Pledge it!

Through Gardener's Supply Company, an employee-owned company, you can make the pledge to 'Grow what you eat' and enter to win a 3'x6' raised planter bed.



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Leaf Me Alone

Man oh man, the garden is getting huge! Tomatoes are out of control with lots of flowers but no tomatoes yet. I do have lovely baby Summer Squash and Peter Pan squash. The squash blossoms are the purtiest things you ever did see. Now if I pick the blossoms to fill with cheese and deep fry and eat will that halt the squash from growing? Hum, need to get the Sunset Bible out.

Beans, onion and leeks are doing really well. Had my first onion the other night. Tastes great but still could use a few more weeks in the dirt.

Now I will just torture you with more photos of my happy and healthy Fog Garden...screw you plant guy at Flower Craft who laughed when I told him where I was planning on planting a vegetable garden in San Francisco.

apricots

The apricot tree beside my plot at the community garden has been populating with the most delightful little globs of goodness! I cannot WAIT til these are ripe! (I was fooled by their peach-like appearance, but they are still a ways away from ready.)

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pink hello kitty and red bicyclette

It was a gals evening in the Sacramento garden. Three blondes, one brunette (and one kinda-sorta white furred gal). Two sippy cups, two goblets. Three vegetarians, one omnivore. Eighteen figs. Each.

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1st tomatoes!!!

Okay, first, the harsh realization: Kristine's tomato plants are EASILY three times larger than mine. Her yardshare plot has a windbreak from the cold ocean winds, and has been getting a ton more sun than my building-shaded community garden plot has been receiving. Kristine has a tomato JUNGLE, and I just have 4 piddly plants.

That said: I HAVE THE FIRST TOMATO:



The 2009 Fog Belt Tomato Challenge isn't over JUST yet!

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color me JEALOUS

This woman's multiple raised beds are making me green with envy - SO not a good look!

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beet shoulders

Ahhhhh, they were just starting to emerge - ruby red shoulders rising.





I waited for as long as I could hold out, but could wait no longer. They're still relatively small, about the size of golf balls, but I've got Round 2 in the ground, and Round 3 seedlings pushing their way up, so I decided this was the time.



I'm roasting these and sauteeing the greens, and bringing the whole lot over to Kristine's for dinner tonight - there'll be lots more we'll be dining from our collective gardens, hooray!!

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dancing chard

native wildflowers

disclaimer: these are NOT from my garden(s). I came across them in the Botanical Garden outside of San Luis Obispo, planted in waves around the still under construction main building. I wanted to capture the way they undulated in the breeze, but also wanted to hone in on the lovely petal detail, and thanks to the fabulous 'loupe' tool in Aperture, I was able to do both!



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seedling tags

I've got a new round of seeds started, and I've learned a lesson or two:

1. I never remember what I've planted
2. I can't tell what I've planted when it comes time to transplant, so I've been messing up on the spacing

This go around, I decided to rectify that. I tagged the 6-packs I'm starting the seeds in, so I'll know what's what when they're ready to go into the ground.



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and now for something PRETTY

This LOVELY cluster of post-bloom poppy pods should pretty much do the trick.


*hey, I just had to get that nasty hairy arm troll off the front page!

When life give you lemons, make lemonade.

What a difference 9 weeks makes

Wow, the garden is abundant with green foliage and flowers. Can you believe the difference? It's been really foggy so I'm surprised things are still growing.



I have tomato flowers and squash blossoms that are lovely.




The worm tea is really stinky so have been afraid to use it. I don't think it's supposed to smell so bad. I mean it's worms eating fruit and veggies. How stinky could their "leavings" be?






Onions and leeks are gorgeous. Almost too gorgeous to pull out. Beans are slowly moving along. They've been attacked by some evil pest. Maybe pincher bugs or pill bugs. My beer catchers worked great for a while and now I think they(the evil bugs) know it's there so just avoid the brew. I've also starting pinching the tomato suckers(new growth between the stems). I've also got a little too much foliage and may start pruning but that's a whole other bag of questions so will get out my faithful Sunset Garden Bible and do some light reading.

I'm entering, are you?

Kris pointed this out, and DARED me to make a comment-submission:

So.... I'm daring her right back! [grin]

Honestly, the reasons are myriad and mystic, perhaps undefinable in words, but I'm gonna try. Will post 'em here, as well as comment at DigginFood. If you decide to enter as well, will you include your response here in the comments, as well? I'd love to see your take on it...

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use your imagination, will ya?

Okay, this isn't some diatribe about how we need to flex that imagination muscle, it's mostly just that I've left my pocket digital camera at the office all weekend, so have no pics from either garden.

So, I'll just have to describe things:
(I'll try to ignore the collective groan of all 4 of our dedicated readers!)

Backyard:
The salad greens I'd harvested prior to leaving on vacation had replicated themselves with astonishing speed. This is a reminder to me to go ahead and snip/snip/snip at those greens while they are what the marketing folk call "baby greens". When I think of that term, I just CAN'T snip at them, but really, I should because they just regrow right back again, likity-split! It's as if it's what they were MEANT to do! Oh wait.... it is.

Community Garden:
The 3 experimental tomatoes are looking fine and healthy, but still no flowers. I caged the largest of them, and will have to individually cage the others, too, eventually. I had hoped to use only one wiry cone structure, and so had planted the 3 in a close ring, but now I see the error of my ways. I may need to space these out further, but right now real estate is pretty prime.

The summer squash plants are erupting into their volcanic selves. Already they cover 9sf of ground (each!) but like the tomatoes, I'm not seeing any blossoms. My assigned plot is at the southwestern end of the Garden, which means I'm right up against a 2-story house next door. My plot doesn't get direct sun until late morning (unlike the plots that are out of the house-shadow, which soak up the rays all day long!) but it gets a decent amount most of the afternoon. Only trouble is that a typical SF summer afternoon involves a bone-chilling late afternoon wind that sucks in the 'ocean effect' of a dense fog blanket. Dense. Fog. Blanket. There is a reason Kris and I call this the 'Fog Belt Tomato Challenge'!

Onions (started last fall, and transplanted twice since, once I started understanding the sun/shade pattern of my plot) are now reaching their full bulbous potential! They are absolutely GORGEOUS, and the leeks are not far behind. They have shot up tall central shoots, with a tight bud at the pinnacle - do onions flower? I'm leaving them be for the time, to see if they do!

I've got 9 red beets that are now about the size of radishes, and 9 more from seed that I just moved from the CG greenhouse to the plot. This is a first time for me (along with the tomatoes) so I'm not sure of what to expect (although now I have a better idea!). I already had to re-seat most of them deeper into the ground, to make sure the beet root was fully submerged, to keep it from drying out from exposure. I'm so excited about these, but it will also stab me in the heart when I finally harvest them and devour them all in one batch, because I love me some roasted beet salad with goat cheese. I hear the beet greens are super nutritious, too, so they will be applied as a chiffonade garnish over the beet salad, sauteed with a little broth and onion, and served as a luscious bed for seared porkchops!

Beans along the boundary fence are doing okay - I didn't get over to water them in the past week, so they had to kinda tough it out, which is reflected in their (lack of) growth. I gotta get better at working in some mid-week waterings.

Rotation
I'm starting to get more savvy about a rotation of seed starts. As much of what I'm growing is for the long haul (beets, onions, chard), those I need to get in the ground early. The regrowth plants (about 4 varieties of salad greens) I can enjoy for 2-3 cycles each, so I need to get better at spacing those out. My personal challenge is going to be my prize product: broccoli rabe. I had a bumper crop that peaked just before we left on vacation (mid-May) but the cut shoots didn't resprout, so I need to start a new batch from seed. I'm figuring out that I need about six plants maturing at any time to meet my desired consumption, which means starting new seedlings every couple of weeks. Which is hard to do, with my schedule. Meaning, I'm pretty lazy.

Okay, so no pics from the past couple week, but hopefully some from the coming week, which if temperatures hold as they have, I'll need at least a couple of stops at the CG to water mid-week.

Hydration:
Also coming up? My Trials and Tribulations At Installing A Soaker Hose Watering System. It's still in rough draft, and I'm looking for a publisher (har har). Okay, I'm really just going to bore you with the gory details of my trial and error method. It's ALMOST all worked out now, but so far? still watering with the can....

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Pretty In Pink

Not much to tell. Garden is humming along. Thought I'd post some pretty pictures of flowers in the yard. Really wish this fog would go away. Pincher bugs have taken over lettuce but the beer catcher is working.




Fed the worms last night with lots of scraps but...lifting the box and seeing all those squirming worms gives me the total creeps. If you ever want to freak me out and make me scream like a little girl then use worms. Highlight of the weekend will be feeding veggies worm-tea. Yum.

Punch Drunk Slug

Damn slugs are eating my lettuce so I've decided to have a party. Beer party that is. Filled plastic plates with beer that we don't drink. Hopefully they do. Also, combed through the leaves of the lettuce and found about 10 of the suckers. Went to check this morning and no slugs but lots of deal pill bugs. I actually have a ton in the garden. They hide in the corners of the beds. Do they eat seedlings? If so, they are now dead and all is good in the garden. If they don't, I am a bad person and have killed good pests.

Succulent succulents

Ok, so that's a silly title but I only have 15 minutes left at work to post. I love succulents. I didn't used to. I thought they were really boring and had spikes that hurt and why would you have a plant that hurt you until Mr. Jelly. Yes, that's his real name. He was my mother's neighbor who grew and propagated succulents. My mom took me on a field trip to his backyard where all types of plants were being lovingly taken care of and I couldn't believe all the different varieties and colors. By the end of the day, I had purchased a car full. Even though I'm in foggy SF, they love our yard and bloom every year. Just take a peak at a few of them.

Naughty and Nice

Neighbors spread redwood chips around the beds and it's all pretty now. The plants are doing great even though we've been shrouded in dreary days of fog.


Neighbor also went out and as he put it, "bought a hammock chair for the garden". It arrived and was set up in the yard. I don't know about you, but I think I should be wearing black leather and carrying a whip while sitting in that chair. Or spanking whoever is...



Neighbor(who has been very busy) bought a compost worm bin. A few days later 200 red worms arrived. They are happily eating all of our leftover bits although it took me a week to gather enough courage to lift the cover and look at them. Ugh, me and worms...yuck! Spiders I can deal with. Worms...I am getting the creeps just typing this. So, poured a little tea out to see if it was working and voila, we have tea although really stinky tea. And I mean really stinky. I hope that's normal.

All in all, a very productive week in our little garden.