99.9% Homegrown Soup
It's hot as Hades and fires are burning everywhere. The last thing on my mind is to fire up the oven to make dinner.
A Season of Orach
It's sort of mean that we can't grow salad greens in the summer here in So Cal. It's too hot and they bolt to seed so quickly. I've tried growing lettuces under shade cloth and that helps a lot, but it's nowhere near as delicious as fall-grown salad greens. One way to combat the heat is to grow slow-bolt or heat tolerant varieties. Another is to try something completely different.
Enter Orach Mountain Spinach.
I know I've talked about this fantastic green before, but I'm going to expound on the wonders of Orach again because this year was particularly ...
Taming of the Asparagus
I'm a little bit of a late bloomer. Or maybe it's just that I get used to looking at - or stepping over - something that's in my way and then I don't do anything about it for a long time. It's kind of like that pile of laundry in the middle of the room. It doesn't go away, but you start to ignore it - so it really isn't there any more, right?
This was the case with the wild patch of asparagus in the raised beds. We're at the end of our second year, which means that ...
School Garden
Gardenerd.com has partnered with the Woolly Pocket Company and School Nutrition Plus to create a pilot program for school gardens that not only integrates the garden into the curriculum, but gives the children something to take into the cafeteria too! Over the last two days we converted an abandoned garden area on the campus of Santa Monica Blvd. Community Charter School into a revitalized growing space that includes a vertical garden!
We started with weeds, old raised beds, tired soil and lots of odds and ends (we even found a shoe). There was a lemon tree starving for sunlight ...
What’s Working…and Not Working
This season has been an interesting one. I've had luck this year with plants I've tried (and failed) to grow for the past 11 years. At the same time, I've…
First Summer Harvest
Even though we've been harvesting squash for awhile now (see "Zucchini Anyone?"), it doesn't really feel like a summer harvest until the tomatoes start showing up. This week, it's official! They're red and ready to start pickin' at the Gardenerd test garden.
Although, to say that they're red would be discriminatory. These heirloom tomatoes are ripening in nearly every color of the rainbow. Red is almost passe with all the delectable heirloom options out there.
...
Zucchini Anyone?
Often when people leave for vacation, they experience a pleasant surprise of a thriving garden when they return (as long as it's being watered while they're gone). My clients often report that just a week away produces a huge growth spurt in their gardens. I've had this experience myself.
Recently though, I'd like to say that I went away on vacation, but the truth is I just got lazy and didn't check in on the zucchini for a few days. Oops...
...
Squash Bonanza
It appears that the zucchini and Bennings Green Tint patty pan squash have officially kicked into high gear - and it's not even summer yet! This is a crucial time - when one needs to visit the garden every day, lest there be a monster squash discovered after a few days away from the garden. So far, so good. We're catching the summer squash early and picking them young. Now to find recipes...
I have a favorite recipe for zucchini, but you
might want to save it for when your sick of zucchini, because when
you're done with this ...
Late Spring Harvest
With a tiny bit of rain drizzling down this morning, I harvested a few things from the garden. It's very exciting on a number of levels.
The first requires a little story: I didn't plant eggplant this year - I planted it last year. It was attacked by flea beetles early on and in fall when the time came to clear the raised bed, I decided to leave the plants because they were showing signs of new growth. So they overwintered, and when spring came they had grown to a very respectable size. Then they flowered and set ...
Houston, We Have Some Squash
I admit it, I went a little crazy. I was determined to have a successful squash crop in the wake of last year's squash catastrophe. So I planned for extra, you might say. This season, at Ocean View Farms, I planted Delicata and Butternut Squashes. While at the Gardenerd Teaching Garden, we planted zucchini, patty pan, yellow crookneck and pumpkin.
The First round of zucchini and patty pan squash were eaten by birds. So were the second round. So then we planted seeds indoors to make sure nothing went wrong. That did the trick. Meanwhile, the pumpkins and ...