Las Trincheras - level terraces designed to get rainwater to slow down and soak in

I’ve been telling myself that I needed to get back into the regular tending of my garden… truth is that it’s been seriously neglected since around the April 2011 CicLAvia. I spotted California poppies blooming already yesterday… which tells me that I do need to get plants going. In this part of Southern California, it’s easy to garden year round… other than it being difficult to get stuff started during the heat of the summer. Winter and Fall gardening work well… and late Winter and Early Spring are the best time to get plants going for a productive Summer. 

It’s generally not a good idea to try to do too much in the garden on a single day. What happens is that everything one plants matures at the same time, then it’s too much to keep up with. Gardening, like many things in life, does best with regular attention, instead of sporadic bursts… so I figure I’ll post here tonight at a sort of log to help commit myself to keeping some regular attention on keeping the garden growing well.

I got starters from Sunset Nursery – purple broccoli, green cauliflower, sequoia strawberry, and onions – yellow and purple. I also seeded greens – mostly mizuna and some lettuce.

I weeded and planted in just two garden beds – the trincheras (photo at top of post) and the heart (photo below.) I post these not because they look lush… but because I am hoping to post before/after photos later.

In my neglect: artichokes have come back well, and some kale survived, poppies and yarrow doing ok, but mostly there were just weeds. The weeds include some radicchio that I should never have let go to seed. Now it comes up all over.

The Heart Garden - which is heart-shaped, but it's difficult to see that in this photo

As usual, it’s fun to garden in the front yard. I was talking with a passerby in my broken Spanish, telling him a little about L.A. Eco-Village after he inquired about the lizard bench, which he really liked. He responded in Spanish using the word “hippy,” which I thought was appropriate and cute.