Growing Citrus in Los Angeles

Growing citrus in Los Angeles is a little bit like growing nails or hair. Or a beard. It pretty much happens on its own or does not. That means that you cannot will them to grow if they don't want to any more than you can stop them from growing if they are in the mind to do that.

At least in my experience. I've tried both. I've tried to restrain the growth of my lemon tree to no avail, and I've also tried to do mouth to mouth resuscitation of other trees with no success.

One of your trees will get every disease in the book. An others will thrive. Why? Who knows. There are people who might know but not me. Ask someone else if you want actual usable advice on gardening of any kind.

In the San Fernando Valley where I live, temperatures can reach 115 degrees for several consecutive days. Young citrus can't cope. Older citrus think it's a walk in the park.

This is what my lemon tree looks like in February. All these flowers might turn to lemons or maybe none will. I've had years where branches broke under the weight of too many lemons and years where the lemons turn black, shrivel and fall off when they are no larger than a penny.




This is later in the year, around December, I think:

Lemons at its pinnacle, with lemons at every stage of development. One of our best year and we don't have a clue as to what we did did differently. 

Here you see the lemon tree at its mysterious pinnacle, with lemons at every stage of development throughout the tree. Ripe ones, green ones, flowers. One of our best years despite the heat, and I have no clue as to why it worked. You're welcome.

Earth Worms: The Final Frontier

Earth Worms are amazing. We did not add them to the garden, they just arrived.  They were undoubtedly beamed up from another dimension/universe. Or else they found their way into our vegetable beds after waiting in the depth of the Earth for a thousand years, because we sure as hell never saw one back when we had a lawn.

This is what earth worms do: they are able to somehow gnaw on solid rock and convert that into plant-accessible trace minerals. They also eat everything that is gross, abject, rotted, stinky, and all around revolting and covert it into nutrient rich worm poop aka worm gold.

It is my very scientific observation that they do all this despite zero eyesight and little brains to speak of. Only a mouth, a butt hole and very little in between.



We don't use pesticide or fertilizer. Only worm casting and worm tea. Some time, I'll explain more. If anyone is interested, leave a question in the comments section.

The Little Watermelon That Could

One of the joys of composting if you are the kind of person who loves surprises in the garden, are the self-planting visitors.  People say not to put seeds in the compost for precisely that reason. But then where would be the fun?

This is the story of a little watermelon that we did not plant and that went on to give us huge juicy watermelons -- four in total. One, and then after we harvested it, three more.

This little guy planted itself at the foot of a small grapefruit tree and in the hottest, sunniest part of the garden, against flagstone, where the temperature must easily reach 110 degrees for months at a time. But no matter, our wee lad was not discouraged.







First flower and a friendly visitor.

First fruit, all fuzzy and tender...


and then starting to grow...



and grow...



and GROW!



The hardest part was to know when to pick. We agonized for days and googled the hell out of it:Was it the stem that shriveled? Was it the size? The spot underneath that should turn yellow or ocre? What was yellow? What was ocre? Was it the proper shade of ocre?

Until a visiting friend of ours, who lives in the country of Vermont, took one look at it and said, "It's ready."

We said, "but how do you know," "but... it's... just... the stem... the color... the hollowness..."

He just bent down and picked it.

And it was perfect.

It's August and Everything Is Juicy

All this year, we planted melons, corn, cucumbers, and watermelons. At first we whined that things were not going fast enough.

Had we planted too early? Our suspicions that we sucked at gardening grew until BAM! Nature knew what to do even if we didn't.

It has been an extraordinary August harvest. We can't keep up with the picking or the eating. Here are a melon, a cob of corn, a couple of cucumbers and a watermelon that are growing so fast that we can see the difference in size from the morning to the evening.

July Is Fruity

This is our best year so far for plums and grapes. We've had tons of rain this year and perhaps this rain is why the growth has been spectacular.  When I was growing up in France, we waited for late summer and even fall for plums and grapes. Here we harvest as early as July.



We painstakingly wrapped each cluster in paper bags as soon as they began to ripen to protect them from birds, squirrels and dirt. It worked!

Until it didn't.

Some of the fruit did not mature evenly. Still delicious and it's nice to outsmart the squirrels for a change (or did they outsmart us? we asked ourselves, as we ate the --literally-- sour grapes.)




So many plums on some of the branches while the other branches remained bare. We think it was due to not enough bees. Next spring we are considering a hive.

Los Angeles Permaculture Vegetable Garden in the Winter

It is now winter but things continue to be super interesting. We planted cabbage. Not sure what to do with them once they are ready to harvest but I'll have to get creative, because, as usual, we over planted.

Kale in back, beets in the middle and gorgeous red cabbage in front. So colorful!

Before we planted the winter crop, I changed the drip system and installed flat piping. They are harder to close at the end and leak quite a bit. I don't think I like them. At least I was able to install before we planted, unlike our spring and summer crop, where I was always playing catch up, drip system-wise.

A ridiculously good-looking red cabbage.

Some kind of cabbage. Lost the tag, evidently...

"Kale bonne nouvelle!"  (only funny if you happen to speak French)

Starting to feel a little brassicaed-out if ya know what I mean.

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.