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! 

 

Garden Shoes!!

I bought them! $4.99 marked down from $14.99.  They will live in the shoe basket by our front door, encouraging me with their sturdy rubber heel and complete foot coverage to not neglect to water, even if I’m in a rush, or it is cold outside or I left my sneakers all….the…way…up…stairs.

Because I’ve read the blueberry bush needs to be kept in very moist, but well drained soil. The ladies of The Bountiful Container say that the dirt should feel like a recently wrung wet sponge at all times.

Translation: water every day, no excuses.

Garden shoes!

Potting MIX vs. Potting SOIL: Mystery solved. Plus! My Patio Farm’s first link!

What a week for My Patio Farm! My first stranger comment (Thanks again Vince!) (Am I scaring you Vince?) And now, my first outside link! The outside link came from Inside Urban Green: Modern methods of growing food, foliage or flowers for the millions of us who are not green thumbs.

(Ed note: The outside link may have technically happened before this week, but it was just this week that I noticed it).

Inside Urban Green is written by interior irrigation specialist Bob Hyland. According to the “About” section on his blog he is “an urban greenscaping professional with over 30 years of experience.” And he’s LA based!! Just the kind of person I’d like to get to know. Especially since ANOTHER one of my lettuce plants has died. Grr.

And if you’d like to know what he has to say about the difference between potting mix and potting soil (and yes, there is definitely a difference!) you can read that here.

And my number one question for Bob: Do you have to keep those plastic showercap-like things over the EarthBoxes? It’s ugly.

My Patio Farm Update: It could be worse…

I’d like to be more upbeat, but my EarthBoxes have not been the glorious answer to all my patio farm growing dreams as I’d hoped. I’d say the success rate has been somewhere between 58 and 73 percent, but take a look for yourself.

Here’s what I started with:

Lettuce mix right after planting 10/13/08.

Broccoli, cauliflower and sugar snap peas right after planting 10/13/08.

And here are those same EarthBoxes about a month later:

The broccoli, cauliflower and sugar snap peas 11/13/08.

The lettuce 11/13/08.

As you can see, the broccoli and cauliflower appear to be doing stellar, the sugar snap peas have thinned, but are definitely climbing, and while half of the lettuce is doing OK, the other half has completely died. (There’s another box too, but the results were similar so I figured it’s not worth photographing).

And here’s the other strange thing–I was watching the lettuce wilt when I’d forget to water for a day or two, so I started being really responsible about watering daily. Then I had to go away for five days and didn’t have time to find a plant sitter. I figured everything would die and the whole patio farm experiment would be off, but when I came back I found that the wilty lettuce had officially died, the OK lettuce had grown and the vegetables were doing great. So…who knows?!?

What have I learned so far? Well, if I were going to start again, I’d plant my lettuce in a non-EarthBox long rectangular wood box and I’d plant a lot more of it than I have. So far it’s like enough lettuce for sandwiches, not really for a salad. And I’d definitely do more vegetables in the EarthBox because that seems to be working out.

What I’m not sure of yet is what broccoli and cauliflower plants are supposed to look like at this stage. I see lots of leafy growth, but I don’t see anything that looks like the beginning of a vegetable. Do I need to be patient? Or are they maybe not getting enough sun? (Expert gardening readers feel free to chime in!)

And before I sign off, I’d like to thank the friendly Vince for providing me with my first stranger comment. At least I think I don’t know you Vince. I crowed in the office when I received the comment. Seriously! CROWED!

Seed Sales are UP 30 %!! (It’s good news, although I now feel signifiantly less original)

Just got forwarded an exciting press release from a thoughtful friend. (Thanks Mr. Viles!)

Here’s a quote: “According to reports of American seed companies, seed sales are up 30% in just the last two weeks.”

The press release came from (and was promoting) a  Mr. Jay North, author of the books “Getting Started in Oragnic Farming for Fun and Profit” and ”Grow Yourself Rich.”

his website is www.goingorganic.com

I’ll see if he’d like to get on the phone later.

EarthBox ordering at 10:30 PST on a Sunday night? YES YOU CAN!

Feel like you NEED to order an EarthBox at 10:30 at night PST? Feeling confused about whether to get the whole organic set or just the (significantly cheaper to ship) simple box with no soil or fertilizer? Worried that you are going to have to wait yet……..another………day to actually get your container garden going? Well quit fretting! As promised on the website, the EarthBox phone lines are open all day and all night.

After a nice chat with the disembodied voice of Paul (I think it was Paul) late yesterday evening I decided yes on three EarthBoxes, no on the fertilizer and soil (I’ll get my own at the garden store) and no on the EarthBox baseball cap. (I actually considered the coffee mug, but lets see how the boxes work out before we start identifying with them).

The bummer is that it may take up to 2 weeks for my EarthBoxes to actually arrive. But at least they’re on their way!

Welcome to planet EarthBox!

So even though what I REALLY want (for no good reason) are these crazy expensive Food Map Containers , what I think I’m actually going to get are these significantly cheaper, less cool looking, but apparently more useful planters called EarthBoxes. They are about $200 cheaper than the Food Map Containers, and they make farming look super easy. A quick web search shows that most people who have used them seem really happy. And I like the fact that they appear to have a sort of self watering function so if we go away we won’t lose our whole crop. I think I’m going to start with three of these. Or maybe even four.

Earthbox rendering.

And for those of you wondering when I’m going to STOP WRITING about how I’m going to garden and actually START GARDENING, the answer is SOON! Next weekend to be exact.

A (true) story I need to tell myself during times (like these) of self doubt

Today I researched chicken coops for a story I’m writing for work. My web exploration took me to many awesome urban farming blogs and I started to feel really discouraged. There are so many people out there doing so many impressive things! And what do I have? Two pots of basil, a rosemary bush with some thyme around it, and grandiose plans.

But it’s times like these when I have to force myself to think of Karen. Karen was my best friend in college and we both thought it would be super cool to be in a band. The problem was that by the time  we were in college it felt like all the people in bands had been playing their instruments since high school. Why even play if you were going to be so much worse than everyone else?

But our junior year Karen decided to learn bass anyway. She totally sucked for 6 months, and had to watch her fingers while she played and couldn’t dance and play at the same time and her first few shows were not so great. But not quite ten years later she’s the bass player and lead singer in a band that just toured Europe and all the reviews of her live shows talk about her awesome stage presence.

The point is, you have to start somewhere.

This is Karen. Her band is called Demander.