Anyone missing a Kitty Cat?

She's been hanging around my garden for the past few days. Very thin, but very affectionate. Think she might be lost or abandoned.

Dinnerplate Dahlia

I can't say my garden is well tended this year. I haven't been taking pictures or doing much out there at all. But a dahlia that I purchased at the San Francisco Flower Show just bloomed, and it's as big as my head! I'm amazed.

Dear Park Seeds

Why would I want pay you $9.95 for 6 leek plants? Unless of course, they're guaranteed to grow 10 feet tall.

le poireau n'est pas l'asperge du pauvre

Weeding Season Again

Nothing like a relaxing afternoon pulling up weeds. Didn't get very far, but it's coming along. The rest of the garden full of oxallis, but I'll start with this patch. I'm hoping to transplant a couple of trees and move the blueberry barrels up here. I'm hoping that this nice weather holds, especially next weekend when there will be a pruning workshop. Ah, winter.

Interesting Article

Scientist Says Ancient Technique Cuts Greenhouse Gas

Sounds intriguing. But what makes me wonder is how you heat up the crop biomass to make biochar? Is this some fancy smancy way of saying "gee, composting works"? (Somehow I don't think so.) Ancient technique, eh? So what is it? This article leaves more questions than answers. At first read it seems to say they burn the crop and plow it under. Sounds like a way to put lots of soot in the air. But the article says "under airtight conditions". Okay, so how does it heat up to "charcoal"? Guess it's something to hunt down more information on.

But I say, grow your own organically and compost. Easiest way to reduce your personal carbon footprint.

Later
Note:
I should do a little research before I post. A google search on biochar rendered plenty of results.
http://www.biochar.org
I'm still more in favor of composting. Still looks like too much soot.

Home is where you hang your heart

Tomato: Anna Maria's Heart

Summer didn't wait for me. I have been busy with my studies and rarely spent time in the garden. But it grew quite happily. I was able to steal away with a few tomatoes, handfuls of green beans for dinner, Swiss chard and arugula into my stir frys. However, the zucchini rebelled against the automated drip sprinklers. For some reason they didn't produce much this year, except for flowers.

One of the best parts of my summer garden was the flower bouquets I would bring in for my desk. The dahlias, sunflowers and cosmos seemed to be endless.

So last weekend I decided to remove the last of the tomato vines. I was excited to find these large ripe Anna Maria's Hearts towards the back of the bed. I hadn't noticed them until the vines had died back from the cold air. I gathered all the green tomatoes and pondered if I could let them ripen. Most of the time, I just leave the vines in the garden and pull the fruit off as they color. But I thought it's November, what's the point of tomato vines? I decided to clean up, amend the soil and add in my winter crops.

So many green tomatoes, what to do? The picture is only one-third of the green tomatoes I picked from the garden. I mentioned my dilemma to a friend and she suggested Green Tomato Mincemeat. I love mincemeat. She even stopped by last Saturday to show me how to make it, and to help process all the tomatoes. Not a huge crop, but I'm glad to have the quarts of tomato sauce and mincemeat ready for winter. And my greens are happily transplanted, ready to grow during the winter rain.

Tomatoes for fog

I overheard a conversation at the Farmer's market last Saturday.

"No, I don't grow tomatoes anymore. Just not worth waiting all summer for a few lousy tomatoes."

Too bad, I thought. But everyone makes those sorts of choices when they garden. And I can honestly say it's not easy growing tomatoes here on the coast; too much cold fog for those jungle weeds. But I like the challenge.

This year, in the spring, I was trying to figure out what to do about growing tomatoes myself. February was quickly disappearing and I knew that I didn't have the time to sprout the varieties that I have learned to love and that do well here. I had resigned myself to looking for something at the garden center or maybe going to Love Apple farms and getting a few plants. I was pretty resolved not to buy an Early Girl. I don't think they have much flavor.

It always amazes me the synchronicity of the universe. Just as I was reviewing my options I received an email from this blog. A neighbor had sprouted more tomatoes than they knew what to do with and would I like some? A neighbor I had never met before. Ah, the power of the internet. Can you believe my luck? I was so excited to pick up those plants, Azoychka, Anna Maria's Heart, Yellow Zebra, Silvery Fir Tree, Nygomous, Berkeley Tie Die, Bloody Butcher, Black Cherry, Lemon Boy, Moscovich, Cosmonaut Volkov, just to name . Then another friend of mine, a true tomato fanatic emailed me to say he also had extras. Double luck!

So although I'm not out in the garden much (thanks to graduate school), it always makes me happy to know that plants grow whether you watch them or not. And the tomatoes are looking great.

I'm happy to wait for them.

Silvery Fir Tree - growing outside the greenhouse. It produced my first tomato of the year on August 20th.