Garden Update and Thoughts about Year-Round Food

January 16, 2016 Elizabeth Boegel

With the bursts of rain and sun, the winter garden is doing very well, and temperatures are above freezing, so we've had some good growth this week. Still, most of my seedlings are very small, and growth is slow. I think, if I were depending entirely upon my garden for year-round produce, I'd have to do the winter garden differently.

I usually start seed in early November. Our first average frost date is December 15; this year our first frost was before Thanksgiving, quite a bit earlier than I'm used to. We barely had the seeds in and the row covers put up before that first frost hit. So the seeds had to germinate in very cold temps, indeed, and I think that has slowed their growth considerably.

What would be ideal, then, is to begin the winter garden in the heat of the October garden, and let it get a good start before the temps begin to fall. I know this, but the problem is, there is always still so much growing in the summer garden in October, It's hard to pull things out before they are done producing.

And then, if you add in crop rotation, which I do, it all gets very confusing. For instance, right now I'm worried about the garlic and potatoes being harvested in time (this spring) to plant tomatoes in those beds. It's all a great big juggle, and sometimes my poor little brain gets all twisted.

I'm thinking of maybe stopping succession planting in the summer, and instead just getting one crop of something before letting the bed go fallow for a while, therefore freeing it up for winter planting. What this means is less produce in the late summer months, which might be ok because my focus could be on tomato and pepper processing in those months, which would make me happy during the winter in another way, as we'd have more produce put up for our cold-weather meals.

This will all take further thinking about. If anyone has experienced this themselves and has some advice, I'd appreciate it.

I spent some time turning compost today. This is not something I have ever done in our smaller bin, but since the mass in the larger bins is astounding, I thought turning it might speed the final processes. What I found was disheartening. After the first top foot, the pile was completely dry. Bone dry. With all the rain we've been getting! So I forked nearly the whole pile over on to another pile, hoping to get it really aerated and exposed to the rain. There is a bunch of totally intact hay from the chicken coop, from a loooong time ago - before I started using sand in the hen house. What does it take to break down hay, I ask you? Anyway I left a small layer, maybe a foot high, in one bin so that it will hopefully decompose quickly. Then the larger pile will just have to sit for a while. A long while, I'm guessing. I suppose if I want compost made faster, I'm going to have to turn it more. Ugh. Not my favorite.

I'll leave you with some pictures of the garden, though it's not that exciting at the moment - just a lot of very small green things. In a month, if the weather continues the way it is now (rainy and mild, with temps in the 40's-50's), there should be a lot more to look at. I did add a little fertilizer to the beds (Dr. Earth Vegetable) since there was no compost to add (sigh) and I figured the rain is probably washing away some nutrients. We'll definitely need to add some store-bought compost to the beds come spring (probably from American Soil).

Thinking about our Soil

October 14, 2015 Elizabeth Boegel

I've been thinking a lot about the garden and how it performed this year. I was disappointed overall. There are three possible reasons for our lackluster harvest:

1) The drought. California is in it's 4th year of severe drought, and because we were told to reduce our overall water bill by 25%, we couldn't water as often or as long as we would normally.

2) Our drip system. We replaced our overhead sprinklers with a drip system, which definitely reduced our water bill, and in theory should water everything even better than the overheads, putting the water where it's most needed (at the roots) and keeping the foliage dry. In reality, we were unsure how often or how long to run them, and probably starved our plants for water.

3) The soil. This year I ordered "Local Hero Veggie Mix" from American Soil in Richmond. It's described as containing "Sandy Loam, Greenwaste Compost, Rice Hulls, Chicken Manure, Grape Compost, and Cocoa Bean Hulls." When we took delivery of the soil, I did think it was quite sandy. And I think, generally, it was fine for amending our current beds. But we had seven new beds to fill, and I filled it with this soil, rather than mixing it in to our regular clay soil.

Now it also says on the American Soil website that this soil is perfect for filling beds, but I do think that the combination of this sandy soil, plus very little water, made it harder for the plants to do as well as they might've. Then on top of that I added well-rotted horse manure which by nature is quite dry. So basically I think it's a combination of all three things listed above which contributed to a smaller harvest.

Now, we've had a good harvest overall. We've had plenty of everything, and even extra to preserve by canning and pickling. But considering the amount we planted, we should have had far more poundage. I'm thinking of the tomatoes especially. We had four plants each of slicing, cherry, and paste tomatoes. We should have had an abundant harvest, massive, filling-the-canning-shelf huge. We were able to put up four quarts of crushed tomatoes and 8 half-pints of tomato paste, but that's meager. We did eat quite a lot of them fresh, and I'm glad we had enough to provide a small caprese salad each day for the last several months, and a pomodoro sauce every so often. Still - not enough to fulfill our sauce and braising dreams for winter.

How to correct these problems? First of all, we wish until it hurts for an El Nino year. It's looking promising, but you'll forgive us all for being dubious (we've been fooled before). Rain would help our personal situation quite a bit, and a few good months of daily rain just might get the entire state out of this drought. (This reminds me to clean the rain gutters and make sure the rain barrels are set up properly. Too bad we don't have a cistern.) As for the soil itself, I wish I had enough home-made compost to put an inch on every one of my 13 raised beds. I just don't. In my small compost bin (the one I call the 'worm bin' because it's too small to heat up very much, and I buy worms to add to it every year) I can get a couple of five-gallon bucketfuls every couple of months. But that's not enough for our growing footage.While I have two other large compost bins (which are positively full to the brim at the moment of material), it just doesn't seem to break down very quickly, and that's probably due to the fact that I can't spare the water to keep them wet. Perhaps they will decompose more quickly once it starts raining. I don't lack for either green or brown matter here and I'm again finding it hard to find a place to put it all. I'm getting more and more wary of buying compost, even from reputable places like American Soil, because I don't really know how it was made or from what.

So I'm not sure what I'll do, moving forward. I might buy some bagged soil mix from a local nursery - they have a kind that I really like that is full of good stuff. A large bag is $10 each, though, and one bag is not enough for each bed. I have been putting a buckwheat cover crop in each bed as I clear it, which I then cut down to use as green manure. That gets covered with soiled hay from the chicken coop which I will leave to use as mulch through the winter crop. Hopefully all that organic matter will help. I also plan to seed fava beans in every bed along with the usual winter veg. That will at least add nitrogen as it's growing, and then in late winter/early spring the flowers will provide forage for the bees, and then food for us.

Speaking of food, this coming weekend I plan on harvesting the butternut squash that is now on the vine and curing it, before storing it in our 'warm' refrigerator in the garage (my parent's old fridge, which is in our garage now, and is on it's warmest setting, which is still probably just under 50 degrees). We've eaten some that I harvested a while back, and they're delicious - these are tiny butternuts, the size of my hand. Their color is a deep, brilliant orange, which just advertises how much nutrition they provide. Roasted in olive oil and sprinkled with plenty of kosher salt, they make an excellent side dish or even snack. I'm excited to eat more of them.

Which reminds me to tell you that I've also been thinking a lot about what colors I am eating every day. After reading "Eating on the Wild Side" by Jo Robinson, I reevaluate nearly everything I eat. And actually, I'm doing pretty well, though I've changed my habits in some ways per her advice, especially in how I store fruits and vegetables (you should see the three-column chart I've posted on the refrigerator. I'm only a tiny bit Type A). It's fun to try to eat something from each color of the rainbow each day (though many days there's no way I can get them all in). I realize it's probably easier to do this in California than it is in, say, Toronto.

Happy Easter!

April 5, 2015 Elizabeth Boegel

Happy Easter! This is a happy day! And Happy Passover, a couple of days late!

Our kids still get Easter baskets, because you're never too old for chocolate, or Legos.

Our neighborhood has a big egg hunt for the little kids, and then an outdoor brunch. Everyone brings a dish to share, and whatever patio furniture they can haul over to the yard where the brunch is held. This year I volunteered to do the flowers for the tables. There's a lot blooming already, so it was fun to make about 10 tiny posies, or Tussie-mussie's, as I like to call them. I know very little about flower arranging, but it seems to me that if you add a lot of color and variety, they turn out nicely.

Everything laid out for arranging

Here they are all together, waiting for transport

Saturday was the Great Tomato Sale, a local fundraiser put on by the Master Gardeners. I bought four slicing tomatoes, four cherry tomatoes, and four paste tomatoes. I also bought four sweet peppers and four hot peppers.

I plant most everything else from seed, including a few herbs like cilantro and basil. (Other herbs, I buy starts.) I don't know why I have a mental block about starting my own tomato seeds indoors and then transplanting them in to the garden - it might be that we just don't have room - it might be that I don't want to buy all the equipment, like grow lights. I'm happy supporting the Master Gardeners, who do good work, by spending a very reasonable $3 per veg.

Nothing got planted this weekend, though, between one thing and another (and a little RAIN!), so I'll try to get to that this week.

But first, I have to solve a problem. We're having some issues with Tasha the cat in the prepared, but unplanted, raised beds. And Joe the dog has been digging near the huckleberry. This never happened on the South Garden, but this back garden is firmly in house-cat/house-dog territory and I think the pets are really noticing that their hang-out space has been reduced. For the dog, I noticed that the digging happened when I hid his frisbees (because they are always littered around the yard), so I've given him those and hopefully that will appease any boredom when he's left alone in the yard (which isn't often, let me be clear). For the cat, I'm going to try a technique I found on the web, very scientific :), where you stick plastic forks, tines up, in the beds. I can't imagine those will feel good on soft padded paws. I'll let you know how this works. I'm not worried about beds where I am planting seedlings and cages, I'm more worried about where there are seeds. I don't mind pee - pee is nontoxic and a good source of nitrogen - but I don't want feces in the beds. And I don't want things dug up after the hard work of planting them.

I had a wonderful afternoon walk with Joe in the foothills of Mt Diablo/Shell Ridge area on Saturday. The hills are so green right now, and the wildflowers really lovely.

CA willow tree seed pods

Hills covered in purple vetch

Elegant Brodaiea

Blue-eyed grass and vetch

As I was heading toward the gate at the end of our walk, I looked back up the hill and saw a creature loping down. Something made me stop and watch. It continued loping down towards me, while another one split off and went up the side of the hill. As the creature came closer, I realized it was a pair of coyotes, and the one heading my way was still coming, and was going to cross my path. I moved forward with Joe and got to the gate and watched the coyote lope up the opposite hill, then stop and look around. It was young and fairly small and quite beautiful. Normally coyotes, though curious about humans, stay well away as they are very shy. This one seemed unafraid.

I love seeing predators in the wild. Mostly because it's unusual, I guess, where deer and turkeys are as common as pets, it seems. I've never seen a cougar but would love to.

Hope you're having a wonderful Easter weekend, and that it involves chocolate. :)

New Raised Beds, plus news about the Urban Farm Tour

April 2, 2015 Elizabeth Boegel

Last November, if you recall, we sheet mulched the North Garden in preparation for this week. The area had been grass and had housed first a play structure, and then a trampoline. About two months after we laid down the sheet mulch, we built the chicken coop. This week we finally began the raised beds in this area of the garden.

The first step is to stake out where you want the beds to go, which Tom did with 2"x2" redwood stakes and some string. After those are in place, it's important to rake the wood chips out of the beds. I didn't do this last year in the South Garden, and we had serious nitrogen issues, or more precisely, lack-of-nitrogen issues. When soil mixes with wood chips or mulch, the nitrogen in the soil immediately goes to work breaking down the mulch, and that work of decomposition ties up all the available nitrogen, leaving none for your seedlings. So learn from my mistake! Rake out the wood chips before you build the beds and fill with soil.

Staked 'n raked

The next step is to purchase lumber, either redwood or cedar, to build your raised beds. Tom likes redwood, and he buys 1'x8' boards. These can be made into either 4x4 beds or 4x8 beds quite easily, with few cuts. He then puts them together with deck screws. This project takes about a day, depending how many beds you're making.

The lumber and the soil are the priciest part of this project. But the beds will last for many, many years, and I'll never have to replace the soil in them - just amend with manure and compost and occasionally top off.

As Tom was working on the beds, I noticed some stubborn Bermuda grass growing in the dirt under the mulch. I hate this stuff. It spreads so incredibly easily and is so difficult to kill. So I spread a little bit of cardboard in the bottom of the beds to help smother it.

The next step is dirt! It takes more dirt than you think to fill raised beds. I ordered 5 cubic yards, which will take care of the new beds, and anything left over will top off the six beds in the South Garden. I ordered it from American Soil in Richmond. I decided to try their special blend called "Local Hero Veggie Mix," which is a mix of sandy loam, green waste compost, rice hulls, chicken manure, grape compost, fir bark, and cocoa bean hulls.

It smells so good and is steaming and cooking in there! Living soil, for sure.

The dirt was delivered at 8:30 this morning, so now you know what the day ahead holds for me.

We've had some fun this week, too. The kids and I went with my folks to the de Young art museum in San Francisco, where we got to see some Impressionist art from the Scottish National Galleries. My favorite piece was a Cezanne, called "The Big Trees." I learned an awful lot about painting from looking at this.

The kids' friends have all been traveling on their breaks, but some were finally back in town, and a few stayed for dinner last night. Dinner outside with friends and a fire in the fire pit - this says 'summer' to me, for sure. I know we're pushing that envelope, but still... it was all I could do not to break out the s'mores.

The Institute of Urban Homesteading has just announced the Urban Farm Tours for this summer, in their spring newsletter. Here is a description of the Walnut Creek/Concord tour:

Walnut Creek & Concord June 6 9am-3pm
Featured Sites
How It WorksYour ticket includes 3 urban farm tour sites and one special interest site (choose at ticket purchase), plus morning hospitality and a simple homegrown lunch.
Come to the staging area in the morning topick up your itinerary, come back for lunch f you desire.
General Admission $40, kids $25,
Friends of the Farm Tour Ticket $60 (includes a gift of farm fresh egg or honey from our farmers)
Patron of the Farm $80 farm fresh eggs or honey plus Ruby Blume's Book, Eveyday Cheesemaking
Tickets on sale April 15

And here is how our farm is described!

Poppy Corners
Hosts: Elizabeth & Tom Boegel
Lot: 7,000 sq ft
Used for agriculture: 4,000 sq ft
Poppy Corners is a testament to what one suburban family can accomplish while raising a couple kids and going to work full time. This thriving hobby farm resides in a tidy neighborhood of overwatered lawns. Most of the grass has been replaced with 14 vegetable beds which produce year-round. There are fruit trees, bushes, vines, and canes interspersed within a perennial garden, as well as vegetable patches tucked in between the flowers. Whatever land is left is devoted to native and drought-tolerant plants and flowers for pollinators. The Poppy Corners farmers raise bees and chickens. They build their own structures wherever possible and tend the garden and critters themselves. They continue to research and apply new ways to use less water in the hot and dry summers, and to catch water in the winter. Diverse farming methods are employed from permaculture principles to square foot gardening. Come enjoy research in process!

We are really excited and hope you will attend and support this effort, if you are anywhere near the area!

Spring Break is here!

March 30, 2015 Elizabeth Boegel

This week is spring break for all four of us. It's a gift of time: Time to actually accomplish the projects on the list, maybe take a nap, perhaps rent a boat on a reservoir? The possibilities are endless. However, the projects will likely get first priority, as having a considerable amount of time to complete them is just too tempting. Also, did I mention how busy it is in the garden, in spring? And with temperatures in the mid-80's over the past weekend, we got a head start on the list. We wished the neighborhood pool was open, after some sweaty working days.

a local hiking trail

Due to the warm temps, we keep a window open in our bedroom at night, and often in the wee hours around 3 am, I've been woken by coyotes up in the open space near our house. They howl and yip, and make quite a racket. I did some research and it looks as though this behavior is very common among coyote family members, especially at night. In fact, the coyote's Latin name, Canis latrans, literally means 'barking dog.' At this time of year in California, females are probably pregnant, having mated in February, and are expecting babies in April. There's still water in the hills in vernal pools, but I'm not sure how long that will last, and when the water runs out, the coyotes venture down in to our neighborhoods. They are generally not aggressive and can be quite shy, but I wouldn't be surprised to find out that they visit our backyard water fountain during summer nights. Which is why our animals are shut up tight after 8 o'clock every evening.

In the garden, there's still lots of greens to eat.

Pesto Chicken tart with spinach, broccoli, and peas from the garden

The kale and spinach are still producing, but the chard is starting to look a little tired, and the romaine is looking like it's going to bolt any minute. The broccoli seems to be finished, and the beets are no longer growing. Peas are being harvested daily. The garlic is starting to get a little brown in the foliage, which means it might be time to stop watering it and then harvest. I didn't expect the garlic to be ready until June, but with this hot weather, it could be ready much earlier. The strawberry wall has tiny berries and I can't wait to taste the first one. The blueberry bushes have tiny berries, too.

garlic

kale

spinach

strawberry wall

peas, and a little friend

And, we have an artichoke coming up in the garden!

My only question is: who gets to eat it???

We eat from the garden constantly; I add greens to almost every dish I make. Tonight I was making a pasta bake, and I realized I was out of ricotta. So Tom whipped up a batch in thirty minutes. That was fun!

Preparations for Easter have commenced. I had so much fun dying Easter eggs naturally last year that I wanted to do it again this year. This project takes most of a day, but the result is so pretty, it's worth it. I used turmeric, red cabbage, red onion skin, yellow onion skin, and beets this time. Put your veg or spice individually in pots with a cup or two of water, bring to a boil, then simmer for 30 minutes, covered. Strain, add a tablespoon of white vinegar, and pour over hard boiled eggs. Then store in fridge for four hours. Drain and let dry.

I used white and brown eggs this year, and I have to say I like the effect on white better.

The darker ones are brown eggs, lighter = white eggs

Blue is white egg with red cabbage, bright yellow is turmeric, orange is yellow onion skin,
green is brown egg with red cabbage, red is beet, red onion skin made the brownish colors

I also spent some time over the weekend making a couple of new paintings for a blank wall. I knew I wanted to paint something from the garden, and add quotes about nature that are meaningful to me. Next time, I'd like to try a mixed media thing, with the quotes made from 'found' letters or torn out of magazines, some sort of decoupage sort of thing, though I've never tried that. Maybe that will be a summer experiment.

Artichoke and Blueberries

Do you know about the website Nextdoor? I've enjoyed being a member. Last Friday, a neighbor posted that his mother was a Master Gardener, and he had many hundreds of seed packets to give away. I responded immediately and met him later that afternoon. I scored about $100 worth of seed packets! It was like Christmas. Not only that, they were from Renee's Garden, my favorite seed house! I'm not sure how old the seeds are, or if they are even viable, but I'm willing to give them a shot. I planted a lot of the flower seeds over the weekend. I have saved the zinnia and cosmos and will plant them in a couple of months.

Flower seeds

Veg seeds

I'll store the winter veg seeds in the fridge until fall, as well.

Speaking of storing seeds, I realized that my haphazard method wasn't working. I asked Dad to build me a seed caddy, and he built one for me (that same day) out of California Claro Walnut, a special kind of wood.

It fits perfectly in the fridge!

I know I've said it before, but it sure is great to have a woodworker in the family.

We cleaned out the garage, moved some lumber, and I took some stuff out of storage. The tomato, cucumber, and pepper cages are ready for use next weekend, after I attend the Master Gardener sale. We'll need to make a few more.

I also got the bee hive ready, as the bees will be here in less than two weeks. I took the bars out of storage and put them in the hive, and made simple syrup for the bees to eat as they are building comb and starting to collect nectar. It takes a lot of energy to build comb, and I want to make sure the bees have the calories to do that. Honeybees like a 1:1 ratio in simple syrup (hummingbirds like 1:4, a less sweet concoction).

Bars are in and tools are ready

the bee feeder is ready, just needs a mason jar full of syrup

pretty yellow simple syrup, which will be stored in the fridge until the bees arrive

Flowers continue to pop up in the spring sunshine and heat.

Harlequin flower

Monkey flower

geraniums

another geranium

Plans for this week include: Building the raised beds in the North Garden, ordering and hauling dirt to fill them, buying and planting all tomatoes and peppers, and starting nearly all the summer vegetable seeds. I'll be taking winter veg out of the South Garden and replacing with summer crops. Early April is planting time. I guess Spring 'break' means something other than a break, at least in the garden.