Holy Crop!

Ahh... I love this time of the year.  That sweet spot straddling spring and summer. The days are noticeably longer but the temps remain pleasant.  The first long weekend after a considerable drought is peeking its head.  The smell of sleepy wood burning stoves are replaced by the scent of barbeque dinners, usually accompanied by the sound of laughter and gatherings, especially on the weekends.  The orchestra of critters are back in the evenings and in the morning, the birds, the birds - you cannot escape them.  It's delightful!



This also means that I have a temporary and much deserved reprieve from all the hard work in the garden!  Except for those that are still too small to be planted outside, 95% of what I've grown from seed is in the ground.  For a brief, impermanent moment, the cold and warm stuff share real estate in the raised bed.  And I have really nothing to do in the garden - except harvest!

The cold crops are getting amazingly huge, like this broccoli here.  The leaves are bigger than my palm! No florets yet, but a voice inside my head keeps saying, "Any day now.. Any day now.."










Meanwhile, I underestimated the peas.  I read online that they don't flower in warm weather.  Well, guess what?  They do.  At least here where it has been getting up to 80's during the day some days but the night temps still hover in the high 40's. I picked three peas today and holy snap!  I didn't realize until today that THAT was how peas were supposed to taste like - sweet and VERY oozy juicy!  What a revelation!

These are the tomatoes I've grown from seed that I transplanted this weekend.  They're protected from the evening chills by these Wall O' Waters and they seem to like that since they've grown up so fast right before my eyes!  (Wall O' Waters is this round plastic contraption that goes around plants.  How it works it has vertical pockets that you fill with water.  It absorbs the heat during the day and releases it at night.  This effectively increases the night temperatures within the wall by maybe 5-10 degrees, give or take.)

And here's more food sleeping together in the same bed.

Spinach and Kale (that I made tonight into pre-dinner kale chips)

Strawberries mixed in with a bunch of lettuce varieties

Garlic - easiest thing to grow EVER!

"Volunteer" thyme from last summer - it dropped seeds in the pot and came back this spring on its own.  No coaxing required!

Pineapple Sage - when it flowers, it attracts hummingbirds!

I've succumbed to the urge to get one more self-watering container.  This City Pickers was on sale at Home Depot for $29 and with a $5 off coupon, I thought it wasn't bad a deal at all.  I really like self-watering containers/sub-irrigation planters because they are literally hassle and worry free.  Especially when gardening in the high desert, I've found that these self-watering containers work well.  I tweaked the potting soil altogether (Kellog's potting mix from Home Depot - never again!).  I made my own mix using high quality organic Black Gold compost, coconut coir, perlite, and Full Circle Compost's Soil Elite.  I have a cucumber, a green bean bush, and a few peppers in that box.  

Growing our food in the yard takes time and energy, yes, no contest.  But it's time well spent knowing that I'm part of the solution to the growing food crisis in the world.  There's a certain reassurance that I am putting the best quality food I can on our table everyday.  The profanity at the table at how everything tastes exponentially better than what we're used to is excusable.  And yes, a sweet bonus.

S'mores-gasm

I think that if I were to eat something with absurdly high caloric and sugar content, then it better count.  On a recent road trip to the northern California Coast, I racked my brain for a deliciously sinful version of s'mores.  I am not a food snob by any means, but I do like it when food tastes as it should - just plain ol' delicious.  A toasted marshmallow slapped on a graham cracker (that could very well be cardboard - it looks like it, too!) and Hershey's milk chocolate somehow doesn't seem like it would eke out a high return in the delicious department.  So I rummaged through the recesses of my brain and came up with this s'mores-gasmic treat - perfect on or off camp!

1.  Instead of layering chocolate on a graham cracker, I thought, hey, why not a chocolate covered biscuit?  My favorite is Petit Ecolier which worked beautifully.

2.  Get the s'mores marshmallows.  They're thinner, flatter, and easier to maneuver when gooey.  Toast on the fire until you think it's ready.

3.   Slap on the chocolate biscuit and top it with a fresh berry.  A ripe, plump strawberry is perfect.

And there you go!  A s'mores-gasmic treat that is well worth those calories!

Road Trip: The Beautiful Northern California Coast

The stark contrast between the northern California coast and the southern one is pretty remarkable.  It was only a couple of weekends ago that The Dutch and I drove the relatively short stretch between Los Angeles and San Diego on Highway 1.  We stopped and had coffee at Huntington Beach where a strong surfing culture is evident.  There was a lot to like.  The infamous California sunshine was wonderful and the people, friendly.

In San Diego, we spent some time frolicking in La Jolla and Pacific Beach.  Although both nice, there was hardly an open spot - either at the beach or the parking lot.  

A couple weekends later, in hot pursuit of spotting migrating gray whales in the more northern side of the Pacific, we went on a road trip with a couple of good friends to camp glamp at a place called Costanoa.  Cradled between the tourist trap touristy Half Moon Bay and Santa Cruz is a peaceful stretch of Highway 1.  It's rather beautiful and untouched.  The highway hugs the coast giving you full, unobstructed views of the rugged, dramatic cliffs of the scenic Nor Cal coast you might have already seen more than once in a magazine or a travel brochure.  

I love it there.

It's has the quaint, quiet charm of an old-fashioned well-behaved beautiful lady.

I love the local farms at almost every turn!  

 

Berry season is in full swing here and I will say this many times in my lifetime, I'm certain, but nothing beats the taste of a plump, fresh, organic, just-picked strawberry. Swanton Berry Farm operates an honor system farm stand.  I LOVE that!  They also have a U-pick and jam tastings.  If you are camping nearby, we accidentally discovered that fresh, perfectly ripe strawberries complete the perfect s'more (which is worthy of an entirely separate post).

And the coastline itself is gorgeous.  We hiked along the coast at the Ano Nuevo State Reserve and although I have been there before, on the same exact trail, no two experiences are ever the same.

Look at all this wildlife waking up!

 

Yes, we came to see the whales, and sure, we spotted a few of them in the wild.  But the highlight of this trip was the gift to witness the inherent beauty of this side of the world, along with the campfire dinner and the amazing company kept.

[STAY]

I have not yet run out of great things to say about Costanoa.  Read about my post about camping at Costanoa in late November here.  The next time, I will be bold and really camp in a tent and sleep on the ground and all that.  It took me a while to ease into it, but now, I cannot even wait to try it!

[PLAY]

Ano Nuevo State Park is across the street and offers limitless hiking and biking opportunities and wildlife viewing.  It is home to a large population of wild elephant seals that you can see (and smell) from a viewing deck that can be reached by a mile or so easy hike.  

Growing Pains: Lessons from the Garden #1

I spent a lot of much needed time in the backyard last weekend; it's so fulfilling to get things done!  I'm very new to this growing-a-garden business and honestly, I've become quite the garden geek lately, it's weird.  But then again I would like to think that I am someone who actually enjoys learning about people and the world and gardening is teaching me so much about nature, science, and the biodynamism of life - by doing!

So I'm going to try to keep a journal of not only the roaring successes, but also of the colossal failures.  After all, it is both that make you learn, right?

1.  If something looks wrong, something IS wrong. 

I am ecstatic about growing a strawberry patch that I even gave them their own exclusive digs.  After being gone for a few days, I came home to a sickly looking patch.  I bought a two year-old plant that I had extremely high hopes for, but the leaves were drying out right before my eyes.  What to do, what to do?!

So here was my process of elimination:

I added drip hoses to the plant.  That wasn't it. 
I watered longer.  That wasn't it.
I mulched that wasn't it. 

I thought to peek under the leaves.  I know I should have done this sooner but this was the least appetizing option (it's funny how we, as humans, sometimes know the solutions to our problems, we are just too afraid to act on it).  So I looked under there and what I saw made me jump, shriek, freak out, and get goosies.  I have tenacity for difficulty, but yes, I'm squeamish when it comes to bugs and little animals.  There were white stuff stuck to the stems of the plant.  I checked the other strawberries and they were there, too!  I checked the lettuce in my Grow Box.  They were THERE, too!  No wonder one out of the six of the lettuce looked stunted compared to the others that were going gangbusters!

Thank goodness for Google and www.growingyourgreens.com, I learned that those things were aphids which are bugs that make like vampires and suck the life out of plants.  They really are easy to control and the easiest way to deal with them is by blasting a hose to dislodge them.  I did exactly that, a few times, actually, and it appeared to work!  Not without casualty, though - the sick lettuce had to be let go.  But the rest all survived their (and mine also) near-death experience.

This is one of the strawberries in recovery after another water blast this morning:

They seem eager to flower and produce.  I just hope they have that latent resiliency!  Nature, work with me!

2.  Accckkk!  Aphids!
The other way I'm organically going to deal with aphids is by using insect frass.  These are byproducts of herbivore insects that actually trigger the auto-immune of plants to activate, therefore, releasing plant antibodies to fight off fatal bugs.  It's pretty cool and I've read about people who swear by it, but what I think is cooler is that some botany geek actually studied it and figured it all out. 

Cedar bark used as mulch supposedly also turns off bugs (the smell of it drives them nuts), and although I have not read about it repelling aphids, I coincidentally mulched my raised bed with cedar bark and that bed was spared 100%.  I have now mulched my Grow Box with cedar and I will see if this does anything.  (I mulched my strawberries with pine bark because they are supposedly high in acidity which strawberries just love.  But that's a different post altogether.)

3.  Mulch Much
Mulching is simply topping your soil with (preferably) organic material like hay, cut grass, pine needles or tree bark to keep the moisture in the soil.  Think whipped cream on scones.  Or flambeed sugar on creme brulee.  With the arid climate in the high desert, I cannot believe this idea never struck me when I tried growing last year.  I mulched with cedar bark (bought at Home Depot for $3.33 for a big bag, which I only used half of for a 4'x4' raised bed) and I have seen a WORLD of a difference only after a week.  The soil is consistently moist, even at high noon, and the veggies look perkier.

4.  Timing is everything.
Cliche', I know.  I'm probably not going to harvest any peas this season because I planted them too late.  I hear that these don't flower when it gets in the upper 70's.  It's already hit 80 this weekend yet, they seem crazy about the weather.  I don't have it in me to yank them out just yet so I'll let them do what they do until they're done doing what they'll do and they will probably end up in my compost pile then.

5.  Patience is a b*tch sometimes.
I've planted lavender seeds a month and a half ago and still no signs of life.  I've planted these tomatoes about the same time and look at them now.

I mean, what the F is up with the lavender?

I stood in line tonight to get a book signed by David Sedaris after a book reading by David Sedaris.  I left after standing in line for ten minutes.  Sometimes, I just don't have that kind of tenacity.

6.  Inertia

And even I need reminding that we  should always see the bright and beautiful side of things and people.  The Dutch keeps me on my toes on that.  Here are THE things that have such an incredible desire to grow.  Can you believe the inertia on this cucumber seed?  It only took two days for this eager beaver to sprout. 

And here are the lettuce I'm growing with the strawberries.  They have sprouted everywhere!

And here are the peas and some parsley (which you probably cant's see) that I've sown in the Grow Box many weeks ago already.  

In the end, life is an amalgamation of good and bad. People are, too.  Perfection does not exist but in imperfection.  I am guilty of glossing over this, more and more lately, but I know if we just take both the good and the bad - aphids, non-sprouters and all - then perhaps, we are closer to happiness.

Out in the Open

My frustration with my busted knee ends here.  Today.  I have gone long enough without any extreme physical activity for seven weeks.  I missed spring skiing and have not gone back to Bikram since.  Salsa dancing?  Have not even touched it with a ten foot pole.  I have gone on an easy snowshoe hike and a little bit of easy urban walking in L.A. and San Diego, but that's the extent of my physical activity the last few weeks.  The weather has been beautiful and I cannot be restrained a day longer.  

I'm done.  

So this week, I hiked a total of ten miles.  

And I'm happy I threw that towel in.  It's beautiful outside!