getting started

Well, all of the seed orders are in with the catalogs, all of the soil turned and getting ready for planting, rain barrels are nearly full already, and plans are coming together for planting the crops.  This is the time of year here in San Diego, and elsewhere, when plans come together for spring planting.  Here at home, we are getting what equates to a late start on winter vegetables.  Still learning about gardening here in this interesting climate!

San Diego is generally within climate zone 10b, which means we are able to grow crops year round here with a little work and planning.  For us here at home, our plans were a little wonky for the first year so winter crops that should have been planted by around September were never put in.  But, the season here is forgiving, and so we will be starting our winter crops "late", in January.  I'm still trying to wrap my mind around how this is late, but this is a learning experience!  In Colorado where I grew up, nothing goes in the ground between December and March unless you have an ice pick and a death wish for whatever it is you may be planting!

January will be when all of our seeds come in from catalogs, and when we organize what we painstakingly harvested last year.  What we've learned in retrospect is that some of our collected heirlooms may very well have hybridized, especially the tomatoes!  Only our first crop will tell.  Apparently, we should have kept single varieties of the veggies we loved most rather than say 20 varieties of tomato.  But, if you don't plant 20, how do you know which one you love best?  So we shall see.  Those black prince heirlooms may turn out to be early girls this year, but I'm sure we will still put them to good use.

In the meantime, I would like to share a few great resources I've stumbled across.  The first is folia.com, which is a great site for networking with other urban gardeners all over the world.  Besides being a great forum for sharing experience, the online database of plants is incredible, including photos, growing tips, hardiness and care instructions.  Awesome resource!  And, you can even network for swapping seed stores with folks from all over the world!  Neat huh?  We will of course be having our own neighborhood seed swap here in SD, but you can bet I will be sharing this resource with my friends so that we can all branch out even further.  My own journal and site there is http://myfolia.com/gardener/BrunoinSD if you are interested in following the more cerebral planning of this gardening year.  We'll see how well I keep up there, but it will be nice at least to keep a record of our seed store and crops there for this year, as well as some quick updates on progress.

The other resource is an online garden planning resource that I believe I will be using to plan out crop rotations and reminders with, Garden Planner.  It's a little steep on cost, $25 per year, but it seems very useful and resilient, and will even allow me to share a website with all of you on my garden plan and layout, which seems both inspirational and useful.  I will give you my full review as I progress through the year.

Lastly, be sure to check out my recommended reading and resources tab on the right over there in my blog.  I update those regularly as I leaf through them.  If any of you out there want a review of these, I'm happy to provide, but these are all great resources for planning your crops this year and inspiring you to continue when the going gets tough!
That's about all for now!  I'll be sharing more as things come together for the year, but for now, here's what's growing on our kitchen table right now!  Sprouts are awesome year round crops, high yield and satisfying as you have a finished product in about a week.  The hyacinth was a gift from my buddy Puck and doing beautifully as you can see.  And, the camelia, rescued from a beautiful shrub near my work that lost a bunch of blossoms in the last rain storm.  Enjoy!

an early start...

Winter is short in San Diego and has moved across the region this past two weeks.  It still takes a little getting used to, knowing that to get a head start, you have to start pretty much in January out here.  For us here at home with three days of rain, it was the perfect time to turn the soil and get things ready for the next planting season.

Also, with all the rains coming, it was a perfect time to get the rain collection barrels cleaned out for new filters.

Also the perfect time to take stock of our seed collection and consult the catalogs for this season's new orders.  Potatoes are about ready to plop into the soil and perhaps some greens and onions for our long, hard winter in Southern California.  (sorry folks in Michigan and Colorado, I couldn't help myself there).

pumpkins

One of the items that we did very well with this year was our pumpkin crop.  We ordered an heirloom variety from D. Landreth called Sugar Sweet.  It was fun watching these compete with the Zucchino Rampicante and watermelons in a vine growth race to our back patio.  They also grew up and over our hedgerow and became an off-the-vine free farmers market for the neighbors in our neighborhood.  We had plenty to share with kids in the neighborhood who came to pick their own jack-o-lantern pumpkins, as well as their parents who came to collect for baking.

Just last night in fact, our neighbor Robert brought us this wonderful cream of mushroom soup in a baked pumpkin shell serving bowl.  It was beautiful and delicious, scraping the pumpkin as we went to add to the soup.  Just an awesome meal for a chilly Autumn evening at home with the fire roaring in the hearth.  Accompanied by, of course...

Cream of Mushroom Soup

Toasted Pumpkin Seeds with Sea Salt & Vinegar

Robert is holding tight to his recipe for homemade fresh cream of mushroom soup, but I can tell you that there is fresh ground pepper and nutmeg in there for sure.  So delicious!  As for the seeds, simply coat them generously in a slurry of sea salt and vinegar, spread out on a cookie sheet, and toast in the oven at 325° to your personal taste, light or dark.  I am betting some fine ground pepper and nutmeg would be wonderful on these as well.

As for what we did with that first pile of pumpkins, we baked them up for muffins and pies through the fall and winter.  Our first batch of pumpkin muffins for breakfast was very well received by house guests this weekend.

Fresh baked pumpkin and pecan muffins

Once again, secret house recipe on the muffins.  You'll just have to come visit!

Here though is the secret to most of what we will be using in our holiday baking this autumn and winter: heirloom pumpkin base for baking all nature of yumminess!

Slice into quarters, remove seeds

Baked in the oven for 30-45 minutes

Pureed to a fine pulp

Set your oven at 375°. Cut your pumpkins into quarters and scoop out the seeds.  We saved what we got for seed swap this winter with friends, but you could use your seeds like Robert did for a delicious snack too.  Coat the inside of the pumpkin flesh with softened butter and place shell side down on baking sheets.  In a bowl on the side, combine a couple cups of brown sugar with a tablespoon or so of cinnamon, a teaspoon or so of fresh ground nutmeg, and a teaspoon or so of sea salt or coarse kosher salt.  Sprinkle this mixture generously over the pumpkins quarters and bake for 30-45 minutes or until the pumpkin flesh is easily pierced with a fork.  Remove from oven and allow to cool.

When removing the pumpkin flesh from the shell, you can pull apart into strings with a fork for coarse baking or pumpkin butter or jam (which is awesome!).  For pumpkin jam, add apple juice, a half teaspoon of cider vinegar, some instant pectin, cinnamon, nutmeg, sugar and little bit of ground ginger, chill and serve!  For pumpkin butter, add apple sauce instead of juice, skip the pectin and place in a blender or food processor to whip up to a mousse like texture.

What we did was simply remove the flesh and place in a big bowl, adding nothing.  We mashed it up with a submersible blender, though you could use a potato masher, blender or food processor.  We scooped out two cups each of the finished pulp into freezer bags and tossed into the deep freeze to use through the season.

Frozen and ready for use year round

If anyone tells you that canned pumpkin tastes the same and is less trouble than fresh baked pumpkin, you have my permission to shake your head and giggle.  Making your own pulp is easy, practical and versatile, and I guarantee you will taste the difference!  If you don't believe me, stick around to try one of my pies this Thanksgiving!

bringing in the harvest

October and November, among other things, is a time of celebration.  A time for remembering our loved ones and ancestors who have passed on, a time for gathering close to our loving families still living, a time for returning home and bringing in the harvest, a time for counting our blessings and giving thanks.  Here at our home, it is a time for reaping the last of the harvest we have sown and bringing in the bounty.

This first year of experimenting with the urban garden has been such an incredible experience in learning and in getting back in touch with the spirit of the land right here where my feet and hands touch it.  We have shared meal after meal the very fruit of our labor, opened our doors and our garden to friends and family and learned so much in the process.

Boule d'Or melon

Buddha Hand Citron

Tomato Medley

Moon & Stars Watermelon

Butternut Squash

And so it is with a little tinge of sadness that we pull it all in, clean it all up, and thatch it all down to prepare for the next season. This is also a time of reflection to consider what did well and what we may change in the coming year, preserve and freeze what we have to use through the short and mild San Diego winter, and possibly even consider which crops could use an early winter start in our fertile earth.  Even now, I'm anticipating bringing in our seed crop to use again next year and sending off for our seed catalogs for what to grow next year... waiting for the inevitable winter rains and rototillers and compost enrichment.  And so, not really an end, but just turning the wheel toward the next cycle and season.

Before the reaping

Ready for the next round of planting

one last little thing...

Our tigger melon has been putting out a few baseball sized fruit all summer long.  One was finally ripe this morning for breakfast!  So sweet and yummy!

 

summer harvest

Well, the first of our harvest has started to come in!  The corn has matured and been hewn down.  Here in Southern California, we have had high temperatures and dry climates that have left the sturdiest of the crops a little brown and thin.  So, with a little hard work and much excitement, we have brought in the corn and the greater part of the late summer squash.

 

The resulting harvest has pushed growth way back into the main part of the garden, but even now, the squash is putting out new growth.

The major part of the Celebrity tomatoes are in as well and made for some wonderful pasta sauces that will accompany us to Burning Man next week.





Beyond that, the rest of the tomatoes are still a little late, but tomatoes are always welcome around this house.  Especially my favorite variety: Black Prince.

Now, the fall and winter squash are beginning to mature and promise for some delicious meals later this season.  Included in that are the zucchini rampicante, which have gone from a light green summer squash to a yellow, nutty squash reminiscent of butternut.

Last but not least, for certain... the watermellon are finallay ready!  We had our buddy Majd over last weekend and he helped us harvest our first delicious OrangeGlo Watermelon.

More to come still, this much is certain!  But for now, may your harvest be as bountiful as ours has been already.

summer bounty

As the sun comes to its height here in San Diego, we are starting to get over run with squash!  We may not have done very well with some of the other experiments for crops, but by the time October is here, I'm beginning to wonder if there will be a yard left.  We may very well be picking zucchini and pumpkin, along with melons and a few varieties of winter squash, from the patio!

5 types of melon on the left, pumpkin and zucchino rampicante on the right

Squash blossoms

Pumpkins

Zucchino Rampicante, in its natural habitat

The first little watermelon!

For melons, we have 2 types of watermelon growing, one variety called Moon and Stars, and another called Orangelo.  We then have 3 types of smaller melon:  Chanterlais, Tigger and Boule D'or, all of which are more or less like canteloupe or honeydew.  All of them either putting out either lots of vines and blooms or new shoots in the case of the Chanterlais and Boule D'or.

New melons pushing up vines

Corn is also doing great.  We have two varieties here as well, Silver Queen and Golden Bantam.

Tomatoes and our decorative carnations are all doing well too.  Some of the tomotoes even needed a haircut before they take over the blackberries, if you can imagine.

Fall and winter squash are now beginning to make a showing as well.  On this side of the garden, where things have been slow growing, but sure and steady, we have 6 varieties:  Piñata, Sweet Dumpling, Honey Bear, Sucrine du Berry, Table Queen and Acorn.  For the heck of it, since the Zucchini have pretty much swallowed up our Summer Crooknecks, I planted another mound this morning.

Piñata winter squash

Honey Bear winter squash

Finally, the Buddha Hand Citron have put out 3 fruit so far, and still a lot of blossoms.  We have put up netting to discourage theft this year (this tree is on our street front in our back yard) in hope that we will have some this year to use ourselves.  We should see these ripe by sometime around November with any luck.  For onions back by the shed, our three varieties are doing really well, which is amazing considering how small the seeds were and what we have now to show for it.  Onions might be my favorite thing we have so far.  Our varieties are Jaunde Paille D'or, Florence Red and Bianca di Maggio.

That's what's growing today!  And now, time to get to the kitchen.  Besides how wonderful it feels to give away veggies that we have grown to our neighbors, one of the most pleasing things about having a garden is being able to trade with other growers.  Last week, we got avocado and a whole basket full of chiles, along with bags full of cherry tomatoes which have made a great snack since our tomatoes are all still so late.  Tonight, making up a huge batch of roasted chiles for salsa and chile relleno.  Yummo!