The corn is as high as a.... Labrador's eye!

The garden is having a June boom! The tomatoes are ripening up and have been delicious so far.






The corn is getting to be very tall--about 2.5 feet. It's exciting to think that we'll be harvesting our own sweet corn this year.





I'm especially pleased with the progress of our zucchini plants. With the drip irrigation watering only at the base of each plant, there's been no powdery mildew this year.





The onions are coming along nicely, and I harvested several garlic. I've never had garlic this fresh. It's wonderful! And very easy to grow. I think I'll get another crop started--if I plant enough regularly, I should always have fresh garlic at home.






In other sustainable food news I finally watched the documentary "Food, Inc." Very interesting, and it made me even more concerned about where my meats come from.

We went to the farmer's market and purchased meat from two different vendors. They're both family farms that pasture fed and pasture raise their animals. From Healthy Family Farms we bought some chicken which I fried up that evening. Fantastic! And we also purchased ground beef from Rocky Canyon ranch.

I'm hopeful that by buying directly from small farmers and by growing a portion of our own food that I'm helping strike a blow, albeit a small one, at industrial farming.











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Have you seen my strawberries?

A big success this year was moving the strawberry pot into full sun, and hooking it up to my drip watering system. The strawberries have been productive, sweet and delicious. The trick is harvesting them before little animals come and take nibbles out of them.

Unlike store-bought strawberries, which are bred to be "tough" in
order to survive shipping, these berries are so fragile that there would be no way to store them.


They simply start to melt once you plucked. Best thing to do: pick and eat. There are two kinds of berries growing in my planter, though I can't remember the names. One is smaller and has an almost floral sweetness. Incredible!




Bad news on the pea front (that sounds a little wrong, doesn't it?)--the leaves have started showing signs of powdery mildew.I think that they may now be on the decline.

Good news is that my Early Girl tomatoes are looking fantastic! Lots of green tomatoes getting fat on the vine. Maybe a good tomato summer at last? Stay tuned.




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Cure for the common cold? Not so much...

Last week, while I was sick and somewhat feverish, I decided that I had to work in my garden for a while. Not just the vegetable patch, but the whole backyard. I went to the gardening store in a foggy daze and wandered around putting various plants in my wagon. Ended up with a bunch of drought tolerant plants to spruce up the "decorative" part of the back yard, a six pack of corn seedlings, lettuce seedlings, zucchini and cucumber. And a huge back of top soil. Oh yeah, and a can of grass seeds.

Planting the veggies was no big deal. The soil in my veggie garden is nice and soft, easy to dig into. The soil of the backyard however was another story. I think I worked for about 2.5 hrs in the dwindling daylight, sweating both from effort and from my low-grade fever.

I don't think I've ever heard it recommended that one should garden for several hours, trying to dig into hard, clay-packed dirt, in order to beat a cold. And guess what? Didn't help it. Ooh boy, was I tired that night. But the backyard looks great!

P.S. The new plantings are filling in GREAT!












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Pea Salad, First Tomato

What a difference in pea production from last year! It's very satisfying to be able to harvest enough peas to actually cook something for two people.

I'm a little concerned about my green beans. They should be easy to grow, and yet the leaves are pale green and a little spotty. But maybe it's just because it's been a cool year in SoCal, and they'll perk up once it's fully summer.

The pie pumpkins have lots of blossoms, and there are three baby cucumbers developing on their vines.

I also picked and ate the first tomato of the year. No pictures--it went straight from plant to tummy. Stupice tomato; delicious, great texture.

I made a fresh pea salad, using the peas in their pods, mixed with some asparagus, red onion and a white vinaigrette. Yum!

Funky-Lookin' Carrot

So.... I really don't have a deep enough garden bed to grow root vegetables.... which means I ended up with some mutant carrots. We tried to eat this one, but it kinda tasted funny. Aw. Enjoy the picture.

Springing Forward

Okay, making up for lost time here. The garden has really been taking off. I'm hopeful for some good harvests come summer! Note to self--planting in January is really the key to having a good growing season.

I'm most excited about the progress of my pea plant. Last year I only harvested ONE pea pod. I mean, that's just silly. The pea plants grew hardly bigger than a couple of inches and withered very quickly. This year's planting really shows how peas are meant to look when they're growing well. There are already a couple of pea pods emerging from flowers. Fingers crossed that there will be more and more!

Also, my first tomato has appeared. Hooray!

Here are some recent pictures of my garden, plus a really unique veggie and herb patch that is growing on a wall (yes, vertically) outside a local restaurant.

3 Weeks Later

It's been about three weeks since Ona and I replanted my garden, and miraculously (especially for Southern California) it's been very rainy! The weather has been cool, but not too cold, and all of the seeds we planted are sprouting. The seedlings are starting to flourish, and I will be able to start harvesting lettuce, kale and chard this week. Here are a few pictures to show the changes. I'm just hoping this year that I get a good pea and bean crop--last year I was sadly disappointed.

Baby carrots sprouting in the foreground, purple carrots thriving in the background.

BEANS!

Lettuce loves the rain.

Chard loves the rain.

The garden is flourishing!

New Year, New Garden!

Last weekend, Brandon and I spent a portion of each day redoing the garden bed. First I went through and harvested the few remaining crops: three broccoli florets (I was amazed! The only broccoli all year), several bunches of little yellow onions, and one baby carrot.
Then I cut down all the remaining straggler plants, pulled weeds, and turned the soil over. We got some more siding and attached it to the walls of the garden bed to increase the height by a few inches. Then we mixed another batch of "Mel's Mix" (corse vermiculite, compost and peat moss) and filled in the bed. Unfortunately we'd underestimated how much mix we'd need, and so we wound up doing yet another batch today.

We also visited the nursery and picked out some good "cool weather" crops, such as broccoli, kale and chard (keep in mind that the temperature right now is on average in the 60's during the day).

My friend Ona came over to help with planting. She has a plot in a local community garden, and she's constantly harvesting so much food that she has to beg people to take it away. She certainly has a green thumb! We had a good time figuring out the new layout for the plants, and she advised me not to plant the same kinds of plants in the same place year after year (i.e., if you plant tomatoes in the right corner of the garden one season, then plant them in the left corner the next). Different plants absorb different nutrients and need to be rotated for the best growth.

We also sewed a bunch of seeds. Hopefully by planting in January instead of in late March I'll have gotten a good jump on the growing season and will have more to harvest! After everything was planted, we installed drip irrigation. I'm expecting that by using a drip irrigation method, rather than a spray from the sprinkler, my squash will fair much better and not develop powdery mildew.

The baby plants are so cute, and I can't wait and see if adding those extra inches of dirt will do the trick. Here's hoping!

The Garden was Dead

In the paraphrased words of Charles Dickens: "The Garden was dead, to begin with." It's now totally gone to seed... er, gone fallow... and as the weather seems to be brightening up, I think it will soon be time to turn over the soil and start again.

My plan this year is to increase the size of the garden bed, and the depth. I'm also going to install drip irrigation instead of using the sprinkler heads as this killed a lot of my squash this year.

In the meantime, I picked up my CSA box this week. It's totally full of dark leafy greens. We are so healthy! But I'm looking forward to a change of pace to break up all of the green. Spring is just around the corner (at least, it is in California).

Not as local as the backyard, but still eating locally

It's November 1st and my garden has given up the ghost. With the exception of a few very fine looking onions, I've got fallow land on my hands.

In all honesty, this first attempt at growing my own food was a bit of a bust. The reason, as determined by me and as verified by reliable resources (my mom, other gardening friends), is that I just didn't have enough dirt in my raised bed. Sometime before I plant again in the spring I'm going to add another several inches to the sides of the garden bed and fill it in with my Mel's Mix. According to my friend Pat, broccoli won't even consider growing without about a foot of dirt. So... now I know what my goal is. Also, I'm installing drip irrigation in my garden. My zucchini never had a chance against the powdery mildew. Next year I will prevent it from even thinking about touching my squash.

In the meantime I've taken up the next best thing to having a personal garden: I've joined a local organic CSA (Community Supported Agriculture). Because we live in Los Angeles, there are actually a fair number of these CSA's in the area. Basically, an interested person can "subscribe" to a CSA, paying either a weekly, monthly or annual fee. Depending on the CSA and on your household needs, you can pick up a box of fresh, seasonal produce from a drop off location (often a farmers' market, though sometimes from a private residence) once a week or twice a month.

The CSA I've joined is the South Central Farmers' Cooperative. The farmers in this co-op used to farm a large community garden in downtown LA that was eventually bulldozed by the city and inspired the documentary, The Garden. Now they have a larger piece of land that is funded in part by the CSA.

This week's box included several kinds of kale, collard greens, two eggplants, cilantro, spaghetti squash, green tomatoes, zucchini, sunburst and scallop squash, and purple pole beans. To add to my local mix, I also visited the farmers market for organic apples (Red Winesap and Pink Lady), California olives, and fresh vanilla bean quark. Here's the menu for the week so far. I'm providing links when I can find them--so many recipes that I have in my cook books are also available online:

Halloween Night (yesterday):
Pumpkin Soup (local pumpkin from a family farm)
Melting Greens (I used up all the green leafy veggies from the CSA box)
Crusty bread with Parmesan

Sunday Morning:
Pumpkin Waffles
Organic free-range scrambled eggs
Vanilla Bean Quark
Local blackberries and raspberries

Monday:
Helen's Polenta with Eggplant (pg 287 in Laurel's Kitchen)
Purple Pole Beans with a cheesy, lemony, garlicky topping

Wednesday:
Pancetta Pasta with sundried tomato cream sauce
Zucchini Squash

Thursday:
Still seeking a good recipe for spaghetti squash--any suggestions?
Fried green tomatoes
Starburst squash
Maybe I'll do something with cilantro too