shady garlic

During the winter, the sunlight in the backyard changes radically. The raised bed, which typically gets a lot of sunlight in the summer, goes into complete shade. The north bed gets more sun in the winter than it does in the summer. It's taken me a while to get used to the changing sun/shade patterns.

I've debated about what to do with the raised bed when it gets full shade in the winter. I decided to try planting a crimson clover cover crop to fix nitrogen over winter. The clover has sprouted and looks like it's doing okay without sunlight:


On November 26, I also planted 15 cloves of garlic. Checked on them outside just now and they have all sprouted. Need to keep the garlic weed free, because as my friend says, "you can grow garlic or you can grow weeds but you can't grow both." Given the relatively narrow rooting of the garlic, it doesn't compete well with other plants. Garlic is planted in the fall/winter and won't be ready to harvest until July. Big commitment but I think it will be worth it. I planted a variety that we received in our CSA, from Riverdog Farm in Guinda, California.

where the wild things are pumpkin carving

I spent several hours carving the Wild Things character (Carrol from the movie, Moshe from the book) into a pumpkin. A lot of people remembered my Obama pumpkin from last year. I try to make my pumpkin carvings "timely."

chard harvest and cucumber snacks

The garden continues to give. Our first chard harvest:


A crisp, healthy, cucumber snack with a sprinkling of lemon juice, salt and pepper:

oregano flower bouquets

When herbs are ready to reproduce, they send out flowers. As I pruned the massive oregano plant, I cut off all of the tiny purple flowers so that the plant would continue to grow.


The bees were swarming around the flowers and werent' thrilled about me taking the flowers away.

full bed in august

Here are a few pictures from early August. The raised bed is looking full and healthy. The bluish dinosaur kale looks great:

Here are some good-sized dragon carrots that were planted months ago:


But now the kale has been attacked by aphids so it is time to remove the kale plants and trim back the tomatoes and oregano plants.

a week at smith farm in central maine

I just returned from a 3 week visit to the east coast. I spent one week working on my friend's farm in Troy, Maine. It was inspiring to see the diversity of delicious vegetables produced on the farm. I assisted with harvesting, weeding, cultivating with a horse-powered cultivator, washing, bundling, selling etc. Farming is hard work, but spending time there motivated me to keep working hard on my modest backyard garden.

On the farm, we woke up each morning at 5:30 to harvest vegetables in the cool morning air. Here are some carrots, chard and chinese cabbage:


Here is the cart full of the morning's harvest:

The garlic is hung up to cure on the rafters of the barn:

Here is the horse with the cultivator attached. One person steers the horse with the reins, the other steers the cultivator with the handles. The cultivator has metal blades that dig up the ground, ripping up the weeds between the rows of vegetables.

We spread out the bounty on the tables at the farmers' market:

a pile of pits

Over the past year, occasionally I would save the seeds and pits from fruit that I ate....cherries, apricots, peaches etc. In April, I dumped all of the pits into a 1x1 square foot plot in the backyard just to see what would happen.

In early May, they started to sprout.

Now the mystery fruit has grown quite a bit. At first I thought they were cherry trees based on the size of the sprout, but now they are looking more like melon...who knows?

more cucumbers

Going out of town so I thought I'd check under the big cucumber leaves to see if there were any cucumbers hiding below. Found these four, the biggest yet!

harvesting dinosaur kale

We planted dinosaur kale in mid-May. It's my favorite kind of kale...those bumpy, dark green leaves:


I have begun harvesting the biggest leaves. This gives the smaller leaves more room and sunlight.


I chop them up and cook them down with olive oil, red onion, garlic, salt and pepper. They really cook down a lot so you need a lot of kale to make a dish. Healthy and delicious, although I think I put in a bit too much salt this time...

rainbow over the garden

I went outside today and looked up to see this incredible rainbow in the sky over our backyard:

spiky cucumber harvest

Disappointed by the cucumber experiment in the greenhouse, I picked up some organic cucumber starts at the local drug store. I bought 4 plants, each about 5 inches tall. I planted them in the raised bed in the beginning of May. Here they are to the right of the massive oregano plant:


Since then they have flourished, growing up and out of the bed. They have yellow flowers that turn into mini cucumbers that grow to a size of about 8 inches. The stems of the cucumber plant are very spiky, I assume it's an adaptation for protection. But the cucumbers themselves are also spiky. Need to remove the spikes before the cucumber is ready to eat.

pierre the cat

A frequent visitor to our backyard, we're growing more fond of Pierre the cat. And I think he's taking a liking to us as well. He'll approach looking for a nice scratch behind the ears. Not sure who his owner is....in my mind I keep telling myself that he's not the cat who used the raised bed as a litter box. And yet, he may be...but he's still so cute.

second radish harvest

I'm a huge fan of these French Breakfast radishes. This is the second harvest, meaning I planted a second round of seeds after the first batch of radishes were harvested. 30 day cycle. The space is now ready for another round...but I have more pickled radishes than I can eat!

dragon carrots

Way back in March I planted some carrots in with the radishes. Carrot seeds are so small, so I planted them just beneath the surface of the soil. The radishes came up so quickly, leaving the carrots behind and crowding out the carrots for sun.


But some of the carrots persevered through two rounds of radishes. They grow slowly but they sure are beautiful when they finally come out of the ground. This variety is called Dragon Carrot. Inside, they are yellowish-orange.

amish snap pea harvest

The peas began as sprouts in trays in the basement greenhouse. They were transplanted to the raised bed and used their tendrils to climb up the makeshift lattice.


The peas poked out of their white flowers. Now that they're big enough they're ready to eat.


A white mold has started to engulf the plants from below and it is slowly climbing up the peas. Need to harvest quickly!

from seed to jar: pickled radishes

The radishes prospered in the raised bed:


They poked out of the soil, screaming "pick me!" It was time to harvest the radishes:


I washed them and soaked them for a couple hours in salt water. Then I toasted some mustard seed and black peppercorns. I simmered them in rice vinegar, water and sugar. When the mixture cooled, I poured the pickling solution over the halved radishes in a mason jar and stuck them in the refrigerator. Lucky for me, I like pickled radishes. Can't say the same for my wife...

radish sprouts and transplanting

Growing plants from seeds (rather than from starts) is proving to be quite challenging. In the raised bed outside, I planted beets, chard, radishes and carrots about 2 weeks ago. On the advice of a gardening book, I planted the radishes and carrots in the same area. The theory being that carrots take a long time to germinate (over two weeks) whereas radishes sprout more quickly, thereby reminding me to water the area where the carrots are hiding. Given the success of the radishes thus far, I now recommend radishes to any beginning gardener. While I think I see a few carrots starting to come up, I am still optimistic that more will sprout. So far no sign of the beets and chard.


The early success in the basement greenhouse was followed by a realization that I actually gave the seeds too much light. I used the artificial light for 12-14 hours per day, excited that the plants were growing so quickly. Unfortunately, plants are not accustomed to grow that quickly. The peas, leeks and cucumbers grew too rapidly, leaving their stems long and stringy....not good. The light essentially stretched out the sprouts, making them very weak. I brought the greenhouse outside for a few days to acclimate the plants that did sprout and eventually transplanted the row of peas and a couple of feeble leeks. I am doubtful that the peas will have what it takes to flourish outdoors. I wove them into the lattice for support. The greenhouse experiment has been dissappointing. I will try the greenhouse again, but will limit the light to 6-8 hours a day, an amount more similar to the 6 hours they get outdoors. I also believe that as we approach summertime, the raised bed will get more sunlight.

cucumber and leek sprouts

Cucumber cotyledons (first leaves):


Leeks stick their roots into the ground, lifting their black seed up into the air:


Peas are growing very quickly, about 6 inches tall after 1 week:

basement pea sprouts

The seeds in the basement greenhouse have received about 12 hours of light each day since I planted them 5 days ago. Yesterday, the peas began to break through the soil. Here are the sprouts today, so exciting!

planting plan

As the weeks went by and the greenhouse was no closer to being started, I decided to go to Berkeley Hort to get some advice. After a very thorough consultation with a very patient employee, I've decided on my new planting strategy: some seeds will go directly into the raised bed and some seeds will be grown in my basement. Carrots, beets and radishes are all root vegetables so they need to be planted directly into the ground. They don't transplant well. Warm weather vegetables are ready to start as seeds in a greenhouse. When they grow to about 6" in about 4 weeks, I can transplant them into the raised bed. Since germination requires warmth and sun, I need to use artificial light for about 10-14 hours a day. Hence, the basement.

So here are the seeds I'm planting into my new basement greenhouse (Amish Snap Peas, A&C Pickling Cucumbers and Prizetaker Leeks):


All of the seeds I'm planting are heirloom varieties from the Seed Savers Exchange. This means that they have all been bred for their taste over many years by small farms, free from genetic modification. I am using these mini-greenhouses for ease:


Here are the greenhouses next to the washer/dryer machine in the basement:

greenhouse: following the sun

It has been a quiet winter in the backyard. However, I've noticed that the winter sun shines primarily on the original plot and much less on the raised bed. That leads me to believe that as the sun changes position in the sky from winter to summer, the sunny part of the garden shifts from the original plot to the raised bed. To maximize the sunshine, I am now considering building a small greenhouse on the original plot. That way, I can grow seeds in a warmer environment where the sun is currently shining, and then as the sun shifts, I can transplant the starts into the raised bed. I mocked up a design for a hoop house using PVC piping.

Here are a few models I've been referencing:

http://westsidegardener.com/howto/hoophouse.html

http://www.laspilitas.com/garden/howto/greenhouse.html