Benicia/Vallejo Urban Farm Tour

My friend Barbara and I had an excellent time at the Urban Farm Tour event this past Sunday. This event was organized by the Institute of Urban Homesteading, the same outfit that organized the tour our garden was included in last year. I am always eager to see what other suburban and city farmers are up to - after all, there are as many types of gardens as there are gardeners - and I always learn something. We toured four gardens, one of them a community effort, the rest private. We were supposed to see one more farm but it looked mostly like a large-livestock operation, which didn't interest us much (I personally believe cows should have pasture and room to roam! but not everyone agrees with me).  The gardens were each lovely in their own way, and it was fun to hear the history of each yard and enjoy the accomplishments of the owners. Because make no mistake, completely changing your yard from conventional to farm is a LOT of work. 

Here are some shots I took of the day. I didn't take many photos because, well, privacy. By far my favorite place to visit was Dog Island Farm, which is mildly famous around here for their year-long experiment of not going to the grocery store at all. The farmers blogged about it and got some press. They're super nice people with a lovely farm, and we loved it there and learned a lot from them. 

a ladybug on some celery at the Benicia Community Farm

a carrot umbel at a private Benicia residence

Immature mulberries at Dog Island

One of the friendly Tom turkeys at Dog Island

I'm looking forward to the next tour on tap, which is in Berkeley, and there are 8 gardens on the bill. Wonder if I'll make it to all of them? That's in June, and I'm sure tickets are still available, if you'd like to join me. 

Spent some time this afternoon trimming up the tomatoes (we've got lots of fruit on the plants already) - I've decided to trim off lower branches, allowing light and air in to the bottom of the plant (I'd also like to keep some semblance of control in those beds), repairing/reseeding the winter squash bed as Joe the dog dug it up (argh), and braiding garlic. I've only made six braids of six bulbs each, so I still have a long way to go. 

I decided to make smaller braids this year - that way I can share with more people.

The hops are flowering! I guess I didn't expect that, or thought that the cones were somehow the flower, I don't know. Anyway, they are very small and fuzzy, and so far I don't notice a lot of pollinator activity - I hope that ramps up.

Those are gourd trellises on the wall behind the hops

All else is well and growing.

Our New Door

I've written about my dad the woodworker before. He makes incredibly beautiful furniture, blogs for Fine Woodworking, and teaches classes to other woodworkers. He's always looking for ideas for his classes, and I'm always trying to stay one step ahead and think up things we need around our house. Not long ago, I wondered if he'd be interested in making us a new front door. The old one was suffering from a terrible paint job (mine), torn and trailing weatherstripping, and a faulty doorknob and lock. Dad seized on this idea and made us a gorgeous door out of Douglas Fir. I asked for a dark, reddish-brown stain, and now we have a graceful, solid door with beautiful hardware.

I love the look of the grain.

Dad has inspired me to be more aware of craftsmanship, and he has inspired Tom to do more of his own building (and Tom has made some beautiful stuff), and he has taught both my kids how to use every tool in his shop, both manual and power. It's a real gift to make useful things that are also beautiful. I think we've lost a lot of those arts in the last 50 years. 

Which brings me to the garden. My goal has always been the same; to make it both useful and beautiful. Hence, all the food PLUS flowers. (Of course flowers are both of those things already.) I'm always thinking about aesthetics. We've started to see that a working urban farm will always have a lot of crap lying around, but we both make an effort to minimize that, and instead try to cover every square inch with beauty. My love of craftsmanship came from my father, but my love of flowers definitely came from my mother, who has always had flowers in every possible place.

And the garden is certainly lovely this time of year, with all the late Spring flowers. 

Looking through native clarkias to the tomatoes, and in the background the hops are climbing ever higher

Pole beans, starting the journey up

Blue-eyed grass, a CA native

Blackberries

Sprirea "Dark Knight"

The sun has come out this afternoon, and there are loads of bees taking their first flight out of the hive. I dug around in the compost pile and found beautiful soil with which to seed cosmos. Tomorrow I'm looking forward to going on an urban farm tour with a close friend. Hope you're all enjoying your weekends, too!

A Handful of Blueberries

A handful of blueberries, that's about all I get at a time. Luckily it's always me who is out looking for them. Finders Keepers. Finders Eaters.

I spent a good deal of time this afternoon after work rearranging things in the South Garden. Our chitalpa tree, always large, is especially bounteous this year, which means there is more shade than I bargained for. 

Blooming gloriously. What you need for this picture is 'hear-o-vision' - so you can hear the constant loud buzzzzz coming from the blossoms.

I planned badly and put the collards in the sun, and the cucumbers in a more shady area. I had to do a switcheroo. Some of the seeds had already germinated, but that's ok - if I have collards in my cucumber bed, and cucumbers in my collard bed, no big deal. I'm happier with this arrangement now. When you're growing for the leaves, plants can stand a good deal more shade than plants you're growing for the root or fruit.

Everything has germinated and is starting to grow. I re-seeded the cantaloupe bed, having only three seeds germinate the first time. I also added a second seeding to the bean bed. I have sown loads of basil in anticipation of caprese salad and pesto. I made and froze so much pesto last summer, I was sure we'd never eat it all. But we just had the last jar two weeks ago. I need to do that again this summer.

Native flowers are blooming everywhere in the garden.

Yerba Mansa

pollen grains in a California Sunflower

a California Carpenter bee on a salvia (see below for an interesting tidbit about this)

Elegant Brodiaea

Apricot Mallow

And a lot of non-natives, too.

Pepper Tree

Nasturtiums

I also spent some time watching lizards in my garden, another native. These are Western Fence Lizards. They are literally all over the yard. They eat so many insects, I am so glad to have them. I spent years trying to attract them, and now we have them by the dozen. There is a large family living under the train shed, and they like to come out and sit on the plant marker bricks that I store there when I'm not using them, as they soak up the sun and get quite hot. This little guy was very intent on watching flies in the mulch around him.

Tomatoes are popping out all over, and the peppers are blooming, too. It's time to thin the apples on the apple tree, and peaches should be ready in about a month (dreams of peach smoothies!). I picked a bunch of herbs for dinner tonight (herb-stuffed pork chops) and we're starting to feel the promise of the bounty of summer.

By the way, that bee on the salvia blossom? I learned from "A Sting in the Tale" by Dave Goulson that these flowers evolved so that only long-tongued bees, or hummingbirds, can get in to the nectar. But many bees (including my honeybees) cheat evolution by piercing a hole in the top of the flower and therefore creating a shortcut to the nectar. Pretty smart.

The end of the winter crops

After harvesting the garlic over the weekend, the only crop left in the ground from winter was the fingerling potatoes. Last night, Adam and I went out at 8:30 and harvested those. So that was the official end to the winter crops.

This means the second planting of corn can go in, and it also means we are solidly in to the summer season. At 90 degrees today, there really was no doubt.

There's a happy side to this, though - I noticed the first cherry tomatoes, tiny Mexican Midget, are coming on. Soon we'll have fresh tomatoes!

Nigella - 'Love in a Mist"

Garlic and Shallots

Today I harvested the garlic. The green tops were starting to look a little brown and toasty at the tips, and when I pulled up one plant, the bulb was well-formed and large.

This is a variety called Inchelium Red. It's an heirloom softneck that consistently wins awards for flavor. Upon cutting open the bulb, though rather soft because it was newly harvested, I found the cloves were simply gigantic.

I am very pleased with this harvest. I grew enough to fill the wheelbarrow and it should last nearly a year. I will let it dry between the chicken coop ceiling and roof, and will braid it when it is fully cured. When the garlic begins to show the strain of being hung in a house that is not nearly cool enough in the summer, I will separate the bulbs in to cloves and freeze them in a bit of oil. I did not particularly like pickled garlic and do not plan to preserve it that way again. However freezing worked well.

It's awfully nice to have our own garlic again. I hated buying it in the store, as you never know how long it's been sitting there, and half the time the cloves are mostly mush.

In order to make room for the garlic on top of the coop, I had to pull down the shallots that have been curing there since April 9th. They are not completely dry, but enough so that we could clean them and hang them in mesh bags on the canning shelf.

Pretty, aren't they? I'm also happy with the size of the shallots. It's a pain to peel them when they're tiny. We use shallots in place of onions in all our cooking so I am often peeling them. I believe this variety was French Grey, though they look anything but grey. Perhaps it's referring to the foliage which did have a silvery tint to it.

Today I got the winter squash planted, as well as the gourds and mini-pumpkins; I will save planting of the large pumpkins for a few weeks from now - I want to start them in the collard bed once the collards have a chance to grow tall.

We are all exhausted, it was an incredibly busy week and weekend, and I confess we were all a bit lazy today. I spent a good bit of time sitting in front of the bee hive, spacing out while watching their comings and goings. I witnessed what looked like a bee funeral. I know, I'm anthropomorphizing them, but it really did look like a group of bees paying their last respects to a dead bee before flying it over the side to land it gently in the graveyard below.

I know I'm always talking about the weather (I must be becoming a true farmer!), but we're supposed to get some days of 90 degree heat this week, and I'm hoping the six kinds of basil I planted will finally sprout. Hope you all have a lovely week!