A Giant Pile of Worm Poop

Worms are really hearty creatures.  I have to admit that I sort of neglected them in the last few months.  I watered and fed them with kitchen scraps maybe once every couple of weeks.  When we had the cold spell, I forgot to cover them the first few nights.  And during the garage renovation I temporarily lost the pile of newspaper clippings which I had been using to cover the scraps (which they use as bedding), so I gave them cardboard as bedding -- which they apparently did not care for.  (I can tell because they didn't break it down at all.)

I'm telling you, if there was a CPS for worms, someone would have called them on me.  But notwithstanding my neglect, they seem to be doing relatively well.  We flipped over the contents of the Worm Inn onto a tarp and I began the lengthy and tedious task of separating castings from worms and other grody partially decomposed stuff.  Fed the castings to all the veggies around the garden and then re-assembled the Worm Inn -- which I promise to be more mindful of.

More than Rad-ish!

Even though we're coming up on new years this week, the garden is still churning out some lovely treats.  Here's lettuce, a few kinds of kale and two radishes -- one the size of a tennis ball.  The big one was so spectacular.  It was tender and not too spicy or bitter.  I enjoyed it with a little sprinkling of truffled salt!

Max had 3 helpings of it, though Ginger wasn't a fan.  This is about the last of our radish crop. As you can see from the previous pictures we had some sort of variety pack -- so I don't even know what type of radish seed yielded this behemoth.  

The kale got juiced along with oranges, apples, persian cukes, ginger and celery.

Then there's some crunchy bib lettuce that I will eat with some turkey leftovers.

Even though we have this great harvest, I am greedy and can't wait for spring.  I even have a two plants under grow lights -- bright lights swiss chard and arugula!

Cold-ma-gedon: California Style

Last week it was really cold.  I'll pause while people from real winter places laugh at me.  But for California, it was cold.  It got down to the twenties at night and I had a lot of small tender plants just trying to get established.  

So, J. ran out and bought some plastic coverings.  While the plants did look pretty droopy and sad in the mornings ... they seem to have come out of the cold streak mostly unharmed.   I wish I could say the same for poor J.  He slipped on ice and had a nasty spill on the pavers. :(

One of the nice things to come out of this freeze is that since I assumed most of the plants would die in the cold, every day that they are still around feels like bonus time!  It makes salads taste better, and it's not a bad way to live life.  Every day is a bonus.

Also, since the potato plant totally died, I got to dig up some yummy new potatoes.

The hunt for a tree

The year I was pregnant with Ginger we started a fun little tradition of going to the Santa Cruz Mountains and cutting down our own tree.  Sure, part of it seems silly as there is a christmas tree lot down the street from our house.  But I don't care.  It's fun to get up there, arbitrarily pick a tree that looks "perfect," support a local sustainable business, and catch up with my father-in-law, who always come to help.

This year we are in the middle of a freeze.  Not the fun kind with snow, but it is in the 30s.  This brings into focus the fact that my kids are not well acclimated to cold weather.  I packed mittens and Max cried: "But mama, now I can't point at anything!!!"  Who knew pointing was that important to kids?

So we brought a tree home, decorated it with love, and then heard it crash at 2 a.m. when it tipped over.   Yay! 

Weekend Craftiness

Ok, I'll admit it.  I'm the least crafty mom out there.  Max found a star shaped lens from sunglasses and wanted to know how he could make it stay on his head.  I used scotch tape to affix it on his forehead and he was a happy camper.

I'm much more crafty in the kitchen.  Here's this weekend's no-knead rosemary bread.

Question for the peanut gallery:  at what age does it start to get creepy when you photograph your child when they are sleeping?  Extra cute points: she was snoring.

Garden snacks

We're just starting to harvest some of our garden treats.  How exciting!  Max and Ginger each picked a radish a few days ago.  I have no idea why Max decided to pose with it on its head.  Oh right, 'cuz he's four!  Ginger happily shows off the radish she refuses to eat. 

One of the fun things about growing your own is the irregularities.  Notice that some of the radishes look like a funky shape!  These irregulars would probably never make it to the store or the farmer's market stand but we ate them just fine!  We ate them along side butter lettuce greens, which I forgot to photograph.

We also cooked up the radish greens with some olive oil and salt & pepper. 

In other garden fun, we harvested our first kale, and some of our trustee volunteer chard ...

... and made a fresh batch of mean green juice for breakfast!

Garden Update - November 16, 2013

One of the things I'm really enjoying in gardening this time around is the picking up new skills.  In the past, I'd plant something and hope for the best, but I didn't really have a plan for what to do when something goes wrong, or what to do to increase yields.  I was an emotional gardener, but not a strategic one.  Here's a walk through of some of the gems of knowledge that have been dropped on me.

Here are some of my carrot seedlings.  I've learned how to thin the plants so that they have enough room to develop into good sized carrots.  You pick a good looking seedling that has started growing the secondary leaves, and then you thin out the plants an inch around it.

Also learned to thin radishes.  It occurred to me that I was crowding them before because when I think of radishes, I think of how they look in bunches at the grocery store -- but clearly, they can't be that close in the ground.  I think these are making it to the plate tomorrow.  I'll let the kids each pick one.

Potato plant going like gangbusters in the compost pile!

Yellow leaves on celery are a sign of over watering.  Guilty as charged.

Cauliflower varietals progressing nicely at their own pace

Gave up the ghost on the beets, which never came up.  Instead we planted some lettuce and leeks!  In the past, I would never give up so soon and would probably lose a growing season for it.

These cabbages (and the broccoli out front) have been a lesson in pest management.  I've spotted green caterpillars called Loopers which will kill the plant.  Deal with them by taking them off plant or squishing onto leaves.  Theory is that it will be a lesson to their friends.  I've also found little meal bugs -- those have to be sprayed off with a strong hose.  I was worried that the plant would suffer from the direct spray, but it looked fine.

Mint is happy in its new home.

No, we aren't being pre-holiday festive.  The red bands are scare tape.  That appears to be doing the job of keeping the crows away.

The lettuce has really bounced back.  I knew there was such a thing as plant shock, but I didn't know it could last a month.  I picked a handful of leaves tonight for our salad and I can't wait to use more!

Dry Run Festivus

I really like Thanksgiving food.  I think it might be because it's one of the few times in the year where, as a culture, we really eat with the season and celebrate the harvest.   Since my mom has the monopoly on cooking during actual Thanksgiving day, our nuclear family has started a mini-tradition we call pre-giving where we cook the same recipes.

On the menu was: 

• 14 lb. Apricot glazed turkey
• Duck fat potatoes
• Shallot and onion gravy
• Ginger and garlic cranberry sauce
• Italian sausage, leek, apple, cellery cranberry stuffing
• Salad

We invited friends (who brought yummy stuffed cupcakes) to share in the fun.  We ate them too fast to take a picture. :-/

One of my favorite things about this menu is that I got to use parsley, sage, rosemary and thyme ... all from the garden.

Garden Update - November 10, 2013

Here are some picks from the backyard.  I'm being lazy by not going outside in the cold to take pictures of front yard.

We have two types of cauliflower here.  The type in back has really taken off.  The ones in front are moving along slowly.  I think a crow has munched on some of them.  Upcoming family project: build a scarecrow or take up shooting. 

The tall things are garlic and onions.  They looks really happy here.  The celery -- not so much.

The beets mock me by not even sprouting.

Kale, carrots and radishes

One of the raised beds visible from the street.  

Another raised bed visible from street.

Lettuce -- still looking kinda weak.  Carrots and violas.  I figured out that the neighborhood cats must have eaten my backyard violas because they were planted close to the ground, while the ones in the elevated raised beds out front are fine.

Spinach.

Peas in succession planting.

Swiss chard.  I think crows are eating these because there are a lot less sprouts than there were before.

More peas and cilantro.

Broccoli, carrots, lettuce.

Monster parsley plant!

Cabbage and peas.  Man, it was harder than I anticipated to get the peas to climb the trellis.

New addition to the farm: some mint.  Because mama needs a mojito.

Today we have our second installment of garden instruction.  Looking forward to learning more and figuring out which plants I should give up on.