Dabney Garden Blog

Tree Trimming

So, over MLK weekend, I sent an email to Grounds Manager Delmy Emerson asking whether we could have the two olive trees trimmed to allow more sunlight in the big patch.  Remarkably, the following Wednesday afternoon I happened upon a guy finishing up the job.  Thanks Grounds!  (Unfortunately it hasn’t been sunny any day since, so it’s hard to tell how much better it will be yet.)

Fungicide

I bought a tree oil based fungicide to help out with the powdery mildew problems (neem oil, for those of you keeping score at home).  I refuse to let the squash die of it without a fight.  I have no illusions that a chemical that comes from a tree is necessarily better than one that comes from a lab.  I’m sure it doesn’t qualify as organic, and I can attest that the concentrate is an irritant. (Yeah yeah, the bottle warned me.)  I chose this particular chemical primarily based on the fact that it breaks down quickly in the environment (one to several days) and has low phytotoxicity at use concentrations.  It kills the mildew on contact and ceases to be active after it dries, so I’ve been using it about once a week on the squash, tomatoes, beans, occasionally the lower leaves of the kale.  I have gone to some lengths to avoid spraying anything someone would want to eat.  It seems to be helping.  The tomatoes especially respond well to it– we won’t be pulling up any more of them.

Worm Composting

So, I finished building a worm bin and ordered a pound of worms from the internet at the tremendous cost of $33.  It’s not clear you could do it for any cheaper. I called about 6 local nurseries, but the best offer I got was I could reserve some worms from the next order, three week lag. Sad.  (Note: composting worms are Eisenia foetida, not the same as normal earthworms.  They’re good at living at high population density and eating approximately their own body weight per day of most anything you can throw at them. Earthworms, I’m told, would just die.)  So we should get our worms next Tuesday or Wednesday, and start having them eat things for us.  Between the worms and the regular bins, we should have some nice compost to use for spring plantings.

Fooood!

Since that last week or nine days had consistent temperatures of 80-85 degrees, the tomatoes set a tremendous amount of fruit.  I’ve picked and eaten or distributed at least 10 cute little tomatoes, and there are many more, including a conical heirloom variety, beginning to ripen on the plants. Kristen notes that the tomatoes taste like they were grown in the cold.  I’m interested to see whether we can tell the difference after it gets warm.  Also, it’s really cool that the tomatoes are still doing so well-  we’ll have tomatoes continuously as soon as it gets warm.

There’s also arugula and lettuce growing wild in the yard, presumably seeded from last year’s wall patch. Along with the thriving mustard greens, you can make a pretty solid salad. 

The radishes aren’t large, but we ate a tiny one the other day– very punchy, good flavor.

I think the beans are done; their last gasp yielded about a quarter cup of dry-able beans.  I’m going to pull them out soon, and I’m strongly considering just leaving in the trellising and planting new beans seeds come warm times. Who said gardening had to be hard?

Also, in a few days, we’re going to start having peas.

So this year we planted a lot of things in the late fall.  A number of things did not do so well in the cold, shady garden.  Insects are definitely a problem as well, even in this cold weather.  For the purpose of record keeping, the poorest performers are:

• broccoli (very slow-growing, but also eaten to death by cabbage worms)
• spinach (just veeery slow-growing?)
• lettuce (maybe never sprouted?)
• most of the greens, with the exception of the red mustard and russian kale (sprouted, but slow-growing and some of them eaten to death)

It seems that beets and carrots are doing fine, but are growing extremely slowly.  Notably, there were two rows of carrots planted a week apart, and the earlier ones are very much larger.  Since that week was very warm comparatively, the older ones are far more than a winter week ahead.  I think in general we planted far too late.  Lessons for next year: everything should be in the ground by early October! (If not sooner…)  Our current crops seem as though they will not be mature by the date of a proper spring planting in early to late March in the coming year.

I tend to think that spring planting and summer gardening will be a more satisfying endeavor, with faster-growing, possibly healthier plants.  For example, faster-growing plants should be better able to overcome insects.  

I also think we should have the tree to the west of the main patch trimmed.  I think a few minor branches are making a lot of difference in terms of the plants getting more than a very few hours of sunlight per day.

I also want to start trapping squirrels and taking them off somewhere else, nasty little buggers.  I don’t know what Caltech would think about that, or whether it’s properly legal.  But I’d love to catch them all and put them up in Angeles Nat’l Forest or something.  I’m sure they’d be fine there, and they’d no longer dig the radishes or eat half of each tomato and eggplant.  

Dumb old squirrels.

And since I did check the weather yesterday for the first time in ever, I’ve got everything in a water-tight box or under our tarp except for, I think, a single pair of gloves and freshly-picked up coffee grounds in the wheelbarrow.  I even managed to get the seed beans brought in.  I’m sure we’re going to have to drain the composters when it stops raining, but that’s okay.

Next step: dash out and turn off the watering system. How sustainable is that? (Turning off watering due to rain? Impossible! says Caltech/Pasadena.)

Oh yeah, and I planted the arugula this morning. 

I spoke to Mike Raven yesterday about having a trash can installed on the Dabney balcony, so maybe people won’t throw so much trash into the garden.  I also cleaned up a lot of trash (on the order of a wheelbarrow-full!), including a lot of our own trash and a pile of sun-melted gloves.  It sucks that we have to clean up balcony trash, but this made me realize how much of the fault is ours.  The place is marginally more presentable now.

I’m going to look into getting a water-tight/spider-proof storage box, so we don’t lose anything else to neglect or the coming rainy season.  This would also let us keep work materials in the garden instead of in someone’s room, so they’ll be more accessible.

Tons of people showed up this weekend, and we got some things done– pruned the tomatoes and moved squash out of the allium patch and a strawberry out of the tomatoes.  Also did some mulching around the newly respectable tomato patch.  Val watered the mulch, and it turns out mulch doesn’t absorb water– we had a wheelbarrow full of mulch soup.  Even though the middle layer was dusty. Weird.  

I sprayed the squash with 10% skim milk again, and there is so far no sign of powdery mildew.  However, I’ve noticed that some of the tiny plants often have dirt on their leaves in the morning, so I’m worried that the watering system is spraying them.  (Keeping the leaves dry prevents the mildew spores from sprouting, another good prevention strategy.)

We also attempted to make science compost in a new black orb, using layered browns and greens, old compost for bacteria, and compost starter / helper thing. Most of the green we had today was coffee grounds from Red Door, and it looks like we can get a 13-gallon trashcan full about every two days, if we’re good about picking it up.  It seems that the other two composters are actually going a bit, the original black orb especially.  Also, extensive and energetic turning and removal of sticks and supposedly-compostable CDS cups has made the upright composter a lot happier.  We also pulled out all the egg cartons and tore them up– I’m hoping that more effective surface area will make them break down faster.

We should to get a few things done in the near term:

• Move some more squash plants into the main bean patch
• Plant daikon radishes in the now bean + squash patch
• Trellis the peas– the larger ones are already sending out tendrils
• Plant snow peas, arugula, and potatoes– and anything else we want for a winter crop

The MHF Fund has generously agreed to provide funding for us to purchase a drip irrigation system. Currently, the money was included in a grant to the Caltech Community Garden Project, and they’ll be placing the order for us directly. Stay posted for details.

Delmy Emerson has offered us “a truckload over the course of a few days” of woodchips every now and then. While I appreciate the gesture, I’m rapidly beginning to think we’ll need to scale the composting operation back or else turn the entire backyard into a compost pile! Still, any extra woodchips (or compost for that matter) can be given away via craigslist or Freecycle or, if worst comes to worst, thrown away (compost is better in a landfill than compostables).

Not to mention our mulch problems are solved.

Last night, we cooked an excellent bean dish with the Kentucky Wonders from the garden (we picked tons and there are plenty left, prolific vines those). Seasoned with Sichuanese chili bean paste, scallions and garlic scapes (also from the garden), and stir-fried in peanut oil. ‘Twas delicious.

Pictures speak louder than words. Full resolution photos available from sidebar to right.

The appetizer: homegrown yellow tomatoes with black pepper and mozzerella:


Val stir fries the seasonings


Here are the famous beans themselves!


We topped it off with a few dried Cayennes my parents sent me from their garden back in Michigan. I’d been eating the pieces, but ran into one really hot one and made a dash for some milk:-)

Hi all,

Val and I ordered a trash can to lend to the Red Door Cafe. They will be donating their used coffee grounds to the garden instead of trashing them as they currently do. Coffee grounds make an excellent mulch, fertilizer, and addition to compost. Eric will be setting it up in a few days.

We have also ordered three more composting bins, since our current donation from Carol is nearly full. These will be a nice rolly model.

Additionally, we will, over the next few weeks, be placing compost buckets (they have an airtight seal and odor-absorbing lid) in the Hovse kitchens. If you really don’t want one in your kitchen email Eric and it will not be put there. We don’t have the resources to regularly empty them, however, so it is up to students who use them to take them out when full. There will be signs on them explaining this.

I’ve loaned a few pieces of equipment to Chris Watson for the purpose of starting a garden at 255 S. Hill, and used a bit of our helping other campus groups funding for soil for his project. Housing may be reimbursing us, but I did build in some getting other groups started funds into the proposal.

Rather than sending out emails to this list for status updates, I plan to set up a blog on our UGCS space. When active, it will be at http://www.ugcs.caltech.edu/~garden/. There will be RSS and all that Web 2.0 stuff that makes yuppies drool.

Finally, there are some edibles back there now, tons of pole beans (Val says you can eat them raw now or wait a few weeks and shell them.), tons of kale by the wall, and lots of garlic shoots and green onion greens. More coming soon.

Peace out to the free world,
Alex

If you have some free time and are interested, I could use some help in the garden:

• We have mulch! the bale of straw. If someone could spread it out around plants it would helpwith moisture retention and weed control.
• The compost needs turning. This is awkward at the moment ’cause it’s full of branches
• We have money. MHF approved. I need someone to look into ordering things.

Additionally, I could really use a person or two to watch over things and make sure the plants are getting watered, harvested, etc (and to save enough of each plant for seed next year) over the summer, as I’ll be gone from late June until next year.

Alex