Small garden, Big yield

1. Small garden, big yield!, 2. Broccoli Rabe

The backyard veggie plot is small. Quite. But it produces juuuuuuuuuust fiiiiiine!

ceanotheus cache

The backyard ceanotheus is in full bloom, and the feral hive living in our eaves is taking full advantage.

basil, basil, basil

I have high hopes for garden basil. In the past, planting it in the main veggie bed, it's the first to be devoured, it's tender leaves perforated nearly overnight. I'm hoping that isolating into a tall planter will keep it from falling prey to the cut worms and slugs that are inevitable in the main bed, and let these tender babies flourish!

I planted three species: lovely genovese sweet basil for caprese salad, delicate yet spicy thai for soups, and a new-to-me flavor: purple basil. Apparently it's fabulous in pesto, so if it takes off, I'll give that a try!

Now: fingers crossed!

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chicken stuffed with (garden) sage, over roasted (garden) fennel

1. stuffedchicken, 2. breadedchicken, 3. chickenfennel

I'm in love with fennel. I oughta marry it.

I'm also currently in love with the two kinds of sage that are going like gangbusters in my gardens - one is long and willowy, with light silvery green leaves, and the other is squat, with rounder, darker and more textured leaves. I'm slipping the thin leaves under a lot of chicken skin prior to roasting (yummilicious) and dicing up more of the rounder leaves for sauteing into risotto, soup, etc.

This time I diced up the round leaf sage with shallots, garlic and s&p and stuffed the mix into skinless chicken thighs, pinned together with toothpicks. Breaded and roasted over quartered fennel, leeks and sage, this was a PUUUURFECT summer al fresco meal on the back deck!

(I didn't think of it at the time, but I should have served it with this)

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spring onions

This is actually from a few weeks ago, but just now getting around to pulling photos off the camera... These were harvested to take over to Julie's backyard BBQ to grill with the chicken and pork tenderloin - YUM!

succulent pot

My 'other' garden is a succulent pot. It has a central top opening, and 4 lower openings where I've planted a variety of sedums and succulents, mixing in a blue/grey spectrum, to match the pot glazing.

Easy peasy, I'm actually SUPPOSED to let it dry between waterings!




Now THAT I can handle. And isn't this pretty?

bee maintenance

Upkeep update - it was time to remove the Queen's transport box and respace out the frames, to ensure proper 'bee space' that keeps the comb-making in line. Bees. I tell you, ya gotta keep on 'em. Worse than teenagers. [wink]



1. patient keeper, 2. prying up a frame, 3. busy bees

backyard bee bonanza begins!

And the adventure begins! After buying and prepping the hive (soy sealant, with no harmful VOCs) and lots of back-breaking work by Scott to prep the platform area in the yard, the bees arrived! We had a limited window in which to get them transferred from the shipping box to the hive, as a high wind advisory storm was brewing. The weather may have helped, actually, because the drizzly and chilly air probably dissuaded the agitated bees from getting too aggressive towards the guy whacking them outta their comfortably boxed cluster.



1. Box O'Bees, 2. LOTS of bees, 3. no paper OR plastic, 4. uncorking the bees

End of Summer

Well, if this week's dramatic deluge on the earth didn't signify it, summer is over in SF. Time to clear away the summer squash, the collapsing tomato vines and salvage the salad greens. I made my final 'clear out' of the garden(s), and made off with the goods, with a new batch of fall planting seedlings getting going on the side.



The stately chard, leeks, beets and radishes paused briefly for a photo op, then dove right into the oven and the stewpot. Really, they did.

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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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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

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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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.

sharing the bounty

Before leaving on our Tour de California, I harvested the bounty from both gardens, and distributed the wealth to several neighbors. The salad greens I snipped and bagged, but the broccoli rabe I bundled in saved grocery bands. I couldn't believe how much I'd been able to get from one harvest, and how absolutely GORGEOUS they were!



I'm waiting to see if the cut shoots regrow, and I've got a new batch of seedlings started, just in case. Beets and more radishes are on their way, and if this chilly spring/summer weather keeps up, some traditional broccoli is going in, too. But right now, I'm SOOOOOOO in love with the broccoli rabe!!

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summer of love

I released the tub of ladybugs into the garden last night, and went to check on things this morning. I was pleased to see how many had acclimated to the veggie patch, and then started to notice something else - there was a whoooole lot of luvvvvin' going on! Seriously, EVERYWHERE I looked, they were getting it on with each other.



And NO, I am not embarrassed to have been intrigued by this - this is SCIENCE, people! [wink]

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preditory behavior

These ferocious looking creatures devour many harmful garden pests, but are completely harmless to humans, pets, and plants. In fact they can be kept as pets, and will eat raw meat or insects from your fingers. The Praying Mantids will eat most species of garden pests, including white grubs, beetles, chinch bugs, tent caterpillars, grasshoppers, aphids, flies, leafhoppers and caterpillars.

Bring it. Dusk, tomorrow.

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post script:
I placed the 2 egg casings of Praying Mantids into the crooks of the artichoke bush, which is where the majority of the garden pests are clamoring around. The container stated that the hatching would occur 2-3 weeks after exposure to warm weather, which I don't know how long these egg casings were at room temperature at FlowerCraft, when I bought them. Approximately 200 1/4" long baby mantids should emerge from each casing, and they are apparently pest-effective immediately. We'll see! (and YES, I shivered a total gross-me-out shiver when I opened the container and peered in at the two wasp-nest looking bundles (about the size of large walnuts). Be thankful I resisted taking pictures ~ EEEEEEEKKKKKKKKK!

post post script:
Kept missing dusk to release the ladybugs, and folklore has it that it HAS to happen at dusk, while they're still mobile, but looking to bed down for the night. That way the nestle in to the garden and don't fly off immediately. Shook them out and watched them all pick new homes among the leaves, so all's well.

broccoli buds

This is my second season growing broccoli rabe, and I'm still not quite sure how to deal with this plant. I let them go to seed last time, because I hadn't a clue as to when I should harvest, or how to pinch it down to plump it up. I'm hoping I'll do better with these, even if it means starting a new batch every few weeks to harvest these young and tender.


I harvested just a FRACTION (!!!) of my first batch - wasn't sure if I should pull them out or just snip 'em down. I snipped and will see if the base regrows or not. Looks like I'm not going to be wanting for broccoli rabe in the near future, which is excellent as I have a LOT of recipes that call for this lovely bitter green!


(I grew traditional broccoli in the community garden, which surprised the heck out of me with some really amazingly beautiful heads!)

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snipped from the garden

had my sister over for dinner tonight, and for nostalgia's sake made a doctored version of Palo Alto's Evvia restaurant's wild mushroom risotto. In it: onions and minced Italian parsley from the garden (along with diced chicken thighs and sauteed asparagas)

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soggy sod? try these tips for shady gardens...

We're experiencing some weird growth under the cocoa-mulch in the backyard, after these drizzly days, so I decided to check out these tips for dealing with soggy/shady garden areas. If you've got a damp spot in your realm, check 'em out!

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