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“Establish the Canopy” — How to Have a Rainforest in your Own Backyard

04 Wednesday Jul 2012

Posted by ninagarden in Australian shepherd, dog, garden, palm trees, squash, summer, tomatoes, Uncategorized, vegetables

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Tags

Care of Garden, Summer, vegetables

First, my headline is misleading. This is not really a blog about how to grow a rainforest. This is a blog about why I don’t garden much in the summer in San Diego.

San Diego summers mean beach, visitors, house guests, theme parks, no rain, watering, restricted watering, the beach, house guests, theme parks, visitors. Should I continue?

I go into maintenance mode. Plus you need a break! We could grow something amazing and significant here every month of the year. When I first started gardening here and realized this, it was a little overwhelming. Then I hit summer–I remember running around trying to garden while my house guests ate breakfast. It was stressful. I had to stop trying to have a perfect yard and let things be (as best I could).

Watering is still a priority and my vegetable garden, which really needs fertilizing.

But once you get things growing, you can take a rest.  Here’s my favorite story about that — One day at my old house, while I was walking through the neighborhood, I found a house that intrigued me. There was a stand of unique lime green palm trees in the front, some orchids growing in the shade and other tropical. I walked by there every day, trying to figure out this interesting house and the palms, which I realized also grew to enormous heights behind the house. I told my husband about it and soon he was walking by there too and we discussed it, trying to figure out what was going on. The person had a license plate on his/her car that said “Palms.” Clearly this was not some minor experiment in horticulture. This was serious.

Well, one day, my hubby being the kind of talk-to-strangers with ease guy that he is, got us an invitation to tour the property. It was in fact owned by an expert in palm trees and his wife was a landscape architect.

The backyard contained a bona fide rainforest. It was tremendous. They had bought the house next door and knocked out the walls so the rainforest could take over two back yards. They had what must have been 60 foot palms with a treehouse half-way up. I think there were hundreds of palm trees of all varieties and paths and orchids and impatients and all kinds of wonderous flora.

Our tour guide explained, “Once the canopy was established, it was easy to grow all the other rainforest plants beneath it.”

That stuck with us. In our wonder, we found a bit of humor. We repeated the phrase because it was so far out and so ridiculous to us–being from Michigan and Arizona–that someone could establish a rainforest with a canopy right in our neighborhood.

We use that phrase a lot in our marriage. It comes up two or three times a year one of us will say to the other– “Once the canopy is established,” and laugh.  It has become one of those inside jokes that only the two of us can understand. And that’s nice. But really, back to gardening, I think once your garden gets to a certain point, it can keep going with only a little bit of care here and there and a few seasonal clean up days. If you think you don’t have time to garden, consider that. Once you get your “canopy” in place, you can just watch it grow.

Anyway, that’s what I am saying about my garden right now!  Good thing, because I have a house full of guests waiting for breakfast!

Here are some pictures from my vegetable garden and one of my naughty puppy. I really need to fence her out of my vegetables–that’s one job that really shouldn’t wait.



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My Brother’s Garden

02 Saturday Jun 2012

Posted by ninagarden in chickens, dog, gardening, squash, tomatoes, vegetables

≈ 5 Comments

Tags

tomato

My siblings aren’t competitive about dogs or gardening. No, not at all, which is why my brother keeps emailing me pictures of his vegetable garden and poems and stories about how this year he’s got a  grade “A” plot.

So I told him I’d blog about his great garden to make him happy. After all,  grumpy lawyers need happiness in the form of great homegrown tomatoes, endless abundance of zucchini and other garden produce. A garden is a great outlet for stress relief. To me nothing could be more peaceful than working a long Saturday pruning, watering and planting in the garden. Also, cooking and eating the food you grow is a great byproduct of the joy gardening brings. I also enjoy feeding caterpillars to the chickens—get ‘em girls.

My brother, who is much older ( I don’t know why I say that here, but it seems to tie in. I’m trying to say he is very wise.) Anyway, he says gardening is genetic, and I wonder if this is true. Perhaps. I’d love to know what you think. I can’t say because obviously, as I’ve written, gardening runs in my family. All of my three siblings garden and have their own specialty. Wildflowers and vegetables for the mountain woman, whose winters are snowy so her growing season is short; herbs, roses and flowers for the preschool teacher who lives in desert dwellings; and of course, my brother, who is famous for tomatoes grown in the urban jungles of Phoenix, Arizona.  Just look at his pictures and you will agree.

He taught me that there are two kinds of tomato plants—a “determinate” type and the indeterminate type. I had one of the indeterminate type in my front yard once. It would not die. It was an heirloom and made beautiful purple fruits. It quit producing in winter but kept growing and growing lush green foliage until one day, I don’t know why, I pulled it out. I should have transplanted it, but I didn’t.  Now I wish I had.

I thought homegrown tomatoes mean instant sweetness, but I now have one in a pot that makes the worst tasting tomatoes. It makes a lot of them, but they are garbage. Maybe because they were grown in a pot. Who knows. Hey, brother, do you know? If you answer, I will know that you read this.

To make my brother happy, here are his photos and his poem.

See how high the tomato tree grows,

into the sky like hairs from my nose.
If it was a bean stalk, I’d be Jack,
But instead no tomatoes I lack.
So gather ’round and we’ll sing a tomato song
Put the soup on and we’ll be along
to grill sandwiches so cheesy

and slurp soup that makes me queasy.

Here is his tomato tree:

Here is the harvest — already!

I like the fence around his garden to keep out his tomato-eating dachshunds. And I am jealous that he already has produce! Look at all that!

For the record, even though my tomatoes are mealy, my dog is still the best dog on earth. He would never eat a tomato.

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Garden Club Lecture from the 60s: “Strange Bedfellows” (& Good Friends)

08 Tuesday May 2012

Posted by ninagarden in companion planting, roses, squash, tomatoes, Uncategorized, vegetables

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Tags

borage, companion planting, gardening, garlic, roses, squash, vegetables

Friends for life

My mother sent me notes she’d photocopied from a Garden Club lecture she went to about fifty years ago. The title “Strange Bedfellows,” sounded oddly like a Dickens novel or an episode of Mad Men. Typed, single spaced and on legal paper, it was written by a woman named Jean Hersey, whom she does not know or remember.

I skimmed the first paragraph quickly, knowing my mother would ask me right away if I’d read it.

“Symbiosis is the harmonious living together of two species of organisms for the mutual benefit of both.”

Skimming again, impatient, I read: “Plant garlic in your roses.”

My mother, who was note-taking during the lecture, wrote in the margins: “My grandmother knew this.”

Apparently, the garlic may stop mildew on roses. Enough said, I folded it up and put it somewhere to read it later. I am always fighting mildew and since I don’t like to use pesticides, I thought this might be useful. I would read it one day, when I had time, better eye-sight and a longer attention span. However, I did have time to plant garlic. I ran to the garage and found a package that I’d been meaning to grow. I opened it, thinking how funny it was to plant a whole bulb.

“Do I plant the whole bulb?” I asked my husband who grunted, “No idea.”

It seemed so much like the garlic in my kitchen. I wasn’t sure if it was worth it to plant a bulb, but it was for the roses, I reminded myself. So I did.

Later that day, my best friend called from Huntington Beach. She was parked outside Home Depot. “I can’t find garlic sprouts, and I’m buying them for my roses.”

Get out! The very same thing? Cosmic coincidence? Mind meld? Did my mother send her the same long article?

“It’s a bulb,” I said. “I just planted some. You can’t buy the sprouts. You didn’t get an article from my mother did you?”

Turns out she didn’t. She was fighting the mildew on her roses, too. I told her I tried to ignore the mildew on my roses, because it didn’t seem to hurt them. (My mother’s solution was to take a Q-tip with alcohol out there and wipe them all down. Now that’s a lot of work. I wonder if wine, counts, because there is a possibility I could do that while enjoying a glass.)

Anyway, my girlfriend called me a day later, and she was really getting into “companion planting.” She was planting squash with her corn and basil with her tomatoes. She had called her husband’s cousin who was a Master Gardener and she’d told her to read this web site: http://sally-odum.suite101.com/organic-pest-control-and-pesticide-a4337 and http://www.ghorganics.com/page2.html. (I really like this one!)

And when I started thinking about planting things for mutual benefit. I thought, hmmm, this reminds me of my friend. Yes, funny that I can find a metaphor in just about anything. Funny that she was planting garlic in roses when I was. There is something significant about that coincidence. Let me tell you…we have been friends since before I was born. Yep. That’s right. She is nine months older than I am. Our mothers lived across the street. That means when she was one, I was three months old inside my mother. That’s how we knew each other before birth. Maybe I heard her babbling while I was growing in there, my mother sharing coffee with hers, or maybe trading plant cuttings or recipes—all things they still do today. Then I was born, and we were often put in the same crib.

Forty years later, we’re still friends sharing things and helping each other. If I am oregano, she is tomato. If she is borage, then I am a strawberry. She’s beans, I’m corn. You see, we are like companion plants—her often openness complements my reluctance; her emotions contrast to my stoicism; often she calms the rant; then she rants and I calm. We alternate moods and emotions depending on the problem or the need. We’ve both been irrational and reasonable; sympathetic and outraged, talkative and silent — forty years of companionship through school, college, jobs, marriages, illness, divorce, death, childbirth and child rearing, parents growing in years, moving, house buying, house remodeling and gardening; two growing things have never been as mutually beneficial.

So thank you, friend. I am so lucky to have you as a companion.

Now that my tribute to this friendship is over, and I will get to a summary of Jean Hersey’s points—I finally read the entire article and summarized it for you.

• Lavender and scotch broom: Here’s a picture of scotch broom.

 

• Dandelions. “You may scorn them in the lawn, but please appreciate them for one marvelous characteristic–at sunset they exude an ethylene gas which causes flowers and fruits in the near vicinity to ripen ahead of time.”

• Grapes benefit from nearby plantings of hyssop and wild mustard.

• Strawberries like to grow near spruce trees.

• Bush beans lettuce and spinach are good companions; borage is also good and good with strawberries.

• Never grow cabbage next to strawberries.

• Tomatoes–parsley and asparagus are great; stinging nettle (!) keeps them mold free and sweetens the tomato pulp.

• Never plant tomato with fennel.

• Radishes are good near cucumbers and ward off cucumber beetles. Cucumbers also help corn.

• Most pumpkins or squash and corn and legumes (such as beans) are all good companions.

• Carrots, peas and lettuce are all good for each other are all good together.

• Potatoes and sunflower stunt each other.

• Nasturtiums are good with apple trees and are said to influence the sap and make it taste bad to aphids

• Hang pennyroyal on fig trees to keep flying bugs away.

• Mint repels ants. And since ants carry aphids and that horrible soot and therefore attracting that white scale, I am going to plant a lot of mint this summer. And my favorite one:

• Plant a white geranium among your roses to keep the beetles away: “They [the white geraniums] attract Japanese beetles which eat the geraniums and die. You can also collect Japanese Beatles and pill bugs in traps, burn them and scatter their ashes over nearby vegetation.”

Now that is one kick ass garden club lady! Go Jean!

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Too Much Squash: an Overabundance of Vegetables

09 Tuesday Aug 2011

Posted by ninagarden in eggplant, garden, gardening, grilled vegetables, grilling, recipe, squash, Uncategorized, vegetables

≈ 2 Comments

Thanks to a few days at BlogHer, I have some new ideas. First of all, after being inside for three days, I really need to get out and garden!

At the beach on Sunday, I realized most of my friends — most of whom are gardeners too — have too much squash right now. We can’t give squash away to each other anymore!

My friend Rebecca brought zucchini muffins, which we all ate, expect my husband because he thinks vegetables disguised as desserts or breads is trickery. (I could write a lot about his food habits, but will spare you.)  I planted only yellow squash, and I don’t think that is good for fried squash blossoms or muffins but heck, I may try it soon if I get tired of eating it with my dinner (or lunch as I did today). Plus no one else in my family will eat it — back to the weird food habits story that I haven’t written about yet. I am the primary squash eater of our household. Yay for me!

Anyway, one recipe that my friend Julie  suggested was very delicious and simple. You can use the grill or roast the veggies in the oven. It feels very summery and even my husband tried it! Here goes:

  • Squash (any kind, sliced thin, vertically)
  • Eggplant (Japanese, slice vertically)
  • Red peppers
  • or any other sturdy vegetable
  • Pesto (can purchase from the grocery)
  • Olive Oil

Slice vegetables 1/4 inch thick and dilute the pesto with a little olive oil. Toss vegetables and add salt and pepper to taste. Grill or roast in oven.

There you have it. Thanks, Julie!  Something else to do with all that squash (and Japanese eggplants, too!)

Eat well tonight and garden until the sun goes down.

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