The weather is beginning to turn warm here. I figured it’s time to give the soil a brief rest before it begins its warm weather crops in about a month. In order to give the soil a rest, I had to harvest my carrots this weekend.

I ended up pulling out about 70 carrots yesterday. We washed them and will plan on eating them for the next few weeks. I’m really excited about these carrots- the only crops to have really successfully grown in my garden this Winter. Sure there were some radishes, and the lettuce is ready as well, but nothing was as abundant as the carrots.

The carrots are mildly sweet, very crunchy and obviously extremely fresh.

Small lettuce is also coming out as well as tiny beets. I just planted swiss chard in place of the now dead celery- which was a total failure. Spinach is now replacing the harvested radishes.

For a few weeks, the compost had smelled foul beyond anything. I tried keeping the compost tumbler latch door open for a few days, but that didn’t help. I spent about 20 mintues collecting dry leaves from our street two weeks ago, piled them in, and the scent has since disappeared. I clearly underestimated the simple yet important balance of greens and browns in the bin that are necessary for a proper compost pile. It was amazing how quickly the horrid scent went away.

In my last post, I mentioned Full Circle Farm. We visited the farm for the first time on Sunday, November 29 (2009). The farm has bees, chickens, lots of crops, a farmstand, and even a greenhouse.

I really loved the place, and feel very fortunate to have a farm, here in the Silicon Valley (South Bay) so close to home. Plus, I could stand to learn a thing or two from them.

We bought really great carrots, garlic and some herbs at the farmstand. Here are some pictures from our visit:

they are raising chickens at the farm. Currently I believe they only sell eggs (not meat).

nice rows of spinach, broccoli and other fall and winter crops.

it was really warm, as expected, in the greenhouse; helps extend the season when it’s too cold otherwise.

strawberries and artichokes nearby; some trees and not yet utilized land in the background.

I couldn’t resist putting up a picture of my eggplants from early October last year. I am using it to remember better gardening times, as our weather is absolutely terrible for growing anything right now.

I was still battling the same battles of squirrels attacking my soil and digging up seeds. I finally got some common sense and built small cages around the boxes. These cages are built of a sturdy 2 foot tall thin-metal fence, which is 7 feet long by 5 feet wide, neatly surrounding the 6′ x 4′ boxes. As roofs to these cages I put chicken wire which I twist tied to the fence. I bought some greenhouse plastic cover as well, which I think I will use when we get into the high 30s and below in terms of temperature.

These cages have been in place for abut 3 weeks now, and despite the squirrels hovering around the back yard a lot, the boxes and seeds are unharmed. I am currently trying to grow celery, lettuce, beets, carrots and radishes. By far, the radishes are the most promising. I think the carrots will also make it, but I’m not sure about the others.

I’m expecting a better 2010 than 2009. I know more, am better equipped, have made many mistakes (and learned some lessons from them), and have a better plan with dates in place. I even have a new tumbler compost bin which is very easy to work with, and doesn’t allow ground rocks and unwanted thick twigs and branches to mix into my compost pile.

In the Spring, I plan to grow chameh (Korean Melon) from saved seeds, and watermelon; not in the boxes, but along the north side fence in the back yard. And this year I swear I’m gonna start the summer crops earlier than I always do (typically closer to July).

We also planted a few new trees and other existing ones yielded some fruit. The new ones: avocado (nothing yet), clementines (about 20 yielded this year), and apple (nothing yet). The existing one: the pomegranate tree yielded about 2 dozen fruit, some were perfect, others a bit sour, and our lemon tree is still currently yielding nice meyer lemons (about a handful of nice ones that I can see so far). The persimmon, mandarin and apricot trees (they’re really just overgrown twigs) are still bare.

I’m excited about this year’s gardening potential, hoping to produce great fruits and vegetables to augment what I get at local farmer’s markets, along with the recently discovered wonderful Full Circle Farm (in Sunnyvale, less than 4 miles from home).

Fairly easy to grow, small space requirements, flexibility in growing temp, and our love for beets make these a wonderful crop.

I had plenty of large beets about a month ago, and a few more were ready for the picking this weekend. Enormous cucumbers also emerged from the single seed I planted. Most of them were not bitter, which was a great improvement over last year’s completely bitter bunch.

A little bit of pruning

I love my tomatoes!

Otherwise, about 35 nice, red, heirloom tomatoes have ripened and I’ve had a chance to really enjoy many of those. It’s the success of my tomatoes that I always use as a gauge to determine if I’m pleased with the season. I expect about 25 – 40 more to ripen over the next couple of weeks.

Looking forward to trying this year’s larger eggplants.

Really glad I’ve had a chance to eat non bitter cucumbers this year, they worked really well with the tomatoes in my daily salads.

On top of that, this year’s large “Black Beauty” eggplants are coming along nicely. Within a week or so I’ll harvest a handful of those and enjoy ‘em too.

As always, I’ve learned lessons for improvement for next year- watering times/durations, crop pairings, and locations of where to put certain things. Also, I’d like to start my summer crops earlier next year.

Next up for the fall season, I plan to grow some cooler weather crops: radishes, probably more beets, lettuces, chards, and likely broccoli and cauliflower again.

So I’ve started watering by hand after work in the evenings, generally around 6:30pm. I think it’s helped the beets a lot, and the cucumber has finally emerged as well.

Technically, the tomatoes and eggplants are 4 weeks old now. The beets and cucumber are 2 weeks old. The 2 week old pepper and lettuce have not sprouted yet. I hope those will make it. We did plant those pretty deep in the soil, so I hope it’s depth, not lack of water that have prevented them from popping up.

As for composting- I am without compost bins right now. I’m looking for more of a barrel type compost bin that will prevent rocks and branches from seeping into my soil and degrading it. I expect to get one in the next week or two and resume composting.

Area 1

Heirloom Tomatoes

Area 2

Eggplants in three squares, cucumber in top right corner

Area 3

Bell peppers in three squares, beets in bottom right corner

Area 4

Beets in three squares, lettuce in top right corner

Chaos in the old backyard. I took the time to build new boxes while the landscaping started.

Finally, I got my act together and set up for the new year a few weeks back. I started out by making 12 inch deep boxes this year, instead of 6 inch boxes. This is to enable
crops to establish deeper roots, and by extension, grow larger. One of the things I dealt with last year, which was disappointing, was small size of crops. After doing some reading, I learned that by not being able to establish deep roots, my crops would not grow very large.

This year the boxes are 1 foot deep. They are 6 feet long by 3 feet wide.

The other thing this deep box enables me to do is grow more root type vegetables, in particular carrots, which I really enjoy.

I decided on two boxes this year, each box 6 feet by 3 feet, with 1 foot depth (as mentioned). A 6 x 3 box allows me to allot an area of 1.5 feet by 1.5 feet for each “square foot”. With the increased size, crops will have more space to expand. Last year, I found that the crops exceeded their square foot boxes all too often.

I laid down the new boxes in areas that get even more sun than last year.

To keep things under control this year, with a busier job and less time to spend with my crops, I thought that working on two boxes will be a lot easier for me. Also, each box has 8 (1.5 by 1.5) squares, for a total of 16 crops, which is quite manageable.

I still believe in square foot gardening. In fact, I’m still using the Mel’s mix in my new boxes. I think I need to continue to tweak things around to find what works best.

I re-used much of my Mel’s mix from last year’s boxes to ammend the vermiculite and peat moss that I bought this year. For the compost part, I used all the compost I generated over the last year from banana peels, dried leaves, and other kitchen scraps. I also went to shovel humus, chicken manure, and some other types of compost in local areas around here.

The concurrent landscaping project enabled me to take advantage of auto-watering.

Putting things together, the boxes were set in last week. The landscaper set up an auto-watering system that gently waters my crops early in the morning, and later in the evening. I will change the times as the weather and sun pattern change.

This year’s set up. In the far end of my second box, my tomatoes and eggplants are growing.

I’m currently growing tomatoes, eggplants, peppers, cucumbers, lettuce and beets- all from seed. The tomatoes and eggplants are 2 weeks old right now. The other 4 were just planted today. I messed up (no idea how) with the peppers two weeks ago- while doing the tomatoes and eggplants- so had to start again today, after coming back from an Oregon Coast trip. I know the peppers take as long as the tomatoes and eggplants (the other 3 thankfully take about half as long) to grow, but given that I started my gardening on July 5th last year and succeeded, I’m hopeful that things will work out again.

Eggplants are still tiny here. The squares are 1.5 ft by 1.5 ft this year.

The tomatoes are coming around nicely.

One reminder for myself for next year- start earlier! This pattern of starting my summer crops around late June or July is not very wise. I believe I’ll finally get it right next year.

It has been a long while since I’ve blogged about my garden or have put up pictures. I’m disappointed that I have not given my garden the attention it needs to start providing some Spring crop soon.

It is a slow work in progress right now. In 2008, I had five 4′ X 4′ boxes laid out near the back fence and they did relatively well.

The plan for this year is to move the garden closer to the house, at the edge of the concrete patio. As can be seen in the pictures, I have a fair bit of de-weeding to do. Besides that, I think I’d like to build a large box this year (tearing apart and re-using the wood and soil from the existing boxes) that is actually 12 inches deep, as opposed to the 6 inches I had last year. Vegetables seem to need a lot of depth to get all the roots fully extended, and only then can they reach a nice size. Many of my crops last year came out on the smaller end, presumably due to this.

Even though I won’t exactly be doing square foot gardening anymore, I will still use the great soil that Mel Bartholomew talks about in his book. In fact, I still have a few crops growing in my last remaining square foot box. My artichokes are coming around nicely. I was surprised to find 4 heads stemming from the single seed I planted back in July of ‘08.

The other two crops sharing the box are a cabbage and brussels sprouts.

My Winter compost is ready to go- I have pretty massive amounts- all I have to do now is get off my rear end and start putting a little more sweat and effort into this year’s yard.