My Patio Farm update: A lot’s been growing on

I’m going to run through this Mapleton-Bklyn style, which is to say, quickly, cleanly and without too much gratuitous editorializing.

Indeterminate tomatoes in the earthbox: Doing great. No ripe fruit yet, but lots of flowers and small green tomatoes.

Zucchini in the earthbox: Bigger than ever. Here’s a closer up pic, and this is AFTER I trimmed off a bunch of leaves for the second time last night.

Old, slightly neurotic Deborah might be a little concerned about all that whitish stuff on the leaves. But new Deborah who has no time to be neurotic says, “As long as there are zucchinis growing, who cares?”

That’s a Japanese eggplant to the right of the zucchini. It’s made a few flowers, but nothing eggplant-ish yet. I don’t blame the plant though, I blame that damn zucchini! (Next year two zucchini in one earthbox, they can duke it out among themselves).

Determinate tomatoes: Doing OK,but I’m not seeing a lot of fruit. Here’s a pic:

Potted herbs: Thriving.

That’s a blueberry bush in the half whiskey barrell. I’m not sold on this blueberry situation. Maybe they do better on the east coast? I’m giving this one another year because my friends had a blueberry bush that didn’t fruit for them the first season, but fruited like crazy the second season. We’ll see. But if it doesn’t give me lots of fruit next summer it’s out on its blueberry butt!

Radishes and carrots: Doing great! In the picture below you can see the radishes are really growing. I pulled one radish out of the ground because I was curious if it was already making little radishes. The answer is: not as far as I can see. It just looks like any other new plant root to my untrained eye. I stuck it right back in the ground and it doesn’t seem to have minded the disturbance. In the picture below you can see teeny little seedlings starting to pop up. I believe those are the carrots. Welcome friends!

And finally, this is off topic a bit, but I went to the coolest nursery for work this week. It’s called Rainforest Flora, it’s in Torrance, and it is the biggest grower of Tillandsia (air plants) in the country. If you live in SoCal it is definitely worth a fieldtrip. Although beware. I dropped $70 in about 15 minutes flat; $35 on an amazing staghorn fern, and the other $30 on these two guys in the photo below (the other $5 was tax).

The plant on the right is kind of super ’70s, right? I’m into it!

Radishes are the coolest plants in the world. And by ‘cool,’ I mean ’speedy!’

On Saturday morning I planted some radish and carrot seeds. I took this picture four days later.

CAN YOU EVEN BELIEVE YOUR EYES???

I read (in my bible) that radishes can go from seed to vegetable in three weeks. That seemed absurd, but it doesn’t anymore!

I recommend that all new gardeners plant radishes. I’m not sure I even like radishes. But this rapid sprouting is so gratifying!

Also, I recommend that Southern California gardeners subscribe to Dirt du Jour (Kristen, I’m talking to you!). It’s a Daily Candy rip off for the gardening minded. You can read my LA Times blog post about it, or check out the site for yourself here.

Carrots and radishes and a little June gloom on My Patio Farm

Here in Los Angeles June is often not a nice month. It suddenly gets cool and cloudy. It feels like the bad parts of an east coast April. Un-fun.

So maybe it is the weather, or maybe it is walking by a neighbor’s house and seeing 10 tree-like tomato plants growing in actual dirt in actual sun and feeling consumed with jealousy, but whatever it is, this patio farmer is starting to feel a little gloomy herself .  I’m growing all this edible stuff, but can I really EAT from My Patio Farm besides the occasional one ripe blueberry, or two ripe tomatoes? I grew all that lettuce and in the end it was enough for exactly two salads. 

It is so exciting to watch everything grow, but more like a science experiment than a culinary adventure.  And I really love culinary adventures! Oh well, I suppose there is only so much one can do with such limited space. At least we don’t buy many herbs anymore.

On a less gloomy note: here is a picture of Jonah enjoying his new kitchen.

He enjoyed it just enough for me to get some carrot and radish seeds planted. The radishes should be cool: they are inside out radishes–white on the outside, red on the inside. It’s my first seed experience. Wish me luck! 

 

Monster zucchini attacks My Patio Farm: Earthbox, are you TOO good?

It started off very exciting. Blearily washing dishes on the Tuesday after Labor Day I glanced up from the sink and saw two very exciting yellow flowers on my zucchini plant. Hello ladies!

And just three days later, while doing my second watering of the day (yes, that’s happening now) I saw those flowers had started turning into zucchini!

That happened fast. Here’s a close up:

Pretty awesome, right? Well…yes. But take a step back, and you’ll see that this damn zucchini plant is starting to take over the entire farm!

There’s a Japanese eggplant hiding under the enormous leaves to the right (planted in the same EarthBox), and to the left, there’s a little determinate tomato plant struggling to find some sun. I spaced out the Earthboxes a bit in the hopes that the little tomato will catch a break. But this zucchini plant is aggressive.

Watch out Jonah!

Another project: Sub-irrigated bucket containters? Bring it!

I will just start at the beginning, and you will have to trust that this will eventually get to the point so clearly stated in the subject line. Ready? Lets go!

So, a few weeks ago I saw my friend Bettie for dinner. Bettie is an amazing backyard gardener living in Silverlake, who may be getting into biodynamic farming! Interesting. (Any other biodynamic backyard farmers out there? If yes, I want to write a story on you! Contact me!) 

Bettie’s specialty is growing artichokes and melons. The melons love her yard. And this year she had some volunteer cantaloupe plants that sort of popped up out of nowhere. So, rather than chucking them on the compost, she decided to give them away, and at dinner, she gave one to me.

I love the idea of growing my own melons, but the ladies behind Bountiful Container  (my bible) caution against it. Melons take up too much space, need too much dirt and too much water for the average container gardener. And so there I was with a very nice melon plant and no where to plant it. Then I remembered! My friends Michael and Jessica have a sunny, pretty children’s garden on their property with nothing planted in it yet, and what would be more perfect for a children’s garden than a cantaloupe plant? NOTHING! Kids love cantaloupe! And so I asked them if they wanted the plant.

And now we are getting to the almost point: Michael and Jessica currently have a weathered plastic toy kitchen in their garden that Jonah (my baby boy) played with once at a party at their house, and he loved it! I told Michael I needed to get Jonah a kitchen just like it and he said, “Don’t. Take ours.”

I was supposed to trade them some left over pieces of birthday cake for the kitchen, but then too much time went by and the cake was no longer good. Michael said I could just have the kitchen, but it feels so much nicer to be able to offer them a nice healthy cantaloupe plant in return. Everyone wins!

And now to the real point! If we have this kitchen, and put it on the deck, then maybe it will keep Jonah busy enough for me to work on making a sub-irrigated bucket platner like this:

The guy from Inside Urban Green says no power tools involved!

Inspiration! Soda bottle sub-irrigation planters, prettier than you’d think!

I have a plan. I am not sure when the plan will come to fruition–it may take a week, or two weeks or even a month, but I can guarantee you that before the summer is over I will turn some of these:

Into some of these:

The above photo was borrowed (stolen?) from Chris at  Mapleton-Bklyn . Not only does Chris  write nice clean, tidy, posts (very easy to read!), he is also planting all kinds of cool stuff  on his building’s roof top.  I am very inspired by his cute little soda pop garden. I think the clear plastic looks really cool, and not too DIY or recycled just for recycling’s sake.  (I like to do things that are environmentally responsible, but I like them to be aesthetically pleasing too!)

Chris’ soda pop  garden was inspired by  sub-irrigation prostelytizer/ blogger Bob Hyland of Inside Urban Green. You can read his step by step instructions on how to make one of these soda bottle planters here.

Container mint smackdown and other going ons at My Patio Farm

Yes, I know that’s not mint. Despite the headline, the biggest news of the weekend is the first small tomatoes I discovered dangling from the tomato plants! It is very exciting! The next step is to start tying up some of the tomato stems on the handy new not-so-well constructed fence/trellis that now exists behind them. My spiritual gardening gurus, the authors of The Bountiful Container, recommend tying them up with strips of t-shirts or old pantyhose. Pantyhose! That’s a weird word.

And now to the mint.

I have read that mint cannot be planted in the same container as any other herb because it is so aggressive it will strangle any other plant out of existence. But there were three interesting looking mints at the nursery, so I bought all three and have been letting them battle it out in the same large pot. They appear to be evenly matched. One note however: The vine-y mint (Indian mint it is called) is just for looks. I love how it trails over the edge but it’s definitely a loser on taste. Another note: My baby loves mint! He ate like 15 leaves last night one by one.

And here is a bonus pic just to brag about how gorgeous this red lettuce is, and to humbly accept blame for letting the green lettuce bolt.

Sam says: “I hate baths.”

Revisiting the blueberry bush, as a metaphor for life!

So, you may recall that I bought a blueberry bush on a whim a few months ago  during  a trip to Carpinteria. It seduced me with it’s dusty pink and purple flowering beauty, but I started to regret my purchase almost immediately. At $32 or $37 (I can’t remember specifics) it is by far the most expensive plant on My Patio Farm, and I didn’t even know if there  enough sun on the deck to keep it alive, let alone fruiting.  Besides,  I don’t even like blueberries.

Or at least I thought I didn’t!

It turns out I LOVE blueberries, as long as they are picked directly off MY blueberry bush and popped IMMEDIATELY into my mouth.  Mmm!

But here’s the rub: I’ve only had four such blueberries in my life.  My blueberry bush takes up lots of real estate on My  Patio Farm, drinks a ton of water (drench and drain as fellow urban  blueberry gardener Chris knows), and really doesn’t produce more than the occasional super special one-berry treat. So is it worth keeping?

This weekend I started thinking the only responsible move is to rip it out and fill the enormous half barrel where it currently resides with tons of lettuce, or a squash or even another tomato plant. Maybe that would provide more edible yield per square inch of potted dirt.

But then I popped the one ripe blueberry still dangling from the bush into my mouth and thought, you know what? Who cares? This isn’t my livelihood. I don’t have to worry about my blueberry bush taking up too much space and not giving me enough fruit. I can just enjoy it for what I do get out of it. The very occasional, highly delightful blueberry!

It can’t all be about maximum productivity, right?

Right!

Replanting the EarthBox at 8:30 PM: Craziness in the Night Garden

What went in: Four tomato plants, one zucchini, and one japanese eggplant.

I am an unthrifty nerd and went ahead and bought the Organic EarthBox Replant Kit off Amazon. I don’t know if it was necessary, but after the winter season’s soil debacle I figured it couldn’t hurt to make things nice and official and by the book. Of course I only bought two kits and I have three EarthBoxes, so one set of tomato plants will be fertilized with the non-EarthBox Dr. Earth fertilizer for vegetables. I have a feeling it won’t matter a bit.

What do you say Sam? AAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAH!

A new look for My Patio Farm: BABYPROOF!

Babies! They are not cheap. After six weeks of searching for houses in our beloved Mt. Washington, we have decided that we actually have a pretty great deal on the house we currently rent, we don’t want to leave it unless we absolutely HAVE to, and that yes, it was worth putting some money into baby proofing the deck, AKA My Patio Farm.

Our goal was to put as little cash as possible into this baby proofing effort. Safety was key. Beauty was not. Sadly, it turns out that cheap fencing is pretty expensive (this cost us about $650), but still looks solidly cheap (although oddly, not in this photo). When the handymen who built it left we noticed  little white price stickers on most of the pieces of wood, a terribly drippy stain job, and there was already a split in one of the rails. YIKES!

I know what you are thinking: “Couldn’t you and Eric  have just done it yoursevles?”  The answer, unfortunately, is: NO. WAY. IN. HELL.  I know my limitations, my husband’s limitations, and the sorts of strains our marriage can and cannot handle. Trust me. Attempting to do this on our own would result in disaster (ie: divorce).

And besides, in the end, I think I’m happy with the result. The fencing will serve as a nice trellis on which to tie my new tomato plants (purchased, unexpectedly but VERY happily from the Tomatomania people). And I’m hoping I can tie the eggplant and zucchini plants up as well.  I am going to put some easter egg radishes  (they come in lavender, pink and white, and you don’t know what you have until you pull them out of the ground!) in the planter box which I have now moved from deep shade to spotty shade. And who knows, maybe someday I’ll revisit the grape idea.