The Loofahs are here

I finally managed to clean up and dry the Loofah Gourds I grew last year. (Read here)

This has been a task waiting to be done since the spring of 2011. This ended up being ZBB'd.

ZBB'd is a jargon (among a million others) that is often used at the new place I have joined and just to get a hang of them I have been using them everywhere. It just means that it is a low priority item and there are other tasks that are higher priority that need to be addressed first.

Now that the year's quota of sunshine was quickly running out, it was time i got these cleaned up. Almost half my Loofahs had some kind of dark discoloration and needed some cleaning. I skinned them and dunked them in a solution of baking soda and bleach mixed in water. After an hour of soaking they were rinsed out separately and left to dry.

Irrigation

This is one of my posts from early May that got removed from the blog thanks to a glitch. So it had to be resurrected, and thanks to the great timing right around my year end it has taken me a while to get this up with all the images.

Drippers, sprayers, sprinklers, rotary sprinklers, misters, risers, coupling, elbow, tee, threaded, slip, hose thread, pressure regulator, anti siphon, controller, pop-up head, control valve, timer, T-tapes...and so the list goes.

We are now self taught experts in garden irrigation, and well because of a reason. As with everything else in the "money pit",  the irrigation infrastructure was pathetic.

The old irrigation system was done with Sch -20 pipes that are extremely thin walled. They were also not buried deep enough and when the first supply of dirt was delivered for installing our pool, the 10 cu yard dump truck managed to crack all the pipes underneath.

After a month went by, and an obvious after effect i.e. a pretty expensive water bill we went on a fact finding mission and shut off the entire irrigation system.

We dug out the old pipes and laid down thicker and better pipes in the front yard.

We also moved the risers in the front yard so we could cover them up with the faux rock feature I found. Here is the "before" (actually the "during")

And the "after"

In the backyard, we had to redo the entire irrigation from scratch.

We ripped out the pool and all the concrete and debris that surrounded it and put in our "eco lawn". We also had to plan and provide for irrigation of the other flowering plants that we eventually want to grow.

We also set up drip irrigation controllers for the fruit trees and our raised vegetable planter beds. We have four such controllers set up all over the backyard controlling different areas.

Even in the world of drip irrigation we have learnt along the way. Our Gen1 planter beds were set up with drippers on half inch tubes. The fruit trees have a 2 gal per hour dripper, the Rose bushes have a 1 gal per hour one.

Our Gen2 planter beds that we installed in the spring of 2010 were set up with 1/4 inch soaker hoses. I read somewhere (wish I remember where it was) that soaker hoses were a good option for garden beds. In my opinion they are much more easy to install when compared to the drippers we set up in 2009.

However, the flip side of these 1/4 inch soaker hoses is that the water does not get all the way to the end of the soaker hose. With a 130 ft long side yard, even dividing the soakers into 3 sections did not help.

So, over the last couple of weeks we have been busy ripping out the 1/4 inch soaker hoses we installed last year and replacing them with 1/2 inch cloth based soaker hoses (The Gilmour brand carried by HD).

I will have to wait and see how well that works.

Press Release

I am in the midst of the busy season at work, with a 03/31 year end the busy season falls smack in the middle of spring and the seed starting season.

But then again we are always swamped and have something going on all the time. This winter we got in a good bit of skiing with me graduating (barely) to the blues from the greens. Add to that mix some international business and personal trips, sick time and months fly by.


From the time we officially closed our vegetable garden around November 2010, we have been trying to make up numbers......see if we had hit the elusive 4 figure mark and beat our own expectations. It is an arduous process (i.e. closing the books), which only bean counters will understand. We finally managed to get the 2010 numbers finalized.

We did fairly well in my personal opinion, with 40+ varieties and about 930 lbs, I think we have come a long way.

Mulching

In 2010 we had our friendly tree pruner deliver a couple of loads of wood chips to help us keep the weeds down. This was one of our first loads of wood chips.

We spread them around the yard, mainly the areas where we had nothing growing, and around our raised planter beds. They made a BIG difference. During the winter of 2009 we had serious issues with weeds popping up everywhere.

Now that we are working on adding more plants in the garden (maybe even flowers.....flowers from seeds), we have been working on removing the twigs that were a big part of the wood chips that got delivered. Since it was free stuff, I did not complain about the pieces being uneven. But now it means we have to get them all out.

It has been an extremely arduous task to say the least. We have close to 2 cu yards of decent sized twigs that are now piled up on the driveway waiting to be disposed. Maybe the next time around we should just order some mulch from our garden center and spare us the trouble of having to go through this clean up exercise.

Black Gold

Over the last 3 years that we have lived in this place, we have added almost 70+ cubic yards of compost into the predominantly clayey soil (I would rather call it debris).

A big chunk of it went to the backyard when we closed the pool and started our raised vegetable planter beds.

 Our bulk compost supplier has been Mountain View garden center. We have had them deliver a full truckload of compost on more than one occasion. We recently ordered a truckload (about 10 cubic yards) to add to our planter beds for this growing season and also to mix into the massive concrete retaining wall that we finished and the herb planter bed that we are building right now.

One of the nice things about living in an eco-friendly place like the bay area is the composting program that many cities offer. Ours is no different and therefore when we do not have a big project going on, we pick up free compost from the Sunnyvale SMaRT station for our regular needs.

Now that we are close to a steady state situation, we have been contemplating setting up our own composter at home, and maybe even a worm bin!!!! Vermicomposting would be all left to Guru!

Our home composting enclosure is all set to go. Hopefully we will finish installing it this weekend.

I put in the exclamation because my approach to gardening has a sense of dichotomy. While on the one hand I love digging around in the garden, tending to my plants, pulling out weeds for stress relaxation, on the other I have an unfounded, unbiased distaste for all things slimy. Though it may be justified for those slugs and snails, unfortunately my hate does not differentiate our best garden friend, the earthworm. Yes, I have to accept that I am a worm hater :( I wish there was a class to overcome this.

We have always segregated our degradable trash from the kitchen. Our local Costco in northern California has been carrying compostable trash bags for a while now. Even my parents in India have begun using these Biobags and add it to their compost pit that is in the yard.

I usually have my BioBag set up on my kitchen counter lining a plastic bowl. The biggest flip side is the fact that it attracts fruit flies very easily. On a recent trip to Marshalls I found a steel pail composter that was big enough to hold a decent amount of kitchen scraps, had a lid, looked nice and cost me only $14. The lid was perforated to allow the trash to breathe and not start decaying at the same time, the lid was fitted with a carbon filter to take out the bad odors. And the Biobag ensures easy cleanup and disposal (considering our diet is all vegetarian and we fill up our container in about 2-3 days).

Good find eh !......retail therapy rocks

Eggplant Harvest in October

It is raining Eggplants....and we have been sharing the bounty with friends and family

Disappearing Acts

I was going through my 2010 images folder and saw these ones (taken in early May).

I was right, I filled up all my planter beds up to the brim with amended soil. But for some weird reason the soil seems to have settled down quite a lot. I have kept adding a lot of compost on the top throughout this growing season.

Even then, I will still have a pretty big gap to top up after all my plants come out in winter. Maybe it is time to get a few more loads of compost before they close for the season. (Bay area residents- I pick up my free compost from the SMART station.I have also purchased compost from The Mountain View Garden Center when we had to amend the entire backyard with some of the good stuff.)

Fall

"When was it ever less than a treason
 To go with the drift of things,
 To yield with a grace to reason,
 And bow and accept the end
 Of a love or a season?"
-Robert Frost

The Autumnal Equinox is today (September 22) and marks the official beginning of Fall. But with a lacklustre summer behind us, it is depressing to think that it is going to get colder and colder. I also heard that this fall and winter are going to be much colder than usual. More snow in the Sierra Nevada mountains and good a good ski season are the only flip side I can think of now.

"The last long aster is gone;

The flowers of the witch-hazel wither;

The heart is still aching to seek,

But the feet question "Whither?"

-Robert Frost

This weekend is still supposed to be nice in the upper 70's and maybe even the 80's, and gives us more time to close out some of our long list of garden chores. Clean up all the dead plants, and maybe plant some of the cover crops. Add more wood chips/ mulch to all the flower beds to keep the weeds down, and maybe do some slug hunting at night !

I am not planting any winter veggies, and hopefully that will have us the ability to step out of town for a few days/ week for a much needed vacation.

The veggie garden 2010-Part 4 (Exotic Fruits)

"While it is botanically a fruit, it is considered a vegetable for culinary purposes (as well as by the United States Supreme Court (see Nix v. Hedden) ), which has caused some confusion. "

When I did my earlier post on exotic vegetables, I had included the Tomato in there, but on second thought (actually after reading this one on the Wiki), I decided to dedicate one exclusively for the one exotic fruit I am growing

The Reise Tomato

The Cream Sausage Tomato

Luffa Gourd update

I had written earlier about my attempt at growing my own Luffa's (read here).

I have more updates on how they are doing. Why the special attention you may ask? Because they have been the most prolific in the garden. You can see that they have made it past the 8ft tall fence and have started climbing on to the Pine tree.

The Gourd's themselves are also pretty massive compared to the small dried ones that I have stocked up now.

The plant is also pretty aggressive in sending out flowers that attract the Hummingbirds.

...and Bees

The veggie garden 2010-Part 6 (Inter-planting)

One of the biggest lessons we learnt this year was on "Inter-planting". I don't believe we did inter-planting the right way to begin with.

We planned our vegetable planting plan based on the plants that work well together, the friends versus the foes that should be kept separate.

This is the bed where we had onions and the Broccoli/ Cauliflower planted together. After this initial stage, the  Broccoli/ Cauliflower's took off and completely snuffed out the light to the Onions that never made it big.

We planted the Squash (Sugar Pumpkins) with Beans in the back. I ended up having to remove the Squash leaves that went towards the back of the bed and kind of moved everything to grow towards the front. I am not sure if it caused any stress to the plant. But looking at the production, it does not look like they were affected. 

The Pole Beans were able to pick up from there on and seem to be doing well now.

The Zucchinis were planted in the front with the Bitter Gourds in the back of the bed. I trimmed out the Zucchini leaves the same way I trimmed out the leaves of the Sugar Pumpkin. The Zucchini's were not affected but because of the way they grow (not spreading as much as the Pumpkins) they kept interfering with the growth of the Bitter Gourds. Till date, we haven't harvested even one Bitter Gourd.

The Zucchini leaves I trimmed early on....and kept trimming the entire season.

The Bitter Gourds languishing behind the Zucchini's

We also planted the Okras (Ladies Finger) and the Bell Peppers near the Tomatoes. They have also been dwarfed and stunted by the massive Tomato plants.

The only ones that seems to be co-existing in harmony are the Bell Peppers and the Eggplants that are together in one of the planter beds.

Eggplants

The Eggplant (Brinjal/ Aubergine) flowers have been blooming for a while. They took a while to set fruit (and lets blame it again on the weather).

I spotted these white Eggplants that are just coming along. 

The Fairy Tale eggplant are also just making an appearance.

The Black Beauty are just about getting bigger, hopefully I can harvest the first one in a week.

These have been the most prolific so far, we have harvested over 5 lbs in the last 2 weeks. Wonder what one does with 5lbs of Eggplant.....

And these are supposed to be long (sort of like eggs), except that this one looked kind of weird.

Peppers

The first of the Purple Peppers

The California Wonder Orange

They are way tinier than the ones I see at the supermarkets but the plants are extremely prolific. I am not sure if it is because of the mild summer or something else that we should be doing. I am not quite sure what I could do with these small peppers....pickle them maybe

Finally we have vine ripened Tomatoes

Thanks to the weather hitting the 90's for a short time last week, we have the first vine ripened Tomatoes of the season

The first vine ripened Beef Steak Tomato

And the first vine ripened Cherry Tomatoes

The veggie garden 2010-Part 4 (Planning)

This is one of those posts that has been languishing in the "draft" stage for a while. Some of the pictures of our planning were stuck in our home computer that was out of commission for a few months.

This year, Spring and Summer of 2010 has been one fraught with trouble. All our planning and prep work was tossed out the door.

Our bible for planning the veggie garden was the Santa Clara County Master Gardener resources and especially their planting calendar.

So off we went starting our seeds in pots and fretting that we probably started a week or two late.

Weather played spoil sport with our plans....by the end of May and we still were having night time temperatures below 50 degrees.

We put together some planting plans based on "Edward Smiths's book"

Here are some of our plans

Plan 1

Plan 2

Plan 3

Plan 4

What we did not plan for was the bad weather and that many of our seeds might not germinate.

We have learnt a lot from what we did (and did not do) in our veggie garden planning this year, and we are hoping to do better next year.

Harvest Monday- September 6, 2010

We finally got caught up and entered the details of our harvest from our garden note book into the computer and summed it all up. 

We are getting close to our target of 450 lbs and with at least a month to go we hope to reach our target.

All this was in days harvest early last week, with the Cucumbers being the heaviest contributors.

This was our harvest on Sep 5. Mostly Persian Cucumbers yet again. We have harvested about 118 lbs of these lovely Cucumbers so far and they are still going strong. I have been sharing the Cucumber abundance with Friends, Family and Co-workers in addition to using them up everyday.

This is going to be my first posting to Harvest Monday at Daphne's Dandelions. Not sure if I can figure out how to use the Mister Linky widget thing....but I am going to try.