A Community Garden

We went down to the Westminster Church Community Garden today after Thanksgiving dinner.  It's quite a nice and large garden.  I took alot of pictures.  I noticed though that they seemed to be letting alot of plants stay in the ground too long.  The lettuce seemed really large and tall, and rangy at the top -- so I think it had bolted.  Also, some of their swiss chard was beyond massively tall.  There were other plants there that were really big, that I didn't really recognize.

I'm not sure whether we were supposed to be inside the garden or not.  It was after hours, it was gated, and they had locks on each gate.  However, one of the gates was a double door -- and by pulling the door stake out of the ground, and by swinging it out, you could get both gates open without needing to remove the lock.

Sooooo...  not exactly the most legit start to Thanksgiving.

Here are the pictures I took:

Lettuce that has bolted

Broccoli -- one of the guys is still small and already has a head on it

Bird houses

Massive swiss chard

A pyramid trellis

Cabbage

A MASSIVE carrot ready to be plucked

Really nice work bench....  I want it!

Succulents and DoDads

I bought these two succulents awhile back at a garage sale.  In the olden days, I was only growing succulents.  Mostly because they are pretty, and you can't kill them (however, I have killed a few, lemme tell you....).  Anyway, a lady was selling off her large succulent collection, and I ended up buying a few of them, giving some to my Mom.

Several different types of succulents in a copper pot

More succulents in a painted terra cotta pot

When I went to buy my fountain (see previous post), I also bought two metal plant stands.  The woman selling the fountain was foreclosing on her house, and she'd decided to sell every last fixture in the house (including her 200 lb fountain that came with the house).  She had a nice garden full of dodads, and so she offered to sell me all her plants (that were still in the ground) and all the dodads.  I stuck with the dodads and bought the two metal plant stands.

Seed Club

I tried to start a seed club at work, but wasn't too successful.  I envisioned us sharing seeds -- I'll trade you 3 butternut squash seeds for 5 buttercrunch lettuce seeds.  I got a bunch of people interested, and wanting to participate.  I created a google document, that could be shared among all of us, and I got a few people to list their seeds on it.  I thought we could all reference the document to facilitate a trade.

I just couldn't get people to actually do it.  For starters I had quite a few seeds available and a lot of the other folks had only a few seeds to share.

Has anyone been successful starting a seed club?  What's more important?  People who are really into it?  Or people with alot of seeds?  Or both?  I don't know.

I think it'd be lots of fun (and would save some money) to trade seeds you don't plan on using for seeds you really need...

FYI, my favorite seed store:  Victory Seeds

Fountain as a Plant Stand

I bought a fountain awhile back on craigslist, and am using it as a planter.  I think I paid $90 for it.  And it was HEAVY.  HEAVY HEAVY HEAVY.  Luckily there were some guys in the alley, when we unloaded it, and they helped carry it in (took 4 guys total). The entire fountain fit in the trunk of the Camry, once we separated it all apart.  We got it into the Camry using a dolly that the lady had who was selling it.  Hubs was able to roll it close to the car, and then he and I were able to lift it straight into the car.  Getting it out of the car, from the alley, and into the backyard was a little too far for me to lift....  We were lucky those guys were around.

I got this idea from a local eatery:  To The Point Cafe  They had a fountain (a 2 tier one) out on their patio that they would grow herbs in.  It was cute.  This one I have is much bigger.

Fountain off of craigslist

To The Point Cafe -- 2 tier fountain right in the center (from Yelp)

My fountain has three tiers.  I'm using the second tier right now to grow strawberries.  Every couple of weeks I have a strawberry to eat!

Strawberries on the 2nd tier

I've tried doing a couple things with the top tier.  There's not much soil in the top, and it dries out quickly.  I tried starting some succulents in it, but they aren't spreading.  And right now a little green onion is coming up volunteer.  So, I don't really know what to do.....

Top tier, succulents and a volunteer green onion

The bottom tier has lots of soil in it, and stays moist.  Right now I'm growing lettuce in it, and as you can see I have bird netting over it.  I put bird netting over everything, better safe than sorry.  However, I'm worried the birds are going to find the strawberries, so I really need to be diligent about plucking them.  I've got rocks holding the bird netting onto the fountain.  So very non-permanent.

Lettuce in the bottom tier

What Did I Pull Today?

 Four big radishes, two mini carrots, and 2 green beans (I've got a pile of green beans going).  I'm putting everything in a beef stew for dinner.

We Built a Fancy Planter

My husband built me a fancy plant stand today (ok, maybe it took him 3 weekends to do it, but who is counting?).

I saw this plant stand a few weeks ago at the City Farmers Nursery.  I could tell that this plant stand was made from fence wood, because we'd been using fence wood on all my square foot planter boxes and I recognized the wood color and the notches at the top of the wood.

The planter box I liked and wanted to make

So we set about building it.  We bought the wood from Home Depot.  We bought 8 boards that were 7.5" wide, and another 8 that were 5.5" wide (all matching fence redwood).  That amount of wood makes two plant stands.

The boards at Home Depot

Prices of the boards

The boards were $4.27/ea for the wide boards and $2.35/ea for the smaller boards.  And we were able to fit all the boards inside my Camry!

16 boards fit in the Camry!

Starting to cut the small boards down

Each stand has two 7.5" wide boards, for the sides, with no cuts (original lengths).  Then each stand has four short 7.5" boards acting as the base of each planter box.  To make those, we just cut the wide boards short, removing the notches at the top.  Then there are 8 planter box side boards, which are the 5.5" boards, cut to length.  Then the feet to brace it and keep it upright (it's really tall).  We just used scrap wood for the feet.

Here is the final product!  I've put it in front of a window on the back of my house to give us something decorative to look out at.  I've already filled it up with soil, and planted lettuce in it.  This side of the house gets direct sun, and faces south.  So I'm hoping it will get a lot of sun and grow nice lettuce.

The final product!

Hubs put some REALLY big feet on the stand -- you know, California earthquakes and all...

The San Diego Zoo:

Went to the zoo this morning to just walk around awhile.  We have a membership, so can come and go as we please.

We were walking around the zoo and I found one area where they were growing a bunch of veggies.  I'm wondering who planted it and why.  Are they doing something with the veggies?

I thought some of their plantings were spaced too closely together.  For example they had quite a few broccoli plants in one planter box, and I thought they were way too close together, and inter-mixed with other plants way too close together.

But hey, they didn't ask me.....

Here are their carrots.  They are sticking out of the ground about half an inch.  Time to pull them!

Kohlrabi

Some fancy eggplant

Eggplant

Really pretty signs for the lettuce boxes

Nice vertical planting system

More lettuce

GIANT radishes...  I should find out what variety these are.  GIANT.

Lettuce and lavender

More vertical growing

Really cute greenhouse, but nothing in it

Carrots and something that is trellised?

More vertical

Mesclun