Dabney Garden Blog

So today I saw this lady in a tank tops and cutoffs carrying a two-year-old wearing only shorts.  Does this adequately illustrate how warm it has been?  We haven’t had days below 70ish, except that one when it rained. 

As a result, the garden’s looking great.  The tree-trimming seems to have made the carrots happy, if nothing else.  I was able to harvest about ten little tomatoes and a few peas today.  These are the first ready peas I’d seen, even though I wrote about seeing a blossom December 22nd. Probably haven’t been looking closely enough.  And as a result, missing tastiness.

Today I saw a cluster of seven honeybees drinking water off a still-wet soaker hose.  

The bean plant(s) near the wall were not looking so happy, and I’d been meaning to pull them out for a while.  I bought a potted rosemary plant with the intent of putting it in the corner when the bean was done-it’s probably the best placement for a perennial bush.  I finally replaced the bean today.  When I pulled it out, I got another double-handful of dried bean pods out of its unreachable depths (and converted them into 1/3 cup of beans).  I also found some sprouting beans, which I replanted near the snow peas.  

I also put some more of Alex’s sprouting onions into the ground, including nine cloves of garlic.  While the garlic may bulb again, the onions should be let to go to seed. They already had 3-6 inch bulbs, and likely won’t improve upon that.

My indoor starter flats are really happy.  I planted them sixteen days ago, and all four types (basil, kohlrabi, oregano, and parsley) are up, in that order.  They certainly follow the light of the desklamp- when I turn them, three hours later they are leaning toward the light again.  We’ll have more herbs for the wall bed when it gets warm for good.  (Who knows, maybe that’s now?)

I bought some little black plastic starter flats, and planted kohlrabi, sweet basil, oregano, and parsley last Thursday (1/15/09).  All of these things purport to take 14-21 days to sprout, and can be kept in the flats for longer if it isn’t warm yet. This should give us a good indoor start on spring planting, since the latter three especially are so cold-intolerant that they’re killed off by temperatures below about 50 degrees.

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.

On a better note, the day I left (12/22/08) the first sweet pea plant had a pretty purple bloom, and one of the squash was starting to get a bud.  Note that these yield dates, even if they bear fruit, will be beyond the expected range for the plant.  Clearly these ranges are calculated for summer growing, and the Theoretical Eating Chart is not so useful for winter plantings.  I’m not sure how to update it for winter usefulness, as even the latter range dates are far too early.

But yeah, we’re going to have veggies, and that’s cool.

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.

It wouldn’t surprise me if it has rained 4 inches in the past three days.  I’ve had the watering system turned off, and the garden seems fine, no puddles or anything even.  The rain is also helping with the mildew problems, washing the spores off the plants and out of the air and such.  The beans are still bearing, and are remarkably crispy due to the rain.  Delicious.

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. 

The major revelation for the weekend is that hose-end-fixers work great, so we can use our cut-up/broken hoses to make patch hoses of appropriate length. These will be less likely to be cut up, and they’ll keep our long hoses out of the fray.  And the place already looks a lot neater, which is important to Caltech if not to us.

Now for the bad news… Some of the tomatoes came down with an aggressive powdery mildew.  Val and I pulled three plants and collected a couple of handfuls of little green tomatoes to pickle.  We pruned and checked the other plants, and they seem to be okay.  Going to need to keep pruning and checking, though. Val asserts, and the internet corroborates, that powdery mildew is a Very Bad Thing for tomatoes.

And now back to your regularly scheduled good news!  Non-science compost is warm, and science compost and upright compost got a coffee infusion.  I’m going to get a little more coffee, and then maybe quit for a while.  (MORE COFFEE THAN YOUR GARDEN HAS ROOM FOR!)

We also planted ten potatoes in that back corner.  See Theoretical Eating Chart.

I’ve got a big list of things that need to get done sooner or later:

• mulch tomatoes and maybe others
• squirrel cage for eggplant
• plant arugula
• weed (always…)
• keep mixing that shitty bit
• look at the long white (crappy) hose– can we make two patch hoses?
• build worm home
• keep checking the tomatoes

Obviously a lot of sooner and a lot of later.  We’ll see how it goes.

Well, almost.  See the updated Fall Planting Map for details.  Val and I put in a row of snow peas and one of kohlrabi this morning, and I planted some daikon along the north-south sides of the bean patch (between the beans; see signs) and one little row within the patch (again, see sign).  We’re planning to put in potatoes and arugula, and to move some more of the squash over to the herb patch.  Prior to planting the peas and kohlrabi, we worked about 40 pounds of coffee grounds into the soil, so hopefully the little plants should be happy.

Our old compost orb is totally hot.  Science compost needs more green. It will receive coffee grounds. 

The new green hose running the automagic watering of the snow peas and kohlrabi belongs to Blacker.  I’m going to buy us another hose, possibly tomorrow, and give it back.  We have at least 4 non-working busted leaky hoses.  Seriously guys, quit mowing the hoses.

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