January 26, 2013

AND WE HAVE A WINNER!!

Yes, the pac choi noses out by a head.  This little bit emerged from the soil yesterday, but was too small to photograph with any hope that you would know what it was.  The second planting of pac choi emerged this morning, as did the scallions.

No showing from the blood oranges yet, but the last time I planted them, it took months for them to germinate.  (It took so long, I forgot about the container, but luckily had covered it with a plastic bag, and just noticed the teeny plant when I decided to throw the container out!)

January 23, 2013

This was my breakfast today.   It consists of kale, pac choi, cucumber, spinach, orange, apple, lemon, and ginger.  This is typical of what I use daily, with minor substitutions when I am out of something or have to use something up.  The produce goes in "Hal" (my Omega juicer) to make the green juice elixir that wakes up my cells and gets me moving every day.

My goal is to eventually grow everything in this picture, with the possible exception of the ginger, since I'm not sure if I'm in the right climate for it.

With that goal in mind, I went through my seed inventory to see what I could plant now.  The only seeds I had for the above mix that were suitable to plant this early were pac choi, so you will see some of those in the containers.  (I also found some cucumber seeds, but I planted those too early last year, and I don't intend to repeat that mistake.)

If you look at my previous blog (below), you'll see one bush that looks like it has a bunch of yellowing leaves on it.  Those aren't leaves, they are lemons.  I have a LOT of lemons.  I also have a lot of oranges, so good to go there.  I hope to buy an apple tree this year, as well, although it will be a few years before I can hope to really harvest any fruit from this year's plantings.

I found some other seeds that I decided to start today, including chives, onions, parsley, basil, and scallions.  Some of them are from last year's crops, and some are from commercially-purchased packets from last year.  I am excited to see if my own seeds hold their own, since I would love to get into a self-sustaining cycle of being able to collect seeds at the end of the one year to start the harvest for the next, rather than having to buy them.

Okay, one more admission, for those of you who are concerned about the footprint we leave on the environment.  Yes, these are styrofoam cups.   I did not buy them, but through a twist of fate, I ended up with about 500 of them, and I have been storing them for four or five years now.  This year, I finally decided to use them up, rather than just dispose of them.  It was the best thing I could think to do with them, using them to help create something that will be good for the environment to offset the damage they will do when they are thrown out.  You will also see (and can see behind the cups in the left-hand side of this picture if you have a good eye) that I also have plastic water bottles.  I used to have water delivered and bottles refilled, but the water company (Alhambra) used a driver who repeatedly left my gates open, and I would come home to find goats wandering around in places no goats should be, resulting in the destruction of fruit trees and the death of one of my goats when she got into the tack room and ate more than her fill of wet COB (corn, oats, and barley mixed with molasses).  So now I buy my water in bottles, and I am not organized enough to remember to take an empty bottle with me for refilling, so I just buy the 2.5 gallon jugs.  You'll be seeing some of those again in future blogs.  They make great little greenhouses.  :)

January 21, 2013

Happy Martin Luther King/Inauguration/Squirrel Appreciation Day!!

I celebrated the day by making oil-packed sun-dried tomatoes, using the last of last year's tomato harvest.  I made three jars of these last year, and gave away two.  After tasting the remaining jar, I seriously regretted giving away the others, so I am making another two that I intend to jealously guard and eat hedonistically, perhaps while wearing a robe and fuzzy slippers, and while painting my toenails, and watching "Snapped" on the Oxygen channel.

 If you are interested in making your own, I just stacked sun-dried tomatoes, dash of salt,  pinch of fresh minced garlic, pinch of dried oregano, and fresh basil into a jar, repeating until the jar was full, then filled it all up with olive oil.  In a little over a week, I should have a jar full of delicious morsels!  (And the oil makes a KILLER dip for bread!)  California Olive Ranch olive oil.  Just saying.  Anything else is a waste and an insult to your tastebuds.

I also started my great blood orange seed experiment.  (Wait, you say?  The date on the cup reads January 20, 2013, not today's date.  Okay, I'm busted.  I actually started it last night, but I had already published my blog for that day and didn't feel like editing.)  I have fifteen seeds planted under various conditions:  a) soaked (recommended method); b) soaked and stratified for 48 hours; c) unsoaked; and c) soaked and nicked.  All fifteen seeds are now resting comfortably on my DVR, so they will stay relatively warm until they sprout.  I have read conflicting accounts of whether Moro blood oranges grow true from seed, so this should be interesting.  I get the impression, from what I am reading, that I will get oranges, at least, and most of the articles I have read say that some or all of the child plants will grow true to their parent, and I am nothing if not optimistic.

Today was tree trimming day!!

Nectarine on the left and pecan on the right.

The nectarine produced fruit this year, but the birds got it all.  The pecan is only about two years old, so no nuts yet, but it is growing well and looking healthy.

I had a beautiful English walnut tree that was just starting to produce nuts, but it was mercilessly dispatched by a gopher last year.

Here is the carnage left behind from trimming my little bank of trees (mostly citrus) near the dogs' run.  Lemon, orange, nectarine, pear, grapefruit, kumquat, blood orange, and persimmon trees in this section, although only a few trees are shown in this picture.  I also forgot to take a picture of the other two persimmon trees that I trimmed today.  I'll try to get better detail pics later, when I'm not fighting the evening sun for lighting.

If you haven't noticed by now, I am photographically-challenged.   I am working on it, so bear with me.

I was running low on olive oil, after making both pesto and the sun-dried tomatoes, so I made a quick run to the grocery store this afternoon.  The store was right next to K-Mart, and I can't pass a K-Mart without checking their garden section for plants, seeds, and cool little gadgets I just can't live without.  Those of you who read my other blog know that I am a sucker for anything that needs a little extra love and attention, and that is probably how I ended up with these:

These three little miniature roses were the only three still alive, on a rack that held about forty plants.  They were on sale, and it was obvious that no one was even watering them, so I grabbed them up with a promise from the clerk that I could return them if they died.  I am not really sure where I am going to put them, but I just couldn't leave them there to die, so I will find some place for them, once I rehabilitate them.  (The "debris" in the background, btw, is from my pesto-making.) 

I hope to add a few more trees this year, perhaps an apple and an avocado.  I'll have to swing by my local nursery to see what they have available.  Usually, I go there with one tree in mind and return with a half dozen, at which point I have to scramble to get them all planted. 

I found this very cool site for seeds: CSA Seed Store.  It has a wealth of heirloom seeds for sale by family farms around the country, including seeds from heirloom fruit trees.  I usually buy my seeds from Territorial Seed Company, but I might just have to try a few from this new find.

That's it for the day.  Tomorrow, it is back to work, but I hope to be able to continue to make progress (at least a little) throughout the week.  If I do, you'll be the first to know!

January 20, 2013

Okay, here is the deal, and I don't tell too many people, so don't spread it around:

I SUCK AT GARDENING.

Add to this the following challenges:

1. Evil ground squirrels (like gophers on steroids because they can climb OVER the screened-in raised beds you set up to keep the evil gophers away); 
2. I am apparently in the migration route of blackbirds, crows, magpies, and scrub jays, as well as a few orioles who all stop to grab a quick snack of my veggies and fruits on their way to warmer climes;
3. Dirt that is red clay until you get down to about four inches, at which point it turns into rock;
4. Free-range chickens who think it is their one mission in life to find a way into the garden, so they can take dust baths in the raised beds, scattering plants and exposing roots as they go;
5. Ground squirrels, who are just so evil, they deserve a second mention.

And yet, somehow, I have always managed to have a few successes among my abysmal failures.  Last year, I grew a bumper crop of tomatoes, while the squirrels ate all my garlic.  The year before that, the garlic grew at a phenomenal rate, but I didn't get a single bloom on the tomatoes.  One asparagus bed flourishes, while the other withers.  So, forever the optimist, I continue to beat myself up every year, thinking this will be the year that it all works out.

I decided, this year, to document my actions, so that I can see what I did right and what I did wrong, and maybe learn from my mistakes.

So, today, I cleaned out the old beds in last year's garden.  I already know this garden has problems.  It was the only flat area near the house I could find, so I used it, but it gets shaded in both the morning and the evening by oak and pine trees.  The trees shade the chicken coop and also provide shade for the livestock, and I also hate to kill living things, so having them removed is not an option.

Last year, the tomatoes did well in this garden, but they shaded out all the other veggies (the ones that survived the critters, anyway), so I am going to use this garden, this year, as my cool weather garden and populate it with veggies that don't need a lot of sun:  lettuces, spinach, garlic, etc.

(That bed in the back, upper-left, portion of the garden is the new compost bin.)

So this, of course, raises the obvious question:  where will the sun-loving vegetables (and fruit, if you are a tomato-purist) be planted?  I have my eye on a beauty of a spot, but it will take a lot of time and money (both of which always seem to be in short supply) to prepare it, so I MIGHT have to resort to container planting this spring, if I can't swing it by planting time.

Here is the plan:

This large flat area might just be perfect for a real ranch garden.  It is exposed, with very few trees that can shade it.  It is relatively level and relatively free of stones.  It is close enough to the house to run water to it.  I can envision large beds of corn, sprawling vines of zucchini and cucumbers, tomatoes busting out of their cages.

Can the squirrels and birds still attack it?  Yes, but I will have that problem regardless of where I place it, so I didn't see that as a limiting factor.

What it NEEDS is a good strong fence around the two exposed sides, to keep curious goats and donkeys at bay.   That is where the money and time come in.  I do know my limitations (even though I push them sometimes), and I don't think I can muscle a 200 pound railroad tie into the ground.  Well, maybe one.  But then I'd be in the hospital for a while, and it would take FOREVER to get this garden fenced! 

In addition to this, I want to expand my existing herb garden (thank you to whoever planted that before I moved in) and add to my small orchard of fruit and nut trees.   I need to inventory what I have and figure out a better way of keeping track of what is what because tags fall off, and I am left wondering if I am looking at a plum or a nectarine, a walnut or a pecan tree.

And that is the plan.  Let's see what happens!