Slow, Slow Grow

Seedlings grow slowly! A watched seedling never grows, or something like that. The quick and exciting sprouting of the seeds has given way to the slow and less dramatic development of the seedling. The excitement has waned, at least for the moment. It’s a question of patience now.  As in everything else, patience needs to be cultivated with at least as much care as one gives to the cultivation of the soil.

Although at a snail’s pace, most things are progressing well with two exceptions: the zucchini seedlings and the last batch of mini pots I set with tomato and okra seeds. The stem of the zucchini, the part right at ground level, seems to have atrophied and withered, as you can see in the photo above. I’ve no idea why (too much water, too little water, bugs, wind?) but I’m curious to see if any of these seedlings make it. Squash is normally one of the hardiest crops so it’s a surprise.

As for the tomato and okra seeds, not one has germinated, and that should have happened about four days ago. It’s really weird – not one seedling out of something like 72 little pots. Another mystery.

Two positive things though on the seedling front.

The first is that I transplanted a couple of seedlings from the mini pots into the front yard a couple of days ago and they are still looking good. Photo above is a cantaloupe seedling. It's the tiny little green sprout near the bottom of the frame.  It's on the parkway (the strip of soil between the sidewalk and the gutter.) You can see the white car parked there. I’m not sure how much hope there is for this to survive unless I rope it off with big orange traffic cones, and possibly monitor with a security camera and alarm system ;-), but the thought of having a big sprawling cantaloupe vine with lots of fruit on it growing right there on the parkway is very motivating so I’m giving in a shot. (Besides the risk of being trampled there’s also might be a problem of not enough sunlight there under the big trees that line the street.) Don’t know until you try though.

Below is a tiny broccoli seedling, planted in the front yard.

The other cool thing is that I gave some seedlings today to the lady who watches Kong and Salty when I go out of town. She took a couple of broccoli, a couple of tomato and one snow pea seedling. The idea of giving away the seedlings and seeing how people do with them is just as appealing as cantaloupe growing on the parkway. But don’t worry Michelle, this is not a test!! And by the way Michelle is a fantastic dog watcher, walker, lover, etc so if you live in this area and you need to board your dog, or just have him walked during the day check out her website: www.inthenameofdog.net/

Well that’s it for me. I’m off at the crack of dawn tomorrow to the May Day immigration march in downtown LA. I’ll end with this pix of the hybrid bok choi seedlings, which are one of the things that are actually growing pretty fast.

You Can Eat Kale Raw

Kale is one of my more successful crops. It’s plentiful too so I’m always looking for more good ways to use it.
For the longest time I thought you couldn’t eat kale raw but a while back I found a recipe for a raw kale, avocado and tomato salad with lemon juice, cayenne pepper and olive oil. (if you add salt use very little - it will kill the taste).  Sounds nasty but it’s delicious.  Not only that but right after eating a serving or two you get this great feeling of being energetic and alert - almost a high from all the vitamins in the uncooked kale. Definitely more energizing than “Five Hour Energy” drinks. The two main secrets of preparing raw kale is shred it finely, and use an acidic ingredient like lemon juice to wilt the kale. Just like ceviche.

I have also made a raw kale and parsley salad recently, with avocados, shredded carrots, mushrooms, onions and a dressing of lemon juice and olive oil. (my own concoction). If you like parsley as I do you will love this salad. Just shred the kale super fine – and of course removed the thick stem in the center of each leaf.

Kale and Collards are members of the cabbage family.(Brassicaceae). They are cool weather crops – ok in spring here but not so suitable for midsummer. Right now my kale is still producing well. I have three plants. When I want to cook with them I just snap off a bunch of the outermost leaves. The leaves in the photo were for a dish of fried tofu on a bed of sautéed kale and topped with toasted pine nuts. It keeps producing new leaves so it’s an endless supply of greens. For the hottest days of middle summer I am going to try planting some kale in a partially shaded area in the front where hopefully it will stay coole enough to avoid wilting or bolting.

If you let the kale stay unpicked for too long (especially if it is crowded with not enough space between plants) the risk of developing these white/grey powdery pests on the underside of the leaves increases. I don’t know what they are called but they are pretty common for me. This year has been much better than in the past as I’ve been more diligent about picking the leaves regularly and giving each plant enough “breathing” space.

In general it’s really important not let the vegetable plants get too mature or overgrown because they just become a breeding ground for pests and disease. I just pulled out some six feet tall lettuces from last year that went to seed.  You can imagine the quanity (and variety) of bugs I found in there...

RainDrip Irrigation

Today I installed a Raindrip brand micro-irrigation for the side door garden (SDG). I bought Raindrip's “Landscape kit” for about $35 at the local garden supply store.

There’s a whole variety of “emitters” such as four different types of “drippers,” plus sprinklers, bubblers and sprayers. Each works best for a different application.

I’m using “in-line drippers” (at right) and pressure compensating (PC) drippers (at left). The PC drippers came with the kit but the in-line drippers did not.

This looks like it’s going to work quite well for most situations, except for seed germination. You can see how the drippers wet the ground only around the plants, saving water and also avoiding diseases caused by too much water falling on top of the leaves.

The drips are 1 gallon per hour (GPH) which actually is probably too much. It seems to puddle up pretty fast. Next time I will get the ½ GPH.

I need to get a timer for this set up and I’ll be off the hose hook in this area.

I still have to figure out the most practical way to water seeds in pots before germination, and for the first couple of weeks after germination when they are tiny seedlings. They need to be watered about three times a day – the daily highs are only 75 or 80 degrees, but it’s super hot in the sun and the little pots, and the seedlings in the ground, dry out super fast.

Speaking of seeds, I’m really enjoying germinating seeds and producing the seedlings but I have about 1000 times more than I can use myself. I plan to give them away to friends and neighbors or whoever wants them.

We’ve Got Some Rain

And that’s a big deal in LA. Today and probably tomorrow too. It’s keeping the seedlings nice and damp and saving me the trouble of doing it. I took the potted seedlings out of the plastic water trays to give them a chance to drain to prevent them from getting waterlogged.

Here's a photo (above) of the Australian bottlebrush tree in the backyard. That’s going to have to go in the backyard remodel because the deck will go there (it’s right at the back of the house). It’s pretty hard for me to accept cutting down perfectly healthy trees and throwing them away like an old piece of furniture. Maybe it can be dug up and replanted somewhere else. I’ll ask David Hawkins, the guy who going to build the new garden about that.  It's a beautiful tree and attracts lots of beneficial bees and hummingbirds.

Here’s a couple of “before” photos of the backyard. Looks like a weed-filled lot, which it kind of is as I’ve let the maintenance go when I decided to do the redesign.

I’m trying to eat or transplant everything in the back garden before the demo starts. The kale (below) has been really delicious and beautiful…

Zuke, Strawberry and an Amazing Gardening Tool

The zucchini seedlings and the transplanted strawberry plants are super robust.  I love the way the zucchini sprout throws off the seed cover. Looks like a pumpkin seed shell that someone spit out onto the ground. (photo here and at bottom of this post).

The two strawberry plants clearly survived the transplant well – this berry was green a couple of days ago when I did the transplant.

And below an extremely cool garden tool for creating small square stamps of planting soil. Using this you can sprout seedlings without using any little pots or plastic cells.

I bought it on Sunday from Justin Dervaes at a community gathering/pot luck dinner organized by his family, the owners/operators of Dervaes Farm in urban Pasadena. They produce around 6,000 lbs of produce yearly on a property almost exactly the same size as mine (8,700 sq ft). They have tons of great information on their website urbanhomestead.org

I haven’t used it yet but Justin was demonstrating on Sunday and I loved it. You immerse the tool in a big basin of damp potting soil, pushing it firmly into the soil a few times to get the tool nice and packed solid. The you take the tool, place it over a plastic tray around 24” x 36” with a perforated bottom, press down to release the tightly packed little cubes of soil. You end up with a tray of what looks like a tray of brownies in which you can plant your seeds. I’ll take some photos of it in action this week – much easier to describe how it works with images…

Um, THIS Is What a Zucchini Seedling Looks Like

And not that thing I had a photo of a few days ago, with the caption marveling at how I had them germinating in a world record time.

Here in two photos at top are a zucchini seed hatchling (or whatever its called).  Both photos taken today - the one at left at 9am and the one at right at 5pm.

So what were in those photos from the April 13 post which I thought were zucchini seedlings??? (you can see it at photo at left, in the left foreground).  I’m curious because they are ALL OVER the side door garden (SDG). Like weeds. Are they weeds? I just pulled some Brandywine tomato seedlings I planted in pots to compare them to the “weeds."  Almost identical.  Here's some photos to compare them with the Brandywine seedlings.

It's the Brandywine seedlings in photo at left on white background and the "weeds" from the SDG in photo at right.  And the "weed" (tomato?) in the ground below.

If they are in fact tomato seedlings how come there are something like one hundred of them scattered all over the SDG? A rouge seed packet? A haunted garden with a ghost gardener?

When I sow seeds there are usually leftovers in the packet. Sometimes I empty the packet over a weedy unused plot of dirt to see what happens. I’m sure I didn’t do it into the SDG. Maybe a wind brought them over? The corollary to “don’t spit into the wind” is apparently “don’t seed into the wind.”

Ah well, that's the mystery for today. For entertainment purposes only here’s Salty modeling his new RoughWear booties.  He has neurological damage from an accident when he was a pup so he drags his back paws and if he doesn't wear shoes he quickly wears the nail down to the quick and he bleeds.  So it's not just a fashion statement.  Though those red uppers and Vibram soles are pretty hot ;-)

The Platonic Ideal of a Raised Bed Garden is Within Reach

Here are some photos of the most perfect raised bed garden which I snapped today at Persson’s Nursery in Pasadena. Also a photo of the “plan view” of the garden.

This garden should be a great fit for my backyard and it’s what I am going to ask David Hawkins to build.  David is the contractor who build the hardscape and softscape for the front yard and he did a great job.

As soon as I can get a driveway gate installed near the front of the house so the dogs have somewhere to go while David's guys work in the back we can get the project started...

That’s it for today except for these three photos:

1. A fern groundcover I bought today at Persson’s but they didn’t know the exact name for – any ideas? I shall check in Western Garden Book.

2. Bunching onions I pulled from the back garden today.

3. Delicious tabouli I made this morning. The only ingredient from my garden was the mint but in a couple of month the only ingredient that WON'T be from my garden will be the bulgar wheat!

I Want A Chipper-Shredder!

And I’m gonna get one too, and soon. I’ve been lusting after one for about two years and the time has come. It’s gonna help me turbocharge the compost/soil production – and gonna help me make lots of mulch out of all the sugar cane I’m cutting down.

Today I used the Planters’ Pride “Grower Starter Kit – with dome” to plant some more tomato and okra seeds. The Planters’ Pride kit costs only $7 and includes 72 cell pack, reusable carrying trade and “professional humidity dome” (i.e. plastic cover). In fact it’s abut $1.50 worth of plastic, but I’m grateful Armstrong is only charging $7 for it – they could easily being selling it at $12.95 or something like that.

This time I planted the seeds in a much more methodical and careful fashion and made sure to put no more than two seeds in each of the tiny pots. I think I got the depth just right too (1/4” for tomato seeds and ¾” for okra). I realized the okra seeds are a year old so if they fail I’ll blame it on the fact they are probably past their 'use by' date.

I’m not sure if I should use the dome or not – I’m concerned it might be too hot if the daytime highs are around 80 degrees…

Maybe I’ll just use the dome at night and keep it off during the day.

Today I transplanted the strawberry plants from the backyard to the driveway. I hope the transplant takes coz the fruit is really delicious on these plants. Not only are they sweet but there’s something so perfect about the texture – very different from the often “cellular” airy/dry texture of typical supermarket strawberries.  I might have over watered after transplanting – there was about half an inch of standing water around the two plants. I used the dry/wet vac to vacuum it up. Seemed to be a good solution. I’ll know tomorrow.

Need to buy tomatillo and beet seeds. Hopefully it’s not already too hot for beets.

No “Seed Failure” Here

There’s a guy at the Hollywood Farmers Market on Sunday who sells fantastic seedlings. He is an organic farmer, who grows vegetable and herb seedlings (and some fruit trees too) on the grounds of his small bungalow home in Hollywood. He has top quality stuff – I’ve bought and planted a lot of it in the past. Great stuff, but buying seedlings it is a very expensive way to establish a garden.

On my last trip to his nursery/home he said many people buy seedlings from him and other growers because many home gardeners experience “seed failure.”  Seed failure (as he explained it to me) means people plant seeds but they don’t germinate. I thought about it and there really is no good reason for that much seed failure in a climate like we have in Los Angeles. But it does sounds like a good way to encourage people to buying seedlings instead of growing their own.

I wanted to test my theory that seed starting is easy so I decided to plant the majority of my garden from seed this spring.

So far I've planted two groups– the first on March 29 and the second on April 9. That was Friday. Today is Tuesday April 13 and already two of the three types of seeds I planted in the new raised bed (SDG) have germinated!

It’s very crazy because one of them is the Pak Choi (photo at top left) who's number of “Days to Germination” (or PG - Projected Germination as I have it abbreviated on the sign in photo at right) according to the seed packed is 10-14 days.

But it germinated in five days. The other one to germinate is the zucchini (last photo at bottom), which has the PG listed as 7-10 days.

I think the dirt I have (the homemade dirt from the lasagna garden) can take part of the credit for this accelerated germination time. The rest of the credit probably should go to the nice rain we had over the weekend. I think it was at least an inch. Seeds really need to be kept moist to germinate.

Most of the seeds I planted on March 29, which was all in pots, are doing OK too. Here are photos of the carrot (in brown peet trays photo below) and cantaloupe seedlings (in green/aqua colored trays photo at left). The others that are doing well are the bunching onions, broccoli, radish, spinach and even some tomato seedlings.  Only the okra is alluding me at the moment (but I have grown it from seed successfully in the past).

It might be too late (too hot) for the spinach and broccoli to grow to maturity but I guess I will see how that goes. They are “cool season” vegetables.

There’s a little challenge I always face when it comes to thinning seedlings. It’s very hard to bring myself to "Darwinize" by pull out all but the one best seedling per pot. I usually just don’t do it and then the beds end up overcrowded. I’ve already done some thinning in the little pots and I’ll try to keep it up. From what I’ve learned from books and videos there really should be only one seedling per pot.

Now I am waiting for the first “true set of leaves” and then I will transplant some into the SDG and give some away.  If anyone would like some let me know and I’d be happy to share/exchange.

I bought a bunch of nice, simple plastic seed started kits (pots, tray, cover) so I will plant some more seeds in pots tomorrow.