farm with a view

Look who we found hanging out in the sage:

I know he’s harmless and all but he still gave me the creepy crawlies. Andrew, however, was having a grand old time letting the little guy hang out in his hand.

The crazy heat snap we had last week created some monster zucchini twice the girth of my forearms. I literally groaned when I saw these freaks of nature. I’m done with zucchini.

(Zucchini by themselves do not make for very interesting photos. Throw in a monkey with a cell phone, however, and now I’ve got your attention.)

Our impatience got to the best of us and we dug up our dormant spinach seeds. Not one of them germinated. As Andrew would say, “Bee-larg.” (more…)

Our efforts to clean up the plot continued this past weekend. This time we tackled the weeds that sprouted when we weren’t looking. Devil’s grass is an ongoing problem at Ocean View Farms, sneaking in and out of all the plots in every which way and creating a vast, complex underground network of milky white rhizomes leading to god knows where. Thankfully we did a pretty good job of digging most of it out when we first got the plot, so the rhizomes we pulled up this past weekend were young and easier to yank. So satisfying. We also amended the soil (where the beans, tomatoes and peppers used to be) with some bagged organic compost that contained chicken poo, worm castings (worm poo), bat guano (bat poo) and kelp meal, then topped it off with a nice layer of steamy horse poo from the community stash.

Oh, but this post is s’posed to be about pesto, not poo. Right. (more…)

This weekend we got rid of most of the summer plants; a full growing season now pretty much behind us. Dismantled the beans and their makeshift trellis, chopped down everything that was in the self-irrigating planters (plan to write about our success – failures? – with the SIPs later), and pulled up the dried-out tomatoes and bell peppers. It was rather cathartic.

(more…)

Our plants are dying.

It’s September and the days are getting shorter, which makes it feel like the temps are dropping even though they haven’t been high all summer to begin with (here by the ocean, anyway). Our tomato plants produced in one big burst and now they’re spent. The leaves on the lima bean plants are starting to yellow and dry out. There are a few more bell peppers that we’re hoping will make it, but it’s a gamble. Flowers are bursting at the ends of basil stems, which means the leaves will start to get bitter. The zukes are still somewhat prolific but definitely slowing down. The melon is a memory.

Three months ago everything was young, green and growing in leaps and bounds. It was amazing, really. Now, after harnessing the sun and water and soil and putting all their energy into producing offspring, everything is brown and brittle and shrinking. Can’t help but think about how it mirrors most living things, ourselves included.

It was a quiet, overcast morning at the garden. I forgot to bring my camera, so was forced to try the camera on my new old phone. (“New” meaning it’s new to me; a buddy who works at a mobile carrier company hooked me up with a phone after mine broke. “Old” meaning it’s a model from, oh, five years ago.) Check it out:

Seriously, that’s the shot. No Photoshopping whatsoever. Probably for the best, since our tomato plants are dying by the day. But they still have a ton of huge fruits on them that are slowly ripening, a few at a time, so I’m not complaining yet. Compared to the plants we’ve seen on other plots, I’d say we’re in the solid 50th percentile as far as how well our plants are faring. Not bad for first-timers.

We picked 12 tomatoes, two zukes, some more beans and basil. Way too much basil. Thankfully, we ran into our Old Lady Neighbor when we got home and gave her a bunch. She is an old-school guerrilla gardener. That will be a post of its own on another day.

Here’s a shot that shows off the heirloom tomato’s signature wedges. It’s so weird:

And that’s all for today. Time for some lazy Sunday wine!