ripping it up

It was ugly, but someone had to do it... the recent rain, subsequent mold and overall nastiness had to go:


Incredible how long the tomato plants grew, more than 20 feet long:

happy halloween

My favorite two things about Halloween: carving pumpkins and candy. This year, I was compelled to show my support:


No, I did not grow the pumpkin in my backyard. But next year I will. It's certainly a sustainable endeavor, carving pumpkins that is...and quite time consuming (design thanks to yeswecarve.com). We also couldn't resist baking Halloween cupcakes, with sprinkles and frosting. The contrast between the natural and artificial was striking:


And finally, we made good use of the pumpkin seeds. Just added some oil and salt, and toasted them in the oven for about 20 minutes:

green zebra salsa

Another week has gone by, and another batch of tomatoes are ready for harvesting:


We decided to grill the Green Zebras and then blend them with some hot peppers from the CSA. After chilling in the refrigerator, the green salsa is really, really good!

tomato sauce

The tomatoes are finally ripening. We have some red Early Girls, some Green Zebras and a ton of small, orange Sweet Millions and Wings of Night.





We made a delicious batch of tomato sauce with the cherry tomatoes.


Not sure yet what to do with the Green Zebras...

first ripe tomato

Tonight I harvested the first ripe, red tomato. I had to pull back some branches and dig through the foliage a bit, but there she was. RIPE!


I hope the other tomatoes will follow her lead. I've been soaking the bed once a week. We'll see if that's enough water for the tomato plants.

tomato sacrifice: yellow flowers gotta go

I planted my raised bed on June 11th. That was roughly 103 days ago. The tag on the early girl tomato starts said that it would take about 60 days to bear fruit. So either I completely misread the tag, or something is seriously wrong. Yes, there are tomatoes, lots of tomatoes. Maybe too many tomatoes. But they are not ripe. The plants are still putting out shoots, leaves and lots of new yellow flowers. Why not devote more energy to the existing tomatoes? There are plenty, no need to create more. Let's just grow and ripen the ones that exist now. I'm getting concerned that as we get into the fall, the temperature may drop to the point that the existing tomatoes may never ripen. So I decided to make a sacrifice. For the sake of the existing green tomotoes, I cut off as many yellow flowers as I could find. Here's a bowl full of them. I probably cut twice this many. They smell like tomatoes...


Now hopefully the plants will dedicate their energy to ripen the bounty of tomatoes hanging from their branches! It is really cool to see the developmental process in a single branch. Here you can see the yellow flower, then the mini-green tomato emerging.


One more pic of the green tomatoes...

spectacular spider web

Early this morning I noticed a spectacular spider web that was audaciously woven across the steps to the upstairs neighbor. Surely, the web would last a long time, but it certainly was impressive! (click on the photos to enlarge for more detail):

tomato plants out of control!!!

I've been away for the past several weeks (getting married!) and just returned, eager to see what's new in the backyard. Since I've been gone, the tomato plants have completely overtaken the raised bed. The herb plants and lavender are no longer visible. The tomato plants have stretched across the stairway, toppled the bamboo supports and reached 7+ feet in the air. Dozens of little yellow flowers and many small baby green tomatoes. I was overwhelmed. They are growing sideways into the yard! We'll have a huge tomato harvest soon. Given how many there are, the tomatoes probably won't be too big, but they will still be tasty!

purplette onion harvest

The purplette onion tops emerged and looked ready to be yanked out of the soil. From our first onion harvest:

taking over the bed: a pictoral timeline of tomato growth

Well, it turns out that fertile soil+water+sunshine=happy plants. As illusive as that combination of ingredients might be, I think I've finally found success in the backyard. Move over rosemary, step aside thyme, the tomato plants have taken over the raised bed! I'll give myself credit for a bit of forethought: I planted the tomatoes on the eastern side of the raised bed since I didn't want their height and bulk to block the sunlight from the smaller herbs. But that plan has been overcome by the lengthy tomato branches which have completely dominated the rest of the garden. The poor purplette onions are smothered! It is remarkable how quickly the tomatoes have bulked up, now that their root system is in place. As a tribute to the remarkable tomato plants, I have assembled a pictorial timeline of their unprecedented growth (maybe I should make a flip book!):

June 11 (planting day):
July 2 (bamboo stakes added):

July 16:
July 20:

July 28 (surpassed the bamboo):

Small yellow flowers on the tomato plants:


And a few flowers have already yielded little baby tomatoes!

lazy locavores: outsourcing the backyard garden

A relevant article from today's New York Times:

"Eating locally raised food is a growing trend. But who has time to get to the farmer’s market, let alone plant a garden?

That is where Trevor Paque comes in. For a fee, Mr. Paque, who lives in San Francisco, will build an organic garden in your backyard, weed it weekly and even harvest the bounty, gently placing a box of vegetables on the back porch when he leaves.

Call them the lazy locavores — city dwellers who insist on eating food grown close to home but have no inclination to get their hands dirty. Mr. Paque is typical of a new breed of business owner serving their needs."

-NYTimes.com (link to full article)

For me, the joy of backyard gardening is experiencing the plants as they grow and change each day. I like learning about the soil, light and water conditions that make growing food possible. As I've found out, growing food is challenging and from that challenge comes a deep appreciation of the miraculous process of photosynthesis. When we take food for granted, sitting on the shelves of the supermarket, we don't see all of work that goes into producing food.

I would encourage any "lazy locavore" who is considering outsourcing their backyard garden to think again. While it may take time to tend to a garden and it will definitely result in some dirty clothes, I argue that this is exactly the type of connection to the earth that we so desperately need to rediscover. Not only for the sake of our own appreciation but also for the sake of the planet.

guest blogger: pesto!

Guest Blogger: Future wife of "Bean Grower"

Summer is here and that means that basil is growing like crazy. Between the basil we get from the CSA and the basil growing in our garden, we are inundated with basil! The more we harvest, the more it grows. What do we do with all that basil? We make pesto, of course!

Pesto is a sauce that originated in
Genoa in Northern Italy. It is a combination of basil, garlic, pine nuts, olive oil, salt, pepper, and a hard cheese such as parmesan. The name comes from the Latin root pestle--to pound or to crush. Historically, pesto was made using a mortar and pestle. First the basil leaves were washed and dried and then put in the mortar along with garlic and salt and crushed to a pulp. Then pine nuts were crushed and added to the mix. Afterwards, cheese and oil were stirred in with a spoon.

Now, I can make pesto with fresh basil by blending the ingredients in a food processor. After adding the fresh pesto to pasta, I often have extra. My trick is to fill ice cube trays with the leftover pesto. Once it freezes, I take it out of the ice cube trays and leave the cubes in the freezer in zip lock bags. When we are ready for more pesto, I defrost a few cubes.

blackberry breakfast ritual

This past week I've started a new morning ritual. As soon as I wake up, I head out to the backyard and collect the darkest, juiciest blackberries from the blackberry bush. I add them to my morning bowl of cereal and they are simply delicious. So far, I've picked on pace with how fast they ripen, so every morning there are new ripe berries waiting for me. I have a feeling this might last through August...

peach harvest

The peaches are plump, ripe and ready to eat. My friend who gave me the peach tree a year ago returned to the Bay Area for a brief visit, just in time for the peach harvest. With a gentle twist, they come right off the tree, a sure sign that they are ready to be picked. I even found one lying on the ground next to the tree.

abandoned romanesco: aphid delight

After abandoning my original backyard plot, my romanesco plants
were left to fend for themselves. Without much sun, their thick stems ran along the ground before turning up into the air, craning to escape the shade. While feeling slightly guilty having neglected the romanesco as I focused on the raised bed, I was also curious to see how they would fare with minimal attention. I suppose it was an attempt to validate my conclusion that the original plot was not meant to be. Alas, the romanesco managed to hang in there, benefiting from an occasional watering on my behalf. I finally noticed the spiral romanesco head beginning to emerge from the center of the plant. But upon closer inspection, I also noticed a huge colony of aphids growing under the leaves. The infestation was so rampant and horrifying that I quickly hacked down all of the infested plants and put them in a garbage bag for disposal. With organic gardening methods, I'm not sure what I could have done to protect the plants, but I suppose that closer attention would have helped. While it does sadden me to have lost the romanesco crop, I hope that the swift removal avoided further spreading of the aphid infestation.

guest blogger: our fully belly csa

Guest Blogger: Future Wife of the "Bean Grower"

As we watch our garden grow, we enjoy eating vegetables that are almost as local as the ones from our backyard. We belong to a CSA program or Community Supported Agriculture. This means that at the beginning of each growing season we buy a share of a local farm. By paying up front, we help the farmers to replace farming equipment, buy seed etc. In return, we get fresh vegetables from the farm each week--whatever produce is ready for harvesting. It is pretty exciting (and at times discouraging...) because you never quite know what you are going to get. Your weeks worth of produce is in the hands of the farmers. They know best.

We belong to the Full Belly Farm CSA, a farm in the Capay Valley in Guinda, California and we pick up our vegetables right here in Berkeley. This is our third CSA. We were members of CSAs from two farms when we lived in New York. When we started the CSA four years ago, I barely knew how to cook. I would pick up a couple of large bags of vegetables in the East Village and I would be completely stumped. What I am going to do with 12 eggplants?! We don't even like eggplant! How about rhubarb?! I have never eaten it in my life. Needless to say, a lot of food went to waste. And...not even in the compost bin. This was NYC and we lived in a 6 floor walk up. A lot of it went in the trash. However, I did learn to make ratatouille and rhubarb cake!

I am happy to report over the past few years, I have used the CSA vegetables to actually teach myself how to cook. It is a game I play with myself. What delicious recipes can I make based on the vegetables from the CSA each week?

Yesterday was notable. I made a recipe for which every ingredient was from our CSA (minus the lemon juice...more on that later). I made German potato salad with green beans (a family favorite for July 4th.) Here are the ingredients: potatoes, green beans, fresh basil, red onion, garlic, and purslane. (A note about purslane: I have never even heard of this before. It is a green plant with small, thick leaves. I was told it is often used in Mexican cooking and is similar to spinach. It is apparently really good for you.) I also used lemon juice from a Meyer lemon picked from our backyard. It was part of the dressing I put on top of the salad (lemon juice, balsamic vinegar, olive oil, and Dijon mustard). All in all, it was a big hit.

I love that lots of vegetables we are eating are from a local farm! I can't wait to find out what we will get in our CSA box next week.

bamboo stakes: better late than never

As my tomato plants grow taller, they are looking like they need some support. The heavy branches cause the plant to lean and the stems are not strong enough to keep the plant erect, especially when weighed down by tomatoes. There are many ways to scaffold tomato plants including trellises, verticle ropes, cages, stakes or a combination thereof. Since there is a bamboo patch growing in the backyard, I harvested some bamboo shoots to make stakes. I looked for the dry pieces which were stiff and strong. The bamboo ripped right through the tomato roots when I stuck them into the soil right next to the plant. This is definitely a step I should have taken on the day I planted the tomato starts, so the roots could grow around the bamboo. Better late than never. Hopefully the tomato roots will recover. I also added a metal cage and a bit of masking tape to bind the stem and bamboo so that the plants stay straight.

peaches and blackberries

More fruit from the backyard... I counted 12 peaches on the peach tree. They are still quite hard but certainly have potential.


And the blackberries have started to ripen. Their long prickly vines pour over the bushes at the back of the yard. The deliciously tart berries decorated my nectarine poppy seed birthday cake!

first loquat jam

There's a big fruit tree next to my raised bed that bears clusters of small pale orange fruit. The squirrels and birds pay a lot of attention to the fruit as it ripens on the tree, whereas I have always assumed that the fruit was inedible. But this weekend my neighbor informed me that the tree is in fact a loquat tree and loquats are edible. Loquats are native to southeastern China but began growing in California in the 1870s. The name "loquat" comes from an ancient Cantonese word meaning "reed orange."

Loquats can be made into jellies and jams. So I decided to harvest the loquats and follow this jam recipe:

1. Wash the loquats and remove the seeds (seeds contain cyanide)
2. Blend/chop into a pulp (I added lemon juice from a backyard lemon.)
   
3. Barely cover with water and cook until red.
4. Stirr in 3/4 cups of sugar for everyone 1 cup of loquat pulp.
   
5. Continue to cook and stir until thick.

My harvest yielded 8 small jars of loquat jam. Delicious!

brassica rapa: modeling growth

Thanks to pure serendipity, one of my projects at school focuses on how kids learn about evolution through scientific modeling and observation. Students grow plants in their classrooms, measure the plant growth and build models (e.g. graphs etc.) to analyze their data. To simulate the experience of students (since our team is far from the classrooms where the project is based) we decided to grow the same plants as the students and measure the growth ourselves.

In the video game age, kids have short attention spans. So some botanists at the University of Wisconsin bred a quick-growing plant for use with kids. They aptly named the plant: Wisconsin Fast Plants (species: brassica rapa). We ordered a kit that comes with soil, seeds, fertilizer and a host of other materials to get you on your way (including a plastic "light box" that shines fluorescent light on the plants 24/7.) Here is our set of Fast Plants after about 3 days:


Yesterday, when we measured the plants (Day 28), some of the tallest plants had grown to almost 30 centimeters. They don't grow straight up, making it hard to measure. But they do have pretty little yellow flowers. We pierced a dead bee (they came with the kit) with a skewer and simulated pollination, rubbing the bee up against different yellow flowers. Pollen sticks to the bee's hairy body and the bee inadvertently spreads the pollen to different flowers while looking for nectar. This fertilization allows the plant to produce seeds.


Of course kids also like observing caterpillars and butterflies, so we ordered some Cabbage White butterfly eggs (species: pieris rapae). Concerned that the eggs would hatch into ravenous caterpillars that would destroy our baby fast plants, I put the eggs in a jar with some cabbage. A few of the eggs hatched and the baby caterpillars ate a lot of cabbage...and they also produced a lot of frass (caterpillar waste.) Frass gets moldy after a while (yuck!) so today I cleaned out the jar and added fresh local cabbage from our CSA (Community Supported Agriculture.) I managed to salvage a little bit of non-moldy frass to use as fertilizer for the plants. As I cleaned out the jar, I was saddened to find only one healthy caterpillar remaining! We'll take good care of him, and as soon as he pupates, we'll move him into the light box with the brassica rapas.

wanted: watering advice

Over a week has passed since I planted my raised bed. The plants seem to be doing well, still no sprouts from the seeds however. I'm confident that the plants are receiving enough sun and I'm still giving my new soil the benefit of the doubt. That means that water is my primary concern. Obviously plants need water. But why?

Curious about the chemistry of water's role in photosynthesis, I dusted off my college biology textbook and refreshed my memory. Photosynthesis is the process of converting solar energy into chemical energy that can be used by plants. The primary byproduct of photosynthesis are carbohydrates (chains of carbon) such as glucose or fructose.

These carbohydrates store energy for the plant. To make a carbohydrate, the plant needs high energy electrons to connect the carbon atoms together. Where do these electrons come from? When a photon (a packet of light energy) hits the pigment molecule in the leaf, the photon causes one of the pigment's electrons to become a high energy electron. This high energy electron is then used by the plant to create carbon chains. But what about the water? Since the pigment is a donor of electrons, those electrons need to be replenished. Water supplies new low energy electrons to the pigment once the water molecule itself has been split by a photon (photolysis):

Oxygen is a byproduct of photolysis and it is released by the plant into the atmosphere. The hydrogen atoms are also used by the plant to create the carbohydrate sugars.

In addition to the role water plays as an electron replenisher in photosynthesis, water is also important as a solvent to transport minerals and carbohydrates throughout the plant. Water also helps cool the plant as it evaporates through openings (called stomata) in the plant leaves.

So clearly, I need to make sure I give my plants the water they need. But how much? How often? And what time of day?

I posted these questions on the vegetable garden forum (GardenWeb) and received the following responses:

• "One thing that I do know is that some say it is better to water in the evening (probably after 6pm for you), so you avoid any issues with the water burning onto the plants."

• "Don't believe any of that nonsense about water droplets in the sun burning the plants in the sun. It's much worse to have your plants wet all night long. Your plants prefer their leaves to be dry as much as possible. I'll water any time at all if I avoid getting the leaves wet, which is better still. Whenever practical, water the roots, not the leaves. Some would say early morning is best cuz it's cool enough that the water will soak in nicely before evaporating, and they have a point. I kinda like watering just before dusk, soil only, so the roots have all night long to leisurely soak up what they need. And evaporation is minimized."

• "I like to water in the morning so the plants can take up the water and not droop in the heat of the day. Always water at the soil level, never on the leaves."

• "Watering deeply in the morning is preferred here. If you overhead water, each drop can act as a prism and burn a leaf. Also, you want the roots to get the moisture, not the leaves."

• "Watering in the morning is much better, and only at the stems/roots. BTW, you have a very nice city to live in - I visited in April, and drove to the university football stadium for a photo opportunity - If I wouldn't have known which street it was on , i'd never have found it! OMG, it's hidden behind trees and foliage.Anyway - very nice place to visit."

• "Once plants are established, think in terms of water conservation and plant vigor. If you water too much, your plants will not develop the vigor they need to be extremely productive, among other things. And conservation means deep root watering during the coolest times of the day to prevent evaporation. Early morning is considered the optimum time to make the most of your water with a mind towards conservation."

Based on the somewhat conflicting advice I received, I decided to try watering in the mornings, before the sun reached my bed. I also took the spray nozzle off of the hose and put the end of the hose at the base of each plant for a few minutes to avoid watering the leaves. This allows the water to actually seep into the soil, instead of running down the hardened surface of the bed. Hopefully this method will yield healthy, well-watered plants! Many thanks to water for supplying those low-energy electrons!