Category Archives: pumpkins

Agua Linda Farm — Thanksgiving

23 Friday Nov 2012

Posted by in Arizona, pumpkins, Tucson, Uncategorized

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This Thanksgiving I was thankful for my family, for my work which has kept me insanely busy for a month, and for a day spent in the country this fall learning about one of my ancestor gardens at the Agua Linda Farm.

We spent the day there in October with my dad, my brother and his wife Sherry and my two girls.  The Agua Linda is special to my family because my grandparents lived there roughly from 1950 to 1957 after they sold part of the big ranch. My parents lived there in a small adobe house (that no one liked) and my brothers and sisters were raised there as babies. My grandmother built a beautiful Joesler designed home and changed the name from Reventon to Agua Linda for the beautiful Santa Cruz River that she had a view of from her sweeping picture windows.

I was married there in 2000.

So the place is very significant for my family. (And any data I give is probably contestable except for my wedding!)

My family sold it to the Loew family in the late 50s when we could no longer afford to keep it. Members of the Loew family (of Loew’s Theaters and other famous Hollywood names) have lived there since and they have been gracious enough to let me get married there and also indulge in our visits. They have also turned it into a fantastic organic farm that’s open to the public, hosting the greatest pumpkin patch you’ve ever been to. (Of course, I’m biased.)

Pumpkin head courtesy of Uncle Carlos

We had a great day there and also a great conversation with my dad who told me all the history I should know and seem to continuously forget. He says it’s a frustrating place for him to remember the crops that didn’t grow and the cattle that he had to sell, but it still seems magical to me and it’s truly one of the most beautiful places on earth. My Grandma was right! And her iris plants (and maybe violets) still sprout along the brick pathways and courtyard surrounding the house.

Well, here are some photos and some interesting things about silage that my dad told me. (I asked about that because my daughter ran away from me in the silage maze!)

Back in the days we started the farm, they had a cattle feeding operation there and they fed raised corn to feed the cattle–Mexican June, was the name of the corn. It grew so high and tall that the producers of the movie Oklahoma used it for the “Corn as high as an elephant’s eye.” No joke. (Later I will post a beautiful picture of my mother standing next to it.) They bought it and took it away from the farm and planted it somewhere else where they filmed that scene. At least, that’s family lore. But here’s the silage details, which are probably boring next to the gossip, but the farmers out there might like it.

“We put 3,000 tons of silage in a pit. We buried it and put water on it and it ferments.  Wheat, soybeans, cotton, …you chop it and ferment it and the cows get drunk on it.”

“First we dug it and with pitch forks feed it to the cattle. Then we found a silage loader. You dropped the silage on a conveyor belt and it went on the feed truck and we fed the cattle. It was the first silage loader in Arizona. Our silage pit was the length of a football field.”

Here we digress into a general history of every ranch in Southern Arizona and who sold what and who bought what and who lived on a crappy piece of land where it never rained (I think that was every rancher in Southern Arizona.)

Well, I wrote enough and I’m boring you. I hope you enjoyed the pictures! If you are ever in Tucson, drive south towards Nogales and go to the Agua Linda Farm. There’s a big sign on the highway so you can’t miss it.

Happy Day with candy apples!

Happy Thanksgiving! What garden, new or in your past, are you thankful for?

California Riviera Gardens

21 Friday Sep 2012

Posted by in California Riviera, cupckaes, fountains, garden, gardening, Laguna Beach, outdoor rooms, pumpkins

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A few weekends ago, I had the chance to get together with my high school friends for a great girls’ weekend and reunion in Laguna Beach, California.  One of my all time favorite garden stores is nearby—Rogers Gardens, and we had planned to end our trip with a visit to Rogers and a Sprinkles cupcake. What could be better!

Along the way, we discovered a second wonderful garden shop—a quirky place full of unexpected and wonderful gardening ideas. Laguna Nursery on Pacific Coast Highway (PCH) was not hard to miss with its red hearts and funky metal garden sculptures standing out as we drove by. A quick u-turn and we parked in the back and entered the garden shop that seemed right out of a fantasy novel.

In the front garden, a giant white glass orb floats on the water’s mirror surface and seemed to glow in the bright morning sunlight.

Fountains at every turn, some with smoke (or steam) coming out of them.

This downspout fountain really intrigued me. You could hang this in a tree and run a drip line up the tree and onto the top of the downspout, and then the water flows into a pool or basin below. I want to try this.

This garden room was a big hit. With soft, fresh pine needles on the floor, it smelled like a forest. The moose also gave a forest look to the place. That was eclectic!

Little finches in fancy cages:

This passion flower was something we all took pictures of:

Well, that was a fun tour—I bought some seeds too. I recommend stopping in and exploring.

Then we went by Corona Del Mar and drove through the beautiful neighborhoods. What is it with that place?  Every garden is perfect—no mildew on the roses, no wilt, not one piece of grass out of place. It’s all cubical boxwoods, iceberg roses and fox gloves. There are maybe four or five perfect blocks of gardens. Maybe they all get advice at Rogers Gardens up the hill! We stopped at the house where I first met my husband.  It was totally remodeled and almost unrecognizable. The night I met him, we walked through that neighborhood after dinner and he picked rose petals off the rose bushes lining the streets and “popped” them, which means you smack them in a certain way that they kind of pop like a balloon and fly apart.

That’s a funny memory of this neighborhood. I guess it was a perfect place to meet.

: – )

Anyway, we stopped in Rogers for a quick tour of the Halloween shop there, which is incredible and the home goods, not to mention the plants. I just look away. “Look away,” I tell myself. You can’t drive home with all these!

It’s really hard for me to create an order and cohesive look in my yard when I am attracted to so many different plants.  I’m like a crow that can’t resist shiny objects…. Maybe that’s why I can’t live in Corona Del Mar! My gardening style is not that organized.

We ended our garden touring at Sprinkles, a sweet ending to a fabulous weekend.

Here’s to the getaway gals—thanks for decades of friendship (did I just say decades?):

Sorry, Michelle, you’re in the photo above!

And here’s a little Flashback Heart Attack for you!

Pumpkin — Glory Be, Help Me

09 Thursday Aug 2012

Posted by in bee, pumpkins, summer, vegetables

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Here lies my glorious pumpkin, taking up my whole herb garden. I celebrate its robustness–for the first time I actually planted and grew the plants on time and it is  a magnificent vine, full of giant leaves, yellow flowers and tiny fruit. See the picture below–it looks almost mysterious in the morning light, shrouded in mist, flowing down my hill and sending its twining feelers out across the rock steps and over to the apple tree. But if you scroll down to the bottom of the picture below, you will see things are not as they seem. This is not the vital fecund fruit bearing plant it appears to be! No, the baby pumpkins are shriveling!

Gasp! They turn brown and shrivel up and fall off. Not good. I have no words.

Why do I go through this every year? Why can’t I grow pumpkins? This morning after I took this picture, I decided to put on my bee hat and pollinate. I figured that out last year, but I thought that with this giant plant, I wouldn’t have to. But I did and there was one bee with me. Go little bee, do your stuff!

Wow! There’s a lot of pollen in there–some ants too. Well, all of you,  sprinkle that stuff around! Look at it!  I think that’s the male flower. In my rudimentary understanding of the nature of pollination, I put a Q-tip in there and took pollen and stuffed it in the female flower. The female flower, well, looks female and has a baby pumpkin at the end of it. I found lots of males and only three females at my pumpkin fraternity this morning. You get my drift! I have an overpopulation of males–every year, the same situation! Reminds me of my undergrad days, but I suppose that was to my advantage. (Anyway, I didn’t make pumpkins!)

(By the way, morning is good because the flowers are open).

Now what? Really, what I want to know is–what’s wrong? Last year I got one or two pumpkins (from three plants). The year before I got one Cinderella pumpkin. Last year I fertilized them. Last year I planted late and I surely did not have a plant like this. Oh yeah, I fertilized it with something called GROW BIG this morning after I did the pollinating. Geez. All this work for one pumpkin. Now I have to wait and see. It is very hot and humid now so maybe that will help, too.

Honestly, I think the coastal air does something to them. I figured out it’s nearly impossible to grow Echinacea and Black Eyed Susans. That one year I grew Black Eyed Susans was a miracle. This year I bought the seeds from Burpee, I planted them in the ground, I planted a second control group in peat pots–guess what? One flower. ONE flower from all that.

Hey, I also harvested this watermelon too early. Have you ever seen a kid who told her mom not to pick her watermelon look at you after you pick her watermelon when she told you it wasn’t ripe? You don’t want to see that face, belive me.

It didn’t taste that bad. (But it didn’t taste quite right either so no one else would eat it but me pretending that I had done the right thing.) There are three more left safely on the vine, waiting ripeness.

So, while my garden isn’t going exactly how I planned, I finished a draft of my 2nd novel this week. Yipee!

Pumpkin time

19 Monday Sep 2011

Posted by in gardening, pumpkins, Uncategorized, vegetables

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Now I planted seedling pumpkins in July. I know this was late, but I am always hopeful. I hope I will have Thanksgiving pumpkins. But again I had problems. Some little baby pumpkins came but fell off. Some plants had only male flowers — how in the heck is that possible? Anyway, while I was discouraged, I was happy to find some real little gal flowers with baby pumpkins at the base along with some male flowers. Now that I read about fertilizing them myself, I decided to get on it.

That sounded wrong…what I meant was, I was going to have to cross-pollinate my pumpkins. First of all, I probably planted too few and too far apart.  I had to plant them in the front flower beds because we are going to re-do our backyard. Since I bought them late, I only bought one of each variety–a Cinderella, a baby bear and a Jack be Nimble (or something) plus a loofah gourd. Don’t ask me why I bought a loofah. I don’t really like them, but I was fighting some lady at Walter Andersens who was also there buying late pumpkins. We were helping each other, sort of. I got the loofah.

Well, I used a Q-tip. That seemed scientific. I stuck it in there and got as much pollen on it as I could and then I ran around to the Cinderella, the Baby Bear and the loofa and rubbed pollen in all the lady flowers. I thought maybe I should have on some Marvin Gaye. I felt a little embarrassed, like I was doing something naughty.

But you know what, I got a pumpkin. See the one in the photo! I hope it makes it. I hope I don’t get some weird loofah pumpkin hybrid. I’ll keep you posted.

P.S. I went to Olivewood Gardens last week in National City. It is a really neat place. More on that later.

Oh yes, plant your sweet peas and wildflowers now. I started. You can do it in ten minutes if you have a prepared bed, or if you don’t, sweet peas and wildflowers will grow just about anywhere there is sun and water. I don’t have much room for planting right now (plus the pumpkins are taking up a lot more space than I anticipated). I had to find little empty spots around the yard.

Sexy Pumpkins

21 Wednesday Oct 2009

Posted by in garden, gardening, pumpkins, Uncategorized

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Well, here is an update on the pumpkin situation. The one Cinderella pumpkin sits on my front porch, making me happy when I see what I have grown.

But my neighbor deserves credit for figuring out what was wrong with my pumpkins. She told me I had to mate them. Yes. Mate. Male pollen sprinkled into female flower.

I told my dad, who is an old farmer–really, he raised lots of cantaloupes and lettuce on a big farm when I was little. He had a huge vegetable garden on our plot in town. (To give credit, my mother is an excellent gardener too.) He scoffed, guffawed (you know what I mean). Dad resistance.

“You don’t have to do that,” he said. “That’s baloney.”

“It’s true,” I said. “I read it on the Internet.”

More scoffing.

But I think so. All the bees are dying. If the bees die, they can’t fertilize your pumpkins. I told him this. I guess he admitted my point of view–but only slightly.

So once I studied those Internet pictures on male and female flowers on pumpkins (that’s it, I swear), I marched up my hill to the small planter I have on our “vista,” which sees nothing but treetops. I peered into one of the yellow blooms.

Buzzzzzzzzzz. Yikes. I jumped. Out flew a bee right at my nose. Okay, Dad, maybe you were right. This is hogwash.

But then I started looking for females. There were plenty of male flowers . In fact, too many. Not one female anywhere! The only female must have been fertilized by some miracle of survivor bee power. But now, it’s a locker room of manliness.

That’s why I have no baby pumpkins. I have only men flowers to mate. Who knows where the females, with their tiny pumpkin babies sitting at the stalk of their flowers, went or why they aren’t growing.

It makes me kinda sad.

Well, there’s always next year. That is the good thing about a garden. In a garden, you can always start over.

Cinderella Pumpkin

08 Tuesday Sep 2009

Posted by in gardening, glitter, pumpkins

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093Welcome to my garden blog. I have some problems with my pumpkin patch. I’ve never grown pumpkins before and living in San Diego, I probably planted them the wrong time of year, but I did. Now (September) I have one glorious pumpkin, and all the rest have blooms–some are dead or dying after blooming, but I have no other little pumpkins even though I stare at them every day.

The one pumpkin is gorgeous, orange Cinderella type. The kids sprinkle glitter on it daily. But why did I get only one!