An Itty Bitty Melon

Well it certainly wasn't big, but since it was starting to get a little soft on the vine, I thought I better harvest it. Actually, it may have been the smallest melon ever grown. It must have come from some random honeydew seed that I saved last summer from a melon that a farm sitter left at my house. It was sweet and delicious and we savored it like a devout Catholic would with the Sunday sacrament (I love religion solely for the awesome metaphors).

I don't know if I will attempt melons again next year. You never know. The first time I tried my hand at  tomatoes, I came up empty handed and now I can grow them like weeds. Maybe, just maybe, that will happen with melons. Fingers crossed.


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I Did It! Where's My Prize?

Holy cluckin' crap, I did it! I freakin' grew a melon! Sure, it's only one melon and it hasn't made it to harvest yet, but I'm sure as hell going to crow about it. For those of you who do not live in San Francisco, you may not fully comprehend the magnitude of this feat. Our summers are cold and foggy, creating abysmal conditions for the heat seeking melon.

How did I do it? With my ultra fabu hoop house, of course. That little tunnel of polypropylene genius has added enough heat factor to eke out what would otherwise only grow in more torrid environments. Like this delicata squash:

I only got one of these too, but could have grown more, I'm sure, if that damn powdery mildew hadn't been so prolific this year. Here is a glimpse of the aftermath on that blight.

The tomatoes are another matter. They are growing like weeds, having planted them in straight compost and given them a warm, windless area to thrive in. This plump beast is called Rose De Berne (I grew this as a shout out to my Swiss heritage), which I purchased from Baker Creek Heirloom Seeds. Never before have I grown a handful sized tomato. Cluckin' amazing!

And the tomato plants are still thriving. I can barely move around in the hoop house it is so thick with vines. The pungent scent of tomato foliage makes my heart swell every time I enter.




I was also able to get some summer squash, though it, too, was crippled by the mildew. Eh, next year.



Right now, I am babying my prized melon. Not sure what variety it is - in my exuberance I forgot to label things. I made a cheesecloth hammock in hopes that "my precious" will make it to the table.



One thing I realized about my hoop house was that once the plants began to reach maturity, overcrowding and damp conditions had become a serious problem. A few of the tomatoes have molded from being squished within the deep recesses of stalks and leaves. Sometimes less is more. I must remember that more often.

Any special growing techniques that you had to use this year to accommodate your unique climate?


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June Happenings

June has been a weird month as far as weather. We've had several days of rain and howling gales that are more common for early spring. The rain hasn't been too unwelcome as it has kept the greens producing without watering, but we are already seeing signs of powdery mildew on the peas and the apple trees have white fuzzy fungus growing on them. It's not a lot of damage. The wind, however, is driving me nuts. I've always had a strong aversion to wind. It makes me irritable. Highly irritable. And it's pulled my bean plants out by the roots, bent the chard plants that I am trying to save seed from, and nearly ripped off the corrugated roofing on the animal pen that had been glued on with Sikaflex. Damn, that's an angry wind. No wonder I feel like I'm being rubbed the wrong way.

Aside from annoying weather, the apple tree is bursting with fruit. The bees have certainly done their work and it looks as though we will be heavily laden with apple pies, applesauce, apple whatever, and hopefully cider and cider vinegar. The husband is planning to make an apple press, but I'm not sure if he will be able to get to it in time. We should be wading through barrels upon barrels in less than two weeks.




Ethel says I need to repair this fence as the chicks keep escaping through this hole.




Speaking of the chicks, they have graduated to the big girl coop though are not so happy to spend their days with the full grown ladies. Sweet Pea is showing her not-so-sweet side by giving each chick a bit of what for. So they have taken to wandering under the apple tree for some daytime peace and weed munching. Today five of the six made it back to the pen while one of the Dark Cornishes cowered behind a piece of plywood. I think her legs are too big for her to get airborne. Two of the chicks even made it into the coop. That's a first and a good sign that I will spend less time in the evenings chasing recalcitrant chooks around the yard trying to get them to bed.




I'm really proud of the hoop house I set up in my neighbor's yard. Using only rebar, 1/2 inch PVC pipe, 6 mil plastic sheeting, and rubber-tipped clamps, I built the thing for less than $100. The neighbors only use the space to dump trash so I struck a deal with them that if I could use it to grow vegetables, I would keep the area neat and tidy. Thus far it's been an ideal arrangement and I plan to give them a good portion of the harvest.




The plants are absolutely ecstatic to be out of the wind and in some heat. The temperature is usually at least 10 to 15 degrees warmer than anywhere else on our lots. I've even rigged up the drip irrigation in there.




Look at these tomatoes! I was concerned that I might have to buy transplants again this year as I had left the seedlings out in the wind a few too many times. But once I popped them in the poly tunnel, all changed their tune.




I'll keep you updated as to how it works out. I've got more than a dozen varieties of tomatoes, several types of squash, a few cucumbers, beans, and melons growing in there. To think, I might produce a melon in San Francisco! If I'm successful, I will have defied the bounds of growing in a cold, foggy summer micro-climate. Good luck to me, eh?

Baby Bird Update - I'm pretty sure he found his mother. He flew out the window and has not been heard from since. I wish him the best.
 


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Container Gardening Experiment

Last year I believe I mentioned here that it is impossible for me to grow any heat loving, wind sensitive plants in my backyard. Thus I rely solely on my front patio to grow things like tomatoes. While last summer I used standard pots, with great success, to grow my toms, my harvest was pretty small because of the size of the containers - I didn't use anything larger than five gallons - and I got really sick of watering all of those thirsty buggers every day at the right time - water too late at night and you attract pests or water in the middle of the day, the water evaporates and you have a greater chance of burning the plants, which leaves the early morning and that's just out of the question for a sleepyhead like me. So this season I decided to try something a little different: self-watering containers. These puppies are supposed to keep the bottom of the pot consistently moist, encouraging the plant to put down deep roots, which is universally accepted as good growing technique.

Not being one to trust every newfangled fad, I thought I would experiment with a variety of types of self-watering containers: a homemade contraption similar to the EarthBox, a plastic bottle with teeny tiny holes buried in the pot, and an upside down plastic bottle with the bottom cut off and the top buried at the root of the plant so that water can be poured into the open bottom and delivered directly to the roots. At the end of the season I will assess which containers held water best and how well each plant grew and produced in it's environment. The latter will be more of a subjective analysis as there are too many variables that can affect production and growth.

With so much buzz these days about container gardening, I had been pretty excited to test out the EarthBox style. I basically used these designs that create a reservoir at the bottom of the container and use a wick system to pull the water up to the roots. This was by far the most labor intensive in terms of construction, requiring far too much sawing and drilling of PVC and plastics for my liking. I've heard that these guys will only last a couple of seasons, which better not be the case since it took me at least an hour to put together each one. Fortunately, I had a bunch of PVC pipe laying around so the containers weren't as costly to build as they could have been.

Another criticism of the homemade EarthBox type of container is that since they are recommended to be made with  Rubbermaid's Roughneck storage containers, they are rather unattractive, exuding more meth lab aura than Better Homes and Gardens magazine cover luster. Some folks like that look. I, however, am not a big fan, having grown up in the Midwest where there are as many meth labs are there are farms.

While aesthetics are an important consideration for me - these containers do sit in the entrance way to my home -, cost is also a concern. I wanted at least 13 pots and with the EarthBox's $30 price tag, they may look nice but my tomatoes this season would have cost me a pretty penny had I chosen that route. So I went with elbow grease and creative substituting of materials and came up with these:

I love the look, but quickly understood why the Roughnecks were recommended as the bottom of the purple container cracked under the weight of the soil rendering the water reservoir useless. The blue and green containers are holding up well, though.

I'm testing a few different types of reservoirs to see if any work better than others. With the help of my mini farmhand,

I put together three 5 gallon and four 20 gallon containers with this method. Here are a couple of the inserts that create the water reservoirs

I should have used a couple more of the four inch PVC pipe supports on these and will most definitely add them next year since one container has already imploded, leaving me with half a reservoir.

The other two types of self-watering containers are pretty self explanatory so I'll just show you pictures.

I also expanded beyond tomatoes this year with peppers, cucumbers, melons, and companion plantings of herbs and flowers. And I used straight compost rather than the pricey bags of potting soil that I went with last year. I'll report back at the end of the season with the results. If you have any questions about the construction process, drop me a line.

It's That Time

This time of year in the greater Bay Area, you can't swing a dead cat without hitting a pumpkin patch. There's Farmer John's, the Great Pumpkin Patch, Lemos Farm, Arata's (that really great one that has a giant hay bale maze and real live sword fighting), and dozens more littering the highways and bi-ways of our neck of the woods. And of course we have so many since this IS home to the the mother of all pumpkins, the Atlantic Giant, which can weigh in at well over 1000 pounds. Anyone with a kid will find themselves making the yearly trek to one of these festively orange carpeted bonanzas of squash delight. Ironically, I have yet to grow my own pumpkin. It's not like I haven't tried. But something always seems to go wrong. So our little clan joins the hoards in this yearly pilgrimage to pay homage to the gourd.

And what a mighty gourd it is!

Planting Trees and Harvesting Tomatoes

Yup, that's me, hard at it getting that Arbutus 'Marina', a.k.a. Strawberry tree, planted in front of our house. This past weekend Ute and I helped put in a bunch of new trees in our neighborhood with Friends of the Urban Forest. We'd been wanting a tree for some time and FUF gives great deals to residents in our neighborhood. They are a really wonderful organization and so incredibly organized. Along with fellow neighbors, we planted a total of 92 trees in the area, many of them going to Monroe Elementary School where Ute is a 1st grader. They had the whole operation running like a well oiled machine. Our little group of volunteers was the slowest by far, but we still finished somewhere around 1pm. What the above picture doesn't show is that right after it was snapped, I pulled that post pounder up too high, raising it up above the post, lost my balance (and if you've ever picked up a post pounder you know why), came careening off the ladder, hitting the noggin of that older gentleman in the train hat who was standing underneath me, all after our planting leader gave us a dismissive lecture about how tree planting is not a really dangerous activity, but if accidents were to occur, it would be when using the post pounder. I love being the example of why safety precautions are in place. I felt just like a toddler after being given that ubiquitous parental lecture "That's why I told you not to jump on the couch!"

Here's a pic of my big girl doing a much better, and safer, job than I.


Here I am, the joyful owner of a new tree.


If you have a program like this in your city, I highly recommend participating.

In other news, the tomatoes are ripening a plenty. In fact, I was able to make some delicious homemade tomato sauce to freeze with all the excess. The recipe came from Barbara Kingsolver's book Animal, Vegetable, Miracle (a really wonderful read btw). It called for quite a bit of basil, which I will probably moderate on my next attempt of this concoction. But all in all, the sauce tastes great.

Lazy Ladybugs and Mentally Challanged Chicks

We are sporting a serious tomato jungle on the front steps.

It's the only spot on our property where one is not blasted by tempestuous winds. And as I discovered a couple weeks ago, the gales that sweep across the backyard are no place for 'maters. I experimented with some homemade upside down tomato pots along the back fence, which ended in complete disaster. The winds literally whipped the poor plants, roots and all, out of the soil. So we moved tom central to the front entryway where we have about a dozen plants of various Russian varieties growing in containers.

But silly me, I made the novice gardener mistake of watering in the afternoon when the plants looked a bit droopy. Bad, bad Heidi. This little fumble landed me with a gazillion aphids, not to mention white flies and a couple other tiny winged critters. Of course there was not a predator in sight. My first move was to panic. It's what I do best in a crisis. Then I realized this would be the perfect opportunity to buy a tub of ladybugs to provide some summertime entertainment for the five year old. I heard rumor that they have a tendency to fly off if you don't release them at night, so we waited until it was good and dark and then dumped them on the plants. In the morning when we went to check on the progress of Operation Destroy Pests, we found the ladies clumped on top of the tomato stakes

and on the welcome mat,

aphids still a plenty and running amok. What's up with that? First lazy trees and now languorous bugs? Am I the only one working around here?

I'm sure many of you out there are chomping at the bit to get an update on those cute chicks. In general, they are well, though we did narrowly avert catastrophe a couple nights ago. Violet, my Swiss chicken, was looking droopy, doing a weird gaping thing with her beak, and making a slight honking noise. I went to the Backyardchickens.com message board to see what my sweet baby might have and came up with gape worm. This little wriggler lodges itself in the throat and basically suffocates the chicken. Not pretty. I read that sometimes you can see the worm in the back of the throat. So I grabbed my disgruntled farmhand and had him hold the flashlight while I made an awkward attempt at prying the chick's beak open. Easy? Yeah, right. Once those peeps decide they don't want to open up you couldn't jimmy that sucker with a pair of pliers. I held steady, waiting for a squawk, and then jammed my finger in the mouth of the peep. No worm. Phew!

Then I remembered something an old friend, whom also raises citified chooks, told me. One of her chicks had some similar symptoms to Violet, which required her to stay up two nights in a row squirting olive oil down the chick's throat and massaging its crop. When I felt Violet's crop, the lump at the base of the chicken's neck that grinds the food, she had a couple hard things that shouldn't have been there since she has only been eating mashed up feed. So I brought her upstairs, sat her on a heating pad, and went to work. But there was no way Violet was going to let me get any olive oil in her. She clamped her bill shut tighter than a miser keeps a hold of his money. I made several efforts which ended in the bird making desperate peeps for release or flying about the room leaving droppings here and there. I gave up and decided to stick with a plain ol' massage. She acquiesced and began stretching out her neck, looking something like a mohawked giraffe. Boy is her neck long - at least twice the length of the other peeps. After a half hour or so, she began crying for the company of her flock mates. I brought her back to the brooder, keeping my fingers crossed that I wouldn't find her stiff as a board in the morning. The next day she was practically her old self, prancing around, giving herself a little dust bath, and pecking at her friends. Then I witnessed the culprit to this whole fiasco. As Violet pecked at some of the pine shaving bedding on Sweet Pea's back, I admonished her not to eat it. She appeared to have dropped it out of her beak. And then what did she do? She went back for it and swallowed, thus reiterating the stereotypes about chicken intellect.