Finally Finishing the Second Garden Bed in the Front Bulbout

Bobby and Josh resting on our laurels

Thanks to great work by Bobby and Josh today, and lunch provided by Zoe, we finally finished building the second planter bed at the north end of the bulbout in front of Los Angeles Eco-Village. There’s background on the bulbout and before pictures here, and a post on our first completed raised bed thereon.

More pictures and description follows.

 

Some Advice on Winter Planting for Southern California

My garden today: Thai Green Lettuce - grown from Seeds of Change seeds. Also onions from starters from Sunset Nursery, and some arugula just sprouting in the foreground.

I thought I’d share an exchange that I recently had with my friend Angelo Logan – regarding what crops to grow in the winter in Southern California. He wrote:

Joe, I am looking for advice about winter gardening. I want to know what to plant now, if there is anything i can plant, or is it too late. If you can give me some advice that would be great, if not can you refer me to some one?

My response is below. Note that this is pretty climate-specific – It should apply to pretty much anywhere in the Los Angeles Basin… where we have this great semi-arid mediteranean climate that’s splendid for growing  just about anything any time.  Depending on where you live and grow, this may or may not be applicable. I highly recommend asking someone who lives around for advice on what works for your area. You might go to a local garden/nursery store or a farmer’s market and ask people who are selling starter plants.

 

C.I.C.L.E.’s Urban Garden Bike Ride to Visit LAEV this Saturday

A few of the happy velocipedists at C.I.C.L.E.'s November 2009 Tweed, Moxie and Moustache Ride

The non-profit group Cyclists Inciting Change thru Live Exchange (C.I.C.L.E.) hosts a monthly series of Urban Expedition bike rides in various parts of L.A. County. Urban Expeditions are beginner-friendly and family-friendly. Participants are encouraged to bring friends who are less confident. The rides are relatively short (5-8 miles) with a few stops for rest and learning. There are lots of C.I.C.L.E. volunteers to help keep things really safe and fun. Participants and leaders often dress up to celebrate the ride’s theme (check out these pictures of our recent tweed ride!)

This Saturday, January 16th 2009, C.I.C.L.E. hosts our Urban Gardens Ride.

Meet at 12noon the Bicycle Kitchen, 706 North Heliotrope Drive, L.A. 90029. Located very close to the corner of Heliotrope Drive and Melrose Avenue – three short blocks west of Vermont Avenue, and a very short bike ride from the Vermont/Santa Monica Metro Red Line Station. Ride departs at 12:30pm. It’s free! Beginner-friendly and family friendly – about 6 miles – relatively flat.

The lettuce is one winter crop that's doing well in the LAEV gardens. It really enjoyed this morning's rain.

If you’ve been hoping to get a shorter cheaper greener harder better faster stronger (compared to our regular 3-hour tours) introduction to Los Angeles Eco-Village, then this ride is for you. We’ll be doing a walk-through of the eco-village gardens, including lots of fruit trees, greywater, rainwater harvesting, chickens, and more. At the end of the block, we’ll also briefly tour the Bresee Foundation’s Bimini Slough Ecology Park (watch this excellent video introduction to the innovative park project that closed a block of 2nd Street to re-create part of a historic creek.)

The ride will tour a couple of other local community gardens: Francis Avenue Community Garden and Rosewood Community Garden. It will also introduce folks to the future 4th Street Bicycle Boulevard, and pay a visit to Mama’s Hot Tamales.

Come on down and ride with us this Saturday!

(Cross-posted at the LAEV blog and the LAEV Garden Blog. Interested party note: the author of this post, eco-village resident Joe Linton, works for C.I.C.L.E.!)

 

Late Veggies – tough carrots and bitter eggplant

It’s time to reveal some of the errors of my ways. I am actually a bit better at growing than I am at harvesting. Now and then… uh… often… I grow edibles in my garden, and I don’t get around to harvesting them, and they go to seed or otherwise overshoot their optimum harvest date.

Carrots big as my hand, and I've got pretty big hands

In the first week of November, I thought I would pick some garden delights to offer up at one of our eco-village regular Sunday potlucks. I usually try to incorporate at least a little something I’ve grown into my potluck offering. I pulled up some carrots, and was happy to see how big and healthy they looked. I also picked my last half-dozen eggplants, some of which had grown a bit yellowish.

I made a salad, including chunks of carrot… turns out that the carrots were indeed past their prime. Still edible, but they were a bit tough, perhaps plasticky if that’s a word, not so flavorful or sweet. I baked the eggplants into some eggplant parmesan… and though it was edible, they tasted a little bitter. No one mentioned these shortfalls at the meal… but I did have leftovers to take home, which is often not the case when I concoct something really delicious.

It’s my fault for not jumping on these veggies/fruits when they first started looking great. I am certainly a world class procrastinator (evidence: blogging in January about a November incident)… but I also think that harvesting is a difficult and under-explored part of gardening.

Many plants have a decent length window during which they can be harvested without any adverse results. Chard and kale can wait for months to be harvested. Artichokes, tomatoes, and many others patiently linger for a few weeks to a month. Others seem really short – young arrugula goes from just right to strongly bitter (in my opinion) seemingly overnight.

The transition from perfect to inedible can happen pretty slowly. For example, broccoli gets those buds that look a little too tight, they gradually relax and spread out and then flower. It’s definitely at its best when harvested before flowering… and can get really bitter when the flowers get going… but there’s no clear signal (that I am aware of) that tells me when it’s ready. It’s just some indeterminate time during the maturation of those buds… when they’ve started to spread… but haven’t finished spreading.

I think it’s actually a book that needs to be written: something like vegetable havesting tricks and tips. When can you havest? What can and can’t you do with early or late harvest? Such as: tossing those thinnings into your salad… or those late carrots are probably fine in stews? Some of these harvesting practices and timings are probably local and seasonal, so it may be difficult to write it all down in a universal way. There are probably mathematical ways – this type of carrots are best at 12 weeks… but better if there cues that the plant can tell me. Is anyone aware of a book (or a website) that has good guidance on harvesting garden crops?

 

Persimmon Season

Persimmon fruit in my hand, persimmon tree in the background

We’ve got a persimmon tree which we don’t get a lot of fruit from. It’s not that our tree doesn’t yield, but between the squirrels, birds and passersby, I think I only had 2 or 3 persimmons from the tree last year.

Persimmons are orange-colored fruit, about the consistency of an apple, and very sweet and yummy. I thought that they were mosty from asia, but wikipedia tells me that there are various varieties from all over, including the Americas. The two varieties that I know of are very different. Our tree and my favorite kind of persimmon is the “Fuyu,” which seems to be the most accessible, easy to eat variety. Fuyus can be eaten like an apple. They’re firm and as they ripen they get softer, until they’re a little bit gooey. I love to cut them up and add to hot or cold cereal. There’s also Hachiya, which are said to be astringent. You can’t eat Hachiyas until they get really gooey. They tend to be good for baking into persimmon bread or cookies.

At least 15 years ago, eco-villagers planted a persimmon tree at the lot at the northeast corner of Bimini Place and White House Place. When the school district decided to tear down the house at that lot, about 2 years ago, we moved the tree to its current location along the alley at the south end of the Bimini Terrace. It’s now very visible to folks walking on the front sidewalk or down the alley. I think that plenty of the Korean halmonis recognize it as gam namu.

When squirrels nibble or birds peck at the fruit it looks like this (sorry blurry photo but you get the idea):

Learning to share our persimmons with other creatures

The fruit is mostly ripe right now, which seems slightly early – If I recall correctly, they generally ripen in November and December. Maybe it’s global warming or the hot dry summer or just natural variation.

Today I noticed that there were a lot of ants on the tree. At first I assumed that they were going to some of the fruit that looks like the photo above… but on closer inspection I saw that they were especially busy on one branch, which had a great deal of some sort of black lump creatures (which I think are called scale?) on it. Here’s a shot of that branch, which I immediately cut off:

Some kind of scale?

I scoured the tree and could only find a few more of these black lump creatures, mostly right next to ripe fruit. If anyone knows what these are called, and has any recommendations for keeping them under control (using non-toxic tools,) please post in the comments.

I know that ants were probably using tools long before humans were. Ants use aphids to get nutrition from other plants. Aphids are said to be very slow moving messy eaters, so ants help them get around, then eat their leftovers. Ants also harvest and spread molds and various other things that we human gardeners perceive as diseases when ants do their own harvesting of our cultivars. The ants have been really going to town this past summer… I will have to make sure they don’t do too much damage to the persimmon tree.

 

A Couple of Inspiring Gardening/Farming Videos

I recommend a couple of videos that I think are really inspiring for gardeners and farmers to grow our food in harmony with nature. They’re both from a site called Ted.com which features lots of really informative talks about science, technology, creativity, brains, art…

Eduardo Sousa and his Geese

The first talk is by a chef named Dan Barber. It’s all about a Spanish farmer named Eduardo Sousa. Sousa produces foie gras (French for “fat liver”)  a substance that I was unfamiliar with until I heard this talk. Foie gras a delicacy made from goose liver. Sousa farms in such a natural way that wild geese come to stay and live with his domesticated geese. The talk is about permaculture, slow food, history, and the joy of great food as the “expression of nature.” Barber’s excellent talk includes a quote I really liked – from Jonas Salk: ”If all the insects disappear, life on earth as we know it would disappear within fifty years. If human beings disappeared, life on earth as we know it would flourish.”  

The second talk is  by Michael Pollan, who should be familiar with readers of this blog from this earlier post. His talk is sort of a  whirlwind tour of many of the themes his book The Botany of Desire. He suggests that we could see much of humanity as a vast conspiracy of “corn’s scheme for world domination.” The talk concludes with a great profile of Joel Salatin’s permaculture farm in Virginia which is “well beyond organic agriculture.” 

Don’t spend tooooo much time on Ted.com, but check out these two talks, and let them inspire you to get out and garden!

 

Welcome and Unwelcome Garden Visitors

 

Can you spot the lizard?

Above is a cell phone shot of a lizard I just spotted in the garden a couple minutes ago. It’s not a great photo of the critter but I was worried that if I got any closer she/he would dart off.

I’ve heard that lizards are good for gardens. They eat insects, and don’t really damage any of the plants. They like things a little messy, though. If one keeps one’s garden too neat, the lizards will go elsewhere.

Yesterday, I found the corner of the southern bulb-out raised garden bed looking like this:

before

In a few seconds I fixed it back to how it had been. Then it looked like this:

after

The visitor in this case, appears to have been one of those cars… One of the creatures that I don’t really like visiting my garden. I will try to avoid what has been called my obligatory shot at car culture and will just say that it’s easy to rebuilt these urbanite beds when  they come apart.

 

Sneaky Yellow Tomatoes and Front Yard Gardening

I enjoy gardening in the front yard. It’s great for getting to know one’s neighbors - I’ve told some stories about these encounters in previous posts including this one.

One fairly frequent unfortunate downside is that folks will anonymously harvest… and will sometimes just pull up entire plants… especially stuff within arms reach of the public right of way. Sometimes when this happens I feel violated, disappointed, irritated, angry… but then I often try to think that someone out there who needs it is probably eating a little healthier.

Ripe Green Zebra Tomato

At one point I grew big red tomatoes in my front yard… and they would often disappear just when they got nice and big and red… so now I grow yellow tomatoes! The one pictured in the photo is an heirloom variety called “Green Zebra.” They’re a tiny bit more tart than your average tomato, but they generally wait for me to harvest them.  The skin goes from green to a light yellow to a warmer, nearly orange yellow when ripe.

(Updated August 4th – oops – according to Wikipedia Green Zebra isn’t an heirloom… It was bred in 1983 – from heirlooms. There are a few actual green heirlooms: Aunt Ruby’s German Green… which I am also growing this year… but they’re not ripe yet and the zebras are.)

 

my first raised bed garden

over the past few years, i’ve been doing some container gardening in marginal spaces at the eco-village that don’t get very much sun, with limited success. the mizuna and chinese cabbage thrived, but the tomatoes, onions, conventional cabbage and a couple of other sad plant friends did not. after one failed season, i have successfully grown a batch of small onions in a window box off the north stairwell of the 117 building.

i have not wanted to grow in prime garden areas mainly because i’m a novice and didn’t want to waste valuable land when the community’s green thumbs could be growing bounties to feed the world, or at least feed eco-villagers. but now after growing not only edible, but delicious greens and onions, i was ready for more.  so i bought a book, square foot gardening.

this book appeals to my fondness of small things and of things posteriorily retentive. mel bartholomew, the author and quite a character, developed and advocates for a method of planting that uses less space and soil to grow your garden. his “square-foot-gardening” (or sfg) method requires only a 6-inch deep bed and grid system to easily plan, space and maintain your crops.

coincidentally while i was dreaming of my imaginary leafy green grid, federico, the finder that he is, came across a beautiful wooden box that was going to be thrown away at work.  we found a little sunny and underutilized corner of the front garden and set up shop.

raised bed a la square-foot-gardening

sticking strictly to the book, here’s what our sfg raised bed looks like. i’ve transplanted tomatos, basil, and onion, and seeded okra, chinese cabbage, carrots, marigolds and salvia. the carrots and salvia have not yet sprouted after a week  (any thoughts?). i’m not sure it’s a good idea to post this before i know how things will turn out, but i’m very excited about it, and maybe one of you will have some advice or words of encouragement.

to be continued…

 

Artichokes! Artichokes!

Chokes in front of the Bimini Terrace

Mmmmmm… Lots and lots of artichokes in the harvest right now. Artichokes are a relatively trouble-free perennial. Each year they fruit around April-May, then die back above ground in June. In September, they grow plenty of “pups”, maybe three to eight little plants growing from various points on the existing roots. At that point, you can split the roots and plant them as a half-dozen plants. I usually try to do this every other year with mine. The second year growth is very good… but then it seems like the plants get crowded, so splitting them spreads them out. For the most part, they don’t get many insect pests… an excellent plant… and a yummy lunch today!

The same artichokes from a different angle