Lunch with Friends in the Garden

The dahlias are blooming now. They make a lovely view during lunch under the grape arbor -- here with our friends Carol and Art and their daughter Diana.

Tomatoes in the ground...finally!

On a sunny, warm, Sunday, Aaron joined us for a day of planting tomatoes. To get started, we had to clear some nasturtia (in gorgeous bloom already!) and pull some mature pea plants on trellises (carefully picking most of the pods...gee, we've filled the refrigerator with peapods already). Tess helped, chewing on peapods and twigs as we worked. Then, carefully labeling each plant variety that went into the ground, we planted over 100 plants representing over 40 varieties. We're not sure if we'll have enough tomatoes this summer!

No rest for the weary

Today we finally took out our packet of seeds for March planting. Besides the annual herbs, such as dill and cilantro, we will start our annual flowers. With our mild spring weather, these seeds can go right in the ground. But we still like to start them in an outdoor nursery, where we can tend the seedlings during their first few weeks of delicate growth and then, when they are good and hardy, transplant them to their summer places.


As usual, we are planting more flowers than we need: 3 varieties of cosmos, 5 varieties of zinnias, 9 varieties of sunflowers, Mexican torch flowers, a mix of butterfly-favorites, and lots of marigolds to companion plant among the tomatoes. Also, we are planting 2 varieties of morning glories -- a weed, but a beautiful weed. And we are planting moonflowers. Do you know about moonflowers? They are morning glories of the evening. They bloom at dusk. Each flower pin-wheels open in beautiful slow motion, while releasing a heavenly scent.

And these are just the annuals. Don't forget the forget-me-nots. And don't forget the hollyhocks, the dahlias, the roses, the gladioli, the lilies, the lavender, ...

But really, can you ever have too many flowers?

Stroke those tomato seedlings

While nurturing our tomato seedlings in their nursery in the garage, we try to simulate natural growing conditions as much as possible. Daytime sunlight, nighttime warmth, and regular watering are the obvious requirements. But we recently learned that tomato seedlings also benefit from al fresco breezes ruffling their leaves and bending their stems. Apparently, this "exercises" them and makes them grow stronger. To simulate natural breezes, we gently stroke our seedlings 3-5 times a day, whenever we pass through the nursery. They seem to like it!

Spinach: the crop that keeps on giving

As we leave February behind and begin March, we thought it appropriate to have a nice dinner of spring lamb chops with a fresh mint/parsley chimichurri, and spinach cooked slowly and briefly with olive oil, garlic, and salt.

The spinach in the garden, planted last September to be ready in time for the traditional spinach gnocchi at Thanksgiving, is still growing and yielding! Here Tess (now 10 weeks old) is "helping" to harvest some spinach for dinner. We just cut off the largest and mature leaves, as many as we need, and keep the plants in place to keep producing...as we have done all fall and winter so far.

In the kitchen, we made some spaghetti carbonara (using guanciale and pecorino, of course), to savor as a first course. Then we moved on to the lamb chops and spinach, shown here. It was a wonderful dinner, and we look forward to many more meals made with garden parsley, mint, and spinach. And, although we now have our border collie Tess to herd sheep, we doubt that we'll be growing our own lamb chops anytime soon!

Make room for tomatoes!

This week the tomato plants are multiplying at both an alarming and satisfying rate. Beginning with one flat planted with multiple seeds in each of 35 cells, we transplanted the sprouts into many, many plant packs. We must have about 150 tomato plants now representing about 40 different varieties.

But where to put them when it's time to transplant them into the ground? Our ready-made trellises in the raised beds, destined to accommodate the tomato plants after the harvest of peas growing on them now, are insufficient for all of these tomatoes. So, over the past two days, we've created a new planting bed that will hold three new rows of trellises and about 60 tomato plants.

To create this new bed, we hoed the weeds and turned over the soil. Then, all of the grass clippings from the lawn this week were laid down over the bed. We like to use grass clippings (and, in the autumn, leaves) to build new soil through composting. The grass is a good source of composting material because it is clean (we don't use pesticides on the grass) and it gets hot as it decomposes, thus warming up the soil. After the grass was spread over the soil, it was worked into the existing soil to turn the grass into the soil. Then, Perry hauled quite a few wheelbarrow-loads of organic compost (an aged, cured mixture of redwood tailings and horse manure) from the driveway to the new bed, and spread it over the planting area. Finally, the area was sprinkled with a lot of coffee grounds (good source of acid) obtained from the local Peets Coffee. Voila! Add a little chicken wire to create the trellises, and a new planting bed will be ready to go! Here are the photos before, during, and after this process. In a few weeks, when the tomato plants are ready to go into the ground, the ground will be ready to embrace the little plants.

Aaron ties up the peas

When Aaron comes to visit, he always grazes on whatever vegetables or herbs are mature. He also looks for projects to do that involve planting or transplanting, cultivating, preparing the beds, and so on. Last week, he tied up the pea plants that are now almost four feet high.

Time to get going with tomatoes

Perhaps the most special food crop one can grow in a garden is tomatoes. The varieties, colors, sizes, textures, shapes, and flavors are so numerous! And "heirlooms" purchased in a grocery in season, assuming they're available at all, are limited in type and priced at $9 per pound and up. That's $9 per tomato!

We started in early February, sprouting about 35 different varieties of tomatoes in flats placed next to a window in the garage that gets morning sun. Each cell has about 8 seeds in it, so if we get 4-5 seeds sprouted per cell, that will be upwards of 120 plants! In a few days, we'll separate the sprouts and repot them into larger pots, still keeping them growing indoors (for now).

So, give it a go! There are several suppliers of heirloom tomato seeds that you can find on the Web. (See, for example, www.tomatofest.com.) They're easy to sprout from seeds, and you'll have enough plants to give some away, and still keep yourself in BLTs and insalate caprese all summer.