May 7, 2012

It’s going to be a very good year!

Posted by ramblinrobert under My garden, my life | Tags: , , , , , , , , |
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This year looks to be my best yet for growing food. The warm winter, followed by a wet spring, resulted in blossoms galore and lots of soil moisture for my plants. Following is a sampling of fruits and veggies on their way, in various states of growth. Enjoy this beauty from my garden that I get to enjoy every day. As always, you can click on any photo to see a larger version.

Baby plums


Blueberries


Beet sprouts


Baby apples


Apriums–only my second year of these sweet-tart taste bombs.


String bean sprout–first time I’ve been on the ball early enough to plant these from seed.


Blackberry vine–my old standby.


Baby grapes. This is my first year to harvest grapes after several years of growing out the vines. Looks like I’ll have a bumper crop!


I’ve got a good crop of spiders, too! I think these are the orb weavers that are all over my garden later in the summer.

 

May 7, 2012

Critter-proofing my rainwater barrels

Posted by ramblinrobert under My garden, my life, Urban agriculture, Water | Tags: , |
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I’m fortunate I don’t have too much of a problem with the larger pests–racoons and deer–that many people in my area must contend with. However, something around here has been thirsty and has discovered my rainwater barrels. I’m guessing it is racoons. They’ve been ripping off the mosquito screens from the top of my rainwater barrels and I’ve been searching for a solution. I did buy a handful of stainless steel screws to put more screws around the edge of the screens, but I wasn’t optimistic about this approach. If it is racoons, they wouldn’t be put off by a few more screws.

A few weeks ago, someone was touring my garden and suggested I put a ring of some sort around the edge to hold it down. Liking the idea, I headed off to a local warehouse home store with my tape measure and a mental image of a 7 inch ring. As luck would have it, in five minutes I had found what I needed and it is perfect for the job: rings used in some way to install toilets. The size was perfect, as well as the number and location of screw holes.

Now installed, my rainwater should be protected from night-time critters and from breeding mosquitoes. Problem solved!

 

March 29, 2012

Last of the cauliflowers

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Me holding the last of this year's cauliflowers.While I wait for my summer crops to come in (the perennials are well on their way) or to be planted, I’m harvesting my winter crops. Today I harvested the last of my cauliflower, which was a new crop for me this year. Five of the six seedlings I planted survived and produced large heads of cauliflower. I’ll definitely be growing more of these in the future. They’re good raw, but I’ve been cooking them and eating them hot as a side dish or chilled and put in my weekly salad. Either way, they’ve been a successful addition to my list of garden crops. I like them for the big heads as well as being able to harvest a half dozen or so huge (fiddle-sized) leaves, which are also great.

 

March 16, 2012

First out of the blocks this year: Apriums

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With a very warm winter, everything has been blossoming early. But, nothing beats my aprium tree, which had a profusion of blossoms in January. It is now loaded with young fruit about the size of a quarter. I had my first apriums last year and they were delicious–tangy like an apricot, sweet like a plum. They’re especially good as an accent to hot or cold cereal.  I’m looking forward to more of these flavor bombs this year–and very soon, by the looks of it!

 

March 16, 2012

Rain water and earthquakes

Posted by ramblinrobert under My garden, my life, Water | Tags: , |
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My deck, tilted down in the corner.A few weeks ago, I moved rainwater from my catchment barrels to secondary storage–some new garbage cans on my deck. I’ve been storing rainwater this way on my deck for a couple years, now, but these were new barrels in a new location. Apparently, that part of my deck, right next to the house, wasn’t as well supported underneath as the other place. When I first put the water there, there was no problem. But, a few days later we had an earthquake. The next day I noticed a marked tilt to my deck. Live and learn! Four garbage cans of water weight slightly over one-half ton. The combination of that weight and an earthquake has left me with a new project–repairing my deck! The water has now been moved to a new location, on solid earth.

In other good news, this weeks storms have refilled my catchment rain barrels and every five gallon bucket I own. I’m now at my total capacity of over 600 gallons of water. I’m very curious to see how far this amount of water will get me into the summer as I irrigate my garden.

 

January 21, 2012

My Five-Dollar Fuchsia

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For some time, I’ve been looking for something to put in the raised planter in the middle of my yard. Although my backyard is my mini-farm/orchard/vineyard,berry patch, I’ve always wanted to have a pretty ornamental in the central planter of the yard. I thought I would put in a small Japanese maple, but hadn’t gotten around to it yet. A week ago, I was reminded that a local nursery was getting out of the retail business and had an 80% off sale. I figured it was a pretty good time to use the $25 gift certificate I had picked up at a fund raiser several years ago, so I went to the nursery in search of the perfect Japanese maple. The nursery didn’t carry Japanese maples, but as I was walking around with one of the staff members, I asked about the pretty pink fuchsia in the five-gallon pot. Five minutes and five dollars later, I was loading the fuchsia in my car.

Knowing a storm was coming up at the end of the week, I planted the fuchsia on Wednesday week. I look forward to learning more about this plant and having it’s lovely flowers grace my garden in the coming years.

 

January 21, 2012

Water for my garden!

Posted by ramblinrobert under My garden, my life, Water | Tags: , |
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Rain gauge at 2.5 inches from yesterday's storm.

Rain gauge at 2.5 inches from yesterday's storm.

That was a nice storm yesterday, the first good one since early October, if I’m not mistaken. I’ve been watering my winter crops with rainwater from that early storm, using about 200 gallons so far. It’s unusual to need to irrigate in the winter, but I’m glad I’ve got my rainwater collection system.

Yesterday’s storm (with a few drops from Thursday) totaled nearly 2.5 inches. That was enough to completely fill my rain barrels, giving me another 260 gallons of water for irrigation.

A side note about the rain gauge: I put this up a month ago, as part of dealing with leftovers from my parents’ home. This was a Christmas gift to my dad many years ago and I’m happy to provide it a new home. It took me a while to figure out where to put it, since I didn’t want it to be “influenced” by trees or buildings. The only good place I found is on my grape trellis I installed in 2010. Now, it’s very accessible and a welcome addition to my garden.

 

November 10, 2011

Labeling Genetically Engineered Foods

Posted by ramblinrobert under Politics and policy | Tags: , , , , |
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I’ve been a supporter of labeling genetically engineered foods ever since I heard of them. I don’t have time to go into all the reasons here, but read the following press release of good news for California:

http://labelgmos.org/2011/11/california-ballot-initiative-to-require-labeling-of-genetically-engineered-foods-submitted-to-attorney-general/

I’ll be talking more to my friends about this in the near future, as I am committed to collecting signatures and placing this before the voters of California.

 

August 11, 2011

Another Michael Pollan-type meal

Posted by ramblinrobert under Agroecology, Diet, My garden, my life | Tags: , , , , , , , , , , , , , , , |
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Dinner made from all homegrown ingredients.A couple years ago, I cooked a meal for the guys in my men’s group that I called a Michael Pollan-type meal. By that, I meant that the ingredients were primarily home-grown, following one of the meals in his book The Omnivore’s Dilemma. From my previous posting about that meal, I count eight different foods I prepared that were from my garden. This week, I repeated that exercise, again cooking for the guys in my men’s group. This time the menu was not only quite different, but included many more dishes and ingredients from my garden. Following is the menu. Homegrown-fruit dessert bowl, with apples, blueberries, apriums and pepino dulce.All ingredients except beverages, vodka & sugar (in the liqueur), oils and vinegar were homegrown, for a total of 16 homegrown ingredients, not counting multiple varieties of the same ingredient. It was both a tasty and colorful meal!

(The first photo shows the meal, except for the fruit dessert. The second photo shows the dessert in the serving bowl, before adding the blackberry liqueur. Click on the photos to see a larger image.)

Menu

Salad–Tomatoes (two varieties), cucumbers (two varieties) and purslane, dressed with vinegar and oil.

Entreé–dry beans, cooked, then sauteed with garlic and leeks.

Vegetable side dish 1–string beans.

Vegetable side dish 2–summer squash (three varieties).

Vegetable side dish 3–mixed greens (brocollini and beet greens)

Vegetable side dish 4–beets (boiled, chilled, then dressed with olive oil and vinegar).

Dessert–mixed fruit (apples, blueberries, apriums (pulled from the freezer) and pepino dulce) topped with homemade blackberry liqueur.

 

July 6, 2011

OMG, I’m throwing out edibles!

Posted by ramblinrobert under Agroecology, My garden, my life | Tags: , , , , , , |
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We all have our habits. One of mine is the kinds of things I eat. Depending upon the crop, I eat roots, stems, leaves and fruits. For some reason, (more…)

 

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