Thriving in new soil

Here is what the garden is looking like about 3 weeks after the first batch of compost tea. We have lived in the new house for 6 weeks exactly. Our plants have been thriving in their new soil and sunshine. I have brewed 3 batches of compost tea total so far; the first 3 weeks ago, and the second and third  last weekend. My goal is to fertilize with compost tea every 2 weeks until the end of harvest in October or so.

I made 2 last weekend, about 3 days apart, because I forgot to de-chlorinate my hose water, however with further investigation discovered that Oakland does not chlorinate the water. So all three batches should have been full of that beneficial bacteria that I'm looking for that comes from the 'live' compost.

I also pruned my tomato plants to ensure that all their energy goes into fruit production, rather than leaf production. This has spurred the plant's main stems to grow faster vertically rather than produce a lot of low lying foliage. Also, as you can see, I finally mulched my garden now that my babies are big enough to not get squished by the straw.

Pea vines and trellis

Peas starting from seed at the new place

Lettuce so, so good.

New batch of arugula, more to come

 The elephant garlic below started growing these beautiful edible flowers, which we snipped off and ate like garlic in our stir fry. Once you remove the flower stem, the garlic starts putting all its energy into bulb production, rather than flower production. I could have let one go to seed, but I only have 3 and wanted to eat them all. Also, garlic is a biannual seed, meaning that once you let your plants go to seed and you plant those seeds, the first year, you only get a clove, the second year, you plant that clove to get a bulb. Its a 2 year process. I think I'll just buy more bulbs next year, and lots of them, as garlic is my favorite thing in my garden, and something I use quite often. 

Elephant garlic

Laura's Onions

This side is sweet cluster tomatoes

3 Brandywine tomatoes on left, 2 sweet clusters on right

Housewarming heirloom gifts, forget the type

Potted heirloom, same variety as above

Giant pumpkin variety, started from seed 2 weeks ago

3 kinds of cucumbers and summer squash

2 watermelon vines

Zucchini taking over

Lots of zucchini fruits emerging from the stem

Beautiful sun flower that has grown 3 feet in a month.

One week after compost tea

Its been a week since brewing my first batch of compost tea and applying it to all my plants. As I said, I feel that the plants are thriving here at the new home but the compost tea has added new brilliant green growth to most of the plants. The tomatoes have started sprouting new growth all over the entire plant. They are healthier than any tomatoes I have ever grown before. I can not wait to eat them.

Zucchini on left and Brandywine Heirloom tomato on right below.

Midget melon on the left (started from seed in March), cucumbers on the right (from starters).

Radishes on the left, kohlrabi on the right, started from seed 10 days ago.

Crinkle and romaine lettuce

New Beds

Over the weekend I got super ambitious. I came straight home from work on Friday and tore up the entire right side of the property against the fence to put in my full sun veggie plot. I basically tilled about a foot deep, 3 feet wide and about 25 feet long for the new plot. Its super easy to weed when you are just going to till anyway. I just tilled first, and then broke up all the dirt with the shovel and the weeds fall right off.

Stage 1: Tilled the ground up to a foot deep and removed all grass and weeds
Stage 2: Removed bricks and dug raised bed trenches.
Stage 3: Installed wood to make raised beds (6$ total at Urban Ore)
Stage 4: Raked, swept and evened out dirt.

Stage 1

Stage1

Stage 2

Stage 2

Stage 3

Stage 4 and Stella LOVING the worms and bugs I dug up for her

Welcome to the farm - Week 1

After we prepped the front beds, with the exception of the broccoli patch.

Beds Prepped

Germinating organic Brandywine heirloom tomatoes (at night)

Germinating arugula- day 3

Germinating arugula- day 6

It's spring time...

...and I have been wanting to do this for a while. I wanted to try to document the growth my little urban farm, and try to not only remember what I did last year, but hopefully share my experiences with others, so we all can have better urban farming success.

A little about me...I love to garden, farm, produce, whatever you want to call it. I was the dirty kid. The tomboy(ish). I was always outside when I was a kid, always asking questions. My parents took my older brother and I camping, a lot. We loved it. We recycled, and were members of the Sierra Club. The one thing I always wanted, and never had, was a vegetable garden. Not enough light, steep slopes, rocks, sand, it just never worked.

My brother and I started going to a leave-no-trace backpacking camp all summer, every summer until college, Camp Jack Hazard. It changed our lives. We learned vital lessons about nature and the importance of leaving no trace.

I took my love for the environment to college where I ended up majoring in Environmental Studies, and Geography. I got a little house with a garden my sophomore year, and started experimenting with growing my first garden. I got a job at the on campus environmental resource center and worked under the Environmental Department chair, who I looked up to, and learned a lot from. His garden inspired me.

After college, I ended up not going into anything environmental, largely due to the shitty economy, but found a job I still truly love. One thing it lacks though, is the connection to the soil, the earth, the outside, and the environment.

I spend all the spare time that I have, in the garden, or thinking about plans for the garden. I like to call it our urban farm. I live in a cottage with my boyfriend who definitely helps me with everything in the garden, and mostly, Stella, our precious blue Indian Runner Duck. We use Stella's poop, vermicompost (worm poop) and compost as fertilizer in the garden.

Stella

We try to keep everything as organic and sustainable as possible. This year we replaced about 80% of the soil in our 'raised beds' with organic vegetable garden soil and compost. We bought all of our seeds from the Petaluma Seed Bank. They sell organic heirloom seeds from the oldest seed company in America, Baker Creek Heirloom Seed Co. Also, check out the Petaluma Seed Bank on facebook, they have a lot of interesting information.
 

Petaluma Seed Bank

Oldest seed company in the US

Neem Oil

We use neem oil as a pesticide, a naturally occurring deterrent of pests, mostly because it smells god awful. I heard about this stuff in one of my sustainability classes in college, and always remembered its name. It not only has the ability to repel most living creatures, but Indians call it the 'Pharmacy Tree', because it cures lots of medical conditions as well, from eczema to malaria. Works great on my plants, that's all I know. Just make sure you get the one that is specifically designed to be put on your plants, some neem products can burn them, as I have found out the hard way. I order my organic neem products from Amazon because they are pretty hard to find.