31 March 09

Bolting

turnips and cauliflour The cabbages, turnips, arugula, and all other crucifers in the garden are blooming, turning bitter as you watch. I picked the last two cauliflowers and most of the turnips.

It’s too early to plant summer veggies but not by much, and I have a lot to do before then. Trouble is, a nice big fat shipment of yarn came in, and the birds are on their way too.

And I’ve started making my Depression Sketchbook. It’s not very depressing, though…

Posted by at 09:09 PM in Gardening | Link | Comment

8 March 09

The Accidental Turnips

Kohlrabi and purple-topped turnip I dropped a packet of seeds in the fall in the space between the beds. I tried to pick them up but it doesn’t always work and I forgot about them.

In November there was a fine clump of green things where I’d dropped the seeds. I dug them up and put them next to some chard. I had forgotten what they were. All I knew was they were a crucifer.

Purple-top turnips, it turns out. Into tonight’s soup, along with some tomatoes and basil from the freezer, this splendid kohlrabi, some butternut squash (these are getting a little off by now; better eat them up), and white beans.

Soup Sundays: my favorite.

Posted by at 05:35 PM in Gardening | Link | Comment [8]

16 December 08

Volunteer Potatoes

Volunteer potatoes Pica dug these potatoes up today from her vegetable garden after the above-ground bit got killed by a recent frost. She didn’t plant these; they grew from bits left in the ground from previous generations of potatoes. I sketched these using Graphitints in a blank-book-of-mine-turned-journal.

Posted by at 10:11 PM in Design Arts | Link | Comment

18 November 08

Ravelling

Oh no.

In other news, the warm weather we’re having is giving me lots of hope for the yellow beet seeds I put in on Sunday. I have no such hope for the carrot seeds I put in at the same time. Carrots are a bust. I found what grew out of the packet of seeds I dropped sometime over the summer — arugula? — and have put it next to the beet hopefuls.

Tomato puree with food mill We have bought a food mill and put a hopperful of cherry tomatoes through it. What emerged was pulp from one bit and seeds and skins from another. I made a slow-cooked tomato sauce, started in the solar cooker and reduced down on the stove. Yum.

Posted by at 10:06 PM in Knitting | Link | Comment [3]

21 September 08

New Technologies In Food Storage

Butternut squashes in the dog crate We are overrun in butternut squashes. I haven’t been studying Sharon Astyk’s posts on food storage very assiduously, but keeping the squashes in a dog crate we have lying around seems like a good idea.

Posted by at 08:27 PM in Sustainability | Link | Comment [2]

27 August 08

Amaranth in Bloom

Amaranth in bloom The mystery plant which Ron correctly identified as as an amaranth is now blooming, thanks in part to the alfalfa field recently being flood irrigated.

Meanwhile, Pica’s solar garden cooking has been highlighted on the blog Veggie Meal Plans: she has a guest post for a recipe for aduki bean and quinoa stew cooked in a solar oven here.

Posted by at 11:22 PM in Gardening | Link | Comment

29 July 08

Mystery Plant

Mystery plant This plant recently sprouted and grew quickly in one of Pica’s garden plots, which has since been heavily mulched. If anybody has any idea what it is, do let us know.

Posted by at 10:17 PM in Gardening | Link | Comment [4]

13 June 08

A Sort of Typical Morning or How to Embrace Your Inner ADD

Encouraged by the positive slant given to Attention Deficit Disorder pottering by Monty Don in Giles Wilson’s recent article at BBC online, I submit my own example from this morning. Note: times are approximate. Feel free to try your own.

3:00 am. Wake up. Decide it’s way too early to get up no matter what.
3:15 am. On the other hand, it’d be great to get a sketchbook made for our upcoming short trip to the Sierra.
3:30 am. It would be a pamphlet stitch with gray Canson paper outside, slightly larger than the text pages. Stitch: royal blue waxed linen (I don’t have any linen this color, would have to get some at the bead store). Text pages could be the Sundance Felt I already have, trimmed and folded, though Arches Hot Press would be great too. Except then I’d have to buy some, trim, and fold it. What time does the Bookstore open?
3:35 am. Not for a few hours at least, you dork.
3:36 am. Charlie can tell I’m awake and jumps on my belly. I have a full bladder. Okay. I’m getting up to bind this sketchbook.
3:45 am. Now I’m really getting up.
3:46 am. I gather up pillow cases on the pillows I can reach in the dark (that aren’t under Numenius’ head, at least) to throw in the laundry. I close the door behind me and turn on the washing machine.
3:47 am. I give the cats each a scoop of food and get the kettle on; wash their water bowls and fill with water. Thank God I washed out that bottle yesterday, the water was starting to taste disgusting.
3:48 am. Open the laptop, login on my side, start the dial-up connection. (We have no broadband at home.) Check email (there isn’t much; is there a problem?). Notice a reference to an article in Guardian Women by none other than the stupendous Natalie d’Arbeloff, blogger and God-interviewer extraordinaire. Read the article, a beguiling invitation to older women to Just Say No To Bingo and start blogging. Send her a congratulatory email.
4:20 am. Brush cats, both of whom are shedding outlandishly with the heat, producing jumbo turd-like hairballs. Hear the kingbirds singing already. I should draw one today when it gets light; lots of time to draw this morning.
4:25 am. Notice a book list on the counter given to me by a friend who teaches Comp Lit here. I really should read something grownup so when the next person asks me what I’ve read lately, I can say something other than Harry Potter. (I did finish Obama’s Dreams From My Father this week, though not without incurring an overdue library fine. That does qualify, though. Recommended.)
4:30-5:00 am. Read news, check Kos, to which I’ve developed a disturbing re-addiction, given that it’s an election year, do the rounds (this and this and this and most hilariously, this ). Yes. It really is only 5:00 o’clock.
5:00 am. Sweep patio of mulberries that have blown down in the fierce winds in order to hang laundry without tracking mulberries inside. Decide to hang laundry.
5:15 am. Before I get the laundry, I’ll just check on the garden; it’s light enough to see now.
5:20 am. It’s going to be hot today. I’d better mulch. Wish I’d bought mulch the other day. Oh well. I’ll just pile manure on instead, taking care to avoid the basil and parsley.
5:20-5:40 am. Pile on said manure.
5:45 am. Go to turn on hose but instead pick up two tomato cages left outside the front door by the landlady. Let the cats out.
6:10 am. Finish staking two tomato plants to which I’ve added some of the dried vetch for mulch. Realize the 2 bush tomatoes need to be staked too. Pull out one steel frame and reposition, rearranging the triffids volunteer grapevines in the process.
6:25 am. Turn on hose. Water beans, basil shoots, all the squashes, the miraculously surviving potatoes, lettuces, radishes. Water myself copiously (there are three major, and about five minor, leaks in this hose that is “lifetime guaranteed” — if they lasted even a bloody year, I’d be ecstatic). Avoid the tomatoes, whose watering day is Sunday.
6:45 am Check the cats are still in view (they are; both on the field, on gopher patrol). On the way to turn off the water, notice my irrigation barrier needs more dirt. (They have mowed the alfalfa and will be flooding the field within a week; I want some of that water!) Get the shovel and distribute gopher-tunnellings onto my barrier. Turn off water.
6:55 am. Notice only one cat. Damn.
6:56 am. Get Charlie inside.
7:01. Still no Diego. Wake Numenius. Diego turns out to be hiding in the garden, making google eyes.
7:06 Give Numenius a bear hug for finding Diego and as a quick “I’m sorry to get you up so early,” hoping he doesn’t think it’s way TOO early. This is a forlorn hope. It is, for him, WAY too early. (If he does this exercise, and I hope he will, it will be set at night.)
7:07. Finally hang laundry, ignoring the mulberries I missed in the dark. Tracked in they will be.
7:20. Make shopping list. It includes bread, cheese, a hose (lifetime guaranteed) and some mulch. Also some canola oil which I have run out of in traps for earwigs, which do, it turns out, seem to be working, though I never find earwigs in them (the crows, magpies, or mockingbirds are helping themselves, I think).
7:25. Decide to take a shower, which I announce to Numenius.
7:25. On the other hand, I say, wasn’t I going to make a sketchbook?
7:25. Burst out laughing.
7:25. Decide to write this down before it gets swept away in the random ADD potterings of the next five minutes.

I still haven’t taken a shower, eaten breakfast, drawn a bird, or made a sketchbook, despite having been up for nearly four hours. But I do have a blog post ready for tonight, so I feel like I’m ahead.

Posted by at 06:55 PM in Gardening | Link | Comment [6]

8 June 08

Gardens Of The Rock

Nobody expects to find gardens when making a visit to Alcatraz Island. Yet the varied inhabitants of the island, starting with the military personnel when it became a fort in 1853, and then the prison officers and their families living on the island between 1934 and 1963 brought plants over to try to civilize the island. These gardens fell into neglect, until in 2003 the Garden Conservancy started restoring them in collaboration with the Golden Gate National Recreation Area.

Yesterday the island was quite crowded, a fine sunny day on San Francisco Bay, and well into the tourist season. (Alcatraz gets about 1.3 million visitors annually.) This is the season when the western gulls take over all bits of plant life — I think there are about 1500 nesting pairs on the island. And on the western slope of the island there is some fairly lush growth that hosts many nesting black-crowned night herons and snowy egrets.

Here are some historical photos of the gardens of Alcatraz.

Posted by at 11:04 PM in Gardening | Link | Comment

1 June 08

Replantings

I lost many tomato plants in our freak freeze in April. I put in the remainders. They seem to be making it, as do many of the squashes.

But the beans: oh, the earwigs. (And pocket gophers.) The last one of the large Christmas beans was gone this morning, nibbled to death from above and below.

I’ve set out some tubs with oil and water, caught a bunch overnight, but the damage was done. I’ve redug the bean bed and lined it, quickly, against the gophers. I had six different varieties of beans planted; we’re down to three, one of which is simply a volunteer from last year and has a spectacular bright red flower, mostly ornamental.

To make up for all this loss I went and bought three new tomato plants today and flung carrot and radish seeds among the new bean bed: an act of defiance that will I’m sure come back to bite me somewhere, sometime. (Hoping that a teepee of beans will provide enough shade for these winter veggies.) More defiantly, I’m soaking flageolet beans and purple bush beans I intend to put into the parsnip/arugula bed, which is already rodent-lined. (The parsnips have proved remarkably impervious to any pests, but the spray I made with their leaves/peels has not done much to deter earwigs around the beans…)

Carrots Love Tomatoes, says author Louise Riotte. Sure. But they have different watering needs, different growing seasons. I’m encouraged to plant celery in among the beans. Hmm. Not here, not in summer, I don’t think.

Dear gardening gods, have pity… Otherwise, can someone recommend a gardening therapist??

Postscript: I just saw this. I think it’s the answer to everything. Potter away, everyone…

Posted by at 07:47 PM in Gardening | Link | Comment [6]

Previous Next