You Catch More Flies With Honey...

In one of our gardening classes as Alden Lane, we learned that white flies are attracted to yellow gold colors.  A  great way to rid your garden of them, without getting anything toxic on your plants, is to cover a board of some sort that's been painted this yellow gold color with a clear plastic bag that has been sprayed with a product like "Tangle-Trap Sticky Coating" and then remove the fly laden bags when they are carpeted with flies and no sticky stuff is left.  It really works!
Of course being me, and believing that all things functional can be decorative as well,  these adorable beehives are the "fly catchers" my husband made for our garden.  We recycle our clear plastic produce bags which slip easily on and off the beehives.

You really do catch more flies with honey!

The Beets Grow On, and Strawberry Fields Forever

The garden is getting bigger, as you can see in the new photo posts the beets are growing, I love the deep red veins you can see in the leaves, and the strawberries are starting to show up.  We really do hope it is strawberry fields forever, between the jam I need to make to keep my Guy happy, and the fruit we eat in smoothies as well as with cottage cheese and cereal we can eat a fields worth between the two of us!  We also planted some new things last week, corn, eggplant, sunflowers, nasturtium, green onions, and basil.  We're trying to spread out the herbs in order to work the idea that those pungent plants help to keep the bugs at bay.

Guy is busy making fly catchers for me, I'll post a photo of that when he's done and let you know how it worked, and I am indoors updating the blog, because it is cold today, well cold for here anyway.  It is only 55, we had a heavy marine layer from the bay this morning, and the wind is blowing fiercely, if we measured wind chill here I bet it would be about 40.  It's a good day to catch up on indoor work, laundry, cleaning, and blogging, tomorrow should be warmer and I will plant my carrots.

The Stupendous Stupice

The Stupice Tomato is described as, " a Czechoslovakian Heirloom tomato that bears small red fruit and has a potato leaf", they're not kidding, look at the size of this leaf.  The camera is not exaggerating the size, this is the biggest leaf and is probably 4" x 6", can you imagine - and don't the roses look beautiful blooming in the background?  We didn't have to sacrifice the beautiful roses for the "edible" landscape.

Back in Town

We are back in town tending our garden after visiting friends and family for several days, and are grateful our sister was here to water for us given the 90+ temps we have seen lately!

The heat has done wonders for the tomatoes, they have really grown, and it has also brought out the bugs, we will implement some of our organic pest control techniques tonight and see how they do against ear wigs and snails, these seem to be the biggest culprits in the garden so far.

We got our yellow bean seedlings in the ground before we left and today the carrot seedlings, it's really starting to look like a little farm out there!

Green Beans and Apron Strings

They're in the ground, all of the Kentucky Blue Beans have been planted, yippity skippity, and no surprise to those of you who know me, we did end up with tepees for the beans to climb.  I think it will add a lot of height and color to the garden, and I will have so much fun watching the beans climb up the poles!  We fashioned the tepees out of bamboo sticks tied together with the fabric left over from our niece Ashlyn's apron.  Now we have two reasons to smile when we look at the beans, the cool tepees and thinking of our cute Ashlyn! 

Look at these Kentucky Blue Beans - they look like a little bean forest in the flat the seeds were planted in.  They are so ready to get put in the ground, I planted the seeds about ten days ago and can't believe how quickly they have popped up.  Hopefully the rain will slow down a little this afternoon and I will be able to get them in the ground.  These are pole beans so we will need to decide whether to build tepees or a trellis for them to climb, I think the tepees would be cooler and add some visual interest to the garden but a trellis might be more practical, hmmmm wonder which will win over?

The Pencil Pod Black Wax Beans, bet it will surprise you to know these are yellow beans, also popped up, no trellis needed for these, they are bush beans so they only need to be staked.

I was excited this morning to see the first Yellow Crookneck squash poking up through the potting soil it's funny how fast things are moving along, I thought it would take much more time for the seeds to get going, but I guess all that warmth and light really accelerated the timeline.

The Beginning

October 2008 - We determined it would be in our best interest to re-purpose much of our back yard, which was primarily lawn, and roses, into an "edible" landscape.  Our reasons for this included a desire to be more self reliant, increasing the nutritional value of our produce, reducing our carbon footprint, (and our grocery bill) and following the teachings of our religious leaders.

November 2008 - While we weren't ready to plant anything, we decided to get ready by starting to compost all organic waste.  We built two compost keepers out of 1" mesh wire for a cost of about $16.00, one of our goals is to keep everything as cost effective as possible.  Everything organic went into the compost keepers, all the shells from the Cioppino we enjoyed over the winter, egg shells, onion skins, avocado and banana peels, leaves, grass clippings, you name it, the only thing we didn't include were weeds.

February 2009 - We were anxious to begin planning our garden and decided to educate ourselves by attending classes at what we consider to be the premiere local nursery, Alden Lane Nursery in Livermore California.  We attended classes on soil preparation, requirements of organic gardening, and pest control, both traditional and organic.  With these classes we felt we were ready to plan our garden, we consulted several books from the library to identify the best crops for our area, and understand their growth habits.  Now we knew what would grow best in our area, and how best to organize the garden based on the needs of the crops.

March 2009 - We began the process of re-purposing our back yard, we converted about 40% of our back yard to an "edible" landscape and did not give up any of the roses or other strictly decorative plants, we only converted lawn.  We did shift some roses in order to create more room but they have all lived through the move!  Once we identified where we wanted our "garden to grow", we set about making raised beds, this is critical in our area as our natural soil is "clay rich". 

Once the raised beds were constructed we began to enrich the soil. We used a fabulous soil amendment, Bumper Crop, which contains yummy things for the soil and your veggies, like chicken manure and bat guano.  We also turned in to the soil E.B. Stone Natural Granular Gypsum, again for the clay, and E.B. Stone Organic Tomato and Vegetable Fertilizer, we were striving for very happy rich soil!

We also started our seed planting in March, preparing for April planting of beets, beans, squash, and carrots. 

April 2009 - The tomatoes we ordered from Ginger of Sun Catcher Harvest arrived last week and we planted them immediately,  Our tomatoes include; Abraham Lincoln Hybrid, Stupice, Super San Marzano, Gingers Golden Delicious, Sungold, and Black Krim.  I can't wait!