I've been devoting a fair amount of time to gardening this past week, which may explain why I haven't entered much here. There were things in my small backyard that couldn't be ignored any longer, though now most of them are done. The over winter chard is gone, the arugula has bolted and the parsley, too - but now the basil and tomato are in.
I say tomato, singular, because I have so little sun in the back yard it is really tricky to grow many. I have one heirloom plant in a giant pot on wheels (with some red rubin basil tucked in), so I can chase the sun a bit as the seasons shift and the sun moves.
I say tomato, singular, because I have so little sun in the back yard it is really tricky to grow many. I have one heirloom plant in a giant pot on wheels (with some red rubin basil tucked in), so I can chase the sun a bit as the seasons shift and the sun moves.
Sometimes it feels like such an exercise in futility, compounded last year by someone eating all the cherry tomatoes. Birds, possums, skunks? or even rats, which someone in another unit complained of last year?
The shade is a boon for the native woodland strawberries - eating a few of the little devils is a reward for getting the late spring chores done. And I do seem to get as many as the birds do.
Over at the community garden we have scaled back expectations, settling on a demonstration garden for this year. The small plot of green manure we planted late last fall has been tilled in, thanks to Pastor Flak. Karen and some helpers spread a layer of compost on it. But the soil is still miserable clay - it's going to take years of growing, digging and adding compost to turn this vast empty plot into a fruitful garden - but it clearly is the best act of stewardship. Just managing the weeds - for fire abatement - is a continuing headache, so if we can make a community garden spot out of it, at least the labor involved will seem rewarding, not a repetitive thankless chore.
For this year double digging the whole demo plot (which in future will be about the right size for two allotments) would have been impossible. This is partly due to labor available (mostly mine for double digging) and partly due to the very dry winter. Clearly the rain is over now, and digging in the clay will just get more and more difficult.
So we (Marilyn and Stan and I) are gopher proofing one bed along the north side - which will be planted in pole beans and sunflowers. Then we are digging holes/hills and using improv gopher baskets (no - the gophers are not collected in the baskets - the baskets are wire around the plant roots, so the gophers don't take 'em down) for tomato plants and hills of squash and pumpkins. Planting this late we are going for a splash of things that do well in heat and take up space. We want people to know that we are at work, transforming this field.
I'm going to begin slowly putting in some perennials, with an emphasis on it in the fall. Marilyn and I both want to try some rhubarb. I swear it's the Swedish genes!
This week we've been working in the evenings, and hope to have a couple of boys from the congregation help us finish up the digging and some of the planting. It's a blessing to be out there as the day begins to cool. We have California Quail for company, ducks and geese flying over. Did I mention we are near a creek that runs toward the Laguna main channel?
There are also real possibilities for community. The 12-Step groups which use the church weekday evenings have lots of people, and surely some of them must be interested in gardening?
If we can do a little Tom Sawyer action with the garden (actually we don't really need to try to make it look fun - it is fun - and good exercise) the goal is to have four times the area next year, with eight to ten gardeners. Think of the possibilities!
The shade is a boon for the native woodland strawberries - eating a few of the little devils is a reward for getting the late spring chores done. And I do seem to get as many as the birds do.
Over at the community garden we have scaled back expectations, settling on a demonstration garden for this year. The small plot of green manure we planted late last fall has been tilled in, thanks to Pastor Flak. Karen and some helpers spread a layer of compost on it. But the soil is still miserable clay - it's going to take years of growing, digging and adding compost to turn this vast empty plot into a fruitful garden - but it clearly is the best act of stewardship. Just managing the weeds - for fire abatement - is a continuing headache, so if we can make a community garden spot out of it, at least the labor involved will seem rewarding, not a repetitive thankless chore.
For this year double digging the whole demo plot (which in future will be about the right size for two allotments) would have been impossible. This is partly due to labor available (mostly mine for double digging) and partly due to the very dry winter. Clearly the rain is over now, and digging in the clay will just get more and more difficult.
So we (Marilyn and Stan and I) are gopher proofing one bed along the north side - which will be planted in pole beans and sunflowers. Then we are digging holes/hills and using improv gopher baskets (no - the gophers are not collected in the baskets - the baskets are wire around the plant roots, so the gophers don't take 'em down) for tomato plants and hills of squash and pumpkins. Planting this late we are going for a splash of things that do well in heat and take up space. We want people to know that we are at work, transforming this field.
I'm going to begin slowly putting in some perennials, with an emphasis on it in the fall. Marilyn and I both want to try some rhubarb. I swear it's the Swedish genes!
This week we've been working in the evenings, and hope to have a couple of boys from the congregation help us finish up the digging and some of the planting. It's a blessing to be out there as the day begins to cool. We have California Quail for company, ducks and geese flying over. Did I mention we are near a creek that runs toward the Laguna main channel?
There are also real possibilities for community. The 12-Step groups which use the church weekday evenings have lots of people, and surely some of them must be interested in gardening?
If we can do a little Tom Sawyer action with the garden (actually we don't really need to try to make it look fun - it is fun - and good exercise) the goal is to have four times the area next year, with eight to ten gardeners. Think of the possibilities!
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