after work I did some garden stuff, filling pots and bringing them inside to start seeds where it's warm. They are on the dryer where the kittens can't get them and where it will periodically be extra warm. I used a plastic tray and plastic containers to make sure I won't get dirt and water on the dryer.

I have 5 different squashes planted: Georgia Candy Roaster, Italian Ramipicante, Maori Kamo Kamo, Sweet Dumpling, and Sunshine Kabocha.

I started a pair of cucumbers, a Beit Alpha and a Renee's Persian cucumber. I like small, thin-skinned cucumbers that you can eat right off the vine without peeling, yum!

I also started two six packs of chard, both pretty colors-- the red-n-white stripe stalk Peppermint and the old faithful Bright Lights with red, orange, and yellow stalked versions. Finally I did a pair of six packs of herbs, Vierling blue-green dill and Slow-Bolt cilantro.

I thought about starting lettuce, but most of my seeds were very old, from 2006 and 2007, so I scattered a bunch outside on my long garden bed and we'll see if I get any volunteers from there. I'll buy fresh seed of the kind I want and plant a six pack or two.

For planting outdoors, a number of years ago I made these Square Foot Garden Guides at TechShop on the Epilog laser cutter. They're made out of sturdy acrylic, and have the various cultivars that go with each spacing etched on the surface of the planting guide.

I use the guides for planting, with a chopstick to poke the holes. Tonight after work I planted 3 squares of yellow wax bush beans, 3 squares of Roma green bush beans, a square of baby bok choi, 2 squares of chiogga beets, and 2 squares of golden beets. Phew! BTW, the sun angle is just completely wrong in the picture below, and hides the etched lettering on the guide, wups.

I stopped by OSH tonight and picked up some Forellenschluss heirloom lettuce seed. OK, Renee's seeds is calling it by the translated name, "speckled trout back" lettuce, but it's the same thing. I need to poke around some and find Batavian Nevada lettuce-- it naturalizes easily in my yard and I really like the mild taste and frilly green heads. I'm not sure if I'm going to start the lettuce in 6-packs (I'm running out of dryer space) or just seed in the ground. Probably the latter.

Ready, Set, Garden!

2016-03-27T09:14:00.001-07:00

The peas I planted a couple of weeks ago are now about 3 inches high, and I'll be working with them to make sure they fasten to the fence and not to each other as they grow. I added some pansies for color in the bed, and will be starting the squashes for that bed today or tomorrow night.

My rhubarb crown has sprouted, and the strawberries are happily putting forth new leaves, so I'm a happy camper. Now that we've got the raised beds finished and are filling them, I can start more of my garden (yay)!

Seedling time! I loaded up the cart at the Mountain View Summer Winds (pricier than OSH but usually with more of an heirloom selection). Above are, from the top left, lemon basil, Early Girl tomato, marjoram, Biergarten sage, fernleaf dill, thyme, sweet basil, and two Florence fennels.

Above in this picture are large-leaf basil, Ping Tung Long eggplant, marigolds, curly parsley, and another large-leaf basil. So I've got most of my herb bed-- missing savory and lemon and lime thymes, and maybe a golden sage if it looks like I have room. Oh, and "Greek oregano", really Dittany of Crete, a lovely fuzzy plant that tastes like a cross between oregano and sage. I find that I use marjoram, which is sweeter, where most folks use Italian oregano. So I don't think I'll be adding oregano to my herb bed. Here's the herb bed planted out so far:

Next we moved on to the medium 4x8 bed, which will hold tomatoes this year. I placed the cages just to give the bed some structure and reassure myself that my planting plan will work:

Yep, there's lots of room around the cages for my basil, fennel, carrots, scallions, etc. I planted out the left side with my Early Girl, my basils, and my fennel.

Then I planted out the right side with my remaining basil. Today I'll put up the poles and plant my pole beans in the top right corner. You can see that I need to pick up a couple more large-leaf basil to fill in the gap, or maybe I'll just plant a few carrots there.

This is the most exciting time of the garden year for me-- for some reason this is even more fun than harvesting. It reminds me of being a little kid and building cities in the mud puddles. I love laying out the garden plan and planting!

Next week is my birthday, and Mike has been asking "what do you want for your birthday?". I think I may have found the answer at Summer Winds-- check out the gorgeous metal garden decoration and glass birdbath. Either of those would make me very happy! I hope they're still there when we go back today!

Garden Plan for 2016

2016-03-22T01:00:00.000-07:00

No plan survives contact with reality for very long, but I still love to make my garden plans. Some things grow, some don't, I fill in the holes, the final garden doesn't always looks a lot like the plan. Usually I do my garden plans up in PowerPoint or Google Slides. This year I also took advantage of the free square foot garden planner at Gardeners.Com. I don't necessarily agree with all of their spacing advice-- a square foot for zucchini or tomatoes?! I filled in multiple squares with those to allocate the space.

One thing I really like to do is add flowers to the garden. They attract pollinators, add prettiness, and in some cases repel pests. My favorite flowers to sprinkle into a garden plan are conveniently sold in 6-packs throughout most of the growing season, and usually stay fairly small if planted from a 6-pack instead of from seed:

Alyssum
Cosmos
Calendula
Marigold (French, African, or Mexican!)
Petunias (avoid spreading petunias like The Wave)
Pinks (Dianthus)
Violas (Johnny Jump Ups)
Zinnia

Without further ado, here are the plans! I have three main veggie beds, with a small corner fence bed that I didn't need to diagram (two big squashes is all that will fit) and an herb bed ditto. Next year I'll have to mix these all up, and do crop rotation and all that good stuff, so I'm keeping records of what went where.

The Short Bed: Peppers and Eggplants

I'm returning to my classic favorites, Marconi Red and Marconi Gold peppers, as well as the sweet frying pepper Jimmy Nardello. I don't have a lot of faith in bell peppers, but I want to try a yellow or orange bell, as I really like them. For my fifth pepper, I'll choose one of the small upright peppers, like Lipstick or Tulip. In past years I've grown paprika peppers and mole peppers-- if I see a mole pepper seedling that looks good, I may grow that instead of the Lipstick.

For eggplants, I'm growing mostly the more productive Asian types-- my all-around go-to eggplant, Ping Tung Long, plus the small-but-prolific Fairy Tale with its attractive purple-white variegated fruit. For that good old fashioned Italian eggplant flavor, I'll grow Rosa Bianca, with softball sized pinkish white round or oval fruit. The final eggplant will probably be one of the generic "Japanese eggplant" seedlings that appear at OSH every spring. Worth trying! Or I'll go up to YamiGami's and find something exotically heirloom to grow in that spot.

It's worth mentioning that the depiction of the short bed is misleading-- it's actually a 4x4 bed, not a 3x3 bed. The bed it's replacing was a 3x3 bed, and when I grew 9 pepper and eggplant plants in there, they were a bit crowded. So I'm giving them more room and only growing 9 plants in the short bed instead of the 16 that square foot gardening principles say I could theoretically have.

The Medium Bed: Tomatoes, Basil, and Small Stuff

I allocate about two square feet for a tomato in a cage, and I prune the foliage to keep them roughly that size. I make sure to leave plenty of branches and leaves to prevent sunscald on the fruit-- I just pinch off or cut the huge suckers going sideways and heading for the next yard over!

Every year I grow an Early Girl, despite it being an F1 hybrid, and my preference being for open pollinated and heirloom varieties. It's early, the tomatoes are a handy smaller size, and the particular taste of Early Girl is one of my favorite tomato tastes, not too acidic and very rich. I have more favorites than I do tomato space, so I have to compromise. I usually grow some kind of chocolate tomato, and I haven't picked which one this year. Black Krim has done well for me in the past, but I'll see what's available this year. I absolutely ADORE the low acid, tropical-note taste of Hawaiian Pineapple, so if I can find it I will grow it. I have seeds, but I'm not sure if I'm starting from seed this year-- better decide quick, I know. If I weren't growing a full-size chocolate tomato, I'd grow Chocolate Cherry as my cherry tomato, but instead I'll go with old reliable yummy Sungold. If I had made room for a fifth tomato, it would be the delicious (also low-acid) Aunt Ruby's German Green.

I'll put in a big patch of generic six-pack basil from the garden store, but will also raise the giant-leaf basil (whose proper name I'm forgetting) and my best buddy Cinnamon Basil. The giant-leaf basil is super for wrapping around delectables like summer figs or fresh tomatoes, with perhaps a bit of fresh mozarella or some goat cheese inside. Nom!

The space between the tomatoes can get a little shady and crowded, so it's kind of a toss-up what will work there. I'm going to try carrots, companion planting favorite of tomatoes. One of the classic companion planting books is called Carrots Love Tomatoes, in fact. In addition to the Nantes carrots, some scallions for salads and kung pao garnish, and for the first time, some fennel. And what's that in the hopefully-sunny corner? Yes, a few poles and some pole beans, probably a purple variety for appearance and ease of picking.

The Long Bed: Salads and Squashes and Peas, Oh My!

On the side nearest the big fig tree, which might throw some afternoon shade, we have salad-y things that like or at least tolerate some shade. Kuroda is a nice red carrot I picked up on my visit to the Seed Bank in Petaluma. I'll sow a square or two of lettuce, and while leaf and head lettuces are depicted in the diagram, I'm still unclear on what lettuces I'm sowing. Favorites are Cimarron romaine and Forellenschluss leaf lettuce. I also like some of the "salad bowl" mixes that are to be cut and will grow back. We'll see!

Dill on the sunny corner, and some chiogga beets and golden beets, a square of baby bok choi, some slow-bolt cilantro scattered around (we'll see if it lasts long enough for salsa making, or if I'll have to freeze it again). In the back, some cute Peppermint chard, with striped red and white stalks, and my old favorite Bright Lights rainbow chard. I'm growing peas along a section of the back, with poles and some netting for them to climb, and will put more chard in front of the peas so it keeps going after the peas die back. I'll also try a Beit Alpha cuke on the netting. It's supposed to be prolific, so presumably one will keep us happy. I might try a Mediterranean style cuke next to it, partly in the squash space-- lots of little cukes for eating fresh from the garden.

I've got some Roma beans and some yellow wax beans tucked in there, and might expand them by a square or so on each side. They might get taken over and shaded by the squashes, but will probably get one or two crops out of them before they're encroached upon. There are three squashes, and I'm giving them room to sprawl-- ignore the multiple icons and just think of them as squash zones.

For summer squash, I'm growing this year a Rampicante type long curling Italian squash. They have a great flavor and are very productive. On the far side of the garden from it, Kamo Kamo, a Maori heirloom that supposedly can be picked small for summer squash and left to develop for a kabocha-like winter squash. We'll see! In the middle, my second attempt at Georgia Candy Roaster, a delicious squash that won first or second place in the Santa Clara County Master Gardeners' taste tests a few years ago (a close second to Sibley). It's a huge banana type squash, and when I grew it last I got a stunted squash that was barely butternut sized. This time for sure!

What are YOU growing this year?! Send links in your comments!

Bare Root Strawberries and a Rhubarb Crown: Mail Order Gardening

2016-03-15T19:30:00.000-07:00

The King of Spring Wears a Rhubarb Crown

Funny things happen when you get older, and one of them is you get nostalgic for things. I was having tea with some of my friends and we started talking about things you can't seem to get anymore (in urban areas) and the talk turned to rhubarb. We all missed it, and none of us had ever seen it in the Farmers' Market. Hmm, I thought, why not grow some?

When I visited the Seed Bank in Petaluma, I found rhubarb seeds! I snagged a packet, and when I got home, did a little research. Hmm, it takes about 3 years for rhubarb grown from seed to be established enough that you can harvest from it. But if you get a rhubarb crown, you can harvest rhubarb in two years.

I did a little more research and discovered that rhubarb likes colder winters and less hot summers, and it's usually listed as growing in Zones 4 - 8, rather than our Bay Area 9's and 10's. I queried the Master Gardeners of Santa Clara county and found that a number of them were growing rhubarb-- usually the green stemmed "Victoria". At one point they had done a set of trial plantings of rhubarb, and found that variety, and another green-stem, "Glaskin's Perpetual", to do best. However, at least one responder complained that Victoria didn't seem to have that true tart rhubarb flavor (and deep red stalks!) that she remembered and loved. A variety called "MacDonald", which didn't do as well as "Victoria", had the best flavor and the red color.

Well, I'm all about the flavor, so I started looking for "MacDonald". I found it at a specialty grower, and was all set to order it, and their website refused to sell it to me once it knew my location in Zone 9. Sigh. Too helpful!! I did a little more research and found that "MacDonald" was developed from "Crimson", so I went looking for "Crimson". I found it and took the option of ordering the extra large crown which would establish faster-- cut maybe ONE STALK just to prove to yourself it's working in the first year, but you can harvest in the second year on the super crown.

Here's the crown in my gloved hand for scale:

They say it can be hard to tell which end to point up when planting a rhubarb crown, but this one was pretty obvious-- the nub at the top had bright red peeping out of it behind that brownish-yellow fuzz. Gurney's provided a helpful pamphlet with planting instructions for all sorts of things, including the rhubarb, but I checked the internet just in case. Everybody agreed, put the bud about 4 inches below the surface of the soil. Check!

Rhubarb can spread like crazy, and a typical patch can get 3 or 4 feet across. I didn't want THAT much rhubarb, given I have a small backyard set of raised beds, so I chose to plant my rhubarb crown in a container. I have some large self-watering planters that I usually grow eggplants in, and decided to dedicate one to rhubarb. I thought about using the plastic half wine barrel, but thought I might not have enough potting soil to fill it, so I went for the smaller container. If the rhubarb seems cramped, I can always move it to the half wine barrel in the winter.

(I didn't take a picture of the rhubarb planted, because there's nothing to see but dirt!)

Strawberries in the Mail!

I lost my small planter of everbearing strawberries a few years ago to a watering oops, and have missed them ever since. I had 8 or so Quinault everbearing plants in a big blue shallow bowl, as you can see below-- enough to get several ripe berries at at time as a gardening reward. Strawberries can thrive in a container only about 6 inches deep, as long as they are kept well watered. When I saw bare-root strawberries pop up as I was finishing ordering my rhubarb crown, I couldn't resist. Impulse buy! (That never happens to gardeners!)

I knew I wanted everbearing strawberries, not June-bearing-- the latter bear a heavy crop and then stop producing, whereas everbearing strawberries will produce small crops of berries all summer. I'd rather eat my berries fresh by the small handful than get a quart or two and have to freeze them or make jam.

I was very intrigued by the description of Mara des Bois, a French hybrid that was introduced back in 2011 or so to the States. "Sugary sweet, bursting with flavor, juicy, red, ... and perfectly shaped" stated a Dave's Garden blogpost, and I was hooked. I ordered a pack of Gurney's 10 bare-root Mara des Bois, at $16.99. If I'd looked a little further online, I would have seen Burpee's 25-pack of Mara des Bois for $19.99, but that would have meant two planters and some spares. Oh well, live and learn!

I'd forgotten how small bare-root strawberry plants are-- I saw this baggie and thought, "where are my plants?!" And there they are, below, a seeming tangle of dried up plant. Fortunately, the crowns themselves were still moist and healthy, and the roots really weren't tangled at all-- the plants separated easily once I removed the elastic bundling them together. Note the green leaves at the crowns of some of the plants!

Instead of a bowl planter that would need frequent hand watering, I chose to put the strawberries in one of my long white planters with a small water reservoir base. As you can see, there is a layer of screening in the bottom, with about a 2-inch reservoir below it. This planter will hang on the sunny fence by the BBQ, and have a line of drip irrigation run across it. The berries will be at eye level, easy to pick and (I hope) safe from marauding snails.

I realize in retrospect that I probably should have spread the roots out as I planted the strawberries. It was getting dark, and raining, and I knew I wouldn't be able to plant them for several days if I didn't do it tonight (traveling this weekend). We'll see how they do with their roots mostly going straight down. The most important thing, which I did remember, is to make sure the crown is above the soil line-- otherwise they will rot.

Now that they are watered, which washed the dirt off the crowns, I can see quite a bit of green there. I'm eager to see how they do, and will post updates as the plants begin to grow!

Garden Season 2016: Raised Bed Adventure

2016-03-08T21:02:00.000-08:00

I got busy with a new job in 2014 and didn't update the blog. In 2015, I didn't keep a garden, because of the dry winter and the drought in general. This year, we've had a wet winter, and I'm back!

Readers familiar with my garden pictures may remember the black plastic 6-inch raised beds that I've had for years. They were great when I started, but over time the flaws became unignoreable. Too many of the sides had gone more horizontal than vertical. The deep grooves in the inner part of the side made great places for snails to hide. The spacing of the beds was too narrow for a lawnmower between the beds and the back fence, so we had to use a weed whacker to maintain the grass there. The black plastic got very hot in the sun, a feature in the spring when the beds warmed up for planting, but less welcome in the summer and early fall. I didn't keep the beds weeded properly during their fallow period in 2015, and thick mats of grass got established in them. Ugh. Time to start over!

First to sketch up what I wanted, based on measurements of the width of a lawnmower (I allowed 26") and the room that we had. I came up with the following placement:

Good, and now for the beds themselves! I wanted something that will last the next 12 - 15 years we are likely to be living here, be more structural and upright, and not soak up the sun like black plastic. And be taller-- 12" raised beds will make me happier. I decided to go with make-them-yourself wooden raised beds, using premade and predrilled aluminum corner kits. The best combination of expense and functionality that I found were the Gardener's Supply raised bed corners (and the corresponding inline middles).

What to use for wood? I originally thought of using Trex, but it's super duper expensive. Many gardeners recommend cedar, due to its rot resistant properties. That was $1.80 a linear foot, and I would have needed about 438 board feet. Ouch. To my surprise, "common" (not heartwood) redwood turned out to be surprisingly affordable. A woodworker friend says that only the heartwood redwood is really rot-resistant, so we'll have to see how that goes. Nothing else I've read says that. So we are going with common redwood.

Ignore the sign in the background saying FREE FREE FREE-- the 2"x4"x10' boards were a little under $10 each. We used the circular saw to cut the first set of bed sides out, and that was irksome and slow. We'll take the time to set up our fancy chop box and do a bunch of sides at once next time. The kits, which included aluminum self-tapping wood screws, were easy to assemble on the cement of our carport. They were structural enough that we could easily carry the bed to where it would live.

Here is the first bed, a 5'x2', assembled. I found that I'd neglected to allow for the corner units themselves in calculating the width of the bed, so it is about 3 inches wider than I'd planned. Wups. Thus I'll be putting it in the corner by the fence and making a narrower bed for my herbs, here behind the shed. If you notice the wood doesn't come up fully to the height of the corners, you are right-- they are a true 12" and dimensional 2x4s are really 1.75 x 3.75, so three don't fill the space.

Here is the bed filled with Kellogs Organic Potting Soil, three 3-cubic-foot bags. I'm leaving room for a top mulch of compost. I planted peas along the fence (long and short sides), and will get some mesh to staple to the fence for them to climb. I'm planning on putting a pair of winter squashes in that bed, and ditto on having them climb the mesh. My husband suggested, alas after the bed was filled, that it would make more sense to put the sharp edges of the posts on the ground, and use the wood-level side on the top. The next 4 beds will certainly use that method!

I'm busy this coming weekend, Mike is away the following weekend, I guess the last weekend in March will be our mad scramble to finish all the beds to start our growing season. Though I hope we can work on them in the evenings after work instead, and get some of them going. I'd like to plant cilantro and lettuces now while it's cooler!

Watering in the Drought

2014-05-15T16:59:00.001-07:00

We are having a drought year, which makes good watering practices even more important. There isn't any water to spare, so it's crucial to use water wisely and efficiently. Here are some tips and tricks:

Mulch over your soaker or dripper hoses. A good layer of mulch cuts down on evaporation and helps hold moisture in the soil. It protects your plants root systems from extremes of heat. Compost makes a great mulch, and if you live in Santa Clara County you can get free compost from the Sunnyvale SMART Center. Straw is another great mulch, but try to get rice straw as it won't have seeds-- seeds in straw translate to weeds in your garden! My dill and lilies are happy with a thick mulch of compost covering the dripper hose, as you can see in the picture below.

Water deeply when you do water. Leave your soakers on for 30 - 40 minutes and let them get the underlying soil nice and moist. I water twice a week during the spring and fall, and three times a week during the summer (or during heat waves like we just had!).

Water when it's cool outside, at night or in the early morning. If you are hand-watering, or have sprayers, water first thing in the morning so that you don't attract slugs and snails (they love to come out at night, and water just encourages them). If you have well-mulched dripper or soaker hoses, you can water at night or in the early morning.

How can I tell if a plant is stressed and needs extra water? Look at the leaves-- they will be drooping, as shown in the picture below.

Some people will tell you it is just the plant getting through the hottest part of the day. Don't believe them-- yes, the plant is slumping to reduce its surface area and lose less moisture through evaporation. But it's doing it because it's water stressed. A plant which is getting enough water will not droop during the daytime, even when the temperatures are extreme. Contrast the two pictures, taken at the same time during a 95 degree day. One squash plant needs water, the other is perfectly happy with the heat!

When you are going to have a heat wave, do an extra watering before it hits. Be extra careful about recent transplants that may not have deep or established root systems-- they can almost always benefit from some hand watering at the base of the stem, even if they are on a dripper system. Consider doing extra watering of any planters or containers you may have. Some containers are always on the edge of drying out, and a heat wave may push them over the edge.

Happy watering! May you and your garden have a great year, despite the drought!

Time to Plant Squash and Beans

2014-05-07T15:35:00.002-07:00

The nights are starting to stay above 50F, so it's time to start planting squash and beans! This yellow summer squash was purchased as a seedling and put outside in April, a bit early, but it did fine.

Start the squash in 4-inch pots inside for faster germination. Or make a little mound of dirt and plant the squash seeds in it, just a couple of palmfuls of soil in a little bump that will warm up faster during the day. Squash will take 7 - 10 days to germinate. When the seedling starts to poke up out of the dirt, put the pot outdoors in a sunny space. Keep it watered every couple of days so the seedling doesn't dry out. These are seedlings of Renee's Seeds "Romanesco Zucchini". It's one of the best eating zukes out there, and easy to find-- all the OSH's carry Renee's Seeds (and mail order works too).

It was started in a 4-inch pot on April 19th, and planted in the ground today. You want to plant them when they have their first true leaf, the jagged leaf in the center. That was just right, as the roots had just reached the bottom of the 4-inch pot but hadn't started to circle the pot yet. When I plant I do 4 things, and you might want to do them too.

First, I put in about a couple of tablespoons of "Sure Start", a seedling and transplant fertilizer. You can get it at SummerWinds, and I think OSH might carry it to. One box will last quite a long time-- several garden seasons. It's a good investment.

Second, I water the hole. I fill the hole with water and let it drain out before I plant the seedling. That means that there is good moist dirt for the new roots to reach for, and it also helps disperse the Sure Start.

Third, I water the pot. I make sure the root ball is moist so that the seedling will suffer a minimum of transplant shock.

Finally, I add compost to the soil when I fill in the hole. This gives the little plant some good nutrition in the soil around it.

Here is the Sibley winter squash that I started on April 3rd, and transplanted a couple of weekends ago. They've been growing nicely!

You've probably noticed that there are several plants there, and there were two Romanesco zuke seedlings in the photo above. What's up with that? Well, I plant several seeds so that in case one or more doesn't come up, I have extras. What to do with the extras? I let them get larger and get another leaf or two, and then I decide. I pick the biggest one to keep, and cut or pinch the others off at the ground. Never pull them out-- their roots are tangled up with the roots of the one you want to keep! In the case of these Sibley squash, I am keeping both plants. They form a long vine, and I will put one vine in one direction and the other vine opposite it, so that I can keep both plants. That should work-- you and I will both find out as the garden year progresses! For a bush squash like a zuke, that trick won't work, so I will be snipping off one of the little Romanesco zuke seedlings in a week or two once they are more developed and I can pick the clear winner.

I mentioned beans in this post, too. Here are my beans so far. The large plants were volunteers that came up this spring all by themselves-- I had let a bean plant go in the fall and dry up, and the pods split and seed landed in the dirt! I thought I had picked up all the seeds but clearly I missed some. Volunteer plants are great garden neighbors. They are usually early and healthy, as the conditions were just right for them to grow! This fall, let some things that you like to grow every year go to seed and scatter their seeds. You might well get some volunteers in the spring.

You can see the little beans coming up along the drip line. I spaced the seeds so that each seed got a drip of its own. That way I didn't have to do special watering to germinate my beans, I could just turn on the normal drip irrigation. These are Cherokee Wax Beans, an heirloom bean that I've been growing for many years. Heirloom means they breed true, but I grow so few beans at at time that I haven't been saving seeds, I've been working through the generous packet of seed that I got. Bean seeds kept at room temperature in a dry place will easily last 5 years or more. Most beans take 5 - 8 days to germinate-- great to grow with kids because you get results so quickly and they grow so fast!

I often soak beans for a half hour, especially older seed, before planting. I do this with peas too. Some people advise against it but it works for me. Don't soak too long-- the bean can absorb too much water and split, and then it won't germinate. But a half hour is about right, and I think my beans come up a day or two faster because I do this.

If you want to get seedlings and plant them instead of starting from seed, by all means do that. I start from seed so that I can grow my favorites, which aren't usually sold as seedlings. Seedlings have the advantage that they are ready to go in the ground immediately, and are often selected for your particular area's growing conditions. However seedlings can be too big, and might be stunted later because they got "used to" a small pot as their growing ground. In general, never buy a seedling with flowers on it, especially tomatoes. That seedling has decided "this is all the room I'll ever have to grow, so I better go for it and make fruit". Even after you plant it in the ground or a big container with room to grow, it may never reach a normal size for that variety.

Happy planting! Talk to you again next week!

Welcome to Garden Season 2014

2014-04-30T15:08:00.003-07:00

It's that time again. I have been working on my garden for the past few weeks and have the basics in place. This year I'm concentrating on growing things I can't get from the Farmer's Market. I'm letting my big garden bed, the 18x3 foot one, go mostly to flowers this year. I planted a big batch of summer lilies (thank you, Costco) and a batch of dahlias (from OSH). Only about half of the dahlias have come up, which is disappointing, but nearly all of the lilies are up. Volunteer cosmos and California poppies make up the rest of the garden bed, interspersed with some volunteer dill and lettuce. And grass. I need to keep weeding, I'm doing it in stages!

These gorgeous flowers are my thornless blackberry, Black Satin, now blooming and attracting big native bees. Every year in the fall I cut it back to one long runner, which I trellis onto my sideyard fence with a staplegun. It leafs out exuberantly every spring and gives me a bumper crop of blackberries in June. It's not too late to plant bare-root blackberries or raspberries if you can find them-- you may need to mail-order them, as the season to put them in really started a couple of months ago and they may not be in local nurseries.

This picture was taken a couple of weeks ago, and shows a yellow crookneck summer squash, English cucumber, and peppers and beets in the foreground. The 4-inch pots on a plate in the middle are my winter squashes, just starting to poke their heads up. I started them indoors and moved the pots out to the sun so the seedlings would get green and healthy.

I'm growing three kinds of winter squash this year, all of which are varieties that I love and can't reliably find at the Farmers' Market: Hokkori, Sunshine, and Sibley. Hokkori and Sunshine are both kabochas, a Japanese squash that tastes like a cross between a squash and a sweet potato. While I can find generic kabocha at the Farmers' Market, I really like these two varieties and chose to grow them so I can enjoy them. Sibley is an American squash shaped kind of like a long fiddle and related to the Blue Hubbard squash. It won top billing in a squash tasting run by the Santa Clara County Master Gardeners in 2011 or 2012, and I've been meaning to try growing it for several years now.

Here are seed sources for all three varieties:

Sibley, https://www.siskiyouseeds.com/product.asp?specific=2258
Hokkori, http://www.kitazawaseed.com/seed_160-187.html
Sunshine
http://parkseed.com/sunshine-hybrid-winter-squash-seeds/p/05302-PK-P1/

Hokkori and Sunshine are both hybrid varieties, so I can't save the seeds from them and expect to get the same quality of squash.  Sibley is an heirloom variety, but planting it near the other two means it will likely get cross-pollinated by the other squashes and not be good to save for seed.  If I get really ambitious, I can cover a female squash blossom (with the baby squash on the end) with a paper bag while it is still closed, and use a male squash blossom to pollinate it, ensuring that only Sibley genes are passed to that flower.  Since squash blossoms open and are fertile only for a day, I'd need to check the vine two or three times a day and be ready to play pollinator at a moment's notice. I think I'd rather just use the rest of the seed packet next year!

The pollinating part is easy, you just break the center out of the male flower and use it like a paintbrush on the center of the female flower.  It's just getting the timing right.  If I had a big yard, I could grow the Sibley out of the way of the other squashes and be pretty sure it would breed true-- heirloom seed companies isolate their squashes to grow them out for seed, they don't run around with paper bags.  That doesn't scale!

I'll try to start posting regular updates now that it's garden season again.  See you in the garden!

Carrots in Containers-- It's Easy!

2013-03-08T16:48:00.001-08:00

If you have a deep planter (a foot or so deep) you can be growing carrots in it year round. In fact, the weather right now is just fine for getting carrots started, as the nights are consistently 40+ degrees F now. Or you can bring the container indoors onto a porch or even inside the house until the carrots germinate and start putting out leaves. Let's see how!

Carrots are fun and easy to grow, and while you can get a bag of them cheaply at the market, did you know how many KINDS of carrots there are that you can't get there? There are yellow carrots, red carrots, even purple carrots, all with distinctly different sweet or even slightly spicy flavors. It's utterly worth your while to find a nice container and grow yourself some carrots.

The picture above is of a large deep pot that I use for an eggplant in the summer, and put to work growing some carrots over the winter. The long leaves in the middle are a single garlic plant, I had a spare clove and put it there for lack of a better place. The two most important factors in a good carrot crop are the pot depth and heavily composting the pot. If you don't have compost you can use a good organic plant food, but really good compost is easy to get bagged at the hardware store these days.

The pot should be 3 - 6 inches deeper than your carrots will be long. If you are growing baby varieties like the French Baby Ball carrots, which only get 2 - 3 inches long, you can do them in a shallow 6-inch planter. Mid-size carrots like Chantenay and Nantes Half Long are 5 - 6 inches in length and need a 9 - 12 inch planter. Full size carrots like Yellow Sunshine or Atomic Purple (I am not making that up!) need a 12 - 15 inch deep planter. I'm growing a full-size red carrot from North Africa called Maraca, so I'm using a 15 inch deep pot.

Put about half fresh potting soil and half compost into the pot and mix it up. Then put a thin layer of compost on the surface. You will seed the carrots onto the compost, and cover the seeds lightly with a very thin sprinkling of compost. Why? Because carrot seeds need moisture to germinate and compost holds moisture better than the raw potting soil. Carrots can take up to 3 weeks to germinate, so it's important to have something that we don't have to water every single day until they come up!

When you seed the carrots, the seeds are tiny and hard to manage. Put some in the palm of your hand and then use your thumb and forefinger to pinch up a few so you can sprinkle them loosely on the surface of your container. You will likely have to thin them to an inch apart, so sprinkle widely. When you have them all spread out on top, put a very thin, like 1/8 inch sprinkling of compost on top. Now the fun, and a key to success-- tamp down the soil surface with the palm of your hand, or with the bottom of a mug or some other flat surface. You want to make sure the seeds are in good contact with the compost and vice versa.   Now water gently but thoroughly to make sure the surface and the layers down about an inch are damp.

Check every 3rd or 4th day and water again as needed. You want to maintain moist but not wet conditions at the surface.   You can cover the surface with some floating row cover to help maintain moist conditions, but don't use solid plastic or you'll have issues with fungus as the soil won't be able to breathe.

Good luck, and try some awesome different kinds of carrots! This one is a baby carrot I pulled to thin my carrot pot. Note how it loses color towards the end and is still very short.   Pull carrots when they are deeply colored all down their length and have reached true maturity-- unless you need a snack!

Pea Planting Time!

2013-02-20T19:04:00.002-08:00

It's time to plant peas! Or, if you already planted peas, like I did earlier this year, it's time to watch them bloom and start to thrive, after weeks of being little scrawny things!

Though it may be hard to believe after yesterday's rain with snow at higher elevations, Spring is on its way to the Bay Area and it's time to plant things that don't mind a little cold to germinate.

Growing in my garden right now are peas, cilantro, and dill. I have a few beets struggling along, but it's not quite warm enough for them yet. They'll hang on like troopers and start to actually grow sometime in mid-March.

If you're like me, you may have had trouble getting your peas to actually use their supports to climb on. I didn't trellis them when they were little and now that they're spreading all over the ground, I realized I had to get them tied up so they could grab onto their supports. Otherwise they'll get to a certain height and fall over, bending or even breaking their stem, which is just heartbreaking to see.

As you can see here, I have a bent stem on one of the peas already
but have tied it up to a support and hope to save it. The stem is not
torn, it is only slightly bent.

I should be able to wrap text around this image but Blogger is not letting me for some reason. Oh well, I apologize for the formatting. The first picture worked fine.

My winter garden also has garlic that I planted in the fall, around October I believe, in a half wine barrel. I am forever "losing" garlic, because I forget where I planted it and when the grass comes up and becomes thick, I can't see it and end up chopping it down when I weed whack around the garden. So this time I figured I'd put it where I can't lose it! Also, the garlic won't be ready to pull until June. I can put a zucchini into that half barrel in June and not lose any of my growing season, whereas if I put the garlic in the ground (and labelled it) in one of my raised beds, it would block my planting of peppers or tomatoes in those spaces in April or early May.

The other items in my winter garden are failed spinach (New Zealand Giant, which withstands heat and apparently also requires it for successful growth, despite the package label), thriving carrots (Macarena, a North African variety from Baker Creek Heirloom Seeds) and of course cilantro and dill. I don't have a picture of the dill, it is still tiny. The cilantro and carrots are here; the carrots are in the big blue pot. A second pot of carrots of a different kind sprouted but failed to thrive. The seeds were older, and that may have been the difficulty.

Happy gardening! Plant your peas now and you'll have lots of wonderful peas before it gets too hot in late May or early June.