City Farmers Nursery (San Diego):

I went to the nicest nursery today, the City Farmers Nursery (http://www.cityfarmersnursery.com/).  We spent quite awhile walking around it and looking at everything; it was massive!  They had a nice farm in the back, with lots of really large plants growing -- enormous swiss chard and kale!   Below you can (sort of) see they have beehives up in the corner.

The Farm

 They also had lots of animals too:  chickens, goats, turtles, fish, birds, and rabbits.  Below is a mama goat and her two kids.

Mama goat and her two kids

They had quite a few chickens (and ducks), some really pretty ones, like the black and white speckled one shown below.  If anyone knows what type of chicken that is, please let me know!  I want one!  What was also cool was that this store sold chicken feed, bales of straw, and goat and rabbit food too.  It's kind of a drive from my house, so I don't think this location is the best for me to get chicken feed (if I ever get chickens!).

Pretty black and white spotted chicken

We saw a really nice veggie growing stand, shown here, below.  It's about 5'6" tall and made of fence boards.  I just emailed my husband with this picture and said, "guess what you're building this weekend!!"  My mom wants to build one too.  Their store had tons of nice stuff in it -- decorative stuff, canning stuff, regular gardening stuff, you name it.  http://www.cityfarmersnursery.com/products/

Really nice planter stand, which I'm thinking about building

The only thing I bought from the nursery was this decorative chicken below for my garden.  Maybe it'll keep the birds and animals away from some of my plants?  Anyway, I thought it was pretty, and only $22.

The only chicken I walked away with -- heavy and decorative

What I needed to get today, but we actually bought from Home Depot, was some additional compost and peat moss, and then I was after some small ever-bearing strawberries.  I'm using them as ground cover (and for fruit!) in one area of my garden.

The strawberries I got

Food MythBusters:

I saw this video on Jenna Jackson's blog (the lady who wrote the book at the bottom of my previous post).  I thought it was a great video, so re-posting it here:

This video is on YouTube, and here is a link to Jenna's blog:  http://coldantlerfarm.blogspot.com/

The Dirty Life:

I read the best book recently.  "The Dirty Life:  A Memoir of Farming, Food, and Love" by Kristin Kimball.  Soooo interesting.  It's an absolutely lovely book.  I couldn't put it down.  Kristin started out as a freelance writer in New York City.  She had an assignment to write a story on a local farmer who was doing/building/growing everything from scratch.  She met him, fell in love, got married, and now they have their own farm together.  What's unique about this farm is that they are doing all the farming using horses, no tractors or other machinery.  On top of that, they are trying to build a full-diet CSA.  What that means is that their subscribers pay a monthly/quarterly/yearly fee (whatever works best for the customer) and then all year they can get all the meat, eggs, milk, vegetables, fruit, lard, etc, that they need for their family.  Here is her webpage:  http://www.kristinkimball.com/  It talks all about their Essex Farm and their CSA program.  The book is a memoir of their first year starting up the farm.  It's full of amazingly heart-warming stories, and sad stories.  It's just an amazing book.

I'm now reading "Barnheart:  The Incurable Longing for a Farm of One's Own" by Jenna Woginrich.  I think I should have started with her first book first, "Made from Scratch:  Discovering the Pleasures of a Handmade Life" as this one jumps around a bit, and it would have been good to start at the beginning.  But I'll read that next. 

Best Plant Growing App:

The best app for your phone is from Mother Earth News, the When to Plant App, for $1.99.

http://www.motherearthnews.com/when-to-plant-gardening-app.aspx
https://itunes.apple.com/us/app/when-to-plant/id504304351?mt=8

I have it on my iphone.  I trust it more than some of the other apps that are available because it is from Mother Earth News, a trusted source.

Here's a screen shot off the iTunes page:

When To Plant App from Mother Earth News, at the iTunes Store

I like it because you can put in your zip code, and it will figure out your frost dates for you and then tell you what you should plant (from seed or seedlings) in the current month.  It also has a handy reference guide for looking up plants.

My Christmas Wishlist:

I've made a Christmas wishlist so that my husband can easily figure out what to get me this year.  I mostly have books on it:


The Old Farmers Almanac

The Old Farmers Almanac Calendar

I put the Farmer's Almanac on my list because I've never read one before and I want to know when to sow my seeds.  I'm very unsure of when to plant things, and I would just like something to tell me!

The All New Square Foot Gardening Cookbook

I put this on my list because I have Mel Bartholomew's "All New Square Foot Gardening" book, and I thought it was great.   This book has recipes for a number of vegetables.  And often I have extra of one veggie in my refrigerator and I don't know what to do with it or what to turn it into.  Hoping this book would help.  

Also I'm asking for a subscription to Mother Earth News...  I love their website (http://www.motherearthnews.com/).  I get their emails every few days and there always seems to be something interesting to read in there.

Bird Feeders:


I've had these two bird feeders for quite awhile now.  This top picture is the smaller of the two, but it's the cuter of the two, with little perches on each side, and little holes for the birds to put their beaks into.  The birds like the bigger feeder however (below), because there is a large perch they can all sit on to get to the food which falls into a trough at the edge of the perch.  At any one time I can have 5 birds sitting on the bigger feeder.  They make quite a ruckus when they're all perched for food.  And if those birds eat at the food all day long I can go through alot of food in one day.  I could go broke feeding those birds!!  I just filled up the larger feeder, but I think the birds are in bed for the evening.

I bought these feeders on amazon.  I thought the glass mosaic was so pretty.  My neighbors had the red one, and I thought it was so nice, so I bought two!  But in blue!  Below are the amazon links, with pretty pictures of the product...














Here is a picture of 3 birds using the feeder.  I think these guys are getting fat.

 http://www.amazon.com/gp/product/B0038JCVPW/ref=wms_ohs_product_img

http://www.amazon.com/Bird-Brain-Sequin-Feeder-Square/dp/B0038JCWEW/ref=sr_1_4?s=lawn-garden&ie=UTF8&qid=1351378257&sr=1-4&keywords=bird+brain

New Raised Planter Bed:

Here are some pictures of my new raised planter bed.  As you can see, I'm still using the Square Foot Gardening Method.  This is a 2' by 4' by 8" raised planter bed.  There is about 6" of amended soil in the bed, according to the directions in Mel Bartholomew's "All New Square Foot Gardening" book.  I've even put the  grid up on it, using nails and string.

Below, you can see the two planter beds together.  The one on the right was planted early October, and this new one I just put together last night (haven't sowed any seeds in it yet).  Mel says you can put these planter boxes straight down on the grass.  We removed the grass underneath the right-hand bed, but we left the grass underneath the right-hand bed.  So I'll do a little experiment and see how things do between the two boxes.

 I didn't sow any seeds last night, I just prepared the bed.  Instead, I planned what I'm going to plant using Mel's planting grids as shown below.

Mel's grids are all 4 x 4 boxes, so since my beds are 2 x 4, I just planned both beds in one grid -- since it fit nicely.  The top two rows are the old bed, planted a month ago, and the bottom two rows are the new bed.  In the old bed I have broccoli, swiss chard, lettuce, radish, spinach, more lettuce, carrots, and kale.  In this new bed I'm going to plant (this weekend) brocolli, two squares of lettuce, beets, cabbage, turnips, parsnips, and spinach.  The dots that you see show how many of each plant I put in each grid box.

Brocolli Bugs:

I harvested my head of brocolli today.  A bit late.  It had started to flower.  Oh well, it tasted great.  Here are some pictures of it.  You can see the flower starting to form on the right side of it.  The bush was enormous!

Below you can see the size of it, with respect to my hand.  And you can see the flower a bit more.  The tips for harvesting it are to watch for the individual floret size -- when the outer ones get to the size of a match head, it's time.  I think mine were a bit big.  Also the head should be tight and dark green (no hints of yellow).

So I cut it up and started boiling it (it smelled great).  As I was boiling it I noticed what looked like a green caterpillar floating in the water.  I tossed the big guy out, kept boiling, and then drained the broccoli to eat.  It tasted great!  But as my husband was eating the big floret he found another little caterpillar....  and then another...  bad news.  I think those caterpillars REALLY like broccoli...  Here's a picture of the little guys in the bowl, they are pretty small.

Tomorrow I'm going to talk about my new raised planter bed!  I spent this evening building and designing it!

Raised Planter Beds:

My square foot garden raised bed is doing well.  I've got a nice bunch of seedlings started in it.  I planted in it:

16 radishes, 9 spinach, 4 lettuce, 4 winter lettuce, 16 atomic red carrots, 4 swiss chard, 1 brocolli, and 4 kale.

Quite a bit for one box!  The radishes are in the upper left corner and of course they are growing fast.  I think I planted it on October 4th, and if I remember right, radishes have about 25 days harvest time.  My other box of radishes was a bit slow to grow, but they were shaded for part of the day, so maybe that's why.  This box faces directly south with nothing blocking the sun.  So this box should do well I think.  I'm planting another box, exactly the same size, next to it, to the left.

This is a picture of the planter bed that is going to be installed next to my established planter bed above.  The new planter bed is the larger one shown, and the old planter bed that was originally in this location is shown in the center of it.  This small bed is what my parents gave me about a year ago, when I first started planting.  The larger box (2' x 4') is much nicer, and it's taller. It's about 8" tall versus the 6" of the old bed.  My husband made this box for me out of fence wood that we bought from Home Depot.

Not sure what I'll plant in this new box.  I was waiting for the plantings in the small old planter to be harvested before I put the new planter down.  And that happened today.  So I'll swap out the two planters here, load the new one up with amended soil, and then grid it out and plant it.  I may wait till the first of November, and then this new planter bed will be about a month behind the already started bed.  I don't know, just a thought.

Authors:

I grew up in the city, have always been in the city -- San Diego, to be precise.  What I've noticed from the gardening books I'm reading is that alot of these authors grew up on farms, or grew up with parents who were growing vegetables.  

For example, Novella Carpenter's ("Farm City...") parents were hippies and left the city for a ranch in Idaho, growing vegetables and raising rabbits, desiring a lifestyle by which they were living off the land.  Spring Warren ("The Quarter-Acre Farm...") grew up on a ranch in Wyoming.  And Robin Mather ("The Feast Nearby...") grew up in rural Michigan among farms and is now the editor of Mother Earth News.  

Each of these women have quite a bit of prior experience in growing food.  And have all written wonderful books I might add!  But each time I would read another book and think "how did these women know how to do all this," I would become disappointed when I realized they'd grown up doing it.

Where is the book about the city chick, with city parents, who decided to convert her entire backyard and front yard to farming space?  Where is the book that shows how she figured out how to do it?  I'm reading "You Grow Girl" right now by Gayla Trail which seems more focused on the city chick.  She talks alot about container gardening, working under the assumption that you may live in an apartment complex and only have a window or small balcony.  Reading her bio it doesn't seem that she has alot of prior experience, and rather that she learned it all on the go.  Gayla's book is more a how-to, while Novella, Spring, and Robin wrote memoirs.  I think I like the memoirs better, just because there is a bit more to the story line than just the how-to.  However Gayla's book has some great information on companion planting and weeds.  Who would have thought that you could learn about your soil by what type of weeds you have?

I think I'll read some more of her books, once I'm done with this one.

Gayla's website:  http://www.yougrowgirl.com/

Exceptional Eggs:

I read something amazing in my book the other day (Carleen Madigan's "Backyard Homestead: Produce all the Food You Need on Just a Quarter Acre").  I've asked friends this question, I've googled it, and I never got a good answer...  until now!

Q:  How come, when you peel a hard-boiled egg, sometimes it's difficult to peel and the shell sticks to the white which you end up peeling away, and other times it's so easy to peel that the shell just sloughs off?

I could never get a good answer to this question.....  Some people told me to boil it longer, boil it shorter.  Some people said to immediately dunk the boiled eggs into ice water, others said to let them sit in their hot water until they cool down.  Yet nothing I did consistently gave me good eggs!

However in Ms. Madigan's book she states that the fresher the egg, the harder it is to peel. This is because a fresh egg has very little air in it, and therefore the liquid stays closer to the shell.  After a week or two (store bought eggs can be very old), since the shells are porous, there is more air in them and therefore some separation between the yolk and white and the shell wall.

We got 6 fresh eggs in our CSA box the other day, now I need to go hard-boil them, and I expect that they will be difficult to peel!!!

Ravishing Radishes:

I couldn't resist and I harvested one of my radishes today.  It was a nice size and easy to pull out of the ground.  Really big leaves on it.  In a previous post I mentioned that you could eat the radish leaves, but now that I look at them more closely I think, "who would want to??!"  They are kind of fuzzy and prickly, very rough.  I don't think I'd want to eat that in a salad.  So we're not -- I'm going to compost them instead.  On this picture to the left I accidentally cut the leaves off before I took the picture.  So this is my attempt to stage the radish with the leaves.



I cut my single radish up already and we're going to have it on a salad tonight!  I've got about 5 more in the ground still, plus the 16 that are growing in my square foot garden.  I hope they taste good!  Wow, take a look at this link and these pictures of some radishes (http://bettymingliu.com/wp-content/uploads/2011/09/IMG_1843-e1317089350387.jpg)!!  ENORMOUS!!  Mine were tiny compared to these!  Today I sowed some additional lettuce seeds in various nooks and crannies of my garden.  I put lettuce seeds down every few weeks, trying to get a nice rotation together.  

Questionable Carrots:

I've been trying to grow carrots recently.  And not having too much luck.  Here are some carrots I harvested a week or two ago:

I think they are Scarlet Nantes carrots, but quite truthfully, they were from a Feed the Children free gift of seeds.  There were no dates, names, or other information on the package.  So I just randomly tried them because they were free.  Anyway, these guys above that I pulled were really bitter, and as you can see they are short and stubby.  I have to admit, the soil I had in this planter box wasn't so great.  It was just old, clumpy, store bought potting mix.  And the planter bed is sitting on dirt, but it's really hard dirt.  So I'm wondering if the soil wasn't loose enough to grow these very well.  I still have about 3 carrots to pull out, but I'm thinking the rest won't be so good either.

These are the first carrots I've ever grown, and so once the green leafy tops came up I didn't know when I was supposed to harvest them.  But reading up on websites I learned that you're supposed to brush the dirt off the shoulders of the carrots and wait till they are big enough around. Unfortunately, all these carrots are really big up top, but they are short!  So that's the one thing you won't know -- how long they are going to be.

I've planted some Atomic Red carrots (http://www.victoryseeds.com/carrot_atomic-red.html) in my 2'x4' square foot garden.  In some really nice loose soil.  So I'm thinking those might turn out well.   I saw them sprouting little guys when I went out this evening to check on things.

Chickens:

We attended a backyard chicken class tonight.  The class was put on by San Diego Sustainable Living Institute (http://sdsustainable.org/) and they have a ton of great classes.  We learned about chicken coops, feed, health, you name it!

I still can't decide if I want chickens or not.  These folks are really good at turning the chicken's bedding (which there is alot of) into compost.  And I'm not really good at compost yet.  I've tried two previous batches of compost and it never turned into compost.  I have a new batch now, and I'm following all the rules...  really hoping it turns into compost this time.

Our instructor had 5 chickens, all different types.  And they laid all colors of brown eggs. I asked alot of questions because I've read a handful of books and I seemed to know about everything that could go wrong when raising chickens. It was obvious that out of all the class attendees, I was the one asking all the "what about this" questions and the "what if this bad thing happens" questions. I seemed to know about all the health issues these birds can have, whereas he's been raising chickens for 10 years and has yet to encounter a health issue with his flock. So I thought that was good news, that they seem to be low maintenance.

Again, I just worry about the bedding/waste, and I worry about their nitrogen-rich poop burning holes in my yard (I have a lawn).  I was telling my husband that I don't want to lose the lawn, mostly because I'm concerned about the "look" of my house / its curb appeal, and its resale value.  So I don't really want to make drastic and semi-permanent changes to house.

I don't know, I guess I'll keep thinking about it.  The other thing is that I feel I should probably get 1) really good at growing my fruits and veggies and then 2) really good at making compost, and THEN I can think about chickens.  One thing at a time!

Anyway, really good class, only $35, and I highly recommend it to anyone thinking about chickens.

Radishes:

Ohmigoodness, I'm so excited about my radishes.  I have an older planter bed of radishes that are almost ready to harvest.

I was thinking yesterday about the first time I dug away at dirt to look at the status of a root vegetable; I was so nervous.  I swear it almost felt like I was about to operate on someone!  I had to do it on some carrots I was growing to see how big they were, and I was really hesitant to clear the dirt away.  I don't know what I thought would happen.  Like maybe there was a root I would break by clearing away the dirt, and the whole plant would die?  Anyway, I finally got up the nerve to do it on my carrots, and now I'm a pro at it (that's what I'm doing above to the radishes).

So my radishes are going to be ready to harvest any day now.  I planted the ones from the picture above about a month ago now.  And you saw my picture from the previous post about the 16 radishes I planted about a week ago and that just started to sprout.

I wasn't able to go out tonight to look at all my radishes and check up on things, but they're growing fast!

And you know, the truth is, I've probably had radishes in my salads 5 times in my life total (at a restaurant)...  So in all honesty, I don't think I even know what a radish tastes like!  But I'm SO excited to have grown them!  And when my husband asked, "how do you prepare radishes," I replied that all I knew about was eating them raw in salads, and boy were we going to eat alot of salads!!  I've got 6 radishes growing in the old batch, and 16 radishes growing in the new batch.  So we're going to be eating them for a little while :)

And dammit, we're going to like them!!

Did you know you can eat the radish leaves by themselves?  I think once I harvest the radishes, I'll take the leaves and mix them in a salad, and see if my husband notices :)  He's really good about eating and trying lots of veggies, so I doubt he'd have a problem with it, but it'd be neat to see if he notices them!

Tomorrow's topic:  chickens!!

Square Foot Gardening:

I've decided to try Mel Bartholomew's Square Foot Gardening method.  I really liked his book.  "All New Square Foot Gardening" (http://www.amazon.com/All-New-Square-Foot-Gardening/dp/1591862027).

This book is sooooo easy to understand for the new gardener.  I'm an engineer by trade and so I want black and white, cut and dry, 0's and 1's.  I like when things are straightforward and formulaic.  This book was for me, plus it was plain simple on top of that.

I started by amending my soil via Mel's method:

1/3 peat moss
1/3 blended compost
1/3 coarse vermiculite

Ok, so I fibbed.  I couldn't get coarse vermiculite, so I got coarse perl-lite.  I hope I'll be ok.  And, the blended compost was supposed to be 5 types of store bought compost, and instead I got two.  But, one of the compost sacks was already a blend of compost made from 25 different veggies (http://ecoscraps.com/).  So I figured I was already part way there with that blend.  So I just blended the 25-veg-blend with some other brand.

Here is my square foot garden (approximately 8 square feet!):

You see the other thing I cheated on is the grid divider on the planter box.  I used string and nails, because that's easiest for me.  He used actual wood slats to make the dividers.  Yes, Mel's grid will last longer than mine, but mine was super easy to put up.

I planted 16 radishes in the upper left hand square, and today I saw them growing!

I was very excited to see 16 little guys sprouting up!  You can see I have bird netting covering all of my planter box.  I've got some little critters who like to snack on my veggies.  In this neighborhood we have skunk, opossum, and raccoon.  Well, and rats too.  Someone made a feast of some kale I was growing -- tasty stuff. 

Back to Mel's book, did you know that Mel is coming to San Diego?  This week!  (http://www.squarefootgardening.com/greetings-from-san-diego/)  I'm bummed I can't go.  Too much going on at work.  But I think this would have been fun to attend.

So while Mel's book was great at addressing how to amend your soil, and how to implement the square foot gardening method, I have yet to find a book that simply and easily addresses when to sow your seeds.  It's kind of hard to understand those frost date charts, especially when the area of San Diego that I live in has no frost!  But I'm working on it....

Tomorrow's topic:  radishes!

Newbie Gardener:

I got started veggie gardening not very long ago at all.  Probably a year ago?  The only reason I started is because my parents were getting rid of some small raised planter beds, and I had room for them in my backyard.  So I took them and started planting things at random. Here is a picture of one of those raised planter beds with some Little Gem Lettuce growing in it.  The bed has some nice soil in it and is sitting directly on top of dirt.  I've put river rocks around it to fill in the rest of the dirt area between the bricks and the planter box.

I have been reading and reading AND READING since then.  I've read a ton of books about gardening.   In my Kindle library I've got:

Little House in the Suburbs (Caswell and Siskins)
Folks, This Ain't Normal (Salatin)
The Feast Nearby (Mather)
Weekend Homesteader (monthly editions) (Hess)
A Chicken in Every Yard (Litt)
A No-Nonsense Guide to Growing Your Own Vegetables (Spivey)
City Chicks:  Keeping Micro-Flocks of Chickens (Foreman)
DIY Projects for the Self-Sufficient Homeowner (Matheson)
Farm City:  The Education of an Urban Farmer (Carpenter)
Mini Farming (Markham)
The Essential Urban Farmer (Carpenter)
The Home Canning Guide for Everyone Who Eats (Falbe)
You Grow Girl (Trail)
The Working Chicken (Hess)
The Quarter-Acre Farm (Warren)
All New Square Foot Gardening (Bartholomew)

.... and I'm reading more.

I am a super newbie at this gardening stuff, let me tell you.  And boy have I learned alot from these books.  An example of how green under the gills I am?  I was doing alot of reading about canning.  And boy does it sound hard -- lots of rules!  But after all my reading I was super confused.  I totally didn't get the point of canning.  Each of these books said that the flavor and nutrients are lost in canning, and I thought to myself "what's the point then?"  I thought, to make it easy on me my first time canning, I might goto the store and buy a bunch of tomatoes to can as pasta, just for practice.  But I thought, "why would I want to go to all the effort to can all these tomatoes, if they are just going to lose their flavor?  Why would ANYBODY want to can anything?"

Ahhh.... and then it dawned on me.  People can large crops of their veggies prior to winter because they aren't going to have access to those fresh veggies during the winter!  (folks, lemme tell you, it took a few minutes for things to click with me)  See, "kids nowadays" just don't know anything about gardening, farming, canning, homesteading, etc.  A very simple aspect of some people's life -- canning -- was totally lost on me because I grew up in a city that has no winter (San Diego).

Oh well, I say to myself...  I may not understand why people can, but at least I'm not like some of these children nowadays who don't know that the chicken they eat for dinner originally started out as having bones in it.  Or who think that milk is just a bottled beverage that comes from the cold section of the supermarket.

From Joel Salatin's book:  "A friend was buying staples at the supermarket recently. He had flour, salt, sugar, bags of potatoes, boxes of butter, and the lady behind him in the checkout line asked, “What do you eat?”  .... To her, this cart of staples was completely foreign. He looked in her cart, and everything was ready-to-eat, whether it was frozen pizza, canned ravioli, or canned soup. It was all completely processed and just needed to be reheated in a microwave."

(Salatin, Joel (2011-10-10). Folks, This Ain't Normal: A Farmer's Advice for Happier Hens, Healthier People, and a Better World (p. 86). Hachette Book Group. Kindle Edition.)