Fungamentals

Today I started teaching my daughter about mushrooms. Part of me was doing it because it was something fun to do (and we have LOTS of mushrooms in the yard right now), but part of me was also doing it to draw attention to the fact that they can be poisonous. Since our recent rains, we've had mushrooms popping up EVERYWHERE, and leave it to my three year old to become obsessed with these little treasures in the garden. We had a bunch of tree's removed this year, so seeing all of these mushrooms is actually a good thing- as it means the old root systems are starting to break down. Thank goodness we didn't find any stinkhorns today! Here are some pics of our favorites today.....

Annie's Annuals & Perennials

I finally decided to physically visit Annie's Annuals (http://www.anniesannuals.com/). After drooling over their catalog and website for years, I made the hour and a half drive from Sacramento to Annie's last month. My friend Chuck (http://www.back40feet.blogspot.com/) was nice enough to join my daughter and I, and I'm so glad he did! I'm pretty sure Chuck knows their catalog by heart, every time I would google a plant from there that I wanted, his Flickr page ALWAYS came up on an image search- so I'm pretty sure he's grown or taken pictures of every plant they've offered. That being said, I'm pretty sure I bought twice the amount of plants BECAUSE Chuck was with me. All he had to do was say "Oh, I love this plant", and somehow it made its way into my wagon.
Most plants are available for purchase in 4" pots, and each plant has a color coordinated plant label that indicates what the price is. The plants here are VERY reasonably priced. Each plant has a sign above it that is well labeled with its plant zone, water & light requirements, and height & width of the plant. It also includes special characteristics about the plant; such as where it came from, the story behind how they found it, or why they like this particular plant. The information on these signs is all available via their website, so there’s no need to take notes while you’re there! I admit, I put some plants in my cart just because of the story that they wrote about it- is that bad or what? I'm a sucker for a good story.....
I was happy to see one of my favorite plants here- Ceanothus ‘Tuxedo’(pictured above). This is a plant that I was lucky enough to get my hands on from Pat Fitzgerald from Ireland (and Pacific Plug & Liner) earlier this year. If you look closely at the description it even mentions the infamous Pat Fitzgerald! I can’t wait for mine to start blooming, but I'll admit it’s the color of the foliage that I love most (oh- and it does not need a lot of water! It took our summer heat like a champ!). Pat has worked on this plant for YEARS, it has got to feel pretty awesome to see this plant in one of the finest nurseries in California! But do you guys find it odd that the foliage on Tuxedo resembles the color of Guinness? Hmmm....
I had my little helper Alex along to help me pull around my cart. Chuck also got to experience first hand why it’s pretty handy to have a well behaved kid (she’s pulling his cart too). I swear, this is not child labor, she wanted to do it.
To thank(bribe) Alex for her hard work, I let her pick out any plant she wanted. I do this often when we go shopping for plants. It’s fun to see from her perspective what kind of plants she prefers. Today she picked Eucomis autumnalis ‘Pineapple Lily’ which most would say looked like a pineapple, but noooo, my kid says “It looks like corn, but it’s not ready yet”. I admit, this is probably a plant I would have walked right past, but once she pointed it out I started to appreciate its child-like features. I blame her for me adding Echium wildpretii "Tower of Jewels" to the wagon for the same reason. And I blame Chuck for telling me to grab two more of them (something about them looking better when they have "friends").
Did I mention they also have a kid’s area? Yeah- how awesome is that?! I think Alex was pretty entertained pulling the wagons around, but around the time she started getting bored with that is when we found the play area for kids. If any of you have toddlers, you know how awesome it is to find a place that can accommodate a child. Between the play area and their chickens (yeah- chickens!), Alex thought this was as cool as going to the zoo (which is good- because I guess the whole way there she thought we were going to a place called “Annie’s Animals”, thank goodness they had some!).

Next time you're stuck in traffic either heading into San Francisco, or leaving it- I totally recommend you stop in Richmond at Annie's for a bit. This place is like Disneyland for plant lovers. They have gorgeous demonstration gardens which I was too overwhelmed to take pictures of (sorry- I'll take pics next time!). I left this day with 24 plants for my new front yard project, and I'm going back this weekend with some fellow bloggers to check out their Fall Planting Party (and they're having a HUGE sale). By the looks on their website of their previous parties, it looks like TONS of fun- and I am SOOOO hoping to win the shopping spree (I even had a dream that I won it the other night- kinda weird, eh?). I'll be sure to post about some of my new plants from Annie's as they get a bit more established!

"It's gone daddy gone, the lawn is gone"

Ahhh....much better! Even if I don't do a thing to this space for months, it looks a heck of a lot better than the dead grass and weeds that were here just days ago! The fence and lawn removal project that I was told was going to take two days has actually taken four. I’m not complaining though- there’s no way I’d be outside in 100+ degree weather pulling out sod (oh wait, I’ve actually done that before! Lessons learned!). Yesterday when I got home from work I finally got to see the lawn removed- and what a difference it makes! The size of the space is MASSIVE, as you might be able to tell with my pint-sized daughter standing in some of the pictures.

The dirt area you see in the pictures will be amended and covered with shredded bark this Sunday. I’m lucky to have some pretty awesome people in my life to help me with the manual labor, even on a day that’s supposed to be a scorching 100 degree’s. My hope is to gather enough friends to help me knock out the work in record time, before the sun hits us too hard! Needless to say, the freezer will be STOCKED with iced mugs for all of us to enjoy a nice frosty beer afterward.

Once the area is amended and mulched I’ll have the difficult task of actually designing the space. I’m not a landscape designer by any means, but since this is such a huge space that takes up over half of my front yard, I want it to be a little more planned out. I have about a hundred plants arriving the second week in October, in addition to the twenty or so plants I currently have in the backyard in pots (they’re waiting patiently for their moment to shine). I guess I better invest in some graph paper and start planning!

"Take the Good With the Bad"

I often get the question "How did you start gardening?". Working in the technology field, it probably seems like the last thing someone like me would do. My simple response has always been "I've been doing it my whole life" because basically I have, whether I wanted to or not. I'm often envious of people who say their passion for gardening started with helping their grandmother trim her roses, or city dwellers who always yearned for a greener way of living. My story isn't as romantic.

I come from a family of dairy farmers- both sides of my family owned dairy farms. I even had some family members that ran a pig farm in Woodland for many years, but they had stopped that before I was born. My parents bought a house on some land in a small farm town, and my dad immediately turned it into quite a hobby farm. We had sheep, chickens, goats, ducks, rabbits, turkey, geese, and one cow named Bossy (who has her own interesting story, which I'll save for another time) . My dad had also created a huge garden (larger than my entire plot of land now) where we grew pomegranates, oranges, strawberries, grapes, pumpkins, corn, artichokes, tomatoes, basically everything you could possibly want. We always grew WAY too much zucchini (who doesn't?), so much so that my mom had to buy an entire cookbook just on zucchini so we could find ways to get rid of it all (this cookbook now belongs to me!). Fried zucchini, zucchini pancakes, and chocolate zucchini bread were and still are my favorites. It was a lot of work to maintain the farm, and I had a long list of chores to tend to daily. I hated every minute of it.

Reading the previous paragraph I think most would say "Oh, she learned how to garden from her dad". That would be an easy answer! The truth of the matter is, I don't want to give him credit for it. You see, my dad was abusive and to put it mildly, he was kind of a prick. It's hard for me to give credit for something I love so much to someone I dislike. I think he was trying to make me the son he always wanted, so he was pretty critical of me. I admit I wasn't an easy kid, but I know now I didn't deserve most of the punishments I got. He left us my 6th grade year, and most of the farm chores fell on to me. I hated all of the work, especially since that farm was his dream, not mine. I'd get up early to feed all of the animals before catching the hour long bus ride to school. My evenings were spent tending to the garden while it was still light outside, and once the mosquitoes came out I'd go inside and do my homework. Eventually my mom could no longer afford the upkeep of the farm and we sold it. I haven't spoken to my dad in about 18 years. I saw him a couple years ago at a wedding, but he wouldn't come and talk to me (probably wise of him- I had several large glasses of wine that night). I used to be okay with him being gone because my life was a whole lot easier without him around, but once I had my own child it was harder on me. I guess it's hard for me understand how someone can walk away from their own child, and even harder for me to understand how a parent could be abusive to their child. That being said, some of my best qualities are because of him, and my love of gardening is one of them.

After he left I continued with my love of plants. In high school I was active in the FFA (Future Farmers of America) where I would show plants every year at the state fair. At the age of thirteen I helped my mom design and install her front and backyard at our new house, which is where I also learned to never plant mint in the ground (unless you really, really like mojitos). She will be battling that mint for the rest of her life thanks to me! When I bought my first house I didn't have much of a yard so I became really good at container gardening, and started collecting strong scented herbs to try and mask the disgusting cigarette smells from my next door neighbor. Eventually I got married, and we bought a nice house with a decent sized lot that was covered in mature fruit tree's. I secretly started building and installing raised beds in the backyard, which upset my city-loving husband....until he took a bite of a REAL vine-ripened tomato. Three years ago we had a baby girl, and now that she's finally moved past her must-eat-the-dirt phase, I can't seem to spend enough time outside with her working in our vegetable garden. Gardening is no longer a chore, but a nice stress reliever for me.

When someone asks me now "How did you start gardening?" I think I will start to respond with WHY I garden. I garden for my daughter, so she can grow up knowing where her food comes from. I grow a lot of my own fruits and vegetables so that I know what goes into them, so that I may protect her from the many chemicals that are used in commercial farming today. I garden WITH my daughter so that she spends time outdoors learning about things that really matter- like attracting beneficial insects, saving water, how to compost, and how to build a worm bin! And more importantly, I garden with my daughter so that someday when she's my age and someone asks her where she learned to garden, she can PROUDLY say that she learned it from her mother, and that it wasn't a chore because we had way too much fun gardening together.

Mid-July Tomato Update

Wow, sorry I haven't posted anything in a while, the garden is keeping me busy! The tomatoes have finally started ripening, and I am already overwhelmed by the bounty we are receiving! I was lucky enough to have nice friends who contributed to this years tomato crop (thanks Bill, Nels and Angie), and my inability to say no to a free plant has gotten me in way over my head! I am pulling about 4 or 5 tomatoes a day right now, and I'm not including the various cherry types in that number (like the Jelly Bean's, Sweet 100's, and Black Cherry's pictured). I am growing a lot of heirlooms this year that I have never grown before, and not only are they really cool looking- the flavor is outstanding! The hybrids were early producers, and I already made a batch of salsa with them. I also canned my first batch of salsa verde using tomatillos (also pictured), and am almost ready to can another! There's a lot of talk about Late Blight going around, and thankfully we're not showing any signs of it yet (knock on wood). I'm almost anticipating it since the first time I tried growing heirloom tomatoes I got it, and I hadn't attempted heirlooms since! Now, I don't think I could go without heirlooms, although I admit they are a pain in the a$$ to grow organically. The Black Cherry tomato has officially made it to my Must-Have list. We will be growing it every year now as our main cherry tomato (until something better comes along). It has been a heavy producer, and the flavor of the tomatoes are to die for! Other heavy producers that I am antsy to try (they haven't ripened yet) would be the Black Krim and the Japanese Black Trifele. The black tomatoes have definetly peaked my interest this year, and I admit I didn't even wait to see how they tasted before ordering seeds for next year. The JBT (like how I just created an acronym?) has about ten medium sized tomatoes on it right now and is still blooming, and I think I counted 15 on the Black Krim which also still has blooms on it. As for tomatoes that won't be revisiting our garden again, I'll pass on the Green Zebra and Red Lightning, and the Lemon Boy is walking a fine line (but I'll keep him on the list until I find a better tasting yellow tomato). The funkiest tomato plant has been another heavy producer- the Henderson Winsall that I got from Nels. There's a possibilty the tags have been switched and that could be wrong on the name(that's the down side of gardening with a toddler, the plant tags go missing often!), but the picture below is a good example of what it's producing. The tomatoes are pretty twisted, and they are HUGE, and when they ripen they are a deep pink with yellow tones. Hope you are all starting to see success in your garden despite the odd weather-and keep an eye out for Late Blight!

July Bloom Day (sorry it's lame!)

Okay- I'm a little new to the Bloom Day thing, and I admit these pics were taken this past weekend! But I checked- and I have the same stuff blooming today! I think all of the weird weather we've had lately has put everything in a bit of shock!

If You Can't Beat Em'.....

Those of you who listen to my garden rants know that I like to complain about the pests that frequent my yard. Those pests can include my tomato-eating dog, Romie, or the gazillion aphids, whiteflies and mosquitoes that buzz around. The truth is, some of these pests have made me a better gardener and have exposed me to plants (such as California natives) and methods that I may have overlooked before. Using plants that attract beneficial insects has kept some of my pest problems under control, but there is one pest that I really struggle with, a super annoying fur ball that we so cleverly named Mr. Squirrel (very original, eh? Chip or Dale would have been too obvious).

Those of you who don’t try to grow your own food are probably saying “Oh, isn’t he cute?!” No, not really, especially if you are trying to grow your own fruits and vegetables! This guy wipes out every single sunflower I try to grow, not to mention the trail of orange and fig peels that he likes to leave all over my lawn. Don’t get me started on the headache he causes every year in spring when I try to transplant my seedlings into the garden, and then he goes in and digs them all up while I’m at work. Or there was that one time that he teased the dog and made her yank out an entire teepee of green beans as she tried to get to him. Yeah, it would appear that we weren’t on very good terms.

The truth is, as much as I complain about him, I’d hate to see him leave. We’ve been lucky enough to have the same squirrel live in an old lobbed off Italian Cypress tree for a few years now. He used to have a partner, but for the last two years it’s only been him (not sure if she left him for another squirrel, or if he’s widowed, I didn’t want to ask in case it’s a sensitive subject). I don’t know of anyone else that could say they’ve had the same squirrel living with them for a long period of time. I’m not really sure why he picked us, but I kind of feel special that he did. He chases away other squirrels because he’s pretty protective over his garden, and he provides our dog with hours of entertainment (they’re kind of like Tom and Jerry taking turns chasing each other).

Each year I would watch my Mammoth sunflowers disappear one by one. He’d steal them before they even flowered, leaving behind a stalk with a couple of leaves that were lucky enough to be spared by his claws. Last year I decided I would just plant MORE in order to get a couple for us, but that still didn’t work. This year I decided to take a different approach. I planted tons of sunflowers around his tree- Mammoth, Autumn Beauty, Velvet Queen and Lemon Queen (in case he likes variety, of course). I also added a couple strawberry and squash plants that are mingling below the sunflowers. My thought is if I give him so much food that he doesn’t even have to leave his tree, he’ll never really have a reason to venture to the raised beds and cause chaos (because he’d be too fat to move). And of course in other various areas of the yard I planted more sunflowers for US (hopefully).

Last weekend we came home to our first empty stalk. It was one that was right next to his tree, where he literally was able to yawn, roll on his side, and swipe it probably pretty effortlessly. It’s still too early to determine if this approach is going to work, for all I know thousands of other squirrels may move in if Mr. Squirrel gets too fat to chase them off. In the meantime, I’ll try to concentrate on appreciating Mr. Squirrel for who he is and try to understand that he has a place in this world; more specifically he has a place in our yard.

UPDATE: Wow, first time I've had to update a blog! So- I wrote the piece about Mr. Squirrel last night, and this morning we woke up to our first sunflower. I had to do a little happy dance first, then ran to get the camera before it disappeared. By the comments I've already received I have to confess- we have it pretty easy here. We have tons more squirrels in the front yard- that Mr. Squirrel doesn't chase away, and those guys haven't done too much damage. We do have problems with rats (thanks to the neighbors ivy and our fruit tree's), but having a 75 pound dog scares away a lot of the pests. Raccoons, possums, skunks, rabbits, chickens, ducks, and even wild turkeys- all make their way through our neighborhood, causing minimal damage to my front yard. I feel pretty fortunate that we don't have to battle it out with voles or deer- I would be heartbroken to see all of my hard work go to waste!