Urban garden work

I don't have a specific topic coming to mind today so I think I'll just show you what is going on around the garden. Maybe you'll learn something, maybe you will know something I don't and offer your expertise, and if nothing else, the garden is always a nice escape.

Yesterday was my first day as an intern for Urban Plantations, and I had a wonderful day. Yael taught me so much, and was just a pleasure to be around in general. I did not take any pictures yesterday but I will. The place looks way more incredible than it did about a week ago.

Cherry Tomato volunteer

One of the things I learned from Yael is that you want to reduce water on your tomatoes when they start to ripen so they don't taste watery when you harvest.

Our 3x 10 foot banner for the market

Other than beginning the internship, my mind is on preparing for our first week at the market. We have all of the marketing materials we need, including this awesome banner that Farmer D designed from a photograph of the incredible sign our friends at Sonny San Diego made us.

I think we are as ready as possible for the market. We hope to have some cucumbers, peppers, tomatoes, and possibly some eggplant for our debut.

The unruly squash plant

This squash in our front garden area just popped up several months ago, I tried to let it live, and help it grow but in the interest of maximizing space and minimizing extra problems with fugal disease, I reluctantly took it out today. It was taking over the garden, and is not the best use of our limited space.

"You should listen to me and Farmer D(ad) more often - we've been telling you to get rid of that thing for months!"

Farmer D was happy when he walked in the door; "Yay! No more squash!"

Bye Kabocha squash!

"Give me a break. These are unlikely to attract rabbits or chipmunks...or birds!"

Roses 

The roses seem to be coming back nicely after I cut them back a month or so ago. They were severely infected with rust mildew. Hopefully the powdered milk solution I am using to control fungus will prevent that from happening again.

Corn fed cat? She thinks not.

We had some things that needed to be harvested, I am trying to wait to have a good showing at the market on Saturday but some things are ready now and won't be good by the time Saturday comes, so I harvested our dinner.

3 cucumber varieties; Space Master, Japanese, and Heirloom Lemon with Roma tomatoes. 

Sunflower

I hope to be the only vendor with raw sunflower seeds for munching at the market but we'll see. We're awhile away yet - maybe a month - or more.

The strawberries are multiplying

Our peak strawberry season was about a month ago. We're still getting berries but the plants want to multiply.  It's a good idea to propagate new plants at this point, or cut the runners off. I am going to get more of these plants to root. The ones I started a couple weeks ago are doing well.

We added a sign to let people know we'll be at the market. 

These are my neighbor's miniature sunflowers, looking glorious.

Passion fruit vine finding its way up 

This Passion fruit vine is behaving perfectly but several others need some training around the frame of our gate. I am going to take Farmer D's advice and use eye screws to create an anchor to tie the vine to. It will look cleaner than wrapping the entire post with our plant tape.

We have lots of beautiful  passion fruit blooms, but little fruit.

One of our Passion fruits but I have no idea when it will be ready. 

In San Diego we are lucky enough to get 2 rounds out of our warm season. Many people across the country are already thinking about getting starts going for their Fall season but in San Diego, you can still start with warm season plants like cucumber, tomato, beans, corn, and peppers, so if you've been wanting to start a garden but haven't yet, you still can. We currently have warm season plants in several stages, from ripe and ready to eat, to almost fruiting, to just barely getting started.

How to plant an EarthBox

Many people who see our garden ask us about our EarthBoxes and how they work, so I thought I would do a demonstration to show you. We like EarthBoxes a lot as they are transportable so we can take advantage of the sun, even when it moves during certain seasons, and the plants we grow in them are usually the most successful plants in our garden. We currently own 13 of these boxes and hope to acquire many more to fill up our rooftop as we are able. These are great for rooftop gardens because they weigh less than raised planter beds, and it's fun to be able to redesign your garden as often as you want, because you can move them  easily.

An EarthBox and its inner workings. 

Last season we had spinach in this box and now we are replanting it with Big Bertha peppers. Before I started, I cleaned the entire EarthBox and all of the components with bleach and water. The black screen keeps the soil a little more than an inch off of the bottom of the box and the tube is used for watering. There is an overflow hole in the front bottom of the box to let you know when you have watered enough, so that is another great benefit to gardening in these boxes; no second guessing about how much to water.

The soil we sanitized for 6 days in brutally hot weather 

There are several options for soil in your EarthBox. We are using the sanitized FoxFarm soil that was in this box before. We are comfortable reusing the soil because the plants that were in it were healthy and showed no sign of disease. EarthBox also has a coconut medium that you can buy with your box which is lighter weight and seems to be working just as well as regular soil.

Packing the corners.

Place soil in the 2 rear corners first and pack it in, this helps the water wick up into the rest of the soil. Then pack your soil into the box on top of the screen, it will take 2 cu. feet of soil to fill the box.

I added some calcium several inches below the top of the box.

Peppers can get blossom end rot when they don't have enough calcium and we learned from experience that FoxFarm soil can be a little calcium deficient so now we add some to the box during planting to try and prevent that problem from the beginning.

Gidget checks to make sure it's up to standard.

After I put the rest of the soil on top of the calcium, I moved the box to where I wanted it. I also realized I was a little short on soil.

My very lovely neighbor.

Luckily my sweet neighbor, friend, and gardening buddy was on her porch so I was able to ask if I could use some of her soil.

Additional soil is needed after the box is full. 

The fertilizer trough

You'll want to make a trough about 2 inches deep. I went down the center on this box because I am putting 4 plants; 2 on each side into this box. If I were only putting 2 plants in, like for tomatoes, I would have made my trough towards the front edge of the box.

E.B. Stone organic tomato and vegetable food

Granular fertilizer spread evenly across the trough

EarthBox sells complete kits including the fertilizer but we like to use our own, especially because this is a replant, and we can simply use what we have on hand. We use 3 cups organic fertilizer and that is the only food the plants will need for the whole season.

Once you put your fertilizer in the trough, you'll build a mound of soil across your fertilizer strip. This is what the extra soil was for.

Then you'll put on the plastic mulch. These are cheapest online from EarthBox, and the more you buy, the less they cost so we buy them in bulk now.

I always cut my own hole for the watering tube because the pre-cut hole never seems to align properly.

4 Big Bertha peppers

Now I cut holes in the mulch that the plants will fit through, and then move the soil aside to create the right size hole to put the root balls in. When I start seeds directly in the box, I will cut a slit all the way across the plastic.

Planting peppers

Once you place your plants in, press firmly all around 

Lifting up the plastic mulch and reaching underneath to secure the soil around the plant  is easiest.

The last step is to simply water the box until water starts coming out the drainage hole. EarthBoxes are an investment up front but ours have lasted for seasons without any problems ,so I am confident we will have them for years to come. Our plants perform very well in them, so we feel the initial investment has, and will continue, to pay off.

Photo of the week

Lemon cucumber (front) and Japanese cucumber (back)

Growing Zucchini

Zucchini is a fun plant to grow and very productive when it's happy, so while it is a very large plant, it pays off in a big way.

"I hate zucchini."

Gidget may not be a fan of zucchini but many home gardeners are. If you have enough space, it is an easy plant to grow. It wants lots of food, especially nitrogen so soil that is rich in compost will get your zucchini off to a good start. Some worm castings added to the top layer of soil would not hurt either.

Baby Golden Bush Zucchini

With a plant that starts off this small, it is hard to believe it will take up 4 feet of space in your garden, but it will. As long as you give the soil plenty of food, give the plant enough space, full sunshine, and then water it regularly, you should have enough zucchini for an army in a little over a month.

Costa Romanesco Zucchini 

After your zucchini plant is established, you will need to check on a daily basis for your fruit. These babies can get to the size of a small car before you know it, and then the fruit is not very good to eat. It does depend on the variety so check your seed packet but generally zucchini is best when harvested between 6 and 8 inches long.

"That's it! Give me some money so I can go buy some real food, like TUNA!" 

Not only is zucchini productive and easy to grow, it a gorgeous plant.

Several fruits on ours got away from us already, one of them was as large as my calf before I found it because it was hiding way in the back of the plant. The leaves are a little prickly so gloves and long sleeves are a good idea when you go to harvest, that way you will comfortably be able to examine the entire underside of the plant for your delicious summer squash before they get too big.

"I am not eating no stinking zucchini!"

Maximizing space for small vegetable gardens, no more corn

It is an exciting time for Gidget's Garden. We have our embossed, legitimate certified producer's certificate in hand, we have our Fictitcious Business Name, which we are publishing, so if anyone has a problem with us operating under the name of Gidget's Garden; now is the time to bring it up. We have our business license, and we are confirmed for the market on July 16th. I will let you know next Friday what we are bringing, it should be a nice variety of things; in extremely small quantities.

Right now is a good time for Gidget's Garden to take a look at herself and evaluate. Farmer D may not know this, but my goal is not to become rich. I am already rich with abundant blessings, even though I probably do not fall into the same socioeconomic bracket that most "rich" people do. Money is not the motivation behind Gidget's Garden.

The goal of Gidget's Garden has evolved and I hope it continues to do so. We started out because we wanted more control over our own food. Then we wanted to grow all of our own produce, and introduce others to the concept of growing their own too. Now we want to share some of our bounty, and get as much food as possible out of our little plot, while continuing to inspire others to do the same.

Mammoth sunflowers and corn 

We wanted to choose organic, non-GMO , and completely raw food without a lot of brain damage or extra expense. The nutritional quality of the general food supply is getting worse by the nano-second. Children in their teenage years cannot identify a bell pepper when shown one. We have too much  hyper-analyzation of every molecule of our food, while the relaxed enjoyment of actual whole food, grown locally, has always shown the best results for our health; both in studies and through anecdotal evidence.

Our large raised garden bed, planted with the idea of maximizing a small space. 

This bed is the direction that we want to head in the future with all of the spaces in our garden. We did the best we could to create a harmonious environment for many plants here and we are having success.We have 3 sugar baby watermelons, 6 Japanese cucumbers, 4 various peppers, 2 eggplants, beans, 3 tomato plants, a Tomatillo, several lemon cucumbers, some onions, some flowers, and even some lettuce all growing in this 3x10 foot bed. The plants are generally very healthy and producing well. This space is large enough to plant food for 2 people in San Diego, if they are willing to eat an extremely seasonal diet. In full sun, San Diego enjoys a year round growing season.  

Cucumbers, beans, lettuce, and tomatoes growing in a section of our 3x10 foot raised garden bed.

We staggered the planting time in order to have a continual harvest throughout the warm growing season. Some of the plants are just starting to take off while others have been providing food for several weeks.

A patch of sunflowers, corn, a kabocha squash volunteer, and cherry tomato volunteer

When we first started gardening, we really liked the idea of growing our own corn. Corn plants are very unique to see growing in a front yard. Corn also presented us some challenges because we do not have enough room to plant enough to self pollinate, so we had to figure out how to pollinate corn ourselves. Corn is fun to grow and it is a tasty food to eat, especially for those of us that are reminded of long, careless, summer days when we bite into a fresh piece of sweet corn. Now we are starting to reevaluate the value of this crop for Gidget's Garden, and our community.

Corn is one of, if not the absolute worst crop from a political standpoint, but that could be a whole book if you got me going. Some of  the problems have to do with massive genetic modification of the crop, which is potentially the cause of many diseases in today's world. Many farmers in Mexico, and other parts of the world have lost their entire livelihood because we have undercut their traditional maize so much, they can no longer afford to grow it. The majority of the animals we are supposed to eat are force fed corn, even though it is not at all their natural diet, and it is making them extremely sick. Now cows get most of the antibiotic sold in the country and they are creating way more methane gas than they would on a natural diet of grass. The issue of us using corn to fuel our vehicles while babies in other parts of the world starve to death is a whole other subject for debate. All of this corn manipulation is happening with our tax dollars, and it all makes corn a serious subject. I am growing my own because I like corn, and I don't want to contribute to any of the above madness by actually buying it. 

If you add the political factors to the fact that it takes a lot of room to grow a small amount, corn is of little nutritional value, and Gidget will never have enough to sell at market, so our neighbors will not benefit from us growing this crop locally, it makes sense to banish it from our crop rotation.  The space we are using to grow corn in is almost as large as the wonderful, diversified, raised bed we showed you earlier.

Corn in EarthBox on roof. Some of the last corn you will see in Gidget's Garden.

We even have some corn growing on the roof because who grows corn on their roof? I could not resist; corn is fun, especially in an EarthBox, on the roof. But, as fun as it is, corn does not make sense for Gidget's Garden in the future. The political problems associated with it are just too great, and the space needed to produce it is also too great a sacrifice for our goals. We want to bring people local food that is grown organically, and more importantly, help them find the best route to grow their own. We don't have enough room to grow corn and meet those goals.

We do not fault anyone who chooses to grow their own corn because homegrown corn is incredible, and corn is an important and historical crop. Homegrown is certainly the best way to enjoy it.. We are going to live without it in the future in favor of crops that are more beneficial for our home and our community.

Squash (Kabocha) that just popped up and I allowed to stay

In the future I will not keep the random plants that pop up in random places throughout the garden either. This Kabocha squash was fun and I did get a couple of good  fruits off of it but now it is suffering with severe fungal disease and taking over our precious, limited garden space. The space in our garden is so limited that in order to meet our goal growing all of our own produce, and of helping our neighborhood eat local, we will have to plan every inch of space in advance, and pull things that just pop up on their own. 

Gidget says; "Oh my gosh, I seriously have to tell you people everything! If you would have just listened, I could have told you corn was not worth the space in my garden!"