Summer Garden & Diggin' in the Dirt

Our garden is coming along and I can't wait until we can start harvesting the summer bounty!! This year we've planted japanese cucumber, zucchini (its hasn't quite taken off yet, but I'm going to try trellising it once it does), two types of heirloom tomatoes (one cherry and one roma), eggplant, and jalapenos. We also have some rainbow chard that is still going strong from our winter garden.  Sadly the kale, spinach, and lettuce bolted, but I let is seed so hopefully some will come up in the fall.  We also started out with some sugar snap peas, but sadly they didn't make it due to a combination of an early spring heat wave and snails.  I've had an ongoing battle with snails for years.  In the past I've used Sluggo and works o.k., but you have to reapply it every few weeks. Then I heard about copper tape!! I was a bit skeptical, but figured it was worth a try.  I used a staplegun to attach it around our raised bed being careful not to leave any gaps. So far so good, no snails!! I've heard that after a while the copper wears down and looses its effectiveness so we'll see how long it lasts.

You can see my little man in the background enjoying his favorite past time, digging up dirt with his construction equipment.  I hope you are all enjoying your spring/summer gardens!

Making Guava Juice out of Guavas

The New Herb Garden

Growing up, when things didn’t go our way my mom used to sing us kids the famous line from the Rolling Stones song “You don’t always get what you want, but one of these days you might just find you get what you need”.   It pretty much ruined the song for me, but over time, I’ve found that my mom and Mic might actually be on to something.  Case in point.  Last week I decided to prune (and I mean PRUNE) back our guava bush.  I had told my husband I was going to be busting out the pruners, but either he wasn’t listening or he forgot because when he got home from work and saw my handiwork he thought I was trying to cut it down.  So as the wonderful husband that he is, he decided to surprise me and finish the deed for me (Gasp)!  Then he came in the house and asked my son and me to check out his work.  I’m pretty sure I had a look of horror or on my face when I saw the sad remains of the tree.  That look was quickly followed by the “What did you do?” look.  Rapidly followed by my husbands, “Uh Oh, what did I do?” look.  And we both realized that the poor guava tree had suffered from our failure to communicate.  The whole situations made me want to cry and laugh at the same time. 

At that point the deed was done and we both felt bad.  So we decided to do the only thing you can do in that situation, make guava juice out of guavas.  We have a mandarin tree in our back yard that has been living in a half wine barrel for the last six years.  I have wanted to plant it, but never could come up with a good spot for it in our yard.  Well, it was the mandarin tree’s lucky day…a space had just opened up.  So the next day my husband dug up the remaining portion of the guava bush and we planted the mandarin tree in its place.  Then I created an herb garden (the though of making my own herb de provence makes me swoon and my mouth water) in the vacated half wine barrel.  Viola, guava juice out of guavas.  Now it makes me smile every time I walk by the orange tree happily planted in the ground and the awesome herb garden starting growing in the barrel.  So you see, it is sometimes true that you don’t always get what you want, but you just might find…you get what you need (although I’m not so sure the guava bush would agree)!

Winter Harvest and Spring Garden Planning

Kale and Sweet Lettuce Mix

Beets

This year we planted a winter garden for the first time.  Since we have a small garden area I planted high yield veggies (kale, yield chard, lettuce, and peas).   I wasn't sure how it would turn out, but the kale, beets, lettuce, and chard were a great success.  The peas did okay, but not as well as I had hoped.  

It is starting to warm up a bit here on the west coast so I'm planning the spring/summer garden (tomatoes, squash, cucumber, and beans, oh my). However, our winter garden is still doing well and since I LOVE my greens, I don't want to pull the winter plants out just to make room for the spring garden.  I'm slowly learning that many veggies can grow year round in our temperate climate.  Great for us, but there is only so much space in our little raised bed.   So, I've decided to work around the plants that are still doing well.  I am going to start the tomatoes, squash, cucumber, and beans from seed to buy me some time. I've also harvested half of the beets to make a bit of room.  I'll likely also pull out the pea plant this weekend since it's not really producing much anyway.  The cramped quarters in our raised bed is also forcing me to make good on my goal of incorporating edible plants into our landscaping.

Here is a website I have found useful in helping me decide what veggies to plant and to plan out my garden.  Happy planting!!

The worms crawl in, the worms crawl out...

Worm Compost Bin

Outside our backdoor we have a redwood box that serves as our worm compost bin.  Unless I tell people what it is they are never the wiser.  I've actually had it on my to do list to make a cushion for the top of the worm bin and lockable wheels on the bottom so it can double as a movable bench/seat.  There are may different ways to make a worm bin, but here's how I did it.  I bought the pre-made box at a local gardening store along with the worms, soil, and coconut fiber (for worm bedding).  I put the worms and all the fixings in the box and viola worm bin.  Now every evening after dinner I put our fruit and veggie food waste into the bin, varying the food placement each day. It's that easy.  The benefit is that we are keeping a portion of our food waste out of the landfill, we make compost for our veggie garden, and my son not only loves feeding the worms, but is learning hands-on about the food cycle in his own back yard.  What's not to love!

Edible Landscaping

View of a front yard with edible landscaping

Last summer my husband and I were taking a stroll along the beach and on our way home we passed by this amazing front yard that incorporated a variety of garden fruits and vegetables into the landscaping (cucumbers, strawberries, chard, etc.) (see picture).  And the best part about this edible  landscaping (other than the edible part) was that it was so subtle, elegant, and surprisingly non-vegetable garden looking.  It was so subtle in fact that we almost strolled right on past without noticing.  I had read about edible landscaping before but had never seen it executed with such style.  We were smitten and decided that we'd like to incorporate edible landscaping in a similar manner in our yard.  Enter blueberries...

Cucumber, tomatoes, strawberries, and lavender

A month earlier we had visited a local blueberry farm to do some blueberry picking and fell in love with blueberry bushes.  Given our son's penchant for blueberries and the fact that we had a nice little space open in our back yard we decided that blueberries would be our first experiment in the edible landscaping arena.  Not that we don't have other edible landscaping (we have figs, lemons, and guavas in our back yard), but they came with the house and there is plenty of space for more.  After a few months of prepping the soil with coffee grounds generously donated by my coworkers (blueberries need acidic soil) we decided it was time to plant.  So yesterday we headed off to a local nursery and picked up Sunshine and Misty.  As we've learned, you need to have at least two bushes of different varieties.  Sunshine and Misty are varieties that have relatively small bushes (so they'll work in our small space) and they bear fruit at different times of the season (so we can maximize our berry picking time).


We'll see how our first experiment into edible landscaping goes.  If it goes well we'll be replacing four large bushes in our front yard with several varieties of blueberry bushes.  And we already have big plans for some strawberry plants in the front yard once spring rolls around.