After 25 years living in my home in Oakland and 15 years of building a mini-farm and gardening in my backyard, this was one-half of my final harvest. (The other half was given to a friend, of course.) As I write this from Grass Valley, I’m eating the squash and tomatoes shown in the photo, part of a favorite summer salad. (more…)
My garden, my life
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October 18, 2013
Final harvest
Posted by ramblinrobert under My garden, my life | Tags: blackberry propagation, final harvest |Leave a Comment
September 20, 2013
Garden salads coming to an end as summer ends
Posted by ramblinrobert under My garden, my life | Tags: cucumbers, feta, string beans, summer squash, tomatoes |Leave a Comment
For over a month I’ve been enjoying my favorite summer dish, a tomato, cucumber and feta cheese salad. This year I’ve had more of these than usual, given the productivity of my tomatoes and cucumber. My Sungold and Indigo tomatoes have produced hundreds of tomatoes, enough for salads, sharing and dehydrating. Of course, in addition to tomatoes and cucumbers, I like to throw in whatever else I can from the garden. I forgot to put in some celery, but did include my favorite summer squash, trombetta, and a new string bean, Musica Romana. All in all, combined with some whole grain bread, this provides a delicious meal.
I should add that if you’ve never tried a homegrown cucumber, particularly an English or Persian style cuc, they are nothing like store bought. They lack the unappealing paraffin coating, are crisp and crunchy, and have a good cucumber taste. Grow some, or hie thee to a farmers’ market and buy some.
August 30, 2013
It’s tomato season!
Posted by ramblinrobert under Diet, My garden, my life | Tags: dehydrator, drying tomatoes, green zebra, heirloom tomatoes, Indigo tomato, mortgage lifter, sungold, tomatoes |Leave a Comment
I’ve got a medium sized crop of tomatoes this year. Some varieties haven’t done much, like the Green Zebras in the photo, but others have been prolific, like the dark red Indigos in the photo. Of course, the bright orange and sweet garden-candy Sungolds, are tasty and prolific as usual. The yellow ones are Yellow Mortgage Lifters. This photo is of one tray of tomatoes about to be started in the dehydrator.
It’s nice to dry any surplus tomatoes I have, because I love having dried tomatoes during the winter. My favorite way to use them is in soups. I simply grab a couple of handfuls of dried tomatoes and throw them in a kettle of water. They soften up and the water leeches out a nice tomato flavor for the broth. Then I throw in whatever else I want, often string beans and summer squash from the freezer.
August 18, 2013
A beautiful new tomato variety
Posted by ramblinrobert under My garden, my life | Tags: Indigo tomato |Leave a Comment
I was tempted this spring by the name of a tomato I hadn’t grown before: Indigo. I was curious what these would look like. The plant produced fruit very early this summer, but the fruit are only ripening now.
This looks to be a good variety, as it is productive, tasty and pretty. On the vine, before the bottoms ripen and turn red, they are almost black in color. 
August 18, 2013
No, these aren’t jelly beans
Posted by ramblinrobert under Diet, My garden, my life | Tags: dry beans, growing protein |Leave a Comment
I’ve been experimenting with growing a few dry beans in the past couple of years, but this year decided to ramp it up and grow more beans and more varieties. Today, I picked about half of my crop and shelled them. Although they look like something from the Jelly Belly factory, they’re not jelly beans. I just like beans that look interesting.
I’m still not growing enough to provide a lot of protein, but it is a worthwhile experiment. Most gardeners grow only fruits and vegetables that don’t provide a lot of protein. So, this is one way to get some protein from my garden.
June 27, 2013
A plum of a week (and my first fig)
Posted by ramblinrobert under My garden, my life | Tags: fig, musica romana, plum liqueur, plums, string beans |Leave a Comment
This morning I was excited to harvest my first fig of the season, and it was tasty! I then started my regular pass through the garden, harvesting what’s available today. My two BIG items for the day are my string beans and my plums.
The string beans are a new variety for me, a musica romana. These beans are huge! And the plants (about eight) are very productive. Since this is just the beginning of their harvest, I’ll have to make room in the freezer for lots of them. They provide a nice addition to my winter soups.
The plums have been ripening like crazy this week. This will be my biggest harvest ever (what you see in the picture is about 1/3 of the harvest so far this week) and I’m struggling to deal with all of them. They don’t travel well because they are so ripe and juicy, so giving them away is harder than my berries. I started four batches of plum liqueur yesterday. I thought of making jam, but what I’ve been learning is that they are simply too ripe to make good jam. I’ll try to be very careful with them and take them for snacks to dance class tonight and tomorrow. And I’ll take lots of napkins. 🙂
June 13, 2013
Summer harvest is underway
Posted by ramblinrobert under Agroecology, My garden, my life, Urban agriculture | Tags: apricots, apriums, blackberries, blueberries, plums, summer harvest, summer squash |Leave a Comment
June begins my summer harvesting season, with berries and stone fruit in abundance. This was my harvest one day about a week ago-mostly blackberries, some raspberries and a few apriums. The blackberries and raspberries are slowing down now, but the apriums and apricots are in full harvest. I started harvesting my blueberries about a week ago and they are just starting to produce in quantity. In about a week my plums will be coming in. My figs, grapes and apples are other perennials well on their way, too.
My annual crops are already starting to come in. I picked a cucumber a few days ago, and I’ve got two kinds of summer squash that I’ll start to pick in a few days. This is the best part of the year, with all these fresh fruits and vegetables to eat, preserve and share. Life is good as an urban farmer.
June 13, 2013
Pomegranate patience pays off
Posted by ramblinrobert under Agroecology, My garden, my life | Tags: pomegranate |Leave a Comment
A number of years ago, I finished planting out my backyard mini-farm, with raspberries, grapes, blueberries and a pomegranate. I’ve harvested the berries for a couple years, last year was my first small crop of grapes (this year looks to be stupendous) and I’ve been waiting patiently for my pomegranate to produce. A week ago, I noticed these little red “things” on my pomegranate, evidence that this year I’ll get my first pomegranates. Hurray!
I say “things” because I’m not yet familiar with the persimmon’s flowering and fruiting habits. I don’t know if this is a flower bud that has yet to open or, if I missed the flowers and this is already fruit on the way. Does anyone know?
In any case, flower or fruit, I look forward to watching it do its thing and to eating pomegranate seeds later this year.
I still have one tree-a pineapple guava-that has yet to produce fruit. It has flowered in past years, one of the most beautiful flowers I’ve ever seen, but has produced no fruit yet. So, I continue to be patient…
June 13, 2013
Tough love in the garden-thinning fruit
Posted by ramblinrobert under Agroecology, My garden, my life | Tags: apricots, apriums, backyard orchard, plums, stone fruit, thinning fruit |Leave a Comment
A fruit tree covered with blossoms will eventually produce many small fruit. One of the secrets of getting larger fruit is to thin those fruit aggressively, removing 50-90% of small fruit. This allows the tree to concentrate it’s water and sugars into the remaining fruit, making them larger and more flavorful.
So, what’s the problem? For most backyard orchardists, thinning fruit is a difficult, even painful process. Taking off most of the fruit feels like killing your young. Every one of those fruits has the potential to grow into a tasty morsel. But, just as putting 30 children in a single classroom is not the best way to educate children, leaving all those small fruits on a tree is not the best way to grow tasty and healthy fruit. 
Having a small number of students in a classroom allows the precious time of a skilled teacher to be focused on a smaller number of children. And thinning fruit on your trees allows the tree to focus its resources on the remaining fruit. So, you must thin the fruit.
A quick how-to: Thin fruit so the remaining fruit are about six inches apart. Go ahead, just do it. It’s painful, but you’ll be glad you did.
Photos:
- The first photo shows the fruit thinned six weeks ago from my apricot and two plums that are planted next to each other.
- The second picture shows some of this year’s harvest, picked yesterday, of apricots (left) and apriums (right). There are several small fruits among the apricots, suggesting that I didn’t thin aggressively enough on that tree. Next year I’ll have to thin more fruit. The apriums are all large and beautiful, letting me know I did a good job of thinning that tree.
- The third photo shows some of my nicely spaced (i.e., thinned) crop of plums that are coming along, which I’ll begin to harvest in about one week. Yumm!
April 10, 2013
Transplanting my potted citrus trees
Posted by ramblinrobert under My garden, my life | Tags: transplanting potted plants |Leave a Comment
My two citrus trees, a Mandarin orange and a Meyer lemon, could not stay forever in the half-wine-barrel pots. This year it became clear that it was time to replant them. The orange, in particular, was looking very weak. So, yesterday, (more…)
Urban Agroecology 