Haricots Nains

Not content simply to intersperse my new dwarf string beans in and around the lettuces, I’ve dug another bed.

This is a small square one and will be getting afternoon shade from the tomatoes. It’s ideal, in other words, for taking up the lettuce slack so I can plant some more beans. The ones harvested very early by the French and wonderfully tasty in salade niçoise. Or on their own.

Digging in this heat is sort of nuts but at least it went quickly.

After working the bike race yesterday morning followed by Italy-Germany, it made for an interesting day.

The World Cup’s nearly over. It always takes a few days to recover from the intensity of the immersion…

Farmers' Market Visit

We don’t end up buying food at the Farmers’ Market very often, since good, organic produce is available at the Coop along with whatever else we need. Today, though, I biked over there after a retirement party to find some bread, some blackberries, and some peaches (the peach tree outside the kitchen window has finished bearing but I’m used to eating them now and wanted some more).

I ran into three people I know, which is normal: Susan of bicycle and Vet Med designer fame; Wave of Commencement fame; and Anita the poet-cum-fiddler, which was great. (I didn’t know Anita had taken up the fiddle.)

And I was asked to fill out a survey about whether the Yolo Master Gardeners should grow a vegetable garden on B Street. do you have a garden? Do you consider yourself a beginner? Oh yes. But now with my lettuces and squashes starting to overflow, I’d have to say I’m hooked.

This is fun! Who knew?

Tomato Flashback

Back in the early 1980s I got a job in the Centre of Latin American Studies at Cambridge University. It was on the top floor of the History Faculty building, one of James Stirling’s better-known flops. It was an L-shaped building with a half pyramid of glass leading up to my office door—single-paned glass, in a part of the world that was damp and cold in winter but whose gardeners could grow prize cucumbers in greenhouses in summer. (Air conditioning was not on anyone’s radar in those days.) We froze in winter but in summer I grew tomatoes outside my office on the south-facing windowsill.

I had no idea what I was doing so I asked one of the library assistants, a great gardener, for help. (The Centre at the time was a hotbed of Marxism and Phil was a Thatcherite, through-and-through; it made for interesting interactions.) Phil suggested a Growbag. This was a bag of peat you simply cut into and planted your tomatoes. Pick off the growth at leaf intersections, he said; tie the plants to canes; and pinch out all growth past the fourth set of flowers.

Tomatoes in this hemisphere seem to be grown much more anarchically. You encourage multiple, out-of-control, growths at leaf intersections. No canes, here: cages. Tame the anarchic beasts. I’ve been told to plant them in VERY deep holes because tomatoes put out deep, deep roots.

Some of my planted tomatoes have their first flowers now. I’ve never done the anarchic thing before, tomato-wise, but Johnny the Beekeeper says it’s really hard to kill tomatoes, especially in this climate…

Artichoke Dreaming

Pica has planted a couple of artichokes in the garden by now, and we’re hoping that they give fruit that is as delicious as what Karen gave us from her community plot the other day.

A Frenzy of Seeds

I put the kettle on this morning and took the remainder of yesterday’s artichokes (thanks, dear Karen!) out to the compost. We had rain yesterday, a late soaking rain that has perked the California poppies up along with everything else.

I’ve pretty much finished the fence around the garden to keep out jackrabbits and bunnies. (It will not work for squirrels and I’ll have to figure that one out; they apparently love tomatoes.)

I looked in, admiring the artichoke plants I’ve almost certainly planted too late in the season.

My heart sank.

There, in a puddle, were a bunch of seed packets. Wet. Well on their way to germination.

I tore open the packets and started spreading them, pell mell, on the moist good soil. Parsley. (Parsley is not a garnish for me, it’s its own food group.) Mesclun. Spring onions. Arugula. Yard-long beans. Sunflowers. Turned around to get a new packet; it was parsley. The parsley I had planted was, in fact, jalapeño chiles.

I am willing to be entertained by what happens in all this…

Digging by Moonlight

So I hurt all over, folks. Hamstrings, glutes, quads. Arms. This evening I went for a swim and I couldn’t straighten my arms out for backstroke…

Reason # 456 to garden: it’s terrific exercise.

It’s hot when the sun’s out now now and digging—double digging one of my raised beds—beyond dusk has the added advantage of a front-row seat (okay, stand) while the egrets take off and go home to be replaced by the night-herons in the flooded alfalfa field next door. It’s a very bad time to be a burrowing rodent around here these days.

I’m hoping to pick up a huge load of used horse bedding from across the street tomorrow and finish preparing the soil of at least one of the beds. I’m also hoping that all this work up front will save me loads later on when I come to put in my winter garden in August.

Rototilling

The saga of the garden continues. Now we’re going to do the plot behind the almond tree which is out of the way of everything including the currently swarming bees, their accumulated detritus, tires, and whatnot. This is getting to be almost comical. It does seem that you can save a lot of money (if not a lot of time) by getting good advice before you start breaking your back with pickaxes.

A friend called me at six this morning from North Carolina (I was already at work) to ask how to address a vice-chancellor in an email. By their first name, said I. Oh, not chancellor so-and-so? Oh no, I don’t think so. But by the way how should I rototill packed-in Davis clay?

Oh, says she, there’s a man who will come with a tractor and do it for you. Look under rototilling in the yellow pages. And, sure enough, there it was. Greg in Dixon. I left him a message.

Either that or spend a lot to rent one which I have to lug over here. Not sure. But I did also go to Project Compost today to find out how to get yards and cubic yards of compost.

I am so, so in danger of becoming a gardening bore…