Monday, June 6, 2011

Welcome to Gidget's Garden

Gidget is a cat. She owns a garden in Golden Hill, San Diego, California. Being a cat, she is unable to do much around the garden, other than hunt bugs, climb trees, strut her stuff, and enjoy the beautiful weather.

Gidget hard at work
I'm Crystal and my husband is Farmer D. We are the caretakers of Gidget's Garden. We also get a little help from our friends and neighbors. I am an apartment manager, turned marketing director, turned nutritionist, turned urban farmer. Farmer D is also known as The Geek.

I hope to share with you, our passion about food, about growing your own, and about why you should. We want to inspire you, your family, your neighbors, your workplace, and your apartment building to start growing something valuable, like food, in all the places we have earth available to do so. We believe it could save the planet, well I do anyway.

We have only been growing for just over a year in our front yard.

Gidget's Garden April 2010

Gidget's Garden June 2011

We are not experts by any means, but we are passionate, we're learning a lot, and we would love to share our gardening adventure with you. I hope to see lots of edible gardens like ours popping up in every urban area across America.

Ours started with an avocado tree, one EarthBox, and a desire for healthy food. We're currently growing in many different mediums. We have several raised beds, 13 EarthBoxes, many containers of various sizes, and we even grow the old-fashioned way; right in the dirt in our yard.

We're on an urban street and our property runs north-south so sun can be a challenge to our otherwise year round growing season. We lose a lot of sun in the front garden during the fall and winter months so we've also started growing on top of our flat-roofed garage. We made sure to support the garage from the underside before putting anything up there. We started with a 10x10 foot area up there but we plan to expand it soon.

Container Garden Fence

The container garden "fence" around the avocado tree serves a dual purpose; it helps us contain the leaves to mulch around the tree, which helps keep the tree happy and productive, and it keeps the dogs from digging in that area when we're not looking. Also notice the PVC frame, it's wrapped in several layers of bird netting which goes over the raised bed in the back yard to keep the animals out of our food.

Fleck; our inspiration for building a barrier around the avocado tree.
Last year's avocado harvest

Our Rooftop Garden with 2 planter boxes and 6 EarthBoxes for now.

Nutritionally corn doesn't score very highly, but it sure is fun to grow, especially in an EarthBox  on top of your roof. More on how to ensure beautiful ears of corn in an upcoming post.

Another view of the front garden. The frame and trellis are attached to a 3x10 foot raised bed. The trellis is to support the cucumbers, beans, and other climbing crops. The idea is that the back 3rd of the bed will go vertical - up the trellis.  
Mammoth Sunflowers, Corn, and a mystery squash plant that volunteered  in the ground in the front garden, next to our smaller  3x4 foot raised bed. The planter boxes are constructed of  2x12 untreated lumber. They will last at least 5 years before they need to be replaced.


Mrrrwow
That concludes our initial tour of Gidget's Garden so we're signing off now but we hope you'll come back for future posts as we share our trials, triumphs, tips, tricks, and passion for growing our own food. 



9 comments:

  1. I "LOVE" Gidget's Garden! They have been an inspiration to start my own garden! Now granted I live in the apt next door and can only grow in pots for the time being, but I have learned a lot from Crystal and Farmer D! Thanks Crystal! You're the best!

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  2. Thank you Maria! So happy you're our neighbor.

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  3. Wow! Your avocado harvest is amazing! I would love to get your input on avocado trees - we've heard many different things: some trees don't produce fruit, need male/female trees in similar locations, etc. What can you recommend? How long before your tree(s) produced fruit? Thank you!

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  4. Hi Dana,
    Thank you! Our avocado tree has most likely been here since the 60's. We don't even know what variety we have.

    I have learned that you won't know whether a tree started from seed will produce until it's 7 years old and then there is no telling what variety it will be, it's likely it won't be the variety you planted.

    In order to ensure a tree that produces and to know what you're getting, you need to buy a tree that has been grafted. Grafting is when they take a branch from one tree (the one you want to produce) and fuse it onto another. I don't have any experience with that but I would like to because I would like to preserve this particular type of avocado. No one has ever seen one like it, they're really remarkable. We don't have room for another avocado tree though.

    There does need to be another tree nearby but chances are there is, avocados trees are common all over San Diego.

    Thanks for following Gidget's Garden.

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  5. Gidget's Garden with Fleck Freijole as THE Digger...
    Well we already voted it as "Best Garden in San Diego and the rest of California"

    Enjoy Life
    Yvonne & Herman

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  6. Crystal,

    You already know how much I love your glorious, magical garden! I've been loving all of your pictures and posts on FB, and now I'm just in love with your blog! It's the perfect way to share your gorgeous garden and your passion for healthy food with the world! You're such an inspiration, just like Lydia Grace, and I'm eagerly looking forward to following your garden adventures right here on Gidget's Garden! I love, love, love it!

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