Three point nine pounds.

Lately I've been feeling the need for affirmation that the work I do in our home is valuable. Not that Jonathan doesn't tell me he appreciates the effort I put into hour home, but words aren't tangible; you can't quantify them like you can a paycheck...

I've gotten in the habit of weighing our garden produce when I bring it in. It shows me what grows well here, and what I might like to plant more of next year. I'd like to figure out how much money we'd spend on the food we can grow by comparing how much I've harvested to the prices at the market. And I realized today, it gives me a value that I can hold up and say "through all that hard and yucky work of sifting compost and picking bugs off of things, I earned this!"

harvesting, the best part.

first meal 100% garden grown. lettuce, peas, calendula petals.

coming soon: our first carrot!

Three point nine pounds was the figure, in case you're wondering. Three point nine pounds of homegrown produce, in one month! Most of which was chard, kale, arugula, and leaf lettuce. Let's rephrase that...not three point nine pounds of produce but three point nine pounds of leaves!!

Dang. That's a lot of leaves. Now I'm really stoked about harvesting tomatoes...of which I will theoretically have about 12 plants...imagine the poundage!!! I'll beat 3.9 pounds in 5 tomatoes or less!!

Lest I get carried away, however, I must remember: You can't put value on the mystery of nature. It is amazingly interconnected (worms & germs = dirt = plants = food = us) and amazingly beautiful.

the beauty of an average backyard veggie plot? priceless.

change can be beautiful.

If there's one thing true about gardening, it's that it's always changing. Having a garden has been an exercise in embracing change without even realizing it; my favorite morning activities include (but are not limited to): checking my email, drinking tea, eating toast, and going outside (usually in my pj's, bathrobe, and gardening boots, to the probable dismay of my neighbors) to check on the plants.

Remember when we toiled away this summer, digging up our yard? Here's what's happened since then:

the tall ones: peas and favas.  next to the a/c: baby radishes. to the left of the path: garlic, onions, baby beets. to the left of the peas + favas: lettuce, arugula, chard. All those things in pots: kale, collards, broccoli

my personal fave: the greens plot. oh homegrown salad is the BEST!

a broccoli plant. I've been checking for signs of broccoli for days...

do you see the baby broccoli inside?

oodles and oodles of strawberries: 50 plants in all.

the community garden plot. remember last year? almost exactly one year later + lots of homemade compost = a healthy garden: left & clockwise: peas, garlic, carrots, leeks, onions, kale, parsnips, radishes, chard, and in the middle beautiful purple borage flowers, bringing in the bees. 

the bees have found our fava beans, too. :)

invitations, tomatoes, and how do you prepare fava beans?

This blog post has been a few weeks coming. I've been taking lots and lots of pictures of the general goings on around here, but you know.

Ok. First I was really busy putting these in the mail. (Thank you to all who helped! It was really a group effort!)

Then I got sick with a cold that had me sneezing for 4 days straight. It left me with the I-just-blew-my-nose-for-four-days-straight-mustache look. Cute.

And between the grand mailing-of-the-invitations and the catching a cold, I've been working a lot (at my job and in the garden) and taking lots of pictures.

A couple of posts ago I alluded to a newspaper pot tutorial that I was going to put up here. Well, someday I'll get around to telling you all about how to make newspaper pots. But even if my tutorial never makes it up onto the internet, no one will ever go for want of knowing how to make a pot out of newspaper because there are a zillion other people who have put up tutorials on their blogs showing how it's done. So for now just google it.

In the meantime, I'll show you some photos of the tomato plants that have grown up out of our newspaper pots. I'm very pleased. They're almost the same size now as the starter tomatoes you can buy at the store. 

Cherry Tomato, mid-March. Just potted it.

Three Brandywine Tomatoes, mid-March. Note: They are in newspaper pots (circa January) in a box of homemade compost that my dad brought down for me as my compost pile is not yet...well...composted. 

Cherry Tomato. The last photo made me think he wasn't going to make it. This looks more promising. mid-April.

Brandywine has taken off!

Brandywines mid-April

Cherry Tomato today. No longer being supported by the toothpick!

Brandywine today. They've grown a lot in the past couple of weeks!

These photos are especially for you, Dad. I hope you're reading! And I hope your tomatoes are growing!

So that's been fun, watching the tomato plants grow. Hopefully we get some delish fruit off of them. Homegrown tomatoes are the best.

I didn't bring my camera with me, but the bean plants at the community garden plot got tomato cages placed around them, too. Wait you didn't know about the bean plants?? Oh right, I haven't told you yet. I planted a zilllion beans at the minifarm. In counting the ones that have sprouted, I think the tally is 16 black eyed pea plants, (hope we like black eyed peas...), something around 8 green bean plants, 2 "royalty purple pod beans" (sounds exotic) and 1 golden wax bean. The directions for the beans said to place structures for them to climb around on before planting them, but I was eager to get my seeds in the ground. Now that they've sprouted, I'm short on time (and creative energy) and thus chose the easiest bean jungle gym I could imagine constructing - tomato cages. Hopefully beans like tomato cages and my experiment doesn't turn into a disaster ha.

And while we're on the subject of beans, the fava beans are coming into their glory and I picked a gorgeous harvest today.

Maybe someday I'll post a tutorial on how I made this little veggie bag. Suffice it to say it was easy. 

There are some peas in the mix as well. This is by far the biggest harvest I've had of homegrown goodies.

By the way, growing my own vegetables is getting to be addicting.

Now...does anyone have any good fava bean recipes?

spring's first promise

I practically skipped around the garden when I checked it after church on Sunday. Why? Because this was waiting for me there:

that my friends is a home grown pea pod!!

favas are flowering

Looks like we've done something right! We're well on our way to pulling something edible out of this first attempt at gardening. I hope they taste as good as I imagine!

<3
M

hanging in there.

January 18th. Yikes! Our wedding is exactly five months away, and this date marks one month since my last post. Can I say I've been busy? December had Christmas, and so far January has been...you guessed it...wedding wedding wedding. Hence why I haven't updated the blog in so long!

While some days I feel like I'm truly "hanging in there," the title of today's post is really in reference to our little plot. Just before Christmas, I noticed that our seedlings were looking pretty sick. Examples:

(poor babies!)

Thanks to some quick internet research, I learned that our seedlings were suffering from nutrient deficiency, most likely nitrogen. I posted some photos on down to earth forums and the community there agreed with my diagnosis.

Basically, J and I learned the hard way that healthy soil is the first step to healthy plants. The forum-goers offered all sorts of wonderful advice on organic fertilizers, and kindly pointed out that the bark mulch was robbing the soil of nitrogen as it decomposed (oh.). We were advised by a few to start over, after amending the soil, but being stubborn as I am I decided to fertilize like mad and hope for the best.

Step 1: Get back from being at your parent's house for Christmas, see that your planties are looking worse, rush to the garden center and buy whatever has the most nitrogen in it (bat guano), and use as directed.

Step 2: Visit the garden with your fiance, then rope him in to helping you pick the bark mulch out of the 24 square foot plot. Laugh a lot and realize that tedious chores are always more enjoyable when performed with a best buddy. Walk back home a little happier.

Step 3: Check out the garden section of your local Whole Foods, then realize (joy of joys!) that they sell worm castings. Tell yourself that you don't need to start a worm farm now that you know where to get the good stuff. Starting a regular compost bin will do. Buy the castings and mulch your plot with them.

Step 4: Be really really excited when your plants regain their color and show signs of producing something edible!!!!

Fava Flowers

Looks like real kale

Swelling Radish

Pea Flowers!

So that's the story about how this nurse nursed her garden back to health. And in keeping with my ultimate credo that prevention is the best medicine, I've started a compost bin in my back yard for kitchen scraps and the like. I've even got a date to pick up manure to add to the bin from my buddies who have back yard chickens. The idea being that once these crops are done, the compost will be ready and I'll be able to add it to the plot just in time for summer planting (yum!)

My bike basket brimming with palm fronds, after I rode around the neighborhood looking for "dry brown things" for my compost bin. I'm turning into a crazy person, I really am.

look who decided to join the party!

  











The parsnips have arrived! Hip Hip Hooray! Now the mini-farm is complete. Hopefully I continue to have a green thumb and each variety makes it to fruition.

Today I did the nasty (albeit necessary) task of thinning. This is what the damage looked like.

That big pile in the front are the turnips. There were so many sprouts!! The stringy ones are leeks, and then there's kale, carrots, and broccoli. It seems like cruel and unusual punishment but if I really want to eat a turnip then I have to make room for growth.

In other news, something munched on this pea plant! Apparently it didn't like it because I didn't see any evidence of munching on any of the other peas. (phew)

A happy row of peas and favas. If all goes well we'll be quite well fed!

Snapped on the way to the garden. Proof that L.A. does have seasonal changes, however subtle. ;P

Happy weekend, all!

M

lessons in patience, then joy

I made some "row" markers

I'm learning that this whole growing your own food thing takes a lot of patience. And a lot of trust that what you plant in the ground will actually produce something edible! I've been checking on the mini-farm about every other day, and while there is progress it is slow going.

Pea 11/24

Pea 11/ 29

 

Pea 12/5

Pea Signage

I'm sure this impatience is a symptom of living in a fast-paced society where anything I want is fairly easily within reach. If I wanted peas I could just go to the store and buy some. Why plant them myself and wait for them to grow? I mean, really; if I wanted soup I could just go to a restaurant and buy some. Why make it myself?

Turnips 11/24

Turnips 11/29

Turnips 12/5

Why? Because the art of caring for oneself, of knowing how to nourish oneself from the ground up is becoming lost and I want to keep it alive. And I know that in learning to tend to the lives of the plants that will sustain us, I am learning how better to sustain myself.

Broccoli 11/24

Broccoli 11/29

Broccoli 12/5

Broccoli Signage

Besides being a place which will contribute to our physical sustenance, I am finding that the mini-farm is a restorative haven. I love visiting. My favorite part is listening to the ground absorb the water. It sort of snap-crackle-pops its way down to the roots of the little baby veggies.

Radish + Beet 11/24

 

Beet + Radish 11/29

Radish 12/5

Beet 12/5

As a nurse, I work three twelve-hour shifts a week. Sometimes I have to stop by and water on my way to work at about six am. On Friday I did just that, and knowing that I would be taking care of a patient who is dying I took an extra moment to thank the earth for giving life even when life is being lost. That act helped give me the perspective I needed to keep my attitude positive throughout the shift.

Carrot 11/24

Carrot 12/5

Carrots 11/29

Another joy I've discovered is in sharing the garden with others. Today J and I watered the garden after church, and in doing so attracted some of the children. We showed them what plants we were growing, and they giggled with delight when the water "accidentally" squirted them. As we were about to leave, a couple of our friends asked how the garden was growing, and we eagerly led them back to the garden to show off its progress. It is fun to share the joy of new growth, a foretaste of the joy that will come in sharing the harvest.
 

Leek 11/29

Leek 12/5

Except for the parsnips, everything we have planted has begun to sprout! The chard and kale look a lot like the beets and broccoli, respectively.

Chard 11/24

Chard 11/29

Chard 12/5

Kale 11/24

Kale 12/5

I've saved the best for last; my favorite are the fava beans!

Fava 11/29

Fava 12/5

Waiting for the crops to grow is an exercise in patience, but there is joy to be found within the process.

What are you waiting for? How can you find joy in the space that is created by waiting?

Blessings,

M