Gardening Tricks That Don't Work for Shit

We read somewhere that we should procure a plastic snake to scare off birds that were picking at our seedlings. That would dissuade them and plants would grow. Right? Wrong!

It did maybe scare away birds, but it also scared off the family member we shall not name; the one who was supposed to water our seedlings in our absence. It's harder to grow seedlings on a drip irrigation system. Until they come up and develop deep roots, you have to make sure the area is evenly moist.

The family member that shall remain unnamed thought the snake might be real and he carefully avoided the bed. The seedling, unwatered, died.

Los Angeles San Fernando Valley. Four Seasons

Los Angeles gets 4 seasons, just like everywhere else.  Seasons go as follow:

October-November: FALLish-SUMMER: Scorchingly hot but maybe some leaves drop. We get super excited. We carve pumpkins, children trick or treat in T-Shirts and we thank native Americans by eating the sweet-potatoes that have been curing in a dark spot (did you know that unlike regular potatoes, sweet potatoes can't be eaten right away? They need to be cured to be sweet).

December: WINTER. Average rainfall: nil. Average temperature: a frigid 70 degrees. But the sun is lower in the sky and night falls around 5 pm. So maybe, perhaps, less sunlight in some areas. We wear Santas' Hats and do holiday shopping in flip flops.

January-February-March: SPRING! Flowers everywhere. Sometimes gallons of rain fall on your head, sometimes no water at all for say, years.

April-September: SUMMER. Temperatures fluctuate starting in the mid 80s and reaching as much as 115 degrees where I live.

So while my poor mom in France scrutinizes the sky for patches of blue and prays for temperatures over 50 degrees, I cruelly send her pictures of the San Fernando Valley where the garden looks like this:

Tomatoes plants are human-sized:



Tomatoes are timidly showing up



Corn is shoulder-high and the flowers have come out. The bags are not Halloween decoration, or ways to scare birds but my attempt at harvesting pollen from corn flowers. Because in small vegetable gardens, especially in urban gardens, bees can be hard to find and since we get no wind, there needs to be a way to pollinate.  I wrote a post about it here.



This is the ears'  silk that will need pollinating:





We have turnips the size of our heads.



Beets can barely fit in my hand.



Carrots are ready to pick.



Onions are producing humongous flowers that are too pretty to cut.





Beans come in such abundance that they're starting to haunt our dreams



Strawberries are turning from flowers to berry in the blink of an eye.




And pretty flowering vines are trying to devour the house.

Saving Water (and Money) With Permaculture in My Los Angeles Urban Farm

Here are the pros and cons of having an organic permaculture vegetable garden in your backyard:

PROS:

• saves water
• makes you feel giddy about saving water (in case you're one of us dorks that get giddy about that stuff)
• saves money on water bill, duh.
• giving vegetables to your neighbors results in 63.2% decline in risks of being tackled to the ground resulting in broken ribs and ensuing doctors and lawyers bills. 
• turns your garden into a heaven for bees.
• gives you interesting things to look at when you're bored/procrastinating.
• lifts your mood and spirit. Grounds you. 
• makes you feel connected to nature, humanity and yourself.
• saves money on groceries. In the Spring and summer of 2017, we bought very little fruits and vegetables and we definitely produced more than we could consume.
• reduces Farm to Table distance to nothing. Many of the things we grow never make it to the table. I'd say it is more Farm to Mouth at our house. That means no transportation, no refrigeration (smaller carbon footprint), no loss of nutritional value + makes you feel like hipsters
• helps you stay physically active in ways that sure beat going to the gym.
• gives you and your significant other something safe, non-fattening and inexpensive to indulge in.
• but mostly, saves water. That was the original goal and despite producing hundreds of pounds of vegetables over the last two years, we keep saving water.  Here is my proof: 

CONS

• becomes hard to keep up and ingest an ungodly amount of fruits and vegetables.

A Salad Bowl in the Garden

Here is a genius idea: instead of planting heads of lettuce, just scatter lettuce mix and less than three weeks later (depending on the season) you get this:



All you need to do then is clip the lettuce as needed when it's time to make a salad.  The leaves are so young that they have no time to fill with bugs or dirt. Washing them is therefore easier and uses up far less water. Best thing is, as soon as you cut, the lettuce carpet starts growing again.

Like a beard, but edible.

This genius idea I got from my brother in law (So I guess he's the genius, not me). It's likely that you already know this and that what is genius to me is common sense to you. But as I explained earlier, I am new to this gardening thing.

Here, I happen to have the lettuce seedlings right next to my herbs (thyme, parsley) and my onions. So I can clip everything, I head right into the salad bowl, rinse and dry and voilà!

Wildlife in Los Angeles

So now that our garden is hospitable to plants, it has become a sort of heaven for wildlife and other undesirables.

Meet the ducks.

First of all, they are super dumb. They mate for life but one of the male ducks that visits our pool did not get the memo. He has been a third wheel for the last few months and it's hard to watch. He follows the female everywhere and the other male keeps giving him a whooping.

My family argues that I am not sure it's always the same male getting whooped. I don't know. It's a bit of a sad Ménage a Quack.

Second, they can't tell the difference between themselves and their reflection. That or they are vain. They spent so much time admiring their reflection that I call them the Quack-dashians.

Ducks unable to tell shit from shainola. Below, the irresistible duck-fatale.

Thirdly, the poop in the pool and I don't know about you but I find that rude.

But you know what's NOT rude?  This! Awww ....

Other forms of wild life. 

Worms hard at work in the garden.

Dragonflies have begun appearing every so often. They never used to.

The cat, Dusty:  I put him under the category of wild life because if you even remotely try to pet him when he is not in the mood he turns feral on you.

Dusty acts mostly indifferent to the garden. But if he truly did not care, would he be rushing out the moment we are gardening?  I think he secretly approves. He does love the wood chips. Loves to roll in them. And once he is nice and dirty, he loves to take a nice, leisurely tongue bath while lying on our bed, preferably the pillow side.

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Growing With Our Organic Garden

Everyday I am flabbergasted by the beauty of or small permaculture garden. And to think that for 10 long years all we had was an ugly, water-wasting, lawn! It's been only a year since we created our beds, installed our drip system, and planted everything we could lay our hands on. There is no turning back to the old us. We love our garden and we love gardening too much. My husband and I talk about our garden as though it were one of our children. We rejoice in it. We take photographs of it. We share its bounty with our children, our friends and our neighbors.



We nurture the vegetable garden and it nurture us, not just by feeding us organic fruit, herbs, and vegetables, but it keeps us fit and delights our senses. It connects us with nature, with outside, with the soil and the bugs, with ourselves.




We have learned to live with the seasons. (Yes, there are seasons in Los Angeles. Kind of.) There are times for planting, times for harvesting, and times for returning plants to the cycle through composting.



Nothing is wasted in the garden or the kitchen.  We wash our vegetables outside as we water, or over a large pitcher, so that the excess water is immediately returned to the garden. Food waste is down to nothing. Juicing pulp and peel go to the compost or the worm bin. It's the cycle of life and we are now part of it rather than in the way of it.



Critters big and small come to the garden and we have learned to accommodate each other.



Organic gardening also heals us. So much on this planet is messed up and cruel. There is only kindness in our garden. No rash tilling, no chemicals, no additives. Things grow and we watch them do that. The garden calms us, soothes us, and shows us what to do for ourselves and for the planet.

Eggplants Before and After + Baba Ganoush Recipe

Eggplants are very intense. The flowers are tough little things full of thorns. The eggplants themselves seem indestructible, dark purple, the shiniest thing that ever sprang out of a garden.  When you harvest them, be cautious; those beauties bite back. The stems are full of thorns.

And when they come, boy do they come! And you better know what to do with them. So here is my recipe for Baba Ganoush (or eggplant dish, which is probably what Baba Ganoush means in Arabic).

Don't let the eggplant flower fool you into picking it. It has teeth in back; Very Little Shop of Horrors.

Eggplants are naturally shiny when ripe. As soon as they shine and are deep purple they are ready to harvest no matter the size.

Eggplants are surprisingly pest-resistant and grow late into the fall in Southern California.

BABA Frigging-GANOUSH!

  In France we call this "caviar d'aubergine' Or eggplant caviar. Yum!

1- Put the eegplant in an oven at 350 degrees. Do not pierce the skin or remove the stem. Cook until completely soft, about 45 minutes. Some people wrap them in foil but I don't see what that does beside add aluminum to your blood-stream and the landfill.

2- Let it cool enough to handle without pain.

3- Without burning yourself, the eggplant, or the house, put the eggplant directly on the gas stove without a pan.  Let the flame lick it all over until the skin is died and burned in places.  This is the essential step that will give your Baba Ganoush that complex smoky flavor. No need to carbonize it. A little flame is all it takes.

4- Scrape off all traces of skin or scoop out the flesh.

5- Using a fork crush it all to a puree. I think the blender makes it all too smooth. I like it chunky.

6- Add: juice of 1 lemon (no pits), 2 tablespoons of Tahini, 1 Crushed garlic clove (no skin) and about 1/2 cup olive oil per large eggplant.  Add salt, pepper and a dash of cumin to taste. That's it!

Looked What "Turnip" in the Garden

Turnips are everything.

They are so pretty with that white and pastel mauve hue.

They are super resistant to disease; they grow in any soil and any weather or season (as long as you live in Los Angeles).

They are great cooked in stews (couscous, boeuf bourguignon) or braised (sauté first and then add a bit of water or broth) or pickled in vinegar (add a slice of raw beet to give the pickled turnip that nice pink color).

Turns out you can juice the greens or cook them (even though they are rough and hurt the hand when picked). Well, not me but I was hoping you'd try and tell me how that went.

Tomatoes Galore

This isn't funny anymore!

 








Guess what's for dinner ...

July Harvest in Southern California

Almost overnight, our garden has grown a Ratatouille...









Time to get cooking!

Oh wait. we went on a vacation for a week and look what the harvest table looks like now:

Installing a Drip System in the Vegetable Garden

So, I've already established that our vegetable garden has an odd shape. It's basically pizza-shaped. I rather call it native American medicine wheel shaped because every time I use the word pizza I end up dialing the phone for Domino's.

*** call to Domino's pause ***

So, installing a drip system is a lot like playing with Legos but with more cursing.  You get your little pieces and you push them together. Working on a hot day makes the tubing softer to work with but you sweat more.

Drip systems can become expensive but only because every time you run to the hardware store to get a missing piece you need, you end up buying something you don't need but WANT.  Other than that, the system is affordable and runs for years. I spent about $150 in all for a fairly large garden.

It took me a while to decide how to run the main line. I have one-inch drip irrigation pipes going from a faucet (to which I added a pressure compensator and a timer) running all around the outer edge of the circle.





The tubing is hidden in the wood chips that cover the paths. From that pipe, I attached elbows, risers that go into each bed.

From that riser comes another elbow and a straight line of one-inch tubing. From that tubing comes a variety of micro tubing.

I have tiny sprays for the carrots, but for everything else, I either use perforated micro tubing or un-perforated micro tubing with a head at the end.

When I have more time I might add to this post if anyone has questions.