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Pepinos
They look like white eggplants There is an unusual plant in my garden, one that I mistook for a white eggplant. Indeed, it is from the same Solanum family as eggplant, potatoes and tomatoes. The plant right now is small and has dark, shiny attractive leaves and flowers that remind you of eggplants. Then there are the egg-shaped and larger than egg-sized white fruit, which have purple striping. The plant arrived in my garden via Roger Boddaert, the landscape architect who has been working on my property, and there was no name on it. My daughter and I speculated on what the plant could be. A couple of years ago when we were traveling in Ecuador, we were usually served fruit with a sugar syrup for dessert. One of the fruits served was called a Tree Tomato. It was a local treat. It was one of the most god-awful things I’d ever put in my mouth. Thin, red bitter skin filled entirely with small hard seeds and sour pulp, it was everything we could do to eat enough of it to be polite. In our research for what this plant was, the Tree Tomato came into mind and we were apprehensive that we were now the owners of a white version of this disgusting fruit.
We were wonderfully incorrect! The plant in our yard is called pepino, or Solanum muricatum, or pepino melon, or sweet pepino, it is a South American shrubby plant with incredible sweet fruit. It is a relative of the Tree Tomato, and that only goes to show how different members of the same family tree can be! The fruit as it ripens doesn’t become particularly soft; in fact, when it wrinkles it is overripe. The fragrance of the uncut fruit is marvelous. When you open the fruit it has a small center of easily scooped small seeds, and flesh that isn’t too soft or too crunch and has a taste of a ripe melon with a hint of fresh cucumber.
A pleasant fruit with an exotic taste and fragrance The scent is intoxicating, and reminded one friend I showed it to of some elusive childhood fragrance. The perfume is even better than the fruit, but the fruit is wonderful cut up in a fruit salad. The bush itself is attractive, especially with the egg-like fruit dangling from it.
This small bush can grow up to seven feet tall Although pepinos are new to me (I’m always amazed at how many things I don’t know about, even with reading about five books a week and keeping my eyes and ears open in life), they’ve been in San Diego since the late 1800s, and are often grown in greenhouses. They’ve been eaten in the Andes, Ecuador, Peru and Chili from whence they came for so long as to appear in some artwork. If you have a spot in your yard for an unusual and highly satisfactory fruit, look for pepino. The fragrance of the fruit alone is worth it!
- Gardening adventures, Other Insects, Permaculture and Edible Forest Gardening Adventures, Rain Catching, Vegan, Vegetables
Beginning an Edible Forest Garden
Pumpkins by the chickens An edible forest garden is a mode of growing that mimicks the relationships between plants in a forest, while substituting food producing plants for humans. To achieve this, you have to examine what plants grow in forests near you. Here in San Diego County, we have chapparal communities, along with some pine and oak forests in the mountains. I cannot replicate a forest such as found in, say, Olympia, because we have completely different climates, soils, and plant interrelationships. Even for people who live in deserts, you can examine what once was there before the area was a desert, or what plants are in a nearby oasis if you have one. I’d substitute plants for more desirable ones, such as lemonade berry for its cousin poison oak. Plants should provide canopy, groundcover, mulch, nitrogen-fixing, and insect attracting. After these plant guilds mature they will provide fertilizer and moisture for themselves.
However, most of us are far away from this type of gardening, or just don’t want to go that far. Integrating your ornamentals with food plants, though, is not radical anymore and entirely practical. Any nook in your yard can be a place for food producing plants. Too many squash or tomatoes? Take them to a local food pantry.
Melons by a dead lime tree trellis 
A single Cinderella pumpkin vine under an apricot 
Zucchinis make lush bushes 
Watermelons suppressing weeds Tomatoes are a vining plant which will use any upright structure on which to climb.
Can you see the tomato plant? (Its up the palm trunk) Is your produce sprouting in the house? Try planting it instead of composting. Onions make particularly pretty plants with flowers that attract pollinators and hummingbirds. You may collect the seed from them as well. If the produce doesn’t survive, its okay: you’ve just buried compost.
Plant sprouting produce for ornamentals and to gather seed Sweet potatoes are perennial plants that produce swollen rhyzomes rather than swollen roots as other potatoes do. Plant them where you can dig up some of the roots but leave the main plant to thrive for years, depending on your climate. Their leaves are beautiful, and the plants are often sold as ornamentals.
Sweet potatoes have beautiful leaves Herbs in the shrubs, strawberries in the flowers, and melon and squash under the trees all make for a beautiful edible landscape that will provide food, compost, mulch and habitat while you study up for your edible forest garden.
Strawberries with yarrow 
Apple mint attracts pollinators and is good on fruit 
Passionvines are a host plant for Gulf Fritillary butterflies 
Hops are vigorous, tall vines for brewing and sleep pillows 
Grapes will hide a chain link fence - Gardening adventures, Heirloom Plants, Permaculture and Edible Forest Gardening Adventures, Vegan, Vegetables, Vegetarian
Scarlet Runner Beans, A Perennial Bean for Food and Beauty
Scarlet Runner Bean Seeds Scarlet runner beans (Phaseolus coccineus) are beautiful plants that are easy to grow, and are often grown just for their red flowers.
Use taller stakes than I did! A trellis or 8-10′ pole is necessary because the vines wind their way up high.
Eat green beans when small They produce a broad bean that can be eaten very young when green, or allowed to dry and the seeds harvested for storing and cooking later.
Shell the pods to store in a dark, cool place The seeds are a spectacular purple and black, making this whole plant ornamental. Cook the seeds before eating them.
Beautiful purple and black seeds The entire plant is also edible, including the starchy roots. The flowers and young tendrils dress up a salad. Although the vine will die down for the winter, the roots will live on in areas where they won’t receive heavy frost. They are native to many places in South America and have been harvested for hundreds of years. This is a perennial bean which will live about six years with care. It is also a nitrogen-fixer, which is excellent for your soil. How fantastic is that?
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Candying Kumquats
An army of kumquat halves We have two small but prolific kumquat trees. Kumquats are very small citrus that are tart and sweet at the same time, and you eat the skin and all whole. Kind of scary. Not wanting to waste food, my daughter picked a whole batch of them and was determined to juice them. And she did, one tiny half at a time! There was about half a cup of juice in all, which she froze in plastic butter molds for future use in drinks, etc.
De-pithed kumquat shells Then we had all these little half shells, so she carefully scraped the pith out of all of them and candied them. The idea was to make little candied shells in which we’d put little scoops of vanilla ice cream, lemon sherbet, or something yum. We tried a couple with homemade vanilla ice cream, and it was worth all the work.
Cooking kumquats in simple syrup The kumquats needed to dry round, like little bowls, so I picked some more kumquats (yes, there are still more!), halved them and used them as molds for the shells, which were put onto the halves like little hats.
Using kumquat halves as molds for shells All the split ones were set aside, and then everything was sugared and dried. Several years ago we candied orange and lemon peel and I pulled some out of the bags now and then for use in baked goods. Now we have candied kumquat peels and shells.
Sugaring the peels and letting them dry But we still had all those kumquat halves that we’d used as molds. We also had half a saucepan of simple syrup in which the kumquats had been cooked. So, not wanting to waste, we put the kumquat halves into the syrup and boiled it again until the halves were candied and then I put them in jars and sealed them. I’m not sure what I’m going to do with them, but they can be used to decorate desserts.
Candied kumquat preserves in syrup I also had another ginger beer recipe that called for slicing the ginger, cooking the slices in a sugar and water mixture until reduced, then using the liquid as a base for a ginger drink. The slices could then be sugared and dried and eaten. I keep candied ginger from Trader Joe’s in the car to snack on, because ginger helps with car sickness or an upset stomach. These homemade ginger slices were quite hot, so I think I’ll save them to use in cakes and pies instead.
Stored candied kumquat shells and peels So it was a day of sugaring, preserving and messing about in the kitchen. We now have seven quarts of pickles, a couple of bags of dried kale that is not only good to munch on, but great to crumble over rice or noodles, jars of candied kumquats, a jar of sugared kumquat peel, a bag of candied ginger slices, some miscellaneous jam, and lots of zucchini with more to come!
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The Importance of Leaving a Mess
Animal tunnels through a brush pile A clean yard is usually a pleasing sight. Picking up loose boards, plywood, sticks and logs keeps people from tripping, is encouraged by the fire department to reduce fuel for fires, and makes for more room to walk. Also, things live under debris and we’ve always been told to not poke our fingers into dark places (excellent advice! If a giant stuck his huge finger into our bedroom window we’d try to hurt it to make it go away, too!), and by eliminating so-called debris we reduce the chance of bites by snakes, spiders, or whatever bitey things may be living in your part of the world.
However, by reducing the debris, we also reduce habitat. Those bitey creatures need a place to live, as do the non-bitey creatures we are also displacing by removing wood. All these creatures are part of the intensely woven food web that keeps our planet populated and working. I cannot disagree about making your yard safe for children and pets, but if you have a space, make an area for habitat, too. Rope off a corner of your yard and tell your children and pets not to go into there, and leave bundles of sticks, pieces of plywood, old logs, piles of leaves, etc. in that corner. This is a home for the wild things, and your children can understand, observe and respect the fact that the world should not be made clean for them. Teach your children not to hunt and catch wild things, not to tear apart nests and destroy habitat. Observe and wonder instead.
In my yard, especially since I’ve had some sheds removed (in which racoons, wasps and possums raised families… I’m hoping to make a new place for them), I have stacks of plywood and old buidling materials which are good for recycling back into projects around my house. A junkheap, yes; a goldmine, yep. Under these stacks I have found such wonderful creatures that I didn’t even know came into my yard (perhaps they didn’t until the wood was left out).
The most exciting creature was a female Western pond turtle.
Female Western Pond Turtle In Washington, the Western pond turtles are endangered, and they are considered threatened in Oregon and are becoming rare in California and Baja California. Besides loss of habitat and an increase in pollution, one of the major factors in our native turtle’s slow demise is the release of non-native aggressive species such as the red-eared slider turtles. Red-eared sliders are America’s favorite pet turtle although they are native to the Southern United States. Due to releases they are everywhere. DO NOT RELEASE YOUR PET INTO THE WILD! As much harm has been done by and to domestic animals and wild animals by the releasing of pets as by habitat loss. A number of years ago there was a salmonella scare allegedly traced to pet turtles. The public’s response was to dump their children’s turtles in any waterway close by. Red-eared sliders have a distinctive red line by their eyes, and are named sliders because that family of semi-aquatic turtle can slide into the water quickly. They are omnivorous, aggressive, adaptable and become large. They eat anything that they can fit into their mouths, including the less aggressive smaller Western pond turtles.
Females have flat plasterons; notice her left stumpy leg. Finding a female Western pond turtle in the yard was fantastic, and I can only surmise that she had made her way up from the shallow streambed below the property to hopefully lay eggs. I haven’t found signs of a disturbed area yet where she may have layed, but am keeping the whole area protected just in case.
Long tails She is missing one front foot, probably bitten off while a youngster when something was trying to eat her. Before we knew she was a she, we thought of giving him a piratey name due to the missing foot and her semi-aquatic nature. Captain Blood was too fierce, but the author of that and other swashbuckling tales which had been made into movies is Raphael Sabatini. Now that is a terrific name. Go ahead and say it to yourself. See? So he became Raphael Sabatini until we checked her plasteron (the underside of her shell) and realized that it was flat not concave, which meant that she was a female. Males need concave plasterons so that when they are, um, amorous, they don’t fall off so easily. So she became Mrs. Sabatini. Long story… sorry. Nothing simple in my life. Anyway, we checked out Mrs. Sabatini’s health, and then released her into our small upper pond, which has an excess of mosquito fish and bugs, so that she wouldn’t be hurt with all the work that is being done down where she was found. We haven’t seen her since, so hopefully she is healthy and happy.
Good-bye Mrs. Sabatini! Under another piece of plywood I’ve found blue-tailed skinks (I couldn’t take a photo because they move too quickly), California Slender Salamanders,
California Slender Salamander gopher snakes, king snakes,
California Kingsnake and Pacific chorus frogs.
In a brush pile there are many birds hopping through, especially California towhees, Western fence lizards, alligator lizards, tree rats, mice and many other creatures.
In the ground are insects that you’d never expect. For instance while weeding one of my heirloom bulb beds I disturbed this huge caterpiller that had a horn tail.
White-lined Sphinx Moth Caterpiller The only horn tails that I’m familiar with are the tomato hornworms, but this guy was far away from my veggie patch, and instead of stripes had spots. We looked him up, and he is the caterpiller form of the White-Lined Sphinx Moth, also known as the hummingbird moth because of the way it hovers in front of night-blooming flowers to drink nectar. It is one of the important nighttime pollinators which few ever see. We put him back and left some weeds in for him.
Of course mason bees, among other pollinators, use holes in wood in which to nest. Some bumblebees nest in abandoned gopher holes, and they are the natural pollinators of many native North American plants such as blueberries (honeybees were imported from Europe with white settlers; until then native plants developed their flowers to attract and accomidate bumblebees, wasps, and hundreds of other native insects.)
All around my property there are logs and brush piles, and plywood layed down to choke out weeds in my veggie garden. Underneath there is a world of habitat. Isolated refuges for animals and insects who desperately need places to feel safe. So go ahead, throw down some mulch, some logs, a pile of sticks or some plywood. Know that you are doing the Earth a favor.
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Ladybugs
Insect Egg Cluster on Parsnips My daughter’s eagle eyes spotted a cluster of insect eggs on the underside of our parsnip leaves. Many moths and butterflies are laying their eggs right now, so seeing a little white pearl glued to the underside of a leaf isn’t strange.
Unknown Butterfly Egg The parsnips in question are late in the garden; they’ve been in the ground for a while and don’t like the heat so they are stressed. Just as we become sick when stressed, so do plants, and the parsnips are under attack by aphids and ants. Ants feed off of the sticky excretions of the aphids, so they have become ranchers. Ants cultivate herds of aphids on stressed plants, grooming them and collecting their, um, poo. So trying to put that image out of your head, if you see a lot of ants on a plant, expect aphids to be there also. Aphids have rasping, sucking mouthparts that they use to eat away at a plant and suck the vital juices out of it. Sorry, there is another image that you probably don’t want. How to get rid of aphids? The natural way would be to make sure your plants aren’t stressed, and allow ladybugs to flourish in your garden.
So what would you do if you saw THIS in your garden?
Ladybug Larvae Eating Aphids Run screaming? Hit it with a trowel? Wait! You shouldn’t do any of those things! These are baby ladybugs! Just as many children do not resemble the adult into which they will grow, ladybug larvae look like something that Godzilla might take on… if the larvae were the size of a house or something, which they aren’t. Okay, I’m digressing here.
Back to that cluster of eggs my daughter saw. They were hatching ladybug larvae!
Hatching Ladybug Egg Cluster I’ve never seen them that small before. Good news for the garden: rescue forces are being hatched!
Ladybug Larvae Hatching Ladybug larvae eat more aphids than the adults do (just think of teenagers and refrigerators). When they’ve grown as much as they can, they will transform in to the ladybugs that we all know and love (even though we sing a horrible song to them about leaving the garden to check on a false alarm about fire and their children. And people complain about not being able to keep ladybugs in their yards!)
Ladybug! So if you see a creepy bug on your plants, the sides of your house… anywhere… don’t squish him! It may be part of the Ladybug Larvae Special Forces out to break up the illegal ant ranches in your garden!
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Yesterday in the Garden
Yesterday was the solstice, the formal beginning of summer. The longest day of the year. (Only six months to Christmas!) With months of growing season already behind us here in San Diego County, and the threat of drought and fire ahead of us, it is a time to enjoy the bounty that we already have. This is my year for gardening: I have the best vegetable garden I’ve ever had, after years of building raised beds and lining with aviary wire against gophers, improving the soil with compost, and buying organic seeds and fertilizers. I also have incredible freedom in my yard to plant whatever I like, wherever I like (within the constraints of tolerance by the plants). I’ve always had to cluster plants around where I’ve slapped together irrigation on the few stolen weekend hours I could devote to my yard. No more! With the permaculture gardens, the well and the drip irrigation, I am excited about my yard for the first time in the twelve years I’ve lived here. With the incredible job that Roger Boddaert and his team of Juan and Francisco, and also Aquascape’s Aart DeVos with his manager Jacob who has spent thirteen hour days on my property and is back early the next morning, the permaculture project is nearing completion and is spectacular. As a habitat it is succeeding, attracting more wildlife every day. As a food forest it has is off to a good start, with extra going to go to the Fallbrook Food Pantry. As an interesting, decorative garden it is unique and full of surprises. I’ll show you some photos; you can click on any of them to enlarge, but it will open in this window and you’ll have to use the back arrow to return to this page:
Long Scarlet Runner Beans 
Vigorous vines 
Little pickling cucumber 
Towering Quinoa 
Seeds on multiple stems 
Garlic Nearing Harvest Time 
First zucchini harvest 
Through the main entranceway 
Streamside walkway 
Mulched beds with swales 
Tin-roofed bridge 
The Palm Aisle 
My First Yacht 
Yarrow between the stepping stones -
What is a Weed, Anyway?
Weeds are plants that grow where you don’t want them to. It is a label given with purely human whim that often interferes with nature taking care of its animals and soil. Unless you are removing invasive species, weeds have a purpose and can not only be useful medicinally, but also are indicator plants of how healthy your soil is.
In the February 1989 issue of Organic Gardening, I wrote an article called Selective Weeding. In it I described how weeds with deep tap roots not only break up the soil, but are nutrient ‘miners’; they take up minerals from down deep in the earth, send them up to their leaves, and then leave them on the soil surface when the leaves die, which improves the quality of the topsoil for other plants to thrive. Around here, wild radish is the most notable weed that does this although it is invasive, but it isn’t the only one.
Other weeds make good groundcover, such as purslane. Purslane needs fertile soil to thrive, so when you see it, you know there is good soil. It is also edible and a good source of calcium, iron and Omega-3 fatty acids…. a real plus for we vegetarians who don’t eat fish. Lamb’s quarters also grows in highly fertile ground and is very edible. Red clover also loves fertile soil and it’s importance to the pollinator insects is vital. Clover roots set nitrogen in the soil and is often used as a cover crop.
Plantain (Plantago major and not the banana) is naturalized throughout North America and I guarantee that everyone has seen it whether they know it or not. The variety with rounded leaves in a rosette is a common lawn weed, and the variety with long, lanceolet leaves with long veins that grows by waterways is much larger. Why streams and lawns? It thrives in soil that has low fertility and high ratio of water. Plantain makes an excellent salve for stinging nettle rash, insect stings and some say poison oak rash. If you brush against nettle while hiking you’ll know right away because it releases chemicals into your skin that burns for awhile and then dissipates. Look around for plantain, break a leaf and roll it between your fingers till it releases the juice and apply to the site.
Nettle is another great plant even though it stings in self-defense. The chemicals that sting are water-soluable, so if you pick young nettle and soak it or cook it like spinach, you have a green that is very high in Vitamin K, protein, calcium, maganese and potassium. Nettle soup is commonly served in other countries. Nettle is an indicator plant of soil that is high in nitrogen and phosphate, which explains why it often grows around abandoned buildings and farms where there has been animal and human waste. Nettle is the host plant for many butterfly species as well.
Poison oak has a place in our native forests as well. It is a plant which happens to give off a chemical that humans find irritating. It produces berries that birds rely on, it provides shade in the understory to hold in moisture and give safe harbor to many animals, it is beautiful with its bright green spring growth and dark red autumn shades. The entire plant produces an oil that gives most people a rash, which doesn’t begin to irritate the skin for several days. Thinking about the substance being an oil will help you consider how to deal with it. If you or your dog brush it, the oil will transfer to your clothes, skin or your dog’s fur (another great reason why you shouldn’t let your dog run off-leash in natural areas!), and transfer again when it is touched. If burned, the toxicity is increased and you can inhale the fumes and become critically ill. If you think that you’ve brushed against poison oak, wash your clothes separately from the rest of the laundry and wash your skin well. There are many products on the market which help dissolve the oil, such as Technu, which is a wash for just after you’ve touched the plant. On hot days the plant’s oils carry in the air so people who are very sensitive should avoid poison oak habitat in the summer.
Weeds that indicate compacted soil, which is low in oxygen, are bindweed (looks like a small white or pink morning glory), quackgrass and chicory with its tall blue flower. Chicory’s deep taproot mines the minerals and breaks up the soil, and bindweed covers the soil providing some shade and protection against more compaction and dropping leaves over an extended area for mulch. Quackgrass secretes a chemical that supresses other plant growth as it travels via rhizome, breaking up the soil surface and carpeting it for protection.
Dandelions, a weed of childhood fantasy, of back-country wine, of spring tonic greens, are happy little plants that lawn owners ruthlessly kill. They grow in many soils, but are indicators of acidic soil. Henbane is a sign of alkaline soil.
Whether you keep your weeds, selectively weed, or eradicate them all, you should at least learn what they have to tell you. A good list of California weeds is at http://www.ipm.ucdavis.edu/PMG/weeds_intro.html .. An extremely valuable book that I have used so often when conducting hikes (and there is always a little girl that asks what every little plant is along the way), is Roadside Plants of Southern California by Thomas Belzer. It has photographs, descriptions and whether the plant is native or not. Another book is the Natural History of Vacant Lots by Matthew Vessel et al. These are wonderful guides for all the plants that fall between the cracks of most plant ID guides.
Just remember that plants communicate to you, and each have a purpose to fulfill. Whether it be as a mineral miner, a canopy or shade plant, a pollinator and food source, a nitrogen-fixer, a soil breaker, a mulch plant, each is doing something to help build earth fertility. Plants that are non-native take the place of the ones that are native and important to an area and its habitat, supplanting perhaps a plant that is the host for a particular butterfly. Be enlightened when doing yardwork. Feel free, though, to eradicate any Bermuda grass that you see, because it is a weed against which I have a personal vendetta! Happy gardening.
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What’s Happening in the Veggie Beds
“When planting seeds plant four in a row: one for the mouse, one for the crow, one to rot and one to grow.” (unknown).
Baby Baby Corn I know what you’re thinking; you’re thinking, “Oh, no! Not more about peas again!” Well, yes, a little more about peas. It was time for them to go. I grew most of them from old seed just to use it up and to set nitrogen in the soil, since they are legumes. Some plants even had powdery mildew on them, which surprised me.
Powdery mildew I had to cut the plants off at the roots instead of doing it the easy way and pulling up the whole plants.
Cutting peas at their roots Since I’d hurt my right wrist a few weeks ago and I still haven’t allowed it to heal enough, the cutting wasn’t a fun job. It was worth it, though. I left the roots with their nitrogen-fixing nodules in the ground where they would do the most good.
Peas set nitrogen in their roots Then I took all the pea vines up to the driveway, set up a chair, put on shorts and stuck my pale legs in the sun, plugged in an audiobook, and spent about an hour and a half tearing pea pods off of all the vines.
Harvesting time That night after dinner I began sorting through the pods and shelling them. I’m still not done.
Pea harvest I managed about half a big bowl of peas, which I sleepily shoved into the refrigerator before stumbling up to bed. My son was very calm in the morning when he told me about his surprise when he went for a midnight snack and spent about half an hour gathering up peas from the floor and adjacent rooms. I worked on more peas tonight. I’ve already frozen a couple of bags for our use; the rest will be frozen and used to feed the tortoises and chickens. All those pods and vines will combine with trash cans full of weeds I’ve been pulling along with kitchen trash to reconstruct my compost pile.
But there is life beyond peas. There are beans! I’ve planted several types of beans this year. Fresh green beans as well as soup beans and pinto beans. I’ve created two new raised beds and set them off from the rest of the garden. In them I’ve planted sugar baby watermelon, green melon, sugar baby pumpkin, and butternut squash.
There's a pinto bean on the rise These vines will grow out rather than over other garden beds. In the middle of the beds I’ve planted pickling cucumbers, baby corn and pinto beans. They will all grow tall above the vines writhing and twining below. ( Hmm. Note to self: stay away from vine beds at night.)
Here’s an interesting piece of trivia: most gardeners have heard about ‘the three sisters’, which are the Native American pairing of corn, beans and squash. Actually, it should be four sisters, at least for Southwest Indians. The concept of the ‘sisters’ is that they form a complete plant ‘guild’. In other words, these three planted in combination produce more food than any one planted alone. The corn provides a trellis for the beans, the beans are a legume that fix nitrogen in the soil with nodules on their roots that feed off of sugars secreted by the corn roots (all this going on beneath your feet! Yikes!), and the squash forming a cooling, weed-suppressing ground cover that also deters raccoons (notorious corn-eaters who don’t like to walk through the vines). What is missing is a plant to attract and feed the pollinators. In the Southwest Anasazi settlements it was Rocky Mountain bee plant (Cleome serrulata), which has edible parts to it and fixes iron (the Anasazi used it as a dye plant as well as food). With an edible plant guild, we feed the soil and the pollinators as well as ourselves. You can read more about this in the fantastic book on permaculture by Toby Hemenway, Gaia’s Garden. An excerpt is right here: http://patternliteracy.com/the_three_sisters_or_is_it_fou I’m trying my fourth sister as dill weed, which is an excellent bee plant because of it’s small umbellate flowers. Dill also goes well as a flavoring for corn, cucumber and squash, and usually plants that complement each other taste-wise do well planted together, such as basil and tomatoes.
Cucumber, baby corn, watermelon and squash Speaking of which, my garlic/shallot/tomato and basil bed has taken off with the warmer weather. These are slicing tomatoes; I have planted Roma and a yellow variety in other beds.
Where the peas have come out, the broccoli, carrots, parsnips, lettuces, endive and cilantro are doing well. I’ve planted some small eggplant sprouts and more carrot seed so there is a continuous supply.
Life without pea plants Organic sweet corn will go into this bed, which will provide shade for the lettuces. Corn of different varieties must not come into silk simultaneously or they will cross-pollinate. The baby corn in the other bed will mature earlier by nature and by planting times. Those little corn ears can be eaten fresh or left to harden to be used for popcorn. The whole ear can be put into a microwave, for those of you who have such a newfangled contraption (I haven’t owned a microwave, um… ever!).
We’ve had new visitors to the garden. Besides my gopher snake friend (see my post Unsticking the Snake of May 14th), who has been seen again, and a longer gopher snake, my son and I saw a king snake whipping down a gopher hole in the lower Bee Garden, and then today this fellow came through the Chicken Tractor then through the Swiss chard and onion bed, and across the property.
"So good to rest my weary head for a minute!" I’ve only seen one king snake in the yard who shows up in the height of summer to look for mice under the bird feeders. The standing water in the pond and the disturbance of the soil has attracted more of these friends, especially since my dogs are elderly and aren’t ‘making the rounds’ like they used to.
Banded kingsnake Kingsnakes are a little more tetchy than gopher snakes, and will eat other snakes including rattlesnakes. They can be striped or banded, even in the same clutch of eggs. Just like siblings with different hair colors.
Speaking of ponds, the standing water in the lower pond hasn’t receded very much, but has had an algae bloom.
Pea Soup Pond I’m going to have to have a well drilled on site, and have spoken with two well drillers and have received one bid, and am waiting for the third day for a call back. Honestly, is there so much work for some people in this economy that they can’t return phone calls or show up to appointments? During this gardening adventure of the last few months there have been several people of different occupations who just haven’t kept appointments or returned calls although they are still in business and initially shown interest. What’s up? Grrr.
The quinoa (pro: keen– wah) is doing well, and the potatoes are ready to harvest.
Quinoa rows Although I planted a whole packet of sunflower seeds throughout the property, only this blue jay-planted one in my strawberry bed came to anything. It looks like a puckered face!
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- Gardening adventures, Permaculture and Edible Forest Gardening Adventures, Photos, Vegetables, Vegetarian
Eating from the Garden
Mesculn Mix Beginning last week, I’ve been able to serve at least one thing from the vegetable garden every night at dinner. Peas, Swiss chard, lettuce, cilantro,radish, more peas, chives, carrots, strawberries, and, of course, peas. I munch as I water and weed, and feel that for a moment, here at least, all is right with the world. Like so many gardeners everywhere, I await the taste of my first tomato, but since my plants are no more than three inches high, I have awhile to wait.
Purslane Every year I have a bumper crop of purslane growing as a weed in my beds, and this year is no different. However, I’ve read where purslane has more Omega-3 fatty acids than many fish, something we vegetarians should be aware of. Originally from India, and supposedly Ghandi’s favorite food, this succulent member of the Portulaca family offers other nutritional benefits as well. See http://www.nutrition-and-you.com/purslane.html . If uprooted and left on the soil, the plant uses its stored liquids to produce seed and scatter them. “So there!” it says. I must admit that the thick leaves and stems are off-putting for me texture-wise, but I’ve begun to snap off young stems and include them with the lettuce I’m harvesting. I’ll have to be bold and find better uses for it in my kitchen. After all, its free!
Purslane I created two new raised beds, lined with aviary wire (which is a devil to work with. I have scratches all over.)
New raised beds I still have two more raised bed kits, which I bought last Fall in a clearance sale. I’ve leveled them, placed cardboard on the ground to deter weeds (especially the dreaded Bermuda grass!), used a staple gun to attach aviary wire across the bottom and up the insides a little, then filled with topsoil and very wormy mushroom compost, then watered it all in. I still have to add more good soil, then I’ll mix in some Garden’s Alive non-animal organic vegetable fertilizer and some microbes, just to start the beds off right.
Seed Sprouting These beds will be for the vining plants such as squash, pumpkin and melons. There is room for vines outside the beds. Already I have the seeds sprouted and awaiting transplanting, but that won’t happen until early next week.
Roger and his crew hauled over prunings from grape growers, and have used them to sparkle up the trellises to wonderful effect.
Grape vines on trellises I think they add a wonderful ethereal look to the structures.
Viney trellis As far as the ponds go, contouring is slowly being done and we all await the coming of the pump on Monday. I will not be blogging for the next few days because I will be attending the Southern California Permaculture Convergence in Malibu http://www.socalconvergence.org/ , and as I will be sleeping in a bunkhouse at Camp Hess, I’m thinking that bringing my laptop would be a bad idea. I’ll take photos and be excited to share what I’ve learned with you when I return. Have a wonderful weekend!