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.

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).

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. 

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.

Our Garden Transformation: Part 3

So far, we've written about our front yard upgrades and edible back garden. We also have planted a number of flowers both from seed and starters and we now have a bountiful flower garden. Every week, we have fresh cut flowers from our garden--not to mention a host of happy pollinators hopping into flowers. 

Just as a reminder, this is where we started: 

Looking towards our house.

It's sadly a cloudy day, but I'm going to retake this photo on a sunnier one.

I'm cheating a little here as this was taken far earlier this season when the tulips were out.

This as well...

One day in our garden I noticed an interesting "weed" popping up; the leaves looked familiar so I decided to let the plant grow--low and behold, it was a kala lily! Look at how big that blossom is! I'm so glad I let is grow. 

Shade loving hydrangeas. 

Fairy tail fox glove.

Delphinium.

More fox glove.

Dahlias.

Passion fruit flower vine.

White zinnia. 

Peach zinnia.

Cosmos.

Last year's snap dragon that stayed healthy throughout the winter.

And the beginnings of a sunflower.

And remember that old apple tree? (See below photo).

Looking towards our neighbors house.

Well it was about to fall on our neighbors house,  so our landlord had the very sick tree removed. What was left was the perfect spot for a sink planter, which we filled with Alaska variety nasturtiums. Can't wait till they blossom!

This variety of nasturtium blooms in a variety of colors, including red, peach, and yellow. 

Our Garden's Transformation: Part 2

Oh, what a busy blogging weekend it's been! Finally getting around to posting about our garden, which has been a long time coming.

As I mentioned yesterday when I posted part one of this post, I tried growing edibles in San Francisco, but failed miserably in producing anything more than a mouthful of produce at a time. In Oakland, however, it's been a totally different story. Last summer, I began with some of the easier summer edibles: 3 tomato plants (1 dona, 1 sungold, and one that failed) and a cucumber plant (lemon cucumber). I ended up with so many cucumbers that I had to bring some in to work to give out--that's before I learned lemon cucumbers are delicious pickled--and the tomatoes kept growing to the end of January! That's right: JANUARY! Hello sunny California. After last summer's success, I plants my starts a bit earlier, planting 4 tomato plants (I kept with the dona and seascape and added indigo rose and early girl) in late March and adding 1 squash, 2 cucumber, 12 beans plants (6 poling, 6 bushing), 25 seascape strawberry, and 1 pepper (shisito! so excited) in April. We also have some dino kale and some dino kale hybrids still growing strong front the winter--did you know that dino kale is resistent to bolting?--as well as broccoli, sweet peas, radishes, chard, and favas all in the now shadier parts of the garden.

And just as a reminder, this is where we started:

Looking towards our neighbors house.

Looking to the sunny-est part of the garden--and that's slugo around the strawberries. 

Keyhole plan for veggie garden.

The hammock is the best place to relax--the shade tree perfectly place to protect your eyes. 

Our version of a garden gnome: goat! 

Some very tall tomatoes for only being planted two months ago!

Purple sugar snap pea blossoms.

Our garden pig! (atop a stake for the lemon cucumber)

Our garden aardvark (also atop a garden stake for cucumbers)

Look at the squash blossom!

Baby squashes already :) 

Concord grapes, for Concord grape jam! (these were already here when we moved in)

Meyer lemon.

Pineapple strawberries!

Sungold tomatoes. 

Early girl tomatoes :) 

And the earliest of them all: The indigo rose! Can't wait to try this one. 

Bubbly dino kale. 

Tiny sprouted purple broccoli florets. 

Wild blackberry blossoms.

A lemon cucumber tentral finding the stake!

And that's not even all our edible plants--so many edibles this year I have a feeling my cube mates at work will be well fed. We also have many flowers--both annuals and perennials--that give us fresh cut flowers every week. As this post is already long enough, I'll save that for tomorrow!