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.

Beekeeping 101

These honey bees have been living in the wall in the back corner of the backyard for at least a couple of years now.

It's great to have them in the yard as they do lots of the pollination work, but there's no way to access their honey.  Bobby noticed it yesterday morning and decided to build a hive for them so we could collect honey.  He's kept and raised all sorts of animals, including bees.  By looking through the garage he found 99 percent of the materials he needed to build this cool bee box together in one afternoon.

This is the inside of the base level of the hive.  Wooden dowels are inserted at various angles for the bees to hang their honey.  The honey at the base level (the only level we have so far) is for the bees only.  By placing additional levels, or "supers," on top of the base hive you get access to honey which can be collected.

Caulking the wood to make it watertight.  This is the base box, with the lid on it.

This is the side of the box with a lip and a slit opening for the bees to use for entry and exit.  Very similar to the crack in the wall where they live now.

And here's the box in place, the opening facing the crack in the wall where the bees currently live.  Slowly the bees will migrate over to the box and will establish their honey production center there.  Alternatively you can buy a queen and put here in the the the drones and workers will come. 

24 Hours Later...

Lots of sod-cutting action yesterday and hauling and removal today and this is what I found when I got home from work.

Nice!

A couple more "after" photos.  Orange, lemon, fig, apple, avocado, peach and crape myrtle trees all saved.  The rest all chopped and hauled...

Besides that, the tomatoes are coming in brilliantly in the bucket along the driveway.
\

And the dogs seem to like the empty, dusty backyard...

Matt and his guys will be back on Monday to remove more bricks and the tree stumps and bring mulch to build up the soil......

Backyard Demolition Finally Begins

The day has finally arrived!  Matt Dell and his team from Atomic Oak are starting the demo on the backyard today.  I snapped a photo before they started this morning:

Looks like a deserted lot right?  I let it go, bad.  Matt said the demolition should take four days.  I will post a photo a day for those interested in watching the transformation.

Had a salad made exclusively from veggies from the driveway garden yesterday.  Lettuce, tomato, green onions, carrots, basil, amaranth, snow peas.   Dressing was olive oil, lemon (from the tree in backyard), salad and pepper.  Awesome.  Also the tomatoes so far have been exquisite - they can be discussed and analysed the way one would a fine red wine.  Really....

The Secret to Growing Cilantro in the Sizzling Hot Socal Summer

I wish I knew it.  Every time I plant cilantro it bolts.   Bolting means that a plant sends up a tall flower stalk in a very short period of time. This means that the plant has gone to seed and will decline in terms of flavor.

This bok choi seedling bolted when still in it's little pot!

Most plants bolt due to hot weather. When the ground temperature goes above a certain temperature, this flips a switch in the plant to produce flowers and seeds very rapidly and to abandon leaf growth almost completely.

This is the flower from the arugula that bolted a few weeks ago.

The arugula....

Bolting is a survival mechanism in a plant. If the weather get to be above where the plant will survive, it will try to produce the next generation (seeds) as quickly as possible.

Some plants that are known for bolting are broccoli, cilantro, basil, cabbage and lettuce.

Once a plant has fully bolted, the plant is normally inedible. The plant’s entire energy reserve is focused on producing the seeds, so the rest of the plant tends to become tough and woody as well as tasteless or bitter.

Anyway back to the cilantro story.  I had five seedling I needed to get into the ground yesterday so I looked for cooler, partially shaded spots to put them.  Two little cilantro  seedlings I planted along the driveway (two photos below).  The other three I put in the front yard, partially shaded by the trees.

You can't really see the cilantro is this pix because it is tiny but it is just in front of the water heater, which should give it some shade.  The little bush you can see in front of the water heater is bay. You can see the cilantro in the photo below.

I will see if I can stop these from bolting right away.  Since I was planning this blog entry I looked around the internet and here are some suggestions I found to delay your cilantro from bolting:

• Keep the ground cool by covering with mulch.
• Plant cilantro close together - the leaves will keep the sun off the ground (this is one I didn't think of before!).
• Plant cilantro where it will get only early morning or late afternoon sun - not midday sun.

And then of course the other suggestion is just not to plant cilantro when it is too hot - plant either in the spring or the fall.  This makes sense to me because spring is when my avocado are ready :-)

Life and Death of My Bok Choi

Yesterday I harvested the remaining bok choi and cleaned it, cooked it and ate it.  Delicious.  The recipe, classic stir fry bok choi with ginger, garlic and oyster sauce, comes from "The Wisdom of the Chinese Kitchen" by Grace Young.  It's a great mostly Cantonese style cookbook, easy to use and authentic.

Anyway, here's a little photo essay-style document of what happened yesterday, except for the photo at left of the seedlings, which comes from a blog entry from April 30...

Salt guards the crops.

The empty row after taking out the plants. I pulled them all out with roots, except for the one on the far end near the wall - I want to see if the new leaves taste as good as the first batch.  It works with lettuce.

Close up of bok choi stump with some new leaves coming up after only a couple of days.

*@/&^o(#$":)!! Cabbage worms that eat the leaves.  They fell off the leaves when I pulled the plants out.

Washed leaves.  Although no pesticides you still have to wash them and waste a lot of water to get the bugs and dirt off.  I plan to build an outdoor washing station which would be a plastic shop sink over a bucket so that you can recycle all that water for irrigation.  Such a shame to waste it....

Finished product: stir fry bok choi al la Grace Young......