Goodbye, Garden!

Goodbye, garden!  We just didn't get warm enough and you were not the most disappointing garden - last year was pretty bad.  At least I got a few more tomatoes than last year but I can't believe that even the zucchini weren't even half as productive compared to last year.

Time to dump Kassenhoff and get on the ball with starting my own tomatoes in January since their tomato plants never seem to thrive or produce.

After it's done raining, I'm pulling up the sorrel and useless feral arugula (with teeny leaves) and planting some cauliflower, broccoli, mustard, radishes, daikon and stuff... probably too late to sow seeds directly into the ground with this early rain.

Garden Update!

The garden is looking pretty fabulous - I put in 18 plants from Kassenhoff, and I have volunteers all over the garden as well as other random places such as next to the driveway, by the trash cans in the front yard and such.  I think the birds and squirrels were busier than last year.  I have decided this year to do stakes - though I am putting cages on some of the tomato plants, esp the volunteers which I know are going to be cherry tomatoes.

I planted some broccoli - late, I know - but with our late rain (it poured all day on July 5th!) and overcast skies, it is thriving.  I had about 800 ground cherry volunteers - some were potted up and many handed off to local folk who responded to my Freecycle post. 

James turned me onto Annie's in Richmond - I got a spaghetti squash plant there which is just going absolutely nuts.  There are about 10 softball size spaghetti squash.  My cocozelle is doing well, having already produced one 18" long squash (oops! I blinked!) though some are false starts, indicating that I need to digitally facilitate pollination again (or get bees).  Cucumber plants are doing well -- but none of the squash or cucumbers are following the lines I staked down around the leaves to make them climb UP to the trellis (dammit!).  The small honeydew I got from Annie's - supposed to be softball sized - is NOT thriving.  Neither are my two bell pepper plants which probably want way more sunlight.

Parsley & chard are both going to seed, following cilantro and arugula.  I'm waiting for the seeds to shape more maturely so I can pull them off and sow them back in the ground.  The fresh cilantro seeds, however, might get eaten.  I have been quite lazy and haven't yet planted the half wine barrels - but they will soon be planted with some radishes, basil and lettuces.  I know - basil likes hot weather and radishes cool but this *is* July in Oakland afterall.

Pictures coming - I promise!  My neighbor gave me a zinnia start which just opened its first red blossom today and it is stunning!

Garden 2011

Sadly no pictures - just news that I picked up plants from Kassenhoff (at the Farmer's Market) and Annie's in Richmond and put some plants:

• 12 Tomatoes (in addition to the volunteers)
• 4 peppers
• 2 squash
• 1 cucumber
• 1 giant ground cherry (to keep the smaller ground cherries company)

Seems early enough - let's see how it goes this year!

Potato Condo Harvest!

The Great Potato Condo Experiment - after growing potatoes for nearly a year, I wasn't quite sure when I should just knock it over and harvest.  I do, afterall, live in a 365 day growing season (for potatoes, apparently) so none of the plants up and died or dried out on me as I expected as the signal that it was time.  Over the past couple of months, I would find a few potatoes popping out of the wire mesh here and there - I even cut down the wire mesh by 2' because the soil compacted and slid out so much.

Finally, with James' assistance - it was time to harvest.  As he said - $40 worth of dirt for $10 worth of potatoes.  I saved the plants and some of the potatoes with sprouts and put it all into 3-gal nursery pots in a different area to continue growing potatoes - here are photos of the condo harvest.

Garden Update - Tomato Relocation Project

James graciously offered to help with my tomato relocation project - in fact, he had some great ideas and mapped out my rows and we put in some seedings from his house, and moved little tomato plants so they are in better rows. It looks promising!

I've noticed that since my garden is so late in getting going, there are a LOT more weeds. The cucumber plants are doing great - they are popping out of the ground and surrounding their little mounds. Even the kabocha squash seems ok.

The broccoli rab & chard are happening, but all too close together. I picked a TON of mint while James reorganized the volunteer tomato seedlings. When we went inside, we got into some trouble in the kitchen - a giant load of mint pesto. It came out so great that I will definitely be making more of this next time I weed the garden.

James Seedlings: SUCCESS!

Last night, I went to James' house to check out his garden and seedlings. He has already put in posts for his tomatoes - he is doing Florida Weave but on 3 sides of his garden so that the tomatoes are all along the outside edges, with beans and stuff between the tomato plants.

The seedlings he started from my saved seeds look MUCH better than mine - so I hope to get some good seedlings from him once they are healthy.

I was also treated to my favorite vegan Japanese dishes - I especially adore the way he makes hijiki with tofu pocket slices -- it was such a nice gardening & dinner evening with a good friend.

Seedling FAIL!

GARDENING UPDATE: First round of seeds did not germinate - I tried to germinate them outdoors, putting the seed tray in the solar dehydrator. I suspect it got too hot in the day, too cold at night.

Sunday I spent some time replanting the seedling tray. I also put all the kales into the ground: Chinese kale (which looks like broccoli), broccoli rab, lacinato kale and black kale. I even got a couple of tomato plants at the farmer's market to put into the ground since my tomato seeds aren't doing so well.

Other items planted include: garlic, cilantro, endive, parsley, peas, fennel & dill seeds sowed directly in the ground.

The potato condo continues to look stupdendous, and I am sprouting more potatoes for the bald spots. I can't figure out how to get more water down to the bottom of the condo - the top is quite moist and I'm finding the occasional mushroom growing (oh, yay for wood chips in the organic soil).

Garden time!

SEEDLINGS: I confess - I'm afraid. I'm afraid that I started my seeds too late, for one thing. And, I used the wrong medium to start the seeds - it's been almost 3 weeks and NADA! The seeds are NOT coming up. I'm going to buy some more dirt and put together the seed tray from scratch. I just hope I still have some seeds for some of the varieties of tomatoes I wanted from last year.

GARDEN PREP: This is the only thing I've properly managed. The garden is all broken up - a friend with a contracting business loaned me a couple of his workers on a rainy day when they couldn't do their regular work. Best $84 I have spent all year. Today, someone is going to finish up the job and break up the dirt clods so it's nice and soft and I can actually plant seeds.

GROWING THINGS: Last Saturday, more greens went in - more parsley, lettuces, arugula and cilantro.

After a couple months of inactivity, the potato condo is showing promise - there are big green vines coming out some sides and shorter vines on top. I'll get some good pictures and get them up soon.

COOKING: Since I am on a diet, haven't been cooking a ton - though I have been eating a lot of banh mi from Little Saigon Express ($4 for a tofu sandwich with daikon & pickled carrots!). I recently passed along a frozen quart bag of persimmon pulp to a friend so she could try her hand at making persimmon jam. Mostly I have been eating lots of kale and greens - and brought home some avocados and strawberries from Gilroy to make salad with local arugula and peppercress for dinner this week.

I did pull a pretty good April Fool's prank last night, though...

Black Cherry Tomatoes

Cherry Tomatoes

Here's a pile of cherry tomatoes from the garden -- all varieties are represented here, including the volunteer cherry tomatoes (they are the biggest round tomatoes).

DRYING UPDATE: the Principe Borghese tomatoes are doing alright, but drying unevenly. The pears are crispy. They are brown. Not pretty.

Tomatoes, Zucchini & Lemons

Today I took the day off to get ready for a weekend at Orr Hot Springs, I took the day off to prep some food for us to bring to eat over the weekend. Last night, I checked the tomatoes -- some were really close so I decided to leave them on the vine for at least a few more hours of hot weather (Thursday was hot and Friday promises to be warm as well).

Well, this morning when I went out to the garden, I discovered that someone else beat me to one of my beautiful Paul Robeson tomatoes:

Believe me, that critter (likely a squirrel since there are small claw marks next to that groove), didn't eat enough to dissuade me from cutting out the chewed part and including that tomato in my raw lasagna. I got quite a few big tomatoes off the vines and a pile of cherry tomatoes (not all are pictured here).

That basil turned into a big pile of pesto - most of the pesto was frozen in ice cube trays. The tomatoes mostly went into my first attempt at raw veggie lasagna.

VEGGIE LASAGNA: This was the first time that I made the I managed to get some photos of the veggie lasagna as I got it started, but was so busy that I didn't have time to take more photos of the process of layering and the finished product.

This tasted really good, but there are a few things I learned:

• Making raw marinara with mostly sundried tomatoes and some fresh tomatoes, garlic, olive oil, salt and a pinch of cayenne is the most brilliant idea ever. It results in a hearty, thick, delicious marinara that I wouldn't hesitate to heat up for pasta. This confirms my desire to get the solar dehydrator done ASAP so I can dry up a pile of tomatoes!
• Processed the pine nut ricotta too long -- resulted in something more like tahini rather than my friend's fluffy pine nut ricotta.
• Use a bigger baking dish - using a smaller baking dish does not mean you will make less.
• Using white truffle infused olive oil on the zucchini was a really good idea.

LEMONS - I also picked a pile of lemons from my friend Regan's yard to make a gallon of lemonade for our weekend at Orr. I also made a gallon of sweet tea using peppermint, spearmint and lavender.

Eating Green Stuff

Sunday I canned the plum sauce -- I ended up with:

PLUM SAUCE:
2 - 12 oz
7 - 8 oz

I also made up a batch of cilantro pesto using three cilantro plants that bolted in James garden. It was a lot of work pulling off the little lacy tendrils (fortunately my friend Jon was here to help) -- it resulted in amazing. I ended up with about 2 cups of cilantro, added about 8 sun dried tomato halves (soft, not oil packed and not crunchy dried), pumpkinseed oil, olive oil, raw almonds, garlic, salt, pepper -- it came out incredibly delicious.

My friend Eric brought a bottle of wine and a head of cauliflower over while I was picking arugula and chard in the garden. We started planning dinner and were picking leaves off stems when James arrived. Our dinner was really delicious --

• Acme green olive bread with pesto I made earlier in the day
  
• Salad - red leaf lettuce (CSA), arugula (garden), mint (garden), yellow broccoli rab flowers (garden), heirloom tomatos (CSA) and avocado (store) with a gorgeous mustard dressing that Eric whipped up
• Cauliflower (Eric's CSA box) with broccoli rab greens and chard (both my garden), capers, garlic and other yummy stuff.
• Figs (CSA) and strawberries (garden) drizzled with saba

Eric and I were talking about combinations of pesto - he suggested I try chard-mint pesto. I've got about a pound of clean, dried arugula in the fridge, so tonight will be pesto night. I'll make up a few batches of pesto and freeze in ice cube trays. I still have a gallon of plum juice to make into jelly -- that might be tomorrow night's project.

I can't seem to pass up seed stands -- I bought some quinoa seeds at Whole Foods last year (and killed all the sprouts by forgetting to shut off the soaker hose) but can't locate any this year. I need to plant some more stuff after work: garlic (sprouted cloves), dill, oregano, and some seeds I just got -- spinach, micro greens, lovage and fennel.

The garden is doing really great -- the new arugula sprouts are coming up and the parsley is finally looking like parsley. I have a ton of chard and am probably going to plant more chard seeds in a week or two before I head out of town on vacation. The broccoli rab is continuing to send out shoots but they almost instantly turn to flowers -- the greens are still awesome delicious, so I am going to plant some more seeds on a tray and start a few more broccoli rab plants.

And, in the interest of equal time - the kitties are very pleased with the garden. Carmine and George like to sit inside the canopy of tomato plants where they can guard against the landlord's dog, Fred, who has done a few laps through the garden (EEK! No! Fred!).

Garden Update

GARDEN: The tomato plants seem happy - I have to get out there and check on the grow, re-tie them to stakes and such. The basil is starting to take off. I picked up a few small plants on Sunday - zucchini, lettuce, a red bell and a habanero pepper and planted them all before work on Wednesday. The peppers went into pots and I put the zucchini by the fence on the driveway so it can spread out -- I want to have some yummy fried, stuffed zucchini blossoms since James won't let me eat his!

Zucchinis taking off, but the ladybugs are sticking around!

Lettuces are slowly starting, container garden not as big as ground garden.

Tomatoes are growing like gangbusters!

CSA: The CSA is coming along with problems every week -- they allow customization and print these great labels, but the team in the packing room disregards the labels. I keep getting stuff that is on my "do not send" list. Today, I got more summer squash (still have some from last week), rosemary (two plants is enough, thanks!), and lettuce (I still have some from James' garden). And I did not get strawberries or plums which were on the list to go to my house. One more week -- if next week has too many problems, I'm going to give up and go shopping at the store or Farmer's Market for my produce like I did before. Boo!

Surprise Radishes!

Surprise Radishes! IMGP6891
Originally uploaded by jennconspiracy

This morning, I found these three lovely radishes wrapped in a plastic bag on my porch. No note and no e-mail (yet) - I wonder who left me this gift?

Garden Update

I'd like to welcome three people to Distributed Gardening project -- my friend Eric (genius chef behind Millennium), neighbor Beth (writer of Fake Plastic Fish), and coworker Jay (storyteller behind the GreenGorilla).

They all have different gardening areas -- Eric has a terraced area behind his apartment building, Beth has a small, bare front yard surrounded by big buhes that looks great for the 'maters (and maybe some arugula, mint and strawbs if she wants to cover the bare dirt), and Jay has raised beds and more limited space.

Chef Eric witnessed the release of some pretty active ladybugs -- there are still a lot of them on the plum tree and they are still all over the tomato plants. Dobson and George helped.



This morning, after I dropped off the tomato seedlings, I got to meet Beth's charming lovelies, Soots & Arya:


As promised, here are some photos of the garden:



The plum tree is casting more shade than I expected over that part of the garden. I still have quite a few seedlings left to distribute to some friends in San Francisco and some "TBD" recipients.



The basil seedlings are doing pretty well - and the pepper sprouts are moving right along. I just have to figure out where I'm going to put all this stuff!

Garden Update

Garden Update: We finished up turning the earth in my garden, adding 5 cu' of manure and 4 cu' of sand to my garden. We put in 3 cu' of manure, 2 cu' of sand and 10 cu' of "Local Hero" soil with chicken manure into James' garden. His garden is still turning up all sorts of bricks, cement chunks, rock, ash, broken glass and even whole bottles. We suspect that there used to be a building behind his house, and that people burned their trash back there for years.

Ladybugs: We scattered some lady bugs in James' garden -- I scattered two pint containers of lady bugs in my garden -- they seem to be hanging out on the tomato seedlings and also on the peppermint (had little white specks on it).

Garden photos are now up for you to view!

Last night I plotted out the space requirements for all the plants -- I'll have 16 pepper plants and 32 tomato plants in the ground, and hope to have 4 tomato plants in containers. I planted sugar snap peas, regular peas (grow to 16" high), chard and parsley this morning. I'll put dill and one of my rosemary plants along the fence, in view of my kitchen window. Tonight I'll get the lines measured out with James' help and we'll get my tomato plants into the soil.

DIY Foods update

Veg pickle is really good. It's very tasty and I put it in the fridge today because it wasn't fizzing nearly as much as when I opened it up to check it three days ago. It's delicious and the pepper has really permeated throughout.

Kombucha is coming along slowly... looks like something is growing in there, so I am going to have a hand at making some kombucha this weekend.

Sourdough starter -- doesn't seem like much is happening. Was I supposed to just leave the lid on? I left the lid on and it is in a warm-ish place, but the flour is separating from the water. I shake it a bit to mix it but... it just looks like flour and water.

Tomato seedlings - some look really good and some are still pretty scrawny... this weekend I'll do some digging and plant stuff like peas and beans and squash. Pictures will be up for the seedlings and stuff soon.