21 July, 2012

Next Growing Food Class: September 1, 2012!

Growing Food in Southern California
  with
David King

1st Saturday of Every Month, 10AM - 12PM
 at
The Learning Garden at Venice High
Venice Blvd & Walgrove Ave, Venice, CA 90291

Grow Food classes are hands-on mini-workshop where you experience first-hand what the plants and soil are doing, and what you can do to maximize their production in the coming month.  

Emphasis on sustainable, organic practices, including: water conservation, beneficial pest management, soil maintenance, seed saving, and more.

Sample curriculum from July, 2012:

It is most important to have water at the roots of plants – spraying water into the air to fall on the soil, is not very efficient. A lot of that water can be blown away from your plants (on to the neighbors!) and a lot evaporates off into the air. It is not very efficient at all. But there are other ways to to water that are better. All these other ways involve putting the water close to the root zone. The two ways to do this include some of the newest technology and some of the oldest technology. 
The newest technology is drip irrigation; the oldest is called an 'olla' – pronounces OYE-ya.
 Variations of ollas are found in several different ancient cultures and there is a move to put them back into gardens today.

Individual classes are $20, or buy a package of 6 for $100 and save $20.

Classes are held at The Learning Garden, a busting, year-round educational center located on the campus of historic Venice High School, less than 2 miles from the beach. 

David King, Gardenmaster at The Learning Garden, has been growing food and teaching others how to do so in the Southern California climate for more than 20 years. He is a vocal advocate for food sustainable, organic practices in food production




The Learning Garden at Venice High School
Venice Blvd & Walgrove Ave, Venice, CA 90291
(310) - 722 - 3656

09 July, 2012

The Garden In July



Corn standing tall in the garden promises good eating right around the corner. As a boy in Kansas, I knew my grandfather's goal every year was to harvest sweet ears by July 4th. He and his neighbors might bet hard earned money on who would harvest their crop first.  Most years he was the surely the winner! Since corn takes a lot of room, many Los Angelenos will need to purchase this treat at their local farmers' markets.

July brings hot weather. Finally. Now is the time to get a cool drink 
and say hello to summer in our Southern California gardens.

For this reason alone, I insist that no garden should be created without seating for the gardener to glory in the work that has been done. This is not the month to do a lot of planting, if you can help it at all. Water is what your garden wants along with some weeding and harvesting. Don’t just pour water on your garden without exercising your noggin! Monitor the soil moisture and apply water as needed – but before plants begin to wilt. Try to water when less will be lost to evaporation – early in the day or late in the day, even under the full moon, listening to the owls. Stick a finger in the soil up to the first knuckle. Better yet, turn over a small spot of soil with your trowel. It should be slightly moist down about an inch or so. The surface of the soil can be quite dry and that's fine. A gardener is more concerned with the moisture level in that part of the soil where roots live.

It is most important to have water at the roots of plants – spraying water into the air to fall on the soil, is not very efficient. A lot of that water can be blown away from your plants (on to the neighbors!) and a lot evaporates off into the air. It is not very efficient at all. But there are other ways to to water that are better. All these other ways involve putting the water close to the root zone. The two ways to do this include some of the newest technology and some of the oldest technology. The newest technology is drip irrigation; the oldest is called an 'olla' – pronounces OYE-ya. Variations of ollas are found in several different ancient cultures and there is a move to put them back into gardens today.

But before we get to that, we need to know some things about water and how it moves in the soil. First of all, water 'sticks' to itself. If you over fill a glass of water to where it is actually higher than the edge of the glass, it often can hold together and not run down the side of the glass. The tendency of water to stick together is one of the qualities that make water so valuable a part of our world. So as water moves, it pulls other water along behind it.

Water moves down in the soil because of gravity. Water moves up and out of the soil into the atmosphere because of evaporation. Water moves sideways in the soil when pulled along by plant roots pulling water molecules out of the soil, which drags other molecules along behind. Water fans out from the point it drips into the soil to a more narrow or wider 'fan' depending on the composition of the soil; sandy soil, with it's large pore space allows the water to move more downward than outward. Clay soil, on the other hand, with small particles tightly packed causes water to expand outward much more dramatically than sandy soil.

Now, on to getting water to your plants' roots!

Drip irrigation has gotten a lot of attention over the last twenty years. A number of people who have played with drip, myself included, have come to feel it is less than 'as advertised.' In the first place, drip irrigation is a lot of plastic parts. Compared to an underground irrigation system that are very expensive and difficult to install, drip systems are cheap and easy!

But on the other hand, that means they are also relatively impermanent. Plastic can be easily broken – and therein lies the tale of drip. The plastic seems to develop a magnetic attraction for shovels and other sharp instruments, which means it must be repaired constantly. Wild animals also find the plastic tubing an easy source for water – just make the hole a little larger and there is another repair awaiting your attention. Anyone who depends on a drip system, soon learns to observe the entire system while it's running at least once a month. The observation, done more with one's ears than one's because you can hear the water making noises that it would not make if the system was still working properly. Furthermore, the pattern of wetness in the soil made by drip is not ideal for a number of plants. Plants did not evolve to gather water from a single spot with no water before or after that spot. For some plants, this is a problem – especially the 'drought-resistant' plants.

Part of their strategy is to find water over a much wider range than less drought tolerant plants. As a consequence for a lot of the drought resistant plants, drip irrigation is a problem more than a solution. This is particularly difficult for the California Native plant palette than it is for plants that have been in the care of humans over the past hundreds of years. California Native plants tend to not do so well with drip irrigation.

Finally, every replanting of a food crop, requires the drip lines to be rolled up to facilitate preparing the bed and planting. This is a cumbersome project at best and is a disaster for the drip system at worst.

Drip has a lot of drawbacks although it does deliver water to the roots with relatively little loss of water to the atmosphere and does reduce water waste. There is one other recent change that updates drip to what is called a 'leaky pipe or hose.' This technology has most of the good qualities of drip but is easier to deal with and the leaky hose sweats water all along its length which means there is a zone of wetness in the soil, more closely approximating natural conditions and the hose is less of a hassle to repair or move. It's not perfect but this is a reasonable choice for non-permanent plantings.

Ollas on the other hand, are a lot more permanent and are not made of plastic. Made of clay, an olla (Spanish for 'pot,' as in 'soup pot.' ) is porous and water 'leaks' out. The olla is buried in the soil, filled with water which then seeps into the soil, spreading out into the soil to water nearby plants. How far the water moves in the soil is different according to the soil's composition, and is not clearly understood at this time, but one can make some educated guesses in short order. Ollas are not a good candidate for trees and perennials with woody roots. They are also somewhat fragile, but not as much as drip parts and they are not made from oil like plastic. Ollas do not have to be moved to plant a bed, as long as you are not tilling the soil in any way, and, of course, in my style of gardening, that isn't done. Ollas are fabulous in planted containers.


Olla with a tomato plant in a container - a good use of ollas:  they are good in the ground, but an olla in a container is perfect! Photo by El Traspatio, who also sells the olla...
But do take steps to find ways to control the amount of water that is put in your garden – and no matter how you get water to the roots, make sure you mulch the beds thoroughly and save the water you do put down from evaporating off into the atmosphere. 

Check the mulch level this month; insure it is deep enough to keep roots cool and prevent evaporation of the precious water you are putting down. I don't use fertilizer, which means my plants are never over-fertilized and with the constant use of compost and mulch, they are well supplied with all they really need to thrive. 
I am cautious about using really good compost that might have a lot of nitrogen in it on tomatoes. They tend to use up all the nitrogen you give them by growing very large and healthy-looking plants and not setting fruit. For our climate, this isn't a disaster, you just have fresh tomatoes in September and October. But if you don't want to wait that long for tomato season to start, skip fertilizer or so-called 'hot' compost. Save it for corn which is a notoriously heavy feeder.

I mentioned this isn't a good planting month. There was that huge list of all I was supposed to get all done last month, remember? I probably didn't and you might have a few things to wrap up too.
With care, it is still possible to sow beans and, for those of us with the room, corn. It's also possible to sow another planting of summer squash and if the pickle gods smile on you, more cucumbers. Some of the real heat loving veggies can be set out, like more peppers or tomato plants. If you enjoy eggplant, you might set out another plant or two at this time, they will extend your harvest. But remember these late plantings will need extra water (try to plant them in the late afternoon – and try very hard to minimize root damage when you transplant them). The problem with planting now is that the leaves can easily transpire much more water than the small root system can take up. If these plants have been growing in the same amount of sunlight that they will get in the ground, they stand a much better chance of survival. But wilted leaves the following afternoon suggest the root system is not keeping pace with the lost moisture. Unless your little darlings put on enough roots quickly, or you can do some judicious, temporary shading, your crop might not make it to a productive adulthood. With tomatoes, a little pruning of leaves from the plant will cut down on the water loss and the plant will put the leaves back on as soon as its root system can handle it.

Unless the weather cooperates and you are lucky beyond all expectation, I would suggest that getting summer plants in the ground after the Summer Solstice is more likely than not, a waste of time. I have done it and won. I have done it and lost. But before you begin to plant a lot of summer stuff after June 21
st or so, you might want to consider holding off for a couple of months and starting with a winter garden.

In our climate, especially in that part of the west coast that gets a lot of Pacific Ocean influence, growing the cucurbits can be a challenge because the moisture in the air allows mildew to grow and kill these plants. The cucurbits are cucumbers, squashes, melons and pumpkins (which are really a squash) and they are particularly susceptible to getting mildew. It can be hard, in some years with heavy 'June Gloom' to get a good crop. There are some remedies for mildew but I haven't tried any yet. Perhaps this is year I’ll actually try a baking soda and water mixture on mildew and report back to you later. Up to now, I've simply gotten rid of the infected plant and grown another. It's usually only a hassle with winter squash which take longer to ripen, summer squash, the yellow crooknecks and zucchinis produce a lot of food quickly, so a replant will keep you up to your ears in zukes, if you don't get enough from the first harvest.

Summer squash is called that because you eat it in summer. This includes all those zucchini, patty pans, crooknecks, and the squashes the British call 'marrow' and 'courgettes.' They are characterized by soft skin and will rot if you keep them around too long without refrigeration. Winter squash, on the other hand, which includes pumpkins, are so named because they can keep for many months and provide food over the winter months. It is their hard outer shell that allows them to be a part of a winter diet in a world without refrigeration and be transported easily over thousands of miles. Our ancestors relied on the keeping ability of winter squashes to hold starvation at bay. Keeping winter squashes edible for a long period of time in Southern California is a challenge because we don't have root cellars to store them in a cool and dry
place. Gardeners with small gardens have trouble with most winter squashes because of the space they take up.

The avalanche of ripe harvest should begin to worry you before July is halfway through. Tomatoes, eggplants, peppers, beans, corn, zucchini, stone fruits and others will begin to overwhelm a gardener. Keep the harvest coming by picking when ripe promptly and finding ways to keep the produce for later or share your abundance with neighbors, friends or send it off to a local food bank – there are many who can't grow their own food and can't feed themselves and their families good, clean (sans pesticides) nutritious meals. No one should be forced to consume 'instant' food just because they are poor.

Zucchini and summer squashes are a special concern.  A four inch squash on Tuesday will resemble a caveman's club by Friday and won't be as tasty and tender.  Any summer squash will do that.; only neophyte gardeners will brag about how big their zucchinis get, they get that big whenever you don't pick them in time – it's not something to brag about, but something to be embarrassed about!
The ones we call 'zucchini' are the quickest to grow to laughable sizes.  It's the reason for a million recipes for Zucchini Bread, Zucchini Casserole, Zucchini Lasagna.  (I have even eaten a Zucchini Crumble, brown sugar, butter and cinnamon, which was pretty good as long I avoided the bites with zucchini pieces.)  Once zucchini get much beyond the four to six inch size, they aren't all that tasty and begin to get woody. Harvest them early and often. Like voting in Chicago!

Melons are a challenge. Cantaloupe and honeydew melons should have a wilted tendril at the stem end of the fruit and should smell ripe (read as “mouth waters when smelling”). Watermelons are much more difficult to tell; when I was twelve, one infamous melon outsmarted me, my grandfather and the judges at a county fair by winning a blue ribbon and being as green as the proverbial Martian. I only know to thump them-- listening for an almost hollow sound, to determine ripeness, and despite that aforementioned melon, I have been really good at since I was eight. One miss in almost fifty years of thumping is a better record than any baseball pitcher you can name.

Cucumbers are not so much a challenge – as soon a cucumber is big enough for you, snag it. There are many different varieties of cucumber and it would be impossible to list each and every one because they
come in different sizes and shapes. Suffice it to say that Japanese cucumbers and Armenian cukes are able to get quite large and still be delicious! Not so with other varieties. I know a lot of folks get goo-goo eyed about 'Lemon' cucumbers, but I don't share the love. Some say you have to wait until they turn yellow before they are good to eat. I think they are never that good no matter when you pick them and they are stupendously big and rangy plants. In addition, the smaller the fruit you have to peel, the more work it is to get it on the table. I'll go with the Japanese or Armenian cucumbers – highly productive and delicious!

The harvesting of corn is another that begs a few words. The first time I saw folks in Los Angeles trying to choose ripe corn in the market, I was completely blown away! I had never seen people pull back the shuck (the leaves covering the ear) to see if the corn had filled out the cob or to see how large the kernels were. Although, I suppose if you hadn't picked it yourself, these points might be suspect. As a child on a farm that sold sweet corn all summer long, I learned to merely feel through the leaves to 'see' what was underneath. Corn sold in markets – even farmers' markets – is usually picked after it's past the optimum stage – and non-gardeners are likely to prefer it. It is a 'more = better' kind of thinking. But corn kernels that have gotten big and fat are not as juicy and not nearly as tender.
Smaller, as is often the case with vegetables, is better.

The tassel on a corn plant are the 'boy flowers' and the silks are the 'girl flowers.' The pollen falls from the tassel onto the silks and that causes the kernels – really the seed of the next crop of corn – to grow. Each kernel has its own silk. 
If you find a cob with a 'vacancy,' no kernel where there should be, that is where one silk that did not get pollinated.

If you experience worms in your corn, or you fear you will although I don't know how you can see into the future, as soon as you can see silks, put a couple of drops of mineral oil in the spot where they emerge from the shuck. The worms will find that an impassible barrier and you'll have worm free corn. To harvest, feel the ear. It may take some training, but after a time, your tactile explorations will enable you to feel the ripe (and full ear).  Leave the underdeveloped still on the plant. Grab the ear firmly and pull slightly out and down in one compelling motion to liberate it from the plant. The top and bottom ends will need trimming to find the actual ear in all that you have in your hand. As above, you can find it by careful touch.

In this season of heat, don't neglect yourself when you are in the garden. The sun we experience today is not the same sun our grandparents faced. With ozone depletion, it is much easier to
contract skin cancer, so take steps to avoid having to deal with that. I know the popular method to avoid overexposure is to slather on lots of sun screen, but I don't find that a realistic alternative for a person in the sun almost every day. In the first place, I'm concerned that all that goop eventually gets washed off our bodies and goes into the waste stream where there is no provision to deal with. It isn't one of the substances ameliorated by city sewage treatment and so flows out into nature where we don't have a clue what it does. It's just another human pollutant and no one has bothered to investigate to determine it's harmful or benign. In my world, I prefer to deal with our environment, by always assuming the safest course of action and take exceeding care not to damage the only world we have.

I continue to wear long pants and long sleeved shirts even on hot days. I have several that are quite light and let the breeze flow through. It is one way to avoid harmful rays
. I am as comfortable – or as uncomfortable – as the next person. Of course, I strongly suggest a hat which you see me wear daily, not only for the interdiction of the sun, but as a way of shielding my eyes and keeping cooler. Besides, a hat is the epitome of fashion! Almost all good gardeners wear them!

And while we are on this tangent, consider your number one tool set in the garden: your hands. This is one set of tools you cannot replace or upgrade so it's best to take good care of them at all times. For gardeners, the feel of earth in their fingers is one of the true joys – and feeling of connection –
one can experience. However, the hands can also get injured easily in a garden so take a few steps back and consider how to protect them. When doing repetitive tasks that abrade your skin, wear gloves. Have more than one pair: one for moist work that has a moisture barrier of some kind, one for light work (goatskin gloves are marvelous to the touch – they contain a lanolin that works wonders on your hand while you work) and a heavy leather pair for hard work. The goatskin and heavy leather gloves can now be replaced by some non-animal products that are almost as protective. You will find good selections of gloves from your local nursery and your local big box store,  Mail order gardening companies' catalogs display the full range of gloves that are available. Never buy a glove you find uncomfortable. It will discourage you from wearing that pair as often as you might need to. Keep your gloves pinned together when not wearing them or you'll end up with a glove for one hand and another glove for the other hand, or worse, all the same hand will be missing! I use a an electric cable 'alligator' clip to which I have attached a piece of wire in an 'S' shape to slip in my belt loop – other friends use a simple clip clothespin. Find out what works for you, but have your gloves on hand (sorry) for your gardening adventures.Is your tetanus shot up to date? Talk to your doctor – this shot should be renewed every 5-10 years and you should strive to remain currentRecommendations about this, change over the years, like most other medical advice, so talk it over with your doctor to see what course of action you should take. You don't have to garden on a former dump site to be surprised by a nail or broken piece of glass. So while soil is one of the safer substances in its natural state (penicillin was concocted from a soil mold), soil in the city are often troublesome.

In the evening, grab some lemonade and contemplate your garden. You are awesome – you are growing food you can eat. Aren't you glad you put a seat in your garden? When you are done with your reverie, go inside and write me an email about how happy you are. Enclose a check...

Look at June if you want to try to plant anything, but my advice? Try to avoid planting in July if you can.

Lavender Honey Ice Cream


It's time to cool down! At the Learning Garden we have a 4th of July Ice Cream Social and this is one of our annual favorites – I can't wait to supply the honey for this ice cream from one of my hives!

INGREDIENTS (for 2 quarts):
1½ cup honey
2 sprigs of fresh lavender
2 cups half and half
4 cups of whipping cream
6 egg yolks


DIRECTIONS:

Warm the honey with the lavender in a non-corroding saucepan. Taste after five minutes to check the strength of the lavender flavor and leave a little longer if necessary, until the flavor pleases you.

Heat the half and half and cream in a non-corroding saucepan and whisk the egg yolks in a bowl until they are just broken up. Whisk in some of the hot cream and return to the pan. Cook over low heat, stirring constantly, until the mixture coats the spoon. Strain into a container and stir in the flavored honey. Chill thoroughly.

When you are ready to freeze the mixture, remove the vanilla bean pods. Freeze according to the instructions of your ice cream maker.

06 July, 2012

June (Better Late Than Never!)


It's tomato time!  This is one of the so-called 'black' tomatoes with the dark green shoulders.  Most of these are rarely seen in the grocer's shelves because they have such thin skin.  I tell gardeners the best way to eat these is to take your plate and fork to the garden and eat it right off the plant!  They are delicious and worth the effort!

If you are on the Coast, the weather will forgive you for most of your
transgressions of procrastination. As you go further inland, you are
cutting your production seriously if you do not have the bulk of your summer plants in the ground by now. Inland, the hot weather will flatten cool season plants much more seriously than closer to the ocean. On the coast, if we have a typical summer, we have until the end of the month to get almost all of our cool season veggies out of the soil. We can have an atypical summer too. Sometimes it gets hot here and the cool season veggies are wasted just like those in further inland (including the San Fernando Valley). Other times, it is cold and foggy through June and we can have carrots an beets until July. One never knows, so it's best to have a little of both. Once they are out of the ground, usually I will wait until September before taking another crack at planting those cool season veggies. With our tomatoes and cucumbers and all the rest in the ground, we can step back and admire how pretty everything is: just perfect! Doesn't last all that long – take a picture now while you have the chance!

Do all that is listed for May if you haven’t done so yet, but do so with the thought that you’ll need to be more attentive to your plants’ water needs, and if you are inland, the later in the month it gets, the more stress your plants will be under to get their roots established in the ground before really hot weather hits. If you haven’t gotten your slower growing heat lovers in by now, it would almost serve you better to wait until next year. I’m thinking of some squashes and pumpkins – the big ones. The bigger the squash or pumpkin the longer it takes for them to get ripe; some of these take 100 days to harvest time, check that out, that’s over three whole months!, and will not ripen fully without the good heat. On the coast, if we cool down right after Labor Day, it can be challenge to get them ripen to perfection. Inland, you need to know your climate. Do you get cold in September or is the heat still on full blast? Most of you will say, heat still on. But those who have a little elevation might be thinking, heat? September? Not so much! It bears repeating, that no book can speak to your personal microclimate and your local conditions trump any book ever written. Including this one. Take what is written as a guideline, but always look at your local conditions and do not be afraid to modify what is written with a good dose of reality. Learn to trust your senses.

The mulch around your plants needs to be up to at least three inches – provided of course that your plants are taller than 6 inches, as most of summer's crops are. Add any kind of organic matter at all. It matters little what it is, but don't be stingy with it. The worms will come up from the ground in the night and pull bits of the mulch down into the soil, creating air pockets as they come and go and depositing their castings all through the soil. This is what they do and you make them an important and viable part of your soil ecology by allowing them to do what they are born to do – besides it saves your back and makes for a much more enjoyable garden all the way around. And that's what we all want to do – enjoy the garden!

Garlic planted last fall will come due soon. Racambole garlic – the hardneck kind of garlic that I prefer – will begin to grow a hard center stalk that will eventually have a small group of bulbils on it. The hard neck grows up to almost even with the leaves and begins to make an elongated “Q” shape. Once this shoot begins to make its sweeping turn, begin to hold back water. Keep an eye on it and once they have begun to brown, pull them.

Other garlics are a lot less dramatic. As their leaves begin to turn brown on the tips begin to hold back on the water. As the leaves begin to turn fully brown, pull the garlic bulbs, shake the soil from them as best you can and leave the plants in dappled sunlight for a few days until really dry to the touch. You can then braid the softneck garlics and tie the hardnecks into a bundle. Hang them in a cool dry place – I know, like we have those in Southern California, but do the best you can.

Remember, if you have planted both kinds of garlic, the hard necks will often have a more garlicky taste, but they will not keep as well as the soft necks. The soft neck allows the bulb to be sealed more effectively from the air and so helps it last longer. Eat the hard neck garlic first, then, keeping the braids of soft neck garlic until later in the winter. Onions are much the same way – if you have good sized bulbs and the tops are not turning brown, you might need to knock them over at the very top of the onion. This will cause the onion to 'seal' off the bulb from the stalk and will help the onion last longer in your pantry. Mind you, this is not possible with all onions – only the big round ball shaped storage onions. My favorite onion, the Italian Red Torpedo onion, is not a keeper and will need to be eaten fresh – I usually pull them as I need them because they keep better in the soil than they do harvested. The first onions are pulled a little smaller than full sized, the middle ones are pulled as they reach full girth and the rest as I need them, mostly they are gone by the 4th of July. But they are delicious off the grill (like candy!) until they are gone.

A note on the name 'Italian Torpedo...' I finally figured out that 'torpedo' was a bastardization of the name, 'Tropea.' I couldn't figure for the life of me why an onion was like a torpedo, but one day I saw the shape of the onion and found it came from Tropea, Italy and it suddenly made sense. They are a long red onion and until you have had them, you just don't know what you are missing! Normally, onions, a long season crop, are bought as 'sets;' small plants someone else has started growing for you and you set them in the ground to finish them off. Several years ago, my supplier was out of Italian Torpedo onions and I was forced to buy packets of seed. Guess what? Worked out fine.

Onions are a relative of the grasses. It is easy to sow the seeds closely in a small container. They can be transplanted easily without a lot of effort. The only problem one must look out for is to avoid underwatering. All those little guys in one pot can soak up the water faster than you might guess. When they are about three inches high, push a hole in the ground with a dibber (a hole poker stick like thing – a pencil is small dibber, as is a finger – which can get tired – a one by one plant stake is a moderate sized dibber). Sometimes called a dibble or, in fits of covering all sides, a dibbler. Take your pick of a name. Poke the hole in the ground, drop the plant in roots first (always important) and the push the dibber in around the plant to force the soil flush up against the just planted plant. It is an easy way to transplant many plants without digging all those holes. It works best, for obvious reasons, only on small plant like the onions or other bulbs.

If you want to try this, start your onions from seed sometime around October. All the aliums are not fast growers – onions, garlic, leeks and even shallots...

I just started growing shallots after fighting off the mystique that they had to be difficult. They take the same care as onions, and are in fact easier to grow and provide a more reliable harvest than onions. And, while you can buy onions rather cheaply, certainly the same cannot be said about shallots! So, dollar for dollar, shallots are a more tempting allium to grow than onions! Look for October's chapter for more on planting onions, garlic and shallots because that's when you get started. Now for those of us who did it last October, we are at the end of the cycle – the yummy part!

Have you staked up your tomatoes yet? If you haven't, you may well find yourself resigned to having free-range tomatoes this year! Once plants reach a certain size, it is more destructive to try to corral them into a cage than to let nature have its way with them. You may escape with the best harvest ever, but, as much of a risk taker as I am, that's one bet I don't place. Even a lone bamboo pole at the back is better than nothing. Use some soft ribbon or old rags to tie them up – string or twine can damage the plant.

I have my tomatoes planted with two basil plants and one pepper plant for every tomato plant. I'm doing companion planting to discourage pests and to not drain the soil of the nutrients needed by one plant. I could have planted more tomato plants closer together, but all those plants would draw on the same nutrients through the soil. By planting different plants near by, I am using the same ground but perhaps not pulling nutrients of the same exact profile from the whole bed. There will be slightly different nutrients used by the basil and pepper. This helps me keep my soil more fertile – as you know, I eschew the use of all fertilizers. I think they end up being harmful to the soil in the long run. Even the organic ones. 'Organic' heroin is just as bad as chemical heroin. As a part of the companion thing, most folks will add in marigolds for pest deterrence. Marigolds are considered as one of the pest deterrent workhorses of the summer garden. And the yellows, oranges and whites of these plants make a colorful addition to the summer garden. It doesn't hurt to have some color!
Beans and corn can be grown as succession crops in summer. Corn probably is a bad choice for most of us in Southern California because it takes so much room – in fact, if you have enough room to do a succession planting of corn, you probably don't live in here! Corn, as we observed last month, has to be grown in fairly substantial blocks to allow for good pollination. Beans can be grown as a succession crop in summer. Put in several different kinds of beans all through June – just make sure you don't fail to water the seeds and the young plants on hotter days. They'll need more water than the rest of the garden until they put on some size, so pay special attention. Also on beans, watch for snails and slugs – in my experience, beans are the favorite meal of these pests and I have seen entire bean crops defoliated and it's a sad sight.

Also try to keep a lettuce plant here and there on the shady side of taller plants – like corn and tomatoes. Some of the lettuces to try for summer are: Bronze Arrowhead, Gold Rush, Jericho, Mascara, Pablo, Rossa di Trento, Rossimo,Tango, Red Velvet, Reine de Glaces, Slobolt, Summertime, Sunset and Yugoslavian Red Butterhead. All of these promise to be “slow to bolt” or “hold well in heat,” but often that heat is 'heat' as in Maine or in Paris and not 'heat' as in Los Angeles! Marvel of the Four Seasons (Merville de Quartre Saison) is only Marvel of the Three Seasons (Merville de Trois Saison) in Los Angeles!

If you have cabbage, broccoli or other cool season crops still in your garden, you'll probably have to kiss them goodbye soon unless this is a cooler June than usual. Even with “June Gloom,” the temperatures are usually too high for good tasting food from those cool weather plants at this time. If you have a cabbage or a broccoli close to being fully grown, watch it very carefully lest it bolt suddenly on a warm day. Broccoli will begin to show the yellow of the flowers. Once you can make out a pronounced yellow in the head, you cannot procrastinate picking it. If some of the buds do open, all is not lost because you can still eat open flowers, it doesn't however look the part as well. Get it sooner rather than later.

Once cabbage has formed a head, it is acceptable to pick it. If you want the most cabbage for your square foot of land possible, feel the head. If there is 'give' to the leaves, you have a ways to go. A fully grown cabbage will be hard – there will not be space between the leaves and that flexibility will be gone. At this point, you need to pay attention to it. Once you see the outer leaves on the head begin to curl back on the edge, the cabbage is about to split open and the flower stalk will emerge. Once the head has split, you've not got a good eating cabbage on your hands, your cabbage is 'bolting,' going to seed. That's good if that was your intent, but very bad if you've been bragging about your amazing kraut recipe.

If you do miss the signs and they do go to flower, leave them in the garden. Beneficial insects will find them a happy addition to their diet. Many of gardening your friends will be convinced you screwed up, but you can explain to them that you are saving the seeds and allowing the beneficial insects to have a good thing to eat. If this is not a hybrid crop, look into learning how to save your seeds for next year. It really is a good strategy and you can then brag about how insightful you are.

Keep your garden moist – a tough trick as our world heats up. Your mulch will help. Water only in the cooler times of day – early AM or late PM. If you have troubles with mildew and other fungus problems, try to stick to the early mornings; any moisture on the leaves will have a chance to be wicked away and will less likely cause problems. However, if you, like me, are crunched for time, late in the evening is better than not at all! And on the coast, you'll have mildew no matter what you do.

It is better to avoid over head watering if at all possible because the amount of water lost to evaporation and wind dispersal. If you can get one, a 'leaky' hose that sweats the water out at very low pressure is the way to go and is fairly inexpensive to boot. Turn the water on very slightly and, once the hose is full of water it will bead out of minute holes all along the length of the hose. Allow it to run for a very long time and you'll get water soaking down into the roots of your plants which is where you want it. You can use it much less frequently than you would an overhead sprinkler. Look elsewhere in this book for information on 'ollas.' This is an ancient version of drip systems I have begun to work with and am very excited about.

Overhead watering can also encourage problems with mildew on plant leaves. You get a whitish sheen on your leaves that eventually kills the plant. If you grow squash, the 'work-around' is to grow your cucurbits fast ('cucurbits' refers to the family that includes all melons, squashes and cucumbers), get a crop and if that wasn't enough start more plants to keep the harvest coming. Of course, the ones you can't really do that with are the winter squashes and pumpkins. Their growing season is just too long to start over again so you really only get one crop. Still, grow them (if you have room) with plenty of light and air circulation. If you're lucky, you'll get a crop. In most years, you'll be OK, although you'll never harvest those record-setting pumpkins you can read about from points further east – like Kansas, Kentucky and Connecticut, for example.

Marina de Chioggia squash produced a lovely crop for me last year even in a relatively shady bed! So go figure. That not withstanding, if you want a good crop of winter squash, I still advise you to put it in an area with abundant sunlight. And airflow.

Try to insure your summer garden is in before the end of June. After that, it's beginning to be too hot to do all that digging and the planting you do will need extra water to get started.


Start These In Containers
Start These In The Ground
Move to the Ground from Containers
As little as possible
Beans
Cucumbers

Corn
Squash

Cucumbers
Tomatoes

Squash
Peppers


Okra


Basil



Refer to the text for exact dates.

You don't really need a recipe this month. Most of the harvest can be slathered with a little olive oil and put on the grill. Keeps the heat outside the house and deliciousness ensues. It's time to begin to enjoy our world-famous summers!

04 July, 2012

For Plant Study School: Handout 1, A Bibliography


American Horticultural Society Plant Propagation: The Fully Illustrated Plant-by-Plant Manual of Practical Techniques, Toogood, Alan, © 1999 DK Adult, A nice enough book and if you get into propagation, this book is as good as the next.

Breed Your Own Vegetable Varieties: The Gardener's & Farmer's Guide to Plant Breeding & Seed Saving , Deppe, Carol © 2000 Chelsea Green If I ever meet Carol Deppe, I'm buying her whatever she's drinking! She has written two of my favorite gardening books of this decade – this one has a delightful second half that discusses all the advantages and pitfalls of seed-saving. Full of practical advise from the pen of 'one who knows' it is a primary text on my shelf.

Heriloom Vegetable Gardening – A Master Gardener's Guide to Planting, Seed Saving and
Cultural History
, Weaver, William Woys, © Henry Holt & Co Out of print but Mother Earth News sells a DVD of the whole book.

The Garden of Invention: Luther Burbank and the Business of Breeding Plants, Smith Jane S. © 2009, Penguin Press HC, At one time Luther Burbank was held in the same echelon of American heroes as Henry Ford and Thomas Edison and he should be still. The man who brought us Shasta Daisies, the Burbank potato and Santa Rosa plums was truly a wizard of propagation and breeding of plants.

The Grafters' Handbook, Gardener, R. J. © 2003 (2nd) Cassell There is no other book that compares to this book for grafting – it is out of print and the price is considerable now. Having been in print continuously from the 1800's, (the English know how to do this sort of thing, yes?) this book has it all; every thing else is a shadow of this book.

The Home Orchard, Ingels, C. et al, © 2007 UCNR Press, Failing The Grafter's Handbook this book will fill in all the data you need to know and will lead you to a productive and lovely home orchard as well. It is particularly suited to California, which is natural because it's from the University of California.

The New Seed Starter's Handbook, Bubel, Nancy © 1988, Rodale Books, The book that started me towards growing most of my plants from seed – still the authority today.

Where Our Food Comes From: Retracing Nikolay Vavilov's Quest to End Famine, Nabhan, Gary Paul © 2008, Island Press, Gary Paul Nabhan writes a good deal about the seeds that feed us and this book is particularly poignant. The story of a Russion (Soviet) scientist and his dedication to discovering ways that would relieve hunger in the Soviet Union, only to die of starvation himself in a Soviet Gulag is riveting, allowing the reader to learn some fascinating facts about the food we live on today. A well-written book and worth the read.

david