See, We Still Grow Stuff

It's been a while, but we're still pluggin' away here at Castle Turling.  I got one of the two raised beds to actually grow some winter vegetables.  That we ate!

In this bed is broccoli first and foremost.  We're coming to the end of the season.  It was 91F today, so I'm guessing this won't last much longer.

I also planted a ton of lettuce, not realizing just how far lettuce goes.  I've been trimming away at it for salads and it just keeps on growing.  I think I'll put in about half next year.  I also have carrots, onions and garlic in here.

I also put in winter squash, but I'm guessing winter squash is named using the same reasoning as Iceland and Greenland, meaning winter squash needs to be planted in the summer.  Because this stuff sprouted and took one look at the weather and immediately died.  Bastards.

Anyway, the summer raised bed will get planted soon.  Then, I'll do a second planting in the winter bed after it's been cleared out, which I'm guessing will not be long from now.  In the meantime, I'll keep enjoying that lettuce.

A Subversive Plot and Watch More TED

I love TED.  It's addictive.  Below is a clip I hope you'll find interesting.  It's a talk given by Roger Doiron.  Here's his bio:

"Roger Doiron is founding director of Kitchen Gardeners International, a network of people taking a hands-on approach to re-localizing the global food supply. Doiron is an advocate for new policies, technologies, investments, and fresh thinking about the role of gardens. His successful petition to replant a kitchen garden at the White House attracted broad international recognition. He is also a writer, photographer, and public speaker."

I think one interesting (frightening?) note is that in order for the world's population of an estimated 10 billion people by the century's end to be fed, the world will have to produce more food in the next 50 years then in the previous 10,000 combined.  We can't even make decent food now, how on earth are we going to do it on that large of a scale?

I'll tell you how, we're going to grow it ourselves.  I'm heading out today and planting something.  Ok, I'm pulling all the weeds first, but damn it, then I'm planting something!!  Who's with me?!?!

Veggie's Are a Bit Closer

Just a bit, though.  Lots of work still to do, but at least we have dirt!  Err, sorry, soil.

Looks a bit like concrete, doesn't it, but I assure you of ye' of little faith, that it is fluffy and whatever other quality plants like.

After Spurs complete destruction of Liverpool this morning, I felt inspired to actually accomplish something.  Which I still didn't, because as you can see, I have a couple of inches space left to fill to reach the top of the box.  I want to hit the top, so when it settles it won't look half full.

I made a mix of 1/3 compost, 1/3 peat moss and 1/3 sand.  The recipe I had found online called for 1/3 vermiculate instead of sand.   Then, I went to the store and priced vermiculite.  Sweet mother of God that crap's expensive!!!  I would have been better off using 1/3 14kt gold!  Luckily for me, one of the bag's at the gardening center had "accidentally" been opened.  Funny how that happens when you wedge your finger in the top and pull, but I digress.  So, I decided to take a look and vermiculate = sand.  Yes, people, it's f-ing sand.  So, you know what I got???  Well, I got a bag of vermiculate, because there's a little Catholic left in me and the guilt was overwhelming, but after that I got SAND!!  So, it's 1/3'ish sand you could say.

Anyway, now I need to tackle irrigation, because let's be honest, I sure as hell won't remember to hand water everyday, and then complete some fence requirements to keep the rabbits out.  Then, we'll actually plant something.  But, not today.  It's 95F (35C) and I'm grabbing a pint.  Plus, I'm dog sitting a chihuahua and, to no fault of my own, it's barricaded itself under the television console.  I'm sure it's pissed its little brains out down there, too.  It's sure peed every where else.  Where's that pint??

Big Max!!

No, I'm not referring to whatever you might think I was referring to.  Although, it would qualify.  HA!

Big Max, the pumpkin, went into the ground yesterday.  I would have posted it yesterday, but the whole "No card" fiasco continued.  And, yes, it already has damage from the god damn snails.  The last time I saw this was when we planted hostas at our Huntington Beach house.  The snails ate it to the ground in three days.  I need to consult the internet, books and my local yogi to figure out a cure.  I was thinking of sitting next to it and crushing whatever came near.  Then, I realized we saw a bobcat a short time back and decided that wasn't the best course of action.  Maybe I need to buy a rifle.  My son and I are archers, so I could get them with that, but I digress.

Big Max takes about 120 days to mature (grow? escalate? what's the right word here?).  That should put him (I'm going with this one is a Maximillian and not a Maxine) right before Halloween.  This three bucks is going to save me $80 at the pumpkin patch.  The best thing about this when we bought it was the pumpkin seeds were still on the leaves!

I picture some poor employee from Village Nurseries sitting in the back glueing all of the seeds to the leaves.  It would have worked beautifully if I had actually noticed them AT the nursery.  Needless to say, this thing has quadrupled in size in the week we've had it.  I understand that a single vine, and we have three, can take up to 500 square feet of space.  We've put it in an unused corner of the yard where, with a little persuasion, it can grow into a large uninhabited space.  I would have taken a picture, but there are far too many weeds that need to be pulled before that happens.  We're hoping to get four or five pumpkins.  That will give us one for my son, one for Kiki (previously known as Bananas, but she renamed herself), one for McKenna, and then one each for family friends, Aidan, Colin, Kyren (I completely spelled that wrong), Drew, Colin, oh crap, it looks like we had better get more.

Our First Crop!!!!!

It consists of two tomatoes!!!  I'm so excited I could pee!!!  Ok, maybe not that excited.

Yes, they're small.  Yes, there are only two.  But, I couldn't care less.  Roma tomatoes.  We cut them up and put them on some chicken taco's tonight.  And, they tasted like the most tomatoey tomatoes I've ever had.

Now, the plant itself on the other hand...

I expected it to be, well, bigger.  It has about a dozen tomatoes on it, but the cage is so damn big, I thought this thing would be a monster.  Maybe it's still early in the season.  I give it fish emulsion every two weeks.  That's all it gets, so I don't know if I should be giving it more.  I'll stick with that schedule over the summer and see what happens.

Thinning Onions

I think the onions need to be thinned.  I would read the package, but that was lost long ago.

I'm not sure at what point to actually thin them.  I'm going to wait until some look like they resemble a green onion and then give them a yank.  I'll probably leave them about three inches apart.  That pot is not very big, I think it's maybe a foot across.  I'm just shocked the damn things grew.

Garden Gate.

After installing the basic requirements of the vegetable garden (please refer to yesterday's post), I decided it was probably a good idea to build something to keep the riff-raff out.  Then I decided, since I am the riff-raff, I should probably build something the riff-raff can go through, but the rabbits can't.  Or eventually can't, as there are still a couple of items to put on.  The vegetable garden gate has finally been mounted.  Not that kind of mounted, get your mind out of the gutter, my mother reads this blog.

What I would like to do is go through the steps of building a very simple gate.  I do love woodworking and need to have some excuse to bring it into the light, so bear with me.  I built the gate out of redwood.  Not redwood from old growth forests that tree huggers were chained to, but the crappy stuff on farms that is forced to grow too quickly.  I began by making a simple square that is a little more than an inch smaller then the opening it is meant to go into.  That should leave me, roughly, half an inch on either side, which should be enough to keep vermin from squeezing through.  The MOST important thing when building the gate is keeping it square.  There is nothing more frustrating then dealing with items that are not square.  Might as well take up drinking.  No, that's not why I do.  Keep up, now.

The clamps were put in place in order to keep the gate square, meaning each corner is a true 90 degrees. Now, notice there are two screws at each corner of the bottom rail.  Whenever you fasten into end grain, which is the end of the stiles (pieces on the side), this creates a very weak joint.  Mechanical fasteners abhor end grain, like nature abhors a vacuum.  Therefore, we need to put in some bracing.

Simple scraps cut at a 45 degree angle in the corners.  This will allow the screws to be fastened through the sides of the lumber, which make for a significantly stronger joint.  (Yes, yes, yes, the lower right piece is a piece of firewood, as I didn't have enough redwood.  I'm cheap, remember?)

Now, at this point, I would like to point out something I have learned from experience.  If you need eight screws, do not buy eight screws.  Buy a box of screws.  It's only a couple of dollars more and you will inevitably need them for something else.  There is nothing more frustrating then spending $4 on gas to drive back to the hardware store to buy three more screws.  Keep them organized, and your life will be closer to fulfillment.

Now, back to our regularly scheduled programming.  Once the gate is to this stage, the clamps can be removed and outside we go.

Since, my family went to Chuck E. Cheese (look it up), I was left on my own.  Yes, the house is still standing.  Therefore, I used a clamp to hold the gate in place with a spacer that is roughly half an inch to keep my spacing.  Now, at this point I would like to bring to your attention that if you are going to be doing this it is best to clamp it in place when you are on the hinge side of the gate.  Otherwise, you are climbing through that little hole to get to the hinge side.  Secondly, you will notice I put a small strip of wood on the ground underneath the gate to keep it off the path.  If there are nails in the scrap piece of wood, do not put them point side up.  Trust me on this, especially, if you have to crawl through the God forsaken hole.

Since your gate is stable, installing the hinges is straight forward.  Hold them where you want them and mark the holes.  I'm sure there is some scientific method to this, but I'm not Norm Abram.  After drilling pilot holes drive in the screws.  Do the same with some sort of latch contraption.

And, there you have it.  I need to do a little work this weekend lowering some of the pavers as the gate scrapes slightly, then I'll be able to place the same slats on the gate that are on the rest of the fence.  That should keep the vermin at bay.  I hope.

We are Gardeners. We are Not Savages.

Inside the vegetable garden, I have installed the most technologically advanced item to ever enter a garden. Keep in mind, the vegetable garden is no where near complete.  There are no vegetables.  There are no plants.  There are no raised beds.  There are weeds, however.  There is also this.  What is it, both of you ask?  Well, it is simply the greatest invention of this century.  Great minds were consulted.  Weak minds were consulted.  Of course, the weak minds came up with this.  What is it?

We are gardeners.  We are not savages.  Don't live like one.

Peppers

We planted (sowed?  seeded? inseminated?) peppers this past weekend.  Well, we took the seeds from the packet and put them into pots.

This was a mix my lovely wife picked up and sowed.  I think sowed is the proper term as now that I'm reading the packet, that's what it says.  This mix consists of Anaheim Chili, Jalapeno, Hungarian Wax, Long Slim Red Cayenne and Serrano Chili.

Here's the dirt.  We planted them in the pots you put directly into the ground.  After watering them, I'm don't see how these pots will last the few weeks they need to remain indoors.  We'll see.  Supposedly, someone smarter then us has tested these pots and they work.  If they're going to end up as big piles of mud, please let me know so I can put them in something else.

From what I understand, we are a little late in getting these started.  However, I'm hoping the living in California phenomenon (whatever that may be) graces us with peppers.  For the life of me, I don't know when the "last frost date" is.  I'm sure it's in an almanack.  I'm not even sure we have a first frost date.

Blooming Onions!!!!

We have blooming onions!!  Ok, they're not chopped and deep fried, but they're on their way.

It's not much, but it's the first thing we've ever grown from seed.  And, I'm really hoping it's an actual onion and not a blade of grass my wife propped up as a cruel joke.  At this point, it's 50/50 either way.

There is a second one, though.

You really have to squint for that one.  And imagine.  Imagining helps.  A lot.

These are the yellow onions we planted about a week ago.  I think it was a week.  Again, a journal would come in handy.  Then, actually writing things in it would need to follow.  Don't hold your breath.

Lastly, Happy Mother's Day to all the mom's out there.  We'll be having a fun filled day wine tasting in the Temecula Valley, which is our local wine region.  Only fifty miles away, so if we ever become hundred milers, we at least have the wine covered.

Plants, What a Concept!!

Ok, not exactly plants, but an attempt!!  This weekend while buying PVC pipe for the new sprinklers, I saw that daylillies were on sale for a buck!!  So, I bought a couple.

El Desperado and Siloam Ury Winniford.  We got them into pots right away, considering I think we've missed the California planting window.  Now, the package said to plant them "point side up".  There was no point side.  There was a disc and some tentacles that resembled the hair of Predator.  I planted hair side down, although in retrospect, I probably should have planted one in each direction just to be safe.  Although, I wouldn't have written down which end was up, so I would have been at a loss anyway.

The daylillies are the three smaller pots on the left.  The larger pot on the right consists of an unknown amount of onions.

I say unknown, because my son helped me plant them.  There are three rows of them, and we plan on thinning them should they actually sprout.  This is our first attempt at seeds and, I must be honest, the seeds looked like sand.  My son's first reaction was "seriously?  Those look nothing like onions."  I couldn't disagree.  But, when I showed him the onion rings on the package, he couldn't plant them fast enough.

In the meantime, we have the compost down for the lawn.  I would have taken pictures, but it's now dark and the India Pale Ale requires me to not get out of my chair.  I should be able to take picture tomorrow during the day, because...

...the most important game of the season.  Tottenham Hotspur vs. Manchester City from Manchester.  A win and we capture fourth (combined with an Arsenal loss and a win on Sunday and we get third!!  Lasagana revenged!!!  Look it up.)  A draw is fantastic, as we will remain in fourth.  A loss, and it becomes 98% we get fifth.  Not good.  Let me explain for the Americans:

The top four teams in the Premier League qualify for the Champion's League.  This is equivalent to the NCAA basketball tournament where all the Champions from all the leagues of Europe (and every country has one) play in a months' long tournament next year.  If we finish fifth, we qualify for the Europa league, which is the equivalent of the NIT tournament.  Do you know who won the NIT tournament?  I didn't think so.  Needless to say, the money is monumentally different between the two tournaments.

Therefore, I am taking a half day tomorrow from work, so I can be home by noon PDT to watch the game on ESPN2.  I expect ALL of you to do the same.  Ok, both of you.  Also, it's Cinco de Mayo, and my lovely wife gets to celebrate her Mexican heritage.  I get to drink Pacifico and watch the English Premier League.  Win-win in my book.

Book Review: Edible Schoolyard A Universal Idea by Alice Waters

Since books are the second passion of our family (my lovely wife is studying to become a librarian), I have decided to start a semi-regular book review post.  So, here it goes.

The Edible Schoolyard was written by renowned chef Alice Waters with the help of Daniel Duane.  Waters is the co-owner and of Chez Panisse in Berkeley, California.  The book is the story of her founding of a garden and kitchen at the Martin Luther King, Jr. Middle School in Berkeley, California and is quite an inspirational story.

The school was, and prehaps still is, on Waters route to and from work.  She drove by it everyday along with it's horrid land and concrete ground.  While giving an interview to a local paper about land management, Waters pointed out the school as a way not to manage land.  Little did she know the gravity of her claim, until she received a call from the school principle telling her to put her money where her mouth is, so to speak.  Waters walked the grounds with the principal and  began formulating a plan.  The book continues on about the involvement of faculty and parents and the methods used to get the project off the ground.

A year later, the school hired an Englishman (although that wasn't held against him), David Hawkins, to become the full time gardener for the school.  He began a summer program and employment of every cheap method of building he could muster to get the garden put together.

Year three saw the opening of the kitchen at the school, where students could cook the fruits of their labor.  It was also fascinating to read how the kitchen was used for teaching math and science, as well as humanities classes, where in one example, students learning about Neolithic times would hand grind berries in stone mortars as a type of living history.

Throughout the book, stories of getting kids involved abound.  It's also interesting to read how the adults adapted to life with inner-city school children in order to make the garden a place they could be a part of.

The book continues on in the first half with various stories about the happenings in the school, kitchen and garden, including a visit by the Prince of Wales himself.  The latter half of the book consists of photographs, writings of the children and various other illustrations regarding the garden.

I must say I thoroughly enjoyed this book.  I do love reading about passionate people doing remarkable things and Waters must be considered passionate to accomplish what she has during a time when her type of cooking was not considered mainstream.  The book is not at all preachy, either, saving only the last couple of pages to point out the benefits and obvious reasons projects like this need to occur.  Lastly, it's a quick read giving the reader just enough of a glimpse into the history without bogging down.  Well done.

The Vegetable Garden

It doesn't look like much now, but just you wait.  This is where the vegetable garden will be.  Eventually.  (I never said this garden would be done any time soon.)  That's Banana staring over the fence like Wilson.

There are going to be two 4x8 foot raised beds on either side of the brick path going down the middle.  Since, we have gophers (I've scalped four in two years), I'm going to do my best to keep them out by laying a couple layers of chicken wire on the ground.  Or ground wire, it might be called, as it is specific to keeping rodents from coming upwards.  The outsides of the beds will have gravel, which was saved from when this same area housed a 15 foot Oak with gravel as mulch.  The house lies about eight feet from where the bricks enter the garden.  Needless to say, the oak was too close.  It represented stump three of five I have pulled from this yard.  If I never see another stump again....of course, after I get out the last two.  But, that's another post.

The fencing will be lined on the inside with chicken wire to keep the rabbits out.  Yea, we have a lot of them, too.  On top of the stucco wall, I have enough left over lumber to build a two foot fence that will keep the riff-raff from jumping down from above.  The fence itself used left over slats from a fence that fell on the other side of the house.  The posts and rails are redwood from the local lumber yard.  The bricks are recycled from the yard.  After all is said and done, the garden, minus plants, should only run about $200.  I think that's not too bad.

This area also gets light from the first break of dawn over the hill behind us until four pm, when it drops down behind our neighbor to the west.  That's about a solid 10 hours.  Best light in the yard.  We're starting small, as we haven't grown vegetables before and don't want to become too overwhelmed.  My lovely wife, M2, also wanted to use some of each bed for cutting flowers.  When we become more proficient, we'll put in more beds.  We'll also need to see how they handle the local wildlife and decide if more fencing is needed, or if we can grow rabbit favorites INSIDE the fence, and less rabbit favorites OUTSIDE the fence.  Again, that's another post.

Here is a close up (sorry for the blur...we're still pricing new cameras) of the pavers salvaged from other spots.  We still have about five more rows to put on the far end, which will take us to the end of the raised boxes.  I simply dug a trench and laid them on the ground.  That explains the slight unevenness.  There are a couple of reasons for this.  First, we're not putting a man on the moon, we're trying to get a wheelbarrow close to a vegetable bed.  Second, we're hoping the vegetable garden path might end up like this one day.

I lifted that picture from Flickr.  If it's a problem, tell me and I'll take it down.

Plenty of work left, and I'll try to actually get picture of plants in the near future.