A Journal of Urban Living

In about six months:

The chickens are growing so the coop construction must be completed soon.  The drip irrigation heads are installed and the lines need to be run.  The Valencia Orange is the last of the potted citrus that needs to be planted.  (The kumquat will stay in a pot.)  The fig and the bay we lost this summer need replacing.  It’s also about time to set up the seedling starting station in the shed.

It’s been raining more than I’ve ever seen. The garden is fairly well planted to hopefully something is absorbing all the water.

UP
beets and chard have been thinned and are looking good. Peas and favas are up as well as a single random bean. It’s either the old bush beans I planted last fall or a next generation pole bean. Two cabbages seeded last fall seem happy. Arugula is being thinned and eaten. Turnips, spinach, lettuce and a bit of mache are up. chervil and dill and cilantro seemingly everywhere. Spring leeks and mini purple onions distinguishing themselves from crab grass. Radishes are marking the carrot rows and almost ready to come out. A row of rapini just broken the surface.

OUT
The last of the radicchio was harvested and we have a single jalepeno which will go into a pot of black-eyed peas this week.

ON DECK
This year will see more pole beans including some from Native Seeds in Tucson. Also from Native Seeds some corn, hot peppers and watermelons. We’ll start Padron peppers soon as well as whatever old tomato seeds we can scrounge up. Perhaps shishitos if I can find them as well.

Figures that we leave town for 10 days, just as the first tomato is beginning to blush. Not that I’m complaining about a vacation!

Well, now we’re back and there are more tomatoes than I know what to do with.

basket of goodness

In the hat, Ramapo. In the basket, start at the Gypsy pepper and go clockwise: Ramapo, Black from Tula, Costoluto Genevese, Jaune Flame. Also Swiss chard (Neon variety) and radishes.

ripe

You can’t tell, but the plants are so heavy with fruit and branches that they’re toppling over their sturdy cages. That’s the Jaune Flame on the left with the orange orbs of goodness. The best producer is definitely the Ramapo. The prettiest are the wrinkly Black from Tulas that go from burgundy at the bottom to dark greet at the neck.

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poor beans

Something is nomming the beans! We can’t figure out what is eating them before we do.  Several sprouted but were scissored off at the ground by somebody nibbling on their stems. Very upset about this. Once they reach the structure that Peter lovingly built for them, they still get munched around the edges. Hope the 2nd planting will fare better.

Al, the veteran Master Gardener who runs the LA Community Garden Council, says it’s grasshoppers, but I haven’t seen a single one. I think it’s something that comes out at night, like slugs. That would be good, because the late summer heat will do them in. If that’s the case, I’m not going to launch an all-out campaign.

Purchased as seedlings March 29 at Tomatomania! and planted about a week after that. We amended the soil with “zoo poo” — free compost custom blended by the Dept. of Parks and Rec. with herbivore excrement from the LA Zoo in their custom mixer. It was broken down for a while earlier this year because of an OSHA investigation (yikes!) so we are glad the piles of compost are back. At the lovely compost center, they also sell composters and free mulch. So far we’ve stayed away from the mulch because it might contain eucalyptus, which has some nasty chemicals which inhibit growth or sprouting.

The plants have gotten one treatment of fish juice and are laden with blossoms, flowers and fruit.

Black from Tula (where is Tula anyway?)

We chose varieties for variety (duh!) and suitability to our climate — a blazing hot hillside about 15 miles inland between the LA basin and the San Gabriel Valley in Southern California. Pure Mediterranean. The tomato was domesticated and bred not far from here in Mexico, so we’re hopeful.

• Costoluto Genevese: an ugly Italian heirloom that does well in the heat
• Black from Tula: tasty heirloom that’s more like purple than black
• Ramapo: a hybrid beefsteak developed by Rutgers and named after the NJ hills where I grew up
• Jaune Flame: a productive golfball-size orange
• Country Taste: another hybrid that likes the heat

Behind our apartment building we have three pots so we chose 3 varieties that do well in tight quarters:

• Red Currant: the tiniest cherries of them all. So cute you want to string them on a necklace!
• ???: already forgot what this one is but it’s red and suited to containers.
• a volunteer: We planted cherries and heirlooms in pots in the backyard last year, recycled some of the soil and this one popped up in a houseplant! He’s doing great now, so we’ll see what he is.

June has been good to the garden, wet and gray.

one side of the garden

You can see the squash, beans on some homemade supports along the left side. Peppers, eggplants and cosmos along the left. What you can’t see is the leeks, cukes and arugula. read more »

I think he just stopped blogging because his bees died. This won’t happen again. Either the interrupted blogging or the dead bees.