My Garden at 10 Weeks

Some days, like today, I take a step back and admire the chaos of my garden beds.  The control freak in me fought to pluck plants that got too big or seedlings that sprouted up from the soil after I thought I'd removed them all.  But my inner control freak lost the argument and I have just been letting it all grow.

And grow it has done!  Well, with the exception of the plants that I am growing in bags of compost.  

For example, here is a picture of the watermelon that I planted in the dirt by my walkway.  It is roughly five times larger than it was the day that I planted it.  I planted all of my watermelon on the same day, but used different methods and different spaces.

And this is one of the watermelon that I planted in a compost bag.  It is pretty much exactly the same size as it was the day that I planted it.  I have tried everything.  I have removed as much of the bag as possible.  I have watered more.  I have watered less.  I have used plant food.  Nothing happens.  

So, when I bought my tomatoes I was under the impression that they were all the same type of tomato.  I guess that I was misinformed.   I have three plants.  They should all be beefsteak tomatoes.  One of them just sprouted a few baby tomatoes, but the other two have been pretty prolific.  The thing is that one of my plants has large green tomatoes.  They are already about the size of my fist and are hard and green.  Yet, my other plant has little, itty, bitty cherry-looking tomatoes that are small but are already turning orange.  At what point do I pick them?

All of my peppers are growing especially large!  I am not certain how big my yellow peppers are supposed to get before they actually turn yellow. I have one that is getting quite large but is still dark green!  

I am really please with my jalapeno!  I have a few plants and I do believe that one of them has several that are ready to be stuffed with cheese and pineapple, wrapped in bacon and turned into poppers!  I give them one more week before I can pick them! 

Bunny's corn is looking good!  It's growing , but I imagine that it will be August of September before it has corn that we are able to eat!

Hey, have you ever seen anything like this before?  This was the only plant that I left in my garden from the previous people who lived here.  It started as a plant with long green leaves (same shape as corn but tougher and larger) and then grew yellow flowers and NOW this!!!!)  It looks like something from outer space.  

I have my first flower on an acorn squash plant!  And it comes with a little, baby acorn squash!  Isn't it cute?

Some of my round zucchini has started to grow in sort of yellowish!  It tastes the same.  I'm wondering if it's possible that there's some cross pollination happening between my round zucchini and my yellow squash.  I have read that this is possible but I don't' know very much about it.

My garlic are getting big and strong.  I have to admit that I was hoping the other four garlic that I planted would eventually sprout, but I think it's a safe bet that these are the only two that made it!  I am gratefully that they made it, so I'm not going to complain!  This bed is already overcrowded, so it's probably a blessing in disguise.  

The cucumbers that I planted in compost bags are doing pretty terribly, but the seeds that I thought I plucked out and missed are actually doing remarkably well.  I put small cages around them.  In part to give them something to climb and in part to protect the from the squash that is sprawling across that bed.

There hasn't been much change in my pumpkins this week, but know the road to having pumpkins on vines will be long and winding.  

Here's something interesting.  In this picture you'll see my cardinal climbers in front of the bench.  On top of the bench are my mimosa plants, which are not doing so hot.  I think that I need to water them more.  To the right you'll see my old peppermint patch that has been covered with cardboard, mulch, compost, watermelon and cucumbers.  And then, between the old patch and the cardinal climbers you'll see a bunch of green coming up through the cracks in the concrete.  Guess what that is?  PEPPERMINT!  It's found a way to survive!!!!!!!

I realized that I haven't given any updates on my fruit trees lately!  I will post about them specifically later, but for now, my peaches are starting to plump up and turn, well, peach!  

A Peace Offering

The nasty orange squirrels who live in our trees basically chuck full oranges at my children and pets.  I wouldn't believe it if I hadn't witnessed it with my own eyes.  As it turns out, squirrels are quite smart and very mean as well.  This morning, Lila was strolling her baby carriage along our walkway and when she got under the tree, BAM, down came a nice, ripe orange followed by the sound of maniacal laughter and scampering feet.

This afternoon I found this by the tree.

In case you can't read her writing, this says "To my squirrel friend.  Thank you for the orange."  And then it says, "For you" with an arrow pointing to another orange and she also offers a cherry.

Leave it to Lila.  She can put a positive spin on just about anything.

Mystery Tree

This is a picture of the unidentifiable tree that sits in my backyard growing something that may or may not become delicious.

The tree has been driving me nuts.  I honestly can not tell if it is actually two trees.  If you look closely you'll notice that the bottom of the tree splits.  The "fruit" (for lack of a better word) on one side of the split have remained green.  The fruit on the other side of the split are a deep red.  The green fruit are also rounder than the red fruit.

 The first time I blogged about this tree was on April 14th.  If you follow the link you'll see a much better picture of the tree as well as pictures of both kinds of fruit.  At the time, I mistakenly believed that this tree was our peach tree.  In the month since my initial post I have discovered my actually peach trees and they are working hard to make delicious, plump peaches that actually resemble peaches.  Not fruit that looks more like an olive than anything that is going to turn into a peach.

Here are the photographs that I took today of the fruit on my mystery tree"

If you look at the post I created back in April you'll notice that these really haven't grown at all.  

Could they be olives?  The leaves on this tree appear too large to be an olive, but my only gauge of this has been the pictures that I've seen online.  

 After a bit of research, I found that there is a red olive tree, but even in this picture you can see how much smaller and sleeker the leaves on that olive tree appear to be.

Maybe they are the Kalmata Olive?  Or, are the red olive and the Kalmata olive one in the same?  Goodness, gracious!  My head is swimming.  That said, I do not think that these are plums.  

I just want to know a.) what are they?  and b.) can I pickle them?

Homemade Fruit Roll-Ups

Hey, check it out!  Last night at around 8 I was feeling inspired, staring out at my orange tree, thinking about what I could do with all...that... fruit!  And then it hit me!  Why not make my own fruit leather?  After a little bit of research I found that there's no real recipe to follow and it's crazily easy to do.  The downside is that it uses plastic wrap and the only non-plastic recipe that I was able to find used a silicon liner, which I do not have.  With cancer rates on the rise and all, I don't feel entirely comfortable using plastics (never mind HEATING them) but, I'm a gambler, I guess, because I made these treats.

I started with a bowl of fruit.

I used about five oranges, one lemon, a dozen or so cherries (all picked from trees in my yard), a quarter of a cantaloupe, a handful of blackberries and two small peeled, chopped apples.

I generously sprinkled this fruit with sugar.  You can use anything. Agave nectar, honey... whatever.  But I had sugar, so I used it.  Though I felt like I had added enough because the oranges are so sweet, I'm hearing reports that the final product is sour, so don't skimp on the sugar.

Next, you make a puree of this fruit.  Believe it or not, I am the only one in the world without a food processor.  So, I was reliant on a hand mixer and whisk.  I wasn't able to get my puree totally smooth and worried that this would effect the final roll up, but it really didn't.

Now you want to line your cookie sheet with plastic wrap and pour your mixture on top.

Don't worry about the wrap melting in the oven.  Because your heat setting will be so low, the plastic will not melt.  It will shrink just slightly, so you want to leave a tiny overhang.

Preheat your oven to 170.  If your oven will go down to 150, I'd say to even do that.  Mine will not.  170 is the lowest heat setting, so I used it.

I put this in the oven at roughly 9 pm and took it out of the oven at 6:30 am.  So, cooking time was around 9 1/2 hours.  You're not really cooking this, of course.

You are using the heat of the oven to dry the fruit.

Then you will remove the sheet of leather from the pan and turn it leather side down onto a sheet of parchment paper.

Remove the plastic wrap and cut it up into strips using a pizza roller or scissors.

And there you have it!

Here for the enjoying!

I am really looking forward to the day when I have an abundance of peaches!  I see many roll-ups, cobblers and preserves in my family's future!

Cherries

Look at these delicious and ripe cherries!  After seeing a several cherries with little bird bites taken out of them, Bunny and Lila became brave enough to try one.  I guess the girls decided that if the cherries were good enough for the birds, they were good enough for them too.  Coincidentally, this is also how I knew that the oranges were finally sweet.  I noticed that our squirrels were fatter and the peels on our ground had multiplied by three.  

These cherries are sweet, plump and plentiful!   I wonder what I can do with them (other than eat them raw).  I'd really like to learn to make preserves this summer and to can and dehydrate some of our fruit and add it to homemade granola for winter snacking!   

But I'm getting ahead of myself!  By the time that midsummer approaches, I won't have to buy any fruit at the grocery store!  

Backyard Oasis!

I am so excited!  My yard is really coming together.  I spent yesterday doing so much planting in my garden.  I removed flowers and planted fruits and vegetables!

Yesterday I went through a list of edibles that we're growing here and was sort of happily overwhelmed by everything that we are raising to eat.  Some of it was well established long before we arrived and some of it is by my own determination (and the lost lives of many snails by way of egg shell undoing.  May they rest in peace).  Yesterday, through the help of my friend Mathew, I discovered that one of our mystery trees is a cherry tree.

Here's what we've got:

One Orange Tree
Two lemon Trees
Two Peach Trees
One mystery (probably plum) tree
One cherry tree
One fig tree
One rosemary bush
One giant peppermint patch
Garlic
Watermelon
Tomatoes
Summer Squash
Yellow Pepper
Green Peppers
and
Jalapeño Peppers

Crazy! right?

We ended up getting a little pool for the girls and setting up a tent in the backyard for them to use as a temporary playhouse (until we build our own). We set up a conversation set near our outdoor fireplace and grabbed a giant umbrella to use as shade.  I picture so many wonderful summer evenings spent out there.  I even got a much nicer grill than I had planned on.  I don't have pictures of it yet because it's currently in the back of our minivan waiting to be set up.

Here is Lila outside by the little pool last night.  It's small, but they'll be able to come home from the big pool this summer, grab their barbies and splash around while I'm making dinner.  I dream of having a big pool someday, but for now, this will do.

 Unfortunately, the umbrella base here was pretty cheap, like, $10 at Target.  It wouldn't hold the umbrella up, so we had to bite the bank bullet and buy a more sturdy base made of granite.  It shouldn't go anywhere.  You can sort of see the corner of the new base in the picture below.

I can't wait to have our chimney cleaned so that we can start using this fireplace.

I just envision sitting outside on a warm night, in my pj's, with a glass of wine and a friend.  Maybe some music.  Or, by my self, with a book.

Like our little patio set, I think that we'll probably have this for many years.

It really makes my yard seem so inviting!

This is the tent!

I set up the kids barbie houses inside.  I think that I'll also put in a little kitchen and grab a few little chairs and a table for them.

We set this up in the shadiest part of the yard.  I like the idea of spending full days outside with refuse from the heat and sun.  San Francisco isn't hot, but we live in the east bay and it get VERY hot here.  Most people don't' realize how drastic the temperature change is.  Because we live so close to the city it seems like we'd have identical weather here, but we do not.  For instance, it was almost 90 degrees here the other day but when Jay got off the train in the city and walked to work, it was 65 degrees in San Francisco.

I know that a lot of people love the weather in the city, but I'm not one of them.  I like my summers hot!

I wish that I had a picture of my grill to show you, but like I said, it's in the back of my van!  Hopefully, it will be set up today because I plan on bbqing tonight!

Look!  This is a cherry from my cherry tree!

I am waiting to see if they darken. Mathew thinks that they may already be ripe!  I am not daring enough to try one!

These are my tomato plants.  I moved them from their pot and planted the tomatoes and even staked them!  I am going to buy little jail cells to put around them so that they can climb and grow and become prolific beefy, heavy tomatoes.  My friend Mathew says that each tomato can be over a pound.

This just seems like a patch of dirt, but beneath it I have planted five cloves of garlic!  Apparently, it is so easy to grow garlic.  You just take the bulb that you have at home and separate it.  Then you plant the pieces.  Come Fall, you pick it and have all the garlic you need to make a nice big pot of sauce (please note that the residual New Jersey in me has to fight not to call my tomato sauce "gravy" because I know that anyone who is not in the tristate or from Italy wouldn't know what I was talking about).

On the left (where the soil is dark) I have made mounds that are actually far more sizable than they appear to be in this picture.  That's where I have planted my watermelon seeds.  I am SO excited to grow watermelon this year.

Toward the right of this picture is summer squash.  I realize now that I didn't give them enough room to grow.  Hopefully they'll still thrive and produce squash.

This is my first time growing vegetables and I think that spacing has been my biggest obstacle.

Live and learn.






I have to stop writing now.

I just heard a bird screaming outside and in my gut I know that Sherbert has claimed another life.

Guess This Plant

Sunday in the yard

My friend Siet sent a bunch of seeds awhile back and we planted most of them.  One I veered away from because it came with a  warning.  It should be up and away from my pets because it's poisonous.  Because Sherbert Holler is a fierce, curious, warrior cat who spends much of his day outside, protecting our home from unwanted birds and human pests, no plant is safe from his consumption.

I decided to nail a basket to our pergola and plant this flower there.  I can't remember its name (and have thrown away the envelope that it came in) but it's supposed to be pink and fuzzy and quite pretty!

I think that once these pet killers sprout they'll look really beautiful there.

I don't know what to do with the side of my yard.  Maybe I'll just let it be wild.  I have a geranium that is larger than any geranium I've ever seen before!

I also have a huge mystery plant that is so pretty but I have no idea what it is!

And my little peach tree is really working hard.  We have three peach trees.  One of them is quite large and is next to the lemon tree in the very back of my yard.  Two of my peach trees are small and on the side of my house.  I didn't know what they were until a neighbor told me that they bare the sweetest peaches.

But  my big, exciting news is that my little yellow pepper (remember I said that these were the hardiest plants in my garden) sprouted a flower!!!!!!!  How cute is my little pepper baby?
















I can't believe how quickly my garden grows and changes.  I am a little bit overwhelmed because I feel like I can't keep up with everything.  The weeds alone are out of control.  Weeding the front yard is something of a full time job, but the rest of it renders me exhausted.  That said, when I see something new poking through the soil or a pepper baby maturing I feel so satisfied.  I love how my girls are participating and we're all working together to keep snails out of the garden and monitoring the progress of all of our plants.  I had to move a few succulents today because they've been getting too much water from the hose while the girls play outside.  It's been in the high 70's and 80's every day here, so the girls have been cooling off with the hose pretty regularly!  It's great for the kids, but not the succulents!

To The Little Bastard Who Is Eating My Summer Squash

Dear Squirrel or Bird or Rat or Cat Who Is Eating My Squash Leaves At Night,

There is a large tree, plentiful with rich, juicy, sweet oranges out back.   Help yourself!  Invite your friends.  Have a party.  Feast on citrus!  I promise to never bother you and will always sweep up the scraps of your half eaten oranges and gutted peels.  I will even keep Sherbert inside each night so that you can have an entirely uninterrupted meal as often as you'd like!

So, watch your carbs in someone else's yard and stay AWAY from my peppers and squash.

I am serious about this you little M$T%&R F$!@^*S.

With the utmost respect,

Anna Holler

Peach Tree

When we moved into our house in February this tree was completely bare and we were told it was a peach tree.  To me, it just looked like a sad, naked trunk that was adorned by many weak, spiky branches pointing upward.  This is not what I have imagined peach trees look like and I never expected it to become anything other than it was in the winter.

Then, in March something interesting happened.  It seemed like overnight this tree went from being completely bare to being covered in tiny, pretty pink and white flowers.  No sooner did it bloom that it lost all of the pretty little flowers and green leaves sprouted throughout the skinny tree.  But rather than appearing frail, suddenly my peach tree looks full of life and transformation.

Today, I noticed that there are little green and red berries that are about the size of large olives covering this tree.  I can't wait to watch it transform.  Will these grow into peaches?  I already feel so spoiled with an outdoor fire place, two lemon trees, orange tree, rose bushes, tiger lilies and fresh herbs everywhere.  Will I be so lucky as to be able to just pluck a peach from a tree in my backyard every time I need a little midday snack?