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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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Zucchini
I have four vigorous zucchini plants. Why four? Because in winter with a lap full of comforter and gardening catalogs, the January eye peers back at July’s garden and the plants are smaller, the harvest never enough. What if something happens to one spindly seedling? Then there would be no zucchini, and summer without it just wouldn’t be the same. So four tiny sprouts went into the ground and four large plants are what I have. The zucchini harvest began several weeks ago. My daughter and I have happily eaten sauteed zucchini, seared zucchini, broiled zucchini and have even made sun-dried zucchini chips. It has been too hot to make Rosemary Zucchini Soup (see my recipe section). Zucchini bread uses far too little zucchini for the amount of calories it contains. The problem with zucchini recipes is that they use far too little zucchini! Zucchini has many health benefits, and is low-calorie, versitile, and is the butt of many summer-harvest jokes. I say this while considering who I know that I might unload some of the harvest upon.
Zucchini Chips ready to sun-dry on the roof We’ve both been harvesting under the enormous leaves this year’s zucchini plants have produced, and have kept up with it with few surprises. Until today.
In summer the days can run into each other with a speed that is breathtaking. We’d gone two days without checking. Then this morning after a second morning of trying to teach our old dog General the new trick of not hunting the chickens, which we were allowing out of their coop, we were on our way back to the house. It was hot already, the morning mist having burned off as if with an acetyline torch. My daughter carried strawberries in her hat and I was headed up to water stressed plants stranded without irrigation. Then I caught a glimpse of something along the edge of the raised bed. It was green. It was wedged against the corner and pressing against the edge of the wooden end. It was trying to break free. Trembling and exchanging fearsome glances with my daughter, I lifted a spiny leaf: There lay a six-pound zucchini.
This might not impress you. Perhaps you’ve recklessly gone on a summer vacation and forgot to mention to your neighbors that they should keep a cool eye on the big plant in the veg bed, and returned to find a green Moby Dick sucking up all the water in the garden. Perhaps you know already that the world’s record zucchini weighed 65 pounds. The world’s longest was 69.5 inches long, which is 6 and a half inches taller than I. Yet to find a six pounder trying to break down my much-cherished raised bed was something of a shock, especially when there was only a two-day gap between checking. This zucchini is only slightly less weight than my daughter at birth. Yet, I feel strangely deprived of maternal instincts toward it.
Big Zucchini How luxurious it is to complain about too much food. I’ll make steaks out of this big one, and perhaps donate the smaller ones to the Fallbrook Food Pantry. And begin to harvest the squash blossoms more vigorously!
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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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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.
- Bees, Gardening adventures, Grains, Permaculture and Edible Forest Gardening Adventures, Ponds, Vegetables
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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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!
- Gardening adventures, Permaculture and Edible Forest Gardening Adventures, Photos, Vegetables, Vegetarian
My Gardens Today
Entranceway with Running Dog April and May are months that I often don’t remember when reflecting back at the end of the year. Spring is such a busy season. When I was raising children, and when I was working as a school librarian, these months rushed past in the haste towards summer break. As a gardener, Spring is one season when I turn into one of those Garden Designers London and since it is also the season of intense growth of both weeds and desirables, insects and increasing dryness, and for me and so many others, the inevitable allergies that keep me out of the garden for days. So I thought I’d post photos of my gardens as they stand today, in the middle of April, on threshold of Summer.
By the Front Door I’ll start at my front door and work downhill. The walkway to the front door is lined with purple lantana and a mixture of red geraniums, honeysuckle, butterfly bush and Double Delight rose. It is being enjoyed by my very silly old dog General Mischief, who just realized that I was going to let him into the house. He looks a bit like a vampire dog in this photo, though!
By my front door I have a collection of miscellaneous plants, as most people do. Two staghorn ferns given me by my mother have attached themselves in a very satisfactory way to the chain link fence. There is also a dark red ivy geranium, needlepoint ivy, some bulbs just out of bloom, a traveling (or Egyptian) onion (it’s seeds are bulbets grown on the flower) that my brother gave to me, and some sedums. When I water here I usually disturb a Pacific Chorus Frog or two. I’ve thinned and weeded and replanted this collection, but there are always more that magically appear.
Front Pond The front yard pond is full of algae, but that is all right for the moment. I don’t want a crystal clear pond; I want habitat. Because of the clear blobs of frog spawn and wriggling tadpoles hiding from the hungry mouths of the mosquito fish I keep the algae until it is no longer inhabited. Waterlilies (even the monster one! Look at other posts for an explaination) are blooming with last weekend’s sudden heat. In the foreground are Jewel Mix nasturiums with heirloom tuberoses emerging, a grey mound of lamb’s ear which has begun to pop up where I don’t expect it, and rosemary by the bird feeders. Our kitchen table has the view of the feeders, and it is from this yard that we count birds seasonally for Cornell University’s Project Feederwatch. Oh, and try not to focus on the weeds, please.
Side Gardens On the South side of my house I’ve painted the wall a Mediterranean blue to reduce the glare and create a colorful backdrop for flowers. I keep annuals in this bed, along with some bulbs and a rose that is still small that my daughter gave to me. In th photo just blooming are naturtium, alyssum, foxglove, pansies, and a delphinium that fell over and started growing upright again. My library window overlooks this yard. I was trying to keep the color scheme focusing on apricot to show up well agains the wall, but I end up planting whatever I want in here. Cosmos have again reseeded and are starting to grow rapidly; they’ll block the window by summer and be full of goldfinches. I’ve also planted a couple of bleeding hearts that I picked up in one of those bulb packages at WalMart. Usually the plant is pretty spent and they aren’t worth the money, but I somehow think that I am rescuing the poor thing. These came up but haven’t yet bloomed.
Lady Banksia Along my driveway is a Lady Banksia rose that has taken off, along with a bush mallow, a Hidcote lavender, and a late daffodil. Farther along the driveway (not shown) is a Pride of Madera (I love that name!) that is going gangbusters, a small liquidamber, rockrose, a mixture of natives and incidental plants such as a tomato that survived the winter, a Joseph’s Coat rose, and an established pine tree with a crow’s nest at the top. There are other roses and plants here, too, like a prostrate pyracantha for berries, a white carpet rose, native milkweed for the Monarch butterflies (perennial ones; the annuals are usually gone by the time the butterflies migrate here), an apricot penstamon, aloe vera, and probably the kitchen sink, too, if I root around long enough. I love tinkering around with this mess of plants, seeing what will grow and trying new combinations.
Raised Vegetable Beds In my raised vegetable beds the peas have been producing well. The shorter ones had been nibbled by crows as they were emerging, but after I put a rubber snake amongst them, the nibbling stopped. Potatoes are nearing harvest time, and I’ve already snuck out a few new potatoes and they were very good. Sometimes I’ve had potatoes with brown fiber in them and a bitter taste; no doubt due to irregular watering and soil problems. I worked hard on improving my soil and giving it a boost with natural fertilizers from Gardens Alive. There are so many peas in the garden because I planted all my old packets so that the roots will set nitrogen in the soil.
I also have growing carrots, broccoli, cilantro, parsley, endive, salad mix, parsnip, strawberries, blueberries, breadseed poppies, horseradish, asparagus, bush beans, fava beans, a yellow tomato and a red slicing tomato, garlic, shallots, red and white onions, Swiss chard, leeks, collards and basil. Most are just small guys right now.
Seedlings In my temporary nursery area I have sprouting pickling cucumbers, zucchini, quinoa (first time!), more basil, Dukat dill, cantalope, and a cooking pumpkin. I’ll sprout more squashes and maybe popcorn and sweet corn soon.
View up the Middle This is a view of the middle of my property, from the lower end up.
Palm Tree Walkway This is the palm tree walkway as it stands now.
Pre-Pond And this is the lower area. Notice the stakes in the ground and the tractors? They are there because today is the day the ponds will be excavated! The rain-catchment ponds, permanent habitat pond and swales will be carved, shaped and filled in the next two days, fed by water from a 4-inch well augered in the lower property. I have hired Aquascape to create habitat and rain catchment ponds; the demostrations of their work look as if humans hadn’t messed with anything. In about an hour from now, the action finally begins! After the ponds are installed, then the final plant guilds will be established, the minor amount of irrigation installed, and that will be that! I’ll keep you posted on pond development!