Gardening in the time of COVID

2019 summer veggie garden, with Alta cameo. 

Phew. Long time no talk. Nothing like a global pandemic to bring back the blog, amiright?

A lot of friends have been reaching out in the last few days about how they should start gardening. I think folks are worried about access to fresh foods (I am after all those empty shelves. Jeepers.) and wanting a break from the craziness (gardening is therapy, and I won't hear otherwise).  Here are a few resources that I think can help folks right now.

Where to buy seeds and seed starts

My favorite place to buy seeds is Baker Creek seeds (they have lots of varieties you won't be able to find anywhere else), but I also really like Renee's Garden, Jonny's Selected Seeds, Botanical Interests, and Kitazawa (Asian varieties). Seeds are still coming in the mail, so order away.

If you're in the Bay Area, I highly recommend Kasenoff Growers for your seed starts. It's a hyper local business, grown in an empty lot in West Oakland. They normally sell their seed starts at the Temescal Farmers market but are taking extra precaution at this time and are excepting orders for pickup at their growing space. You can email them to place an order. Here's their inventory list right now.

How to prep your soil for plants

If you are just starting out, are in the Bay Area, and thinking about going with raised beds, I highly recommend American Soil and Stone's Local Hero Veggie Mix. Use this mix strait in what ever raised beds you build. I''m not sure if American Soil is open right now, but if it is or when it is, this soild blend worked great for me. They may well be taking orders for delivery and pickup as I know some businesses are, especially as it relates to food (growing edible plants).

If you're in Alameda, I do know that Encinal Nursery is accepting delivery and pickup orders over the phone. They have mostly bag soil, but will likely be able to recommend something that will work.

If this isn't your first time gardening or you aren't planning on going the raised bed route, I'm a big fan of the no dig garden method. In summary, you place compost on top, rake it over your bed, and let the nutrients slowly creep down into the soil. And you DON'T DIG. It's a lot less work and overtime it leads to healthier soil and so many fewer weeds. There are lots of resources online about no dig gardening, beyond the one I linked, so Google away.

To prep my garden beds this year, I'm going to be spreading compost and earthworm castings (since I started using earthworm castings, I have had almost no issues with garden pests. Knock on wood) over my veggie beds, raking it, watering it, and leaving it be for a few weeks. And I will be buying at Encinal Nursery and asking for delivery. And then lysoling (no idea how to spell this new word added to my vocab) the crap out of the bags.

My favorite varieties 

I am in USDA hardiness zone 10a and Sunset zone 14 ish. At least that zone sounds the most likely my growing season although our winters are on average warmer. I might not have the same zones as you so you might not be able to grow everything here, but hopefully something. For example, most folks in SF shouldn't try too many tomatoes (although I believe Cherry tomatoes grow great) or eggplants, but beans, herbs, peas, and green should be easy peasy. I also linked to a few of the varieties if I've only been able to find them at one retailer. 

Greens*

Lacinato Kale

Rainbow Chard

*My greens are honestly pretty basic, but these are always my faves. 

Herbs

Large Italian Leaf Parsley

Slo Bolt Cilantro

Geneovese Basil

Thai Basil 

Lemongrass

Tomatoes

Tomato Gold Medal
Tomato Pink Brandywine
Tomato Berkeley Tie Dye (Green or other)
Tomato Get Stuffed -- Stuffing tomato! Super fun.
Tomato Lucid Gem
Sungold Tomato (cherry!) And my daughter's favorite. She hides the tomato vines and picks them off.

Squash

Costata Romanesco or Johnny's Pantheon F1 hybrid. This is by far the tastiest squash I've ever eaten.
Cocozella Di Napoli Squash - it produces and produces and produces. And produces again.

Cucumber

Soyu Long
Tokyo Green
Tasty Green

Eggplant

Rosa Bianca
Ping Tung

Melon

Ha Ogen

Pole Beans

Purple Podded Pole bean
Rattlesnake Pole
Emerite Pole (aka haricrot vert)

Pea

Spring Blush
Magnolia Blossom Tendril

How to water

You can certainly water by hand, but I recommend drip irrigation if you can manage it. It uses less water, can be set on a timer, and is better for your plants as they slowly get to drink rather than chugging. 

How to build raised beds

I wrote about how we built our raised beds before, but folks might not want to use roof tiles. It's an odd thing to buy right now and might be hard to come by. Most commonly, raised beds are built out of wood, but stick to rot resistant varieties like cedar, redwood, and pine. Empress of Dirt has a really thorough explanation of how to choose your wood. My brother in law also built his out of fencing, which I thought was pretty genius. 

Also, if you want to have a weed barrier in your beds, the cheapest, easiest, and best for the environment is cardboard. You know all those boxes you've been getting in the mail? Break 'em down and spread them on the base of your bed before putting your new soil on top. 

Keep your questions coming friends! And let's garden away our anxiety and make some veggie and fruit babies. 

Kassenoff Growers Plant List.

AVAILABILITY March 18
TOMATOES (in 3½ “ pots - $5 ea)
Early season                                                             
Cosmonaut Volkov
Dona    
Enchantment
Glacier                
New Girl    
Oregon Spring                
Stupice                
Mid-season
Bloody Butcher    
Carmello            
Nepal                    
Pink Berkeley Tie-dye    
Thessaloniki
Late season  
Ananas Noire    
Black Krim            
Brandywine
Cherokee Green    
Cherokee Purple
Green Zebra
Japanese Black Trifele    
Lillian’s Yellow Heirloom    
Paul Robeson    
Striped German    
Tasmanian Chocolate
Weistnicht’s Ukrainian    
Cherry Tomatoes
Dr. Carolyn
Gold Nugget    
Jolly    
Sun Gold    
Super Sweet 100

GREENS (in 6 packs - $5 ea)
Bull’s Blood Beet greens
Chard - mixed colors
Endive ‘Rhodos’
Radicchio ‘Chioggia’
Spinach
Bok choi ‘Rosie Red’
Bok choi ‘Joi Choi’
Tatsoi
Broccoli ‘Arcadia’
Broccoli ‘Piracicaba’
Cauliflower ’Snow Crown’
Collards ‘Champion’
Kale ‘Dazzling Blue’
Kale ‘Lacinato’
Kale ‘Rainbow Lacinato’
Kale ‘Red Russian’
Mustard ‘Osaka Purple’
Mustard ‘Ruby Streak’

LETTUCE (in 6 packs - $5 ea)
Butterhead Green
Looseleaf Green
Looseleaf Red/speckled
Romaine Green
Romaine Red/speckled

FLOWERS (in 6 packs - $5 ea)
Breadseed Poppies Papaver somniferum
‘Jimi’s Flag’ mix
‘Jimi’s Purple Haze’
‘After Midnight’
‘Lauren’s Grape’
Shirley poppy ‘Angel’s Choir’

Recipe: Chocolate Tahini Zucchini Bread

Sometime during your gardening career, you've likely missed picking a zucchini in time and it got all sorts of huge. And that zucchini with all its largeness isn't going to be as tasty as its smaller siblings. What to do? Zucchini bread is one of the best uses but I've struggled to really love a zucchini bread recipe, until now. I combined a few different recipe ideas and made a gluten free version to share. It's the best zucchini bread I've ever had--it was so good, half of it was already noshed before I could remember to take photos. Sorry. Not sorry.

Garden Recipe: Covered Bean Trellis

First off, sorry for the delay in posting! This ended up being a more challenging post to write. But here it is, and I'm proud of it.

Ever  since I visited a friend's family garden where the paths were covered by bean trellis', I wanted my own. I've grown beans on teepee structures and on corn, as part of the three sisters. But with each of those models, I'd miss beans. And then the beans would become huge monstrosities, which is no fun. And let's be honest, a bean tunnel looks awesome. So I set about making my own.

Food Tourism: Andy's Orchard

For many years, my sister-in-law has sung the praises of Andy's Orchard. And for many years, I haven't made the hour plus trip down to Morgan Hill. That was a mistake. Andy's Orchard grows over 100 varieties of stone fruit (they list 128 varieties of peaches, plums, apricots, nectarines, and cherries on their website) which they harvest fully tree ripened. The fruit is delicious and the variety is amazing. Andy's Orchard is worth the trip--I can't believe it took us this long to make it.

The day we visited, Andy's was holding tastings and tours (they hold 1 to 2 per month in the summer) and we tried at least 100 varieties of stone fruit, saw their stone fruit drying operation, and toured their orchards all while picking our own tree ripened fruit. It was grand.

The Best Edible Gardening Books (In My Opinion Anyway)

A few years ago, I knew almost nothing about gardening. I was terrible about keeping house plants alive--I used to run experiments in my head to see how long I could not water my plants before they wilted--but then we moved to the East Bay and everything changed. For the first time, we had a backyard of our own. Since moving to California, I had been enamored with the idea of growing my own food. At one point, I had tried to grow Kale and Chard in pots outside; I watered them maybe once a week and harvested what amounted to large micro greens: delicious, nutritious, but definitely not enough for two bites. When we moved across the Bay, I set my mind to learning to garden; my goal was to grow enough food in the summer months, so that I wouldn't need to buy produce from the grocery store. In the four years since making the move, I have learned so much and truly can call myself a gardener; I'm pretty proud of that. 

Garden Recipe: How to Build Roof Tile Raised Beds

When we moved into our house in September, we had a roughly square area of grass in the middle of our yard. I'm not a fan of grass in California gardens--still in a drought, despite El Nino--but I am a fan of edible gardens. Duh. So the plan to swap one for the other was obvious.

After having a mixed garden of perennials (artichokes and blackberries--yes, what was I thinking? O how much I've learned) and annuals at our last house, we wanted our annual edibles to be separate from our perennials. Annuals and perennials need different things (soil tilling, fertilizer, and watering schedule to name a few).

Recipe: Borage Pesto

With the borage growing like crazy in our garden, I needed to figure out how to do something more with it than just add the flowers and smallest leaves to salads. I'm a big lover of any kind of pesto and think it's important to always have a jar of pesto on hand. Pesto is delicious on almost everything from the obvious pasta to potato salad, thinned out as a salad dressing, on pizza, in sandwiches...well, you get the idea. I couldn't really find a solid recipe for borage pesto, so I experimented and came up with my own recipe--it's a nuttier, deeper version of the traditional pure basil pesto. 

Garden Update: New Raised Beds and What's Growing this Summer

A few weeks ago, I took two days off work to build four raised garden beds that would become our annual kitchen garden. I'll write more about my process of building these raised beds, but in the mean time, I wanted to share how our garden renovation is progressing.

Plant Profile: Borage

Whenever I see my borage plant growing in my garden, in my head I sing the words "My borage brings all the bees to my yard" to Kelis' Milkshake. Seriously though, this plant is a bee magnet. Whenever I walk by a borage plant in bloom, there buzzes a bee. 

Beyond bringing bees to your garden, what can borage not do? You can eat its flowers and leaves, it's a fantastic companion plant, and, if you're particularly crafty, you can make an oil from its seeds that's high in omegas. Also, it's incredibly easy to grow from seeds. For the most part, I use it for it's delicious, cucumber tasting flowers, to attract bees, and sometimes to companion-plant. I find it thrives, despite my ignoring it for much of the spring--only recently have I started trimming and watering my borage.

Garden Technique: Square Foot Gardening

Square foot gardening is the (often edible gardening) technique where a garden's area is divided into squares, often 1' by 1', hence the name, and plants are assigned to a square plot. In comparison with more traditional row gardening, plants are packed together as closely as possible.  I started gardening this way last year and love it for it's efficiency, yields, and simplicity. 

If you're limited on space, square foot gardening a great way to pack your annual edibles into smaller areas. While there is some criticism that this "crowding" of plants will limit root production and thus plant production based on competition for water and nutrients, I didn't find this to be the case. You do, however, have to be very diligent about adding compost and organic plant food throughout the season; I would recommend using a cover crop such as fava beans to add nitrogen and loam to your soil. Planting so many plants close together will be more intensive on the soil, but plan for this by prepping and feeding your beds accordingly.

Garden Recipe: How to Make a Vertical Strawberry Garden

I've been meaning to write this post for a while. A little over a year in fact. So here, finally, goes.

I'd always dreamed of fresh summer strawberries picked warm from our garden. I tried to have a strawberry patch in our Oakland garden, but I didn't mulch properly with straw, and the plants' leaves got mildew and few strawberries were produced. So last year, I ripped out my mini strawberry patch to try something new: vertical gardening in a pallet!

Garden Update: Wisteria! Anemones! O my!

The photo on the left I know these aren't exactly taken from the same position, but you get the idea! The photo on the left was taken in early March and the one on the right in late March--oh what a difference a few weeks can make!

Plant Profile: Strawberries

If there's one thing that makes me think of summer, it's a juicy, fresh strawberry. I guess that and sun warmed tomatoes. Throughout the spring, summer, and fall months, we are always eating strawberries, as the season is just that long here in California. Sorry. Not sorry.


When you grow them yourself, they are at least 10 times better. It took me two tries, and four different varieties to finally get it right, but man oh man, when you grow your own strawberries, it's a whole new world of wow. Eating sun warmed strawberries, just picked, is like nothing you can get at your farmers market, let alone the grocery store. When I finally had the right mix, it was like eating Jolly Ranchers, no joke.

And strawberries are not just a delicious, fruit bearing plant, they are also a functional element in your garden. While most plants are low growing, bushy plant, depending on the variety, they can serve as an excellent ground cover and underplanting or as a repeated accent plant.

Garden Recipe: Strawberry Soil

The start to almost any happy plant is in the its soil, and that's no exception with strawberries. And strawberries, despite their reputation of being an "easy" plant to grow, they do have specific fertilizer requirements.

Garden Update and Recipe: Removing Ivy (And Triming Wisteria)

When we started, our garden was a bit of a jungle of ivy divided by a wall of wisteria. While cozy, private, and green, it wasn't the garden we wanted. We wanted a light, open space where we could grow delicious food, host friends, and enjoy the sun. So we started the process of bringing the garden back to it's bones (ie trimming overgrown plants and removing unwanted ones) so we could get to the hardscaping details.

I think this is a process that every gardener new to a space goes through in some way, and it was a process of discovery for us. Not only did we discover a beautiful arbor underneath all the ivy and the full potential for sun in our yard (look at it! And that's in January!), but we also found Cala Lily's being strangled by ivy (we saved the Cala's, obvs), a white camellia (also being strangled by ivy), and even a few glass marbles. 

Hello 2016! New Year, New Goals

I started this blog way back in 2013 as a way to chronicle projects I was working on in the garden and in our house, mostly for myself and slightly for my parents so they could stay up to date from afar. As the years have gone by and as my garden projects have grown more ambitious, I want to do more with what I write on my blog. So with the new year now upon us--and the garden in its hibernation season--I have some goals for this year both for this blog and for our garden.

Introducing MeadeHouse Manor

When last I wrote, we were moving out of our Temescal home and I alluded to our finding our new home; well, here it is! I'm excited to give you a preview of our forever home: MeadeHouse Manor. 

Our new home is located in Alameda, a "man made" island between Oakland and San Francisco. While I'm never a fan of unnecessary quotes, calling the island man made is a bit of a misnomer. Let me explain. When people in the Bay Area hear Alameda, the man made island, they assume the whole island is landfill and will fall into the Bay when the next Big One comes. This belief isn't true, however. Alameda was once a part of the Oakland landmass but a canal was dredged in 1902 to provide better access to the expanding Port of Oakland. So yes, the island is "man made" but not in the way that people traditionally think. 

Saying Good Bye to Oaktown Manor and our Temescal Garden

As the saying goes, all good things must come to end. And sometimes this happens sooner then we'd like to. This month marks our last month in our Temescal abode. It's bittersweet to leave but everything happens for a reason. 

Enough "sayings" for ya? 

Here's our garden in June, just as it start to warm up and the tomatoes were reaching their full height. This is how I want to remember our garden. 

How to Fold in Fava Beans

After several seasons of constant use, our garden soil was in need of some TLC this winter. We planted a large bag of fava beans in our veggie garden and nothing else. Fava beans are legumes that take nitrogen from the air and fix it to use for bean production.

A few months after planting the seeds, our garden was filled with fava stalks! Fun fact about favas: the grow so quickly that it's rumored that the "magic beans" in Jack and the Beanstalk are favas. Right before the favas started producing bean pods--the beans will take away from of the nitrogen the favas have fixed--we folded the favas into our garden.