the finished product

Finally, after a long pause, I'm back growing vegetables. Over the last couple of weeks I was able to get the help of some very skilled friends and built a raised bed vegetable garden in the style I had been planning, which is 24 inches tall, as I had seen at Persson's Nursery in Pasadena.

While the work is completed, the soil is in and the seeds just started germinating and everything is awesome I have to say that building this raised bed, which is five feet by 16 feet, was not only much more expensive than I expected but also much more work.  The remaining beds will be simpler...

green onion seedlings

carrot seedlings

Wood ($6/foot if you go with redwood), soil ($25/cubic yard for planter box mix, plus $100 for delivery and $60 for a guy from home depot to move it from where the driveway where the delivery truck dumps it to the planter in the backyard). $200 for the irrigation.

So for the next four boxes I plan to shrink the height to 12 inches or maybe even six. My soil in the backyard is great for growing veggies so it's a bit crazy to be buying soil. One reason I wanted the tall beds was to avoid the weeds but you know what - you knock them out before you build with an herbicide and after that you use barriers such as cardboard and lots of weeding.

Here are some photos of the seedlings.  I planted a few kinds of tomato, swiss chard, beets, carrots, green onions, jalapeno pepper, poblano pepper, string beans and basil.

seedlings bought at the farmers' market: tomato at left and string bean at right

View of the first raised bed with irrigation installed

Back in the Garden

raised bed made of douglas fir, before staining

Dump truck delivers five cubic yards of soil in the driveway

emptying my pickup of one cubic yard of soil

One Of The Many Reasons I Love Compost



Mystery Vine Growing from Compost Pile



Onion

Cilantro

Amaranth

Potato



Red Onion



 A Laotian-American woman who has a farm near Fresno told me the best way to grow ginger is to just throw some into a compost pile, keep it damp and let nature work it's magic.  I tried but so far nothing to show for that experiment. BUT, when I got back o Sunday from about 12 days out of town, I noticed some things growing out of the compost bin, one looked like onion (and it was) but the other was something I had never seen before.  Very weird so I dug to where it was originating and found an old potato!  Didn't recognize it as I have never planted potatoes before.  It's very cool and I'd like to put it in the ground or do whatever I need to do to keep it growing, although I'm not sure of the best way to proceed.  Lorraine you are the Potato Master.  Any tips for me? 

I've left both the onion and potato in the bin for now but have taken of the top so they get some light.  Here's some photos of both below, and also one pix of an amaranth plant that seeded itself and is growing out from the bottom draining opening of a plastic five gallon pot.  Young amaranth leaves like these are fantastic raw in salads or stir fried.

The other very cool thing is a bunch of cilantro has seeded itself in the front yard from one old plant that died there a couple of months ago.  Cilantro is such a bitch to grow that I'm very happy about the self seeding.  Hopefully the temperature has cooled down enough now that it won't all flower immediately.  And it's here just it time for the avocados too!

Potato Root



Kong and Salty

























Someone Else's Backyard

People are asking me more and more often how is the backyard coming along.  Well nothing has really happened yet.  A couple of weeks ago in Sunset Magazine I saw a design for a backyard vegetable garden / entertainment area which looked pretty darn fantastic.  I like almost everything about it.  The only modification I would make is a lot more raised beds for veggies.  I gave the magaizne to Matt the designer and he's working on an adaptation that could work here.  He's bringing a rough drawing this week....

If you are interested in the full Sunset article about this backyard in Arizona and the nine attached photos you can see it at

http://www.sunset.com/garden/landscaping-design/kitchen-garden-entertainment-patio-00418000068682/

Here's a cantaoupe from the  driveway yesterday.  I let it go maybe a day or two too long but it was delicious anyway. 

Roadside Cantaloupes

Not much happening in the backyard as I wait for Matt to come up with his drawings.  Planting efforts are still concentrated only along the driveway and in front of the house on the parkway.  Things are going well in both places.  What blows me away the most is that there are a couple of nice sized cantaloupes growing out front.


It's the first time I've grown cantaloupes.  I've tasted only one so far, from the vines planted along the driveway.  It wasn't 100 percent ripe but still pretty good.


What surprises me even more than the fact that I was able to grow the cantaloupes on the parkway is the fact that so far no one has picked them, crushed them or otherwise removed them.  I hope they stay there until they are ripe (you know the melon is ripe when the vines are grey/brown and withered).


















There's also some tomatoes, cucumbers and mint growing around there too.  Someone took this nice yellow tomato.  I don't really care - the stuff I planted along the parkway I wasn't really planning to eat anyway.  It is mostly just a demonstration garden for passersby, as well as an experiment in front yard vegetable gardening.  I get lots of comments from people who regularly walk their dogs or their kids by the house.  That's more satisfying than eating the veggies myself.

The Figs Are Banging

The figs are huge, ripe and copious.  Today I picked about 20 which were about as close to perfect as figs get and brought them as a gift to a friend in Lincoln Heights who was butchering some of his roosters.  He gave me rooster meat in return.  

Searching the internet now for recipes. Coq au vin is the most popular but there are some other stew recipes.  I’ll try one this week.

It’s been a while since my last post so a couple of things to report.  The Ana apple tree is coming close to the end of its run.  The apples were huge and although not as fantastic as the first season still pretty damn good.  I dropped off about 15 lbs with my neighbor across the street who promised to make an apple pie for me.  I’m still waiting for the delivery.  Will post a photo when it arrives. :-)

The tomatoes are great and zucchinis more than abundant but I’ve been missing lettuces so I planted a few seeds today.  

Here’s the list:

Name	Planted	Emerge	Maturity
Lettuce Mesclun (Lactuca sativa)	8/8	8/15 (5-10 days)	9/23 (45 days)
Lettuce Leaf Oak Leaf blend (Lactuca sativa)	8/8	8/15 (5-10 days)	9/23 (45 days)

Oregano	8/8	8/18 (8-14 days)	n/a
Curly Parsley Perejil musgo crespo	8/8	9/10 (21-28 days)	n/a

The two lettuces went into the side garden raised bed next to the tomatoes (where the bok choi were).  The oregano and parsley into pots.  Look at the germination time for the parsley – 28 days!  Must be a record.  

It’s normally too hot to planted lettuce now but I will harvest as baby lettuce before it has a chance to bolt.

As for the organic acetic acid herbicide in the last post, it works quite well on everything except crab and bermuda grass, the two grasses which seem to just not die.  

Roadside Dinner

After a longish hiatus from this blog I'm back, with nothing special to report from the backyard, which looks exactly the same as it did in my last post three weeks ago.  Matt wants to let the mulch sit 4-6 weeks before he rototills and grades the whole backyard.  In the meanwhile, despite four inches of this heavy mulch and total lack of water the bermuda grass and crab grass is coming back.  To combat this I ordered an organic herbicide called Weed Pharm which is made from acetic acid, the stop both from your photo darkroom days if you are old enough to have worked as a photographer in the pre-digital age.

Anyway....acetic acid comes in many qualities the highest of which is "food grade."  (Actually there is even a  "kosher food grade" acetic acid.  I don't know if it is a higher grade but it is approved by a Higher Authority).

Food grade acetic acid in an extremely diluted form is the vinegar you have in your kitchen cupboard.  

The Weed Pharm is dilluted to 20 percent.  I'm going to apply it tomorrow and let it bake in the hot sun and see how effective it is. 

Now, for the roadside dinner, here is what is growing in front of the house, where all dog passing dogs pee and worse.  Two photos below are the same respectably sized cucumber (and my 2004 Honda).

Same Honda and a tomato plant with one red tomato.  This area, called the parkway, gets regular water from the automatic sprinkler system but I don't fertilize or do anything else.  That combined with the dog pee etc I think getting any veggies to grow here at all is an achievement.

This Anaheim pepper plant is in the raised front yard where dogs don't pee (most of the time).  No pee= will be used for cooking.

Kong, sitting beside a cucumber vine, keeps his eye on a squirrel across the street.

30 Square Yards of Mulch

Visually not terribly interesting, but to update the progress in the backyard demolition, yesterday Matt and his guys finished laying down more than 30 square yards of Mulch in the backyard.  That's more than one heaping truckload. 

    This is the view from the back corner of the backyard looking at the garage.

   This is the view in the opposite direction, from the house looking toward the back.

I'm a little skeptical about putting down the  mulch before grading, but here is how Matt sees it:

"I recommend applying a heavy mulching after the sod-cutting. Then after 4-6 weeks rotor-tilling in the decomposing roots and newly decomposed mulch bits. This approach will have superior results. "

So we will see how that goes.

As an aside here are a few photos of what's maturing on the trees and veg plants:

That's red pepper, grapes and peach. And here's Salty sunbathing:

I'm concerned the honey bees were disturbed or harmed by removal of some much vegetation back there (and the laying of the mulch as well) so I'm going to get some honey today to put on the new hive to see if that helps to attract them to move house.