Urban Agroecology

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.

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!

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.