Preparing the bed on the north side & fun with Laurie's camera.

Laurie let me borrow her camera. I wanted to capture my experimentation preparing the bed on the north side.

By the way, in the beginning I had trouble motivating myself to plant (will cut potatoes in a mulch pit do anything other than rot? The uncertainties were huge). Then I read in _Permaculture: A Designers' Manual_ that all seeds can be soaked prior to planting. Soaking seeds is easy, but once I do that, I know that after a day I have to plant them in a flat or in the ground. So that motivates me to get flats made and filled. When the plants get too big for their flats, I get motivated to prepare the ground for planting them.



The west half is going to be done with the sheet mulch approach, or something like it.
The east half is being prepared for double-digging (Jeavons' style). The ground should be watered to soften it up (sometimes) and then let dry a bit. This bed was long ago covered with tarpaper and gravel (now in a pile on the east end). Joe, the north side neighbor, has long been planting in his strip.

This used to be a neglected, never-visited space, but that is about to change. It is a nice compromise: some exposure to the street and people walking by, but not too much exposure to the cars.

The near constant shade on the south side makes it nice to work on during the day.

A drawback is that Joe's resident daughter has kids with whom she rarely interacts without whining or screaming. Sometimes, then, this is a pleasant space, and other times it is a window on a mini-hell. There's more to it but that is enough. Nhat Hanh suggests that by viewing with compassion, this need not be experienced as hell by the observer. So I try that.

Even so, maybe one day I shall garden on a monastery.

Another challenge is that I really don't know what I'm doing. Sometimes as I water, I think to myself, "I don't have a clue what I'm doing!": how much to water, how to plant, what to plant. How not to obsess too much, how not to spend too much time. And on and on.

I'd love to have people come and help, but half the time I spend trying to figure out what to do myself.

Eventually that will change.



The view to the west. That is my grandma in the back. Before I started this project, you could not even walk around that corner of the house (the shrub and chicken wire closed it).



This photo is to show where the bees are in relation to everything else. The beautiful 55-gallon rainwater collection barrel was scavenged.

As you can see, it is almost two-thirds full!

The idea to put the bees on the roof came in part from Urban Wilds.



I'm always amazed at how a huge pile of yard waste compresses. I had just collected this the day before. . . or that morning, if this was Friday morning. I get up early (5am) and scavenge yard waste before the yard waste collection truck comes to get it. It is hard work, but fun.

I got huge amounts this Friday and filled the paths too. I also had clipped the hedges by hand and put the mulch down below the plants. I plan to put dirt on it and plant flowers in it to help attract good insects.

In the past I have clipped with an electric hedge clipper. Clipping by hand was good. And I have the time.

Oh. There is a special kind of sweet potato waiting to be planted sitting on the garden bed. It should sprout more, and then you plant the sprouts. Paul brought it--I need to double check with him on the propagation.



This is just two days after an earlier roof photo:



Has anything grown (or been trimmed?).



This is why I climbed on the roof. The view of the bed I'm preparing.



The bees again.



Here's the bed with more mulch (I had to scavenge from what I put in the paths). I made paths through it too (sort of like a question mark or a toilet gooseneck valve).



I tried to return the camera Friday night, but Laurie wasn't home. So the slideshow continues Saturday morning.

In the front of the potato bed is a new flat I made the night before. Some seeds I had soaked too long ago were begging to be put in the soil. There's an amaranth just to the north of it. I have also planted a beet top and carrot tops in the bed to the left (not visible). The beet top is growing greens!



The famous cabbages, donated by Kimberly. The middle one is aphid food. The others have some aphid guests, except for the bottom one, the biggest and prettiest, which had a cabbage worm, which I went out and squished early one morning in the dark with a flashlight.



The aphid-eaten cabbage. I have squished some and washed off others, but mostly I don't worry about it.



Here you can see Jerusalem Artichoke (donated by Paul--these were what forced me to plant the garden, they could not delay any more out of the soil!). There is a beet or chard. Cilantro. Basil (soon to be moved to a roomier spot). The ubiquitous Chenopodium, and peas at the top. A restaurant had thrown away 50+ carrot tops and a box of carrot peelings, so I used some to feed the worms, and tried some as mulch.



Salad.

I don't have a picture, but I was collecting urine to fertilize the garden. It smells a lot if you leave it sitting around. And then I sprayed in on the garden (using a siphon technique) so the whole place smelled! I think I'll just pour out a little bit at a time now, instead of saving it in a 5-gallon bucket.



This is the flat with garbanzo beans and jiffy time popcorn that is begging me to prepare the bed on the north side so it has a better place to grow.

I have some more native corn varieties in the flat that was on the potato/ mulch bed. There are pole beans in that other flat too.



These are sweet potatoes and two sunflowers. The sweet potatoes began as shoots from a sweet potato with one end stuck in water (only I chopped mine into pieces, but if you do that only roots will grow out of one end, and only shoots out of the other).

Making flats and flatsoil has taken some practice. One I made is almost like an adobe brick, unfortunately.



The west half of the north bed from the roof. It has a gravel path.



Later I covered it with the gravel/topsoil mix I removed from the east half.



I actually have a garden notebook.

Part of this is reminding me to look up Bill Toone of the eco-life foundation, who has an impressive rainwater collection system at his house.

Also there is a note that I don't live in San Diego. But "Montezuma Mesa" may be the best statement of my location. I'm about twelve miles from downtown. And it is a sort of messed up colonization effect where a bunch of people who live further east from me are organizing a reclaim the streets event for downtown. . . and other things like that.

I find I'm happier the less I move around on the roads of the urbanscape of "San Diego," and one way to move around less is to remind myself I live on Montezuma Mesa. Anything not on the mesa (I'm defining as: SDSU south to University and east to 70th) is far away, and trips should probably not be made that far more than once a month.

The contrast of that way of living to the way most people with cars live is significant. I can point to my grandma for some inspiration.

These two days working on the garden, I did not even leave to go to the Kroc center (south on University--a 15-minute walk). The furthest I went was to the campus plaza/ vons shopping center (three blocks? major streets crossed only on the way to Laurie's), and yet I had plenty to interest and exercise me.



A record of where things were planted in the main/spiral bed. Top is south.



Another photo of the seedlings who have outgrown their flat.



The bed in the morning. The digging board is on the ground. That was also scavenged from a dumpster.



Some pretty flowers. By the way, I found two four leaf clovers in the sheetmulch bed.



Double-digging the east end of the north bed. Picture-taking is a break excuse.



You move soil from one trench to the other. Put some compost in the new trench, and work compost in with a digging fork into the bottom of the new trench. That is a very short version of how to do it.



All done. I put gravel down for the path. Later I put a layer of the gravel/topsoil on top of the rest of the double-dug bed.

The soil there is very clayey, and I probably should have added sand (if I had any) when/ before the double-digging.

I was very tired, apparently, after two days of straight garden work. So I rested most of Sunday, and didn't plant the plants in the flat into the bed until Monday afternoon. I still have to go back and plant the rest of the corn (ten more or so?).

Hmm, I was planting the popcorn on 15" spacing (the spacing for sweet corn in Jeavons' book), but I thought I read somewhere it was less. Here it says 8-12". So I'll put the rest closer together.

I'm finally eating things from the garden! Mostly the lambs' quarters (weeds) but also some of the lettuce/mustard.

Watermelon has sprouted!

The garden on Wednesday, 3/21, photos by Mike Thayer

From The Garden at...

The lawnchairs were scavenged. The garden is partly mulched with coffeegrounds and filterpaper from the nearby starbucks. Actually, thanks to donations and scavenging, (and resources already available at my grandma's house) the garden has cost no cash so far.


The makeshift fence at the north end is to keep the cat from using the garden as a litterbox.


Where the stakes are are volunteer tomato plants.



You're looking at a fava bean plant surrounded by carrots. The rest is mizuna and red leaf lettuce and mustard greens. And Lambs' Quarters (Chenopodium album).



Potatoes and under the plastic in the back is corn. The plastic tops keep the cat from eating the corn, but also acts as a greenhouse.



We're babysitting some bees that Mike's family got out of the bottom of their shed with the help of Paul Maschka. They need to be in a new place five miles away for two weeks so they won't go back to their old home.





The bed on the north side. (Will soon be prepared and planted).



The streets around the house and garden (looking east).



Looking north.



Rainwater collection.





The worm bin. The bottom is cut out, and I leave the lid ajar, otherwise it gets too wet.

One Month After Planting

Laurie K. came by and she took these pictures. Thanks!

There is much to do in the garden, but the amount of uncertainty and old habits (the ease of spending a day reading) and inertia and other things have kept me from it.

If you want to come over, you'll at least help motivate me to get out there. It is getting nicer and nicer.

Other related projects: about a week ago I grew Tempeh. See here for the beginning of that story. Yesterday I started some sauerkraut, inspired by a passage in Sandor Kraut's new book, which reminded me of the project I started when I read his older book (I found a crock, bought some sea salt, but never did the rest!).

This reminds me that we need "progressive church" where you go every week to hear the good messages and practice the good practices so that we learn them and keep them up.

Yesterday I also planted my first flat, so I'll have a bit more control and certainty than direct sowing in the garden among the other seeds that are there.

I made the flat from discarded wooden crates that Best Produce throws away. . . I wonder where the wood comes from and where down south they were shipped from.

I planted some papayas, but the main motivation was some sweet potato shoots that need (following Jeavons) to be put in a flat after being cut off the potato prior to being planted in the garden. I also planted sunflowers, butterfly flowers, florence fennel, eggplant, peppers, two squash seeds, some onions. I want more beneficial insects to help eat aphids. It was 50 deg. F (10 C) last night--probably too cold for peppers and eggplant. I also planted three jicama roots in pots. I want to grow cherimoya too. And passionfruit. (For vines to cover an arbor [yet to be built of bamboo from the canyon] and the roof, to make it cooler).

I should perhaps use bottles (glass or plastic) to make mini greenhouses for some of my plants. . . so they will grow faster. We'll see!

There's also some more land on the north side of the house to try planting things in. . .


Those are Kimberly and Mark(?)'s cabbages--they gave me them already started.

The peas are the other visible green things to the north. Fava beans and garlic, which was starting to grow before I ate it (and which I planted), are also doing well. And, what I'm most excited about, things with deep beet-red stems are doing well (chard or beets!). And there is some lettuce too which I need to thin. Carrots may have started to come up. The only thing that may not have grown at all might be the onions.

I have been watering every evening, and spent some mornings thinning out patches where a whole clump of stuff sprouted. I have also pulled out a lot of what I'm sure is grass. (I'm less sure in the onion patch).

There is a rough mulch on top. . . I couldn't bear bare soil. As a result there are some weeds and roly-polys, but so far so good.

Two of the many potato pieces I planted in the sheet mulch bed have grown leaves to the top of the mulch! (others rotted--it is very damp). All the green is sprouted mulch (small pods from some sort of tree).


I'm looking towards two fig trees in pots which are leafing out. One is probably black mission--a volunteer from a corner of the yard (our neighbor has a tree), the other is a cutting from a prolific calimyrna that Jonathan helped me start. I want to plant them, but I'm not yet sure where. There's so many black mission figs in the neighborhood. But the calimyrna would be a great thing. . . I love figs. I've found so many existing fig trees around though (I have been a fig glutton), I'm wondering if there aren't other trees better to plant--Pine nut? Other nut? Papaya? Kiwi (not a tree--vine would be for the front--see below)?

Perhaps I could replace some of the plants which are growing but not making food. . . A ficus, and other things. Like that tangerine tree I do not water (There is definitely more citrus than I could ever hope to eat in the neighborhood--my teeth get too much acid as it is).

Laurie was on the roof for all the previous shots. For some of the following she was in the middle of the road. No hazard pay, but I did let her borrow The Life We Are Given.

Grandma Ann said not to plant trees in the green-paved front yard. She's afraid the roots will mess up her plumbing. Do you have any suggestions about how to address those fears? The lighter patch is where they already dug up her concrete yard to replace rotted pipes. She said the concrete cost $24,000. But maybe she was off by a decimal place.

She did say, however, we could plant flowers there. Paul left a bunch of seeds of drought-tolerant flowers (statice and others). I just need to start a mulch pile out there. And put some soil on top. . . We'll see how that goes over. She suggested it!

I made a tentative commitment to leave SD by January 2008--but that was when I was down from bicycling around ugly SD, dealing with the screaming guy in the apartments out back, and my grandma's sniping, and my attempts to garden, make tempeh, and do all these cool things in isolation (I mean in my house--SD FNL has been a wonderful experience in being helped and in not being isolated), with hardly a clue how to do it (wouldn't it be easier to learn from someone? To live with a group of people who are all into it, and who maybe already have a good collection of books/other resources?).

But who knows. . .

My recent daydreams have me thinking about spending two weeks at Green Gulch Farm or Deer Park Monastery and see what happens from there.

Already, in May, I'll be at Quail Springs for two weeks, and may hike through the forest (Los Padres National Forest) from the Santa Barbara train station to get there.

I'd better quit this. Mike may show up soon after 12 and it is 11.

Bed Preparation Workshop Photos

(Thanks to Mike Thayer for letting me borrow his camera to take these!)


Paul showed us how to use a board to level the bed. The same thing is done to level cement, he said. (Having read so much permaculture stuff I'm not so sure level beds are best--I'll let you know what I think in the long term).


There's Paul, Lana, Mike, and Julie.

Here we're putting woodchips from Paul's (biodiesel) truck onto the beds. The internal paths have been marked by footprints. The night before I marked them out with string.

Mike took the following pictures.

That's me in the back.



The path design is inspired by spiritual labyrinths and permaculture keyhole beds. Later I fixed the nearest curve to make it more curvy.

Pat and Leslie also showed up over the course of the evening.

Paul left me with many seeds and some Jerusalem Artichoke roots, which I finally planted the following Wednesday.

Now I have plants growing (fava beans and peas are doing well) and aphids eating the cabbage starts that Kimberly of SDFNL gave me.

I should have some other pictures eventually.

The sheet-mulched section is also doing well!

Thanks to you four for helping me get started.

When Paul showed up, I'd been trying to lead Lana and Pat in the double-digging approach, but the soil at the north end was very hard. I said to Paul that I did not think we'd finish the whole thing that day. He just looked at me and proceeded to tell us what to do (and to do most of it himself, while demonstrating, very quickly!). We did not double-dig the whole thing. Mostly we moved the soil to create the beds in the space I wanted.

After they left I had the problem of the soil being bone dry and rock hard only a few inches down (primarily at the north end).

As Jeavons suggests, gradually letting water soak in and loosen clods/rock-hard clay over the course of several days helped a lot. And by that time some rains had come.