Gardening

Spring Garden

Posted on May 14, 2008 by Debora

“To own a bit of ground, to scratch it with a hoe, to plant seeds, and watch the renewal of life – this is the commonest delight of the race, the most satisfactory thing a man can do.”
–Charles Dudley Warner

I’ve finally gotten all my spring veggies planted, and most of my summer ones. This has been an unusually cool spring, but I didn’t want to wait any longer to get everything in the ground. We had a totally unexpected hard frost a couple weeks ago that decimated my bell peppers and eggplants, but other than that things are looking really good. I replaced the frost victims with new seedlings and I’m keeping a much closer eye on the weather now, so I can cover up the tender stuff with straw should the need arise.

Here’s what my garden looks like right now:

As you can see, I’m all about the mulch. You really can’t garden without it in this arid climate. It holds moisture in, blocks weeds, adds organic matter to the soil as it decomposes, and keeps the plants’ roots cool so they don’t burn up in the broiling heat of summer. Gotta have the mulch!

I’ve gone in a slightly different direction this year with my crop selections. The more I read about Colony Collapse Disorder, the more concerned I get about the effects of genetically modified plants on the beneficial insects that come into contact with them. This has inspired an interest in preserving old heirloom and open-pollinated varieties of crops. The added bonus here is that I can save the seeds my plants produce and they will breed true year after year, unlike hybrids.

So I’ve switched from my usual super-sweet hybrid corn to the old favorite Golden Bantam. Instead of my beloved Hybrid Packman broccoli I’m trying an Italian heirloom variety called Di Cicco. I couldn’t give up hybrid tomatoes completely — gotta have my Early Girl and my Sweet 100 Cherries — but I’ve added Red Brandywine and Roma this year.

What I’ve planted so far:

Arugula
Beets
Broccoli
Carrots
Eggplants, Black Beauty and a Japanese variety called Ichiban
Garlic
Green Beans, Kentucky Wonder
Italian Parsley
Kale, two different varieties with really long names
Lettuce, several different varieties
Malabar Spinach
Melons, an Amish cantaloupe type
Onions, Walla-Walla and Yellow Ebenezer
Oregano
Peas, Snow and Sugar Snap
Potatoes, Yukon Gold
Radishes
Red Cabbage
Sorrel
Sweet Corn
Swiss Chard
Thyme
Tomatoes
Watermelon, Crimson Sweet and Garrison

I’m going to put in some pumpkins later; I’ve learned not to rush that. Nothing worse than pumpkins that are ripe in August and rotten by Halloween!

I also put in a bed of strawberries, but that’s a post unto itself.

I’m having the usual luck with my watermelons so far — which is to say, very little — but I think that’s another post too.

Here’s hoping for warm weather, no more frosts, and just enough rain!

Categories: environment, food, Gardening, Life, Weather | 3 Comments

Sun Dance

Posted on April 23, 2008 by Debora

Have you ever observed a humming-bird moving about in an aerial dance among the flowers — a living prismatic gem that changes its colour with every change of position…In its exquisite form, its changeful splendour, its swift motions and intervals of aerial suspension, it is a creature of such fairy-like loveliness as to mock all description.

–W.H. Hudson

I was in the garden this morning, enjoying the sunshine and checking the progress of my spring seedlings, when I heard the familiar “zzip, zzip” of a hummingbird flitting around nearby. I looked up and saw him, an iridescent green fellow with a jewel-pink throat, doing an exuberant sunlit dance in midair a few feet away from me.

At first he seemed to be performing solely for my benefit, and a lovely performance it was. Then I realized that he was in the midst of a hovering cloud of gnats, dipping and whirling with elegant grace as he snapped up dozens of the tiny insects. I sat back on my heels and just enjoyed the show, which lasted for a good minute or two before the hummer finally darted off in a brilliant flash of color.

I think Nature likes to indulge in random acts of beauty and joy for the sheer pleasure of it. What other explanation could there be for moments like that?

Categories: Animals, Gardening, Life, Wildlife | Tags: hummingbirds | Leave a comment

Moving On

Posted on April 15, 2008 by Debora

Sorry about the long absence. Been dealing with some life changes, and apparently the first thing to go was my usually compulsive need to write.

With crushing irony in light of last month’s romantic marital musings, Steve and I have separated. It wasn’t any lack of love that ended the marriage; we were just too different. Different goals, different values, different interests. During our almost-twelve years of wedlock both of us compromised and sacrificed so much of ourselves to make the marriage work, that by the end we both felt like we’d lost touch with who we really were. Letting go of the struggle was almost a relief.

It was all as amicable as a breakup can possibly be. He kept what was important to him and I kept what was important to me; there was no overlap, nothing we both wanted enough to argue over. That’s a sort of sad commentary in itself, I suppose.

I love this house and Steve doesn’t much care where he lives as long as there’s room for his band equipment, so I stayed here and he moved back in with his parents a quarter-mile up the road. They seem happy to have him: the prodigal son, back safe where he belongs at last. The kids took it hardest, but we’ve made it as easy as possible for them and they seem to be adjusting well.

I could go on and on about all the effort that went into this marriage and why it ultimately failed, but…I don’t feel like it.

So. Moving on.

To celebrate my birthday I did something that I was never able to do with the city-phobic Steve: I took the kids to visit one of my favorite old stomping grounds, the Mission Avenue part of Riverside. I used to live on the corner of 7th and Locust, within walking distance of the library and museums and everything, and my memories of that area are warm.

We started the day with a climb up Mt. Rubidoux. The weather was gorgeous, and all the winter rain made the scenery a lot greener than usual. The Santa Ana riverbed wound lush and verdant alongside the city’s edge, looking nothing like its usual sandy deserty self.

We took the “down road” up. Steeper, but shorter.

The cross at the summit. Its sheer size never comes across in photos:

The view from the top:

The Friendship Tower and Peace Bridge:

Elizabeth likes livin’ on the edge. In each of the next three pics, she is inches away from bone-breaking drops:

At the base of the cross:

On the way down we skipped the roads and took a footpath:

Our next stop was the Riverside Marketplace. We wandered through all the beautiful shops, and picked up some fun trinkets for the kids. Then to the Mission Inn, to admire the wonderful courtyards and all the incredible details.

Then we headed over to the Natural History Museum, which I’ve loved since I was a kid.

By then the kids were starting to get tired, so we called it a day and headed homeward. We stopped in Temec for a nice supper, and got home just as dusk was falling. In spite of all the personal drama going on right now, I think it was the nicest birthday I’ve had in years. It felt like…a new beginning.

Categories: Family, food, Gardening, kids, Life, Love, Marriage, Travel | 7 Comments

Winter Garden, Part 3

Posted on February 16, 2008 by Debora

With spring looming on the horizon, this seems like a good time to record what I’ve learned this winter about growing cold-weather crops in containers with no protection from the elements other than the south wall of the house itself. It all pretty much boils down to two important things:

1. Stuff grows a whole lot slower in cold weather than it does in warm, sunny weather. That sounds like a no-brainer, but I was really surprised at how *much* slower everything grew. I planted in mid-November, and have yet to harvest any mature plants. I’ve had a few nice salads made from thinnings, but by mid-February I’d really expected more. Here are my little broccoli transplants that I moved into their own planter in December:

Granted, this has been an unusually cold winter for SoCal, so maybe in a more typical winter I’d have been harvesting broccoli florets by now.

2. Stuff grows REALLY slow when it’s crowded. I overseeded my original planter, and every time I thin out the seedlings more seedlings sprout. This overcrowding has seriously stunted the development of the little plants. Behold:

As you can see, these are really tiny for three-month-old lettuces and kale.

So to summarize, this fall I will plant my winter garden a few weeks earlier and use a lot fewer seeds.

One other interesting thing I learned from my experiment is that carrots grow just fine here in the winter, but radishes apparently won’t even sprout in cold weather. At least, mine didn’t. This surprised me, since I’ve always understood them to be a cool-weather crop. It might have been a fluke, I guess; maybe the radish seeds were defective. I’m going to try them again next fall, just to see.

And now it’s time to start preparing my spring/summer garden bed….

Categories: food, Gardening, Life, Weather, Winter | 3 Comments

My Tiny Winter Garden, Part 2

Posted on December 22, 2007 by Debora

[Part 1 can be read here.]

So far my little garden has flourished, through snow and ice and howling winds and unseasonably frigid temps.

I’ve found myself getting a bit impatient at how slowly the little veggies are growing; they’re a fraction of the size they’d be by now if the weather had been warm and sunny this December.

One thing I’ll do differently next time is to scatter less seed. I’m constantly thinning out my sprouts, and they’re still crowding each other. I could have used one third the amount of seeds and still had plenty.

I’m pleasantly surprised by how tasty the kale seedlings are. I’ve never grown kale before, and never liked the version of it they sell in supermarkets. But I keep hearing that it’s one of those crops you have to grow yourself to appreciate, so I tossed it into my winter garden to see for myself. So far I’m loving it!

A week or so ago I bought a second big planter and transplanted a few of the crucifers into it. I can’t tell the the broccoli from the radishes at this point, so I can only hope that I got two or three broccoli seedlings into the new planter (since that’s its intended purpose).

I plan to put in bigger, more permanent beds all along the south side of the house this spring. My first thought had been to build them out of cinderblock, but Steve offered the truly brilliant suggestion of using big galvanized water troughs instead. I love this idea! Horse troughs are decorative, impervious to rot and weather, and someday when we move we can just empty them and bring them with us!

So this spring I’m looking forward to planting asparagus and strawberries, two crops that my garden’s perpetual bermudagrass infestation won’t let me grow down there. I’m very excited about this!

Categories: food, Gardening, Life | Tags: Winter | Leave a comment