Hobbits In Rivendell

We’re both pretty sore today, ’cause we spent all day yesterday rototilling & then cleaning up rows to make high beds – they’re about a foot and a half above the level of the paths between. It took us just about all day to get watersorb, gypsum, slow-release fertilizer, and blood meal added; everything rototilled twice; and to form up the beds. But it’s now ready for planting, and all we’ve got to do is to get the tomatoes from the nursery & to lay in the major drip lines and we’re ready to plant.

In addition to what I listed in a previous post, we’re planting Collard Greens, Red Potatoes, and Sweet Potatoes. Most of those seeds come from Kitazawa Seed, which is a seed company here in San Francisco which specializes in Asian vegetables. They’re pretty cool, and I suggest that you grow some Kabocha squash if you grow anything at all, ’cause they’re truly fabulous – way better than pumpkin for making pies.

Here’s a diagram of what the layout is like. It’s 25 feet from top to bottom, and about 45 feet from left to right. The spaces between the rows are about 1 foot, so that should give you an idea of what you’re looking at.

The space is shady towards the top left corner (where the Celtuce is to go), and we’ve had to balance out where to put things based upon where they’ve been before (no tomatoes nor potatoes can go in the same place they’ve been unless you’ve had three years in between, for example), but we’re pretty sure of this layout.

One thing we learned last year was that you can’t really trellis more than two tomatoes in a row, because you lose fruit where the plants intermingle, and you end up with plants being dwarfed by their neighbors. So, we’ll be planting the tomatoes in short beds, with only two tomatoes in each bed, and stretching two support beams above the three beds. It should let us trellis successfully, and give us a better harvest. We’ll see.

We’ve also made the beds much higher than we’ve been able to make them in the past, which should make it easier to harvest and to weed. AND we’re only planting one thing in each bed. We’ve tried to mix things in the past – tucking basil beneath the shade of a tomato, for example – and it just doesn’t work all that well. Not only do you end up with things competing for resources, you also end up with an inability to plant things in replacement. For example, if you’ve already pulled all of your beets out, but you still have greens growing, you’re stuck with leaving that bed to the greens. If you plant just one thing, however, you could plant a replacement crop, better utilizing the space.

These are things we think about. And lie awake thinking about.

Happy Gardening!

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Are you guys gardening yet? We already ordered our WaterSorb so we’re ready to start rototilling … but the soil’s going to be too wet for another couple of weeks. I’m sure that others are ready to start, though, because we left ours pretty much just “to stand” over winter (and harvested the last of the beets and carrots a couple weeks ago), so we had plenty of cover to keep the ground moist. Our friend (in whose yard we garden) did a rough till last week with his tractor, just to knock down the tall stuff, though, so there’s hope that it’ll dry out before midsummer.

We need to order from Kitizawa Seed for our Kabochas soon … I’ll probably take care of that today. We’ve found that Kabocha Squash makes a far better pumpkin pie than any other pumpkins, but the problem now is in choosing, because until I checked Kitizawa I was somehow thinking that there were, oh, maybe two kinds of Kabocha. No such luck. There are 12 varieties on Kitizawa’s site, so it’s either going to be a squash-filled gardening season, or we’re going to have to make some hard choices. Fortunately for us, our CSA will, no doubt, provide us with Delica (green) and Uchiki Kuri (red). Our trouble will be in deciding which of the other 10 varieties we should grow.

Next up, of course, will be the choosing of tomatoes. We are going to attempt some restraint this year, as we’re still not through with last year’s: some are in the freezer, awaiting pasta or something; more are in zips, dried, awaiting breads and pestos. However, when we get to Morning Sun Herb Farm, we usually find at least 6 different varieties right away, and a bit of wandering brings us a few more. Last year, thanks to the gophers, we “only” ended up with 7 plants. This year … I think we’re going to try for 6 plants. Only. No “fallbacks,” no “spares,” no “just in case the gophers get them.” We’ll see.

And, surprisingly, tomatoes and squash about does it for what we’d like out of the garden this year, except for an Armenian Cucumber and, perhaps, a couple of Ronde de Nice zucchini. And that’s it. Except for the things we have to grow in the way of “rent” for the garden space, that is: okra and collard greens.

It’s strange to think that we may have finally gotten our gardening under control. We’ll see – because we usually give ourselves these stern talking-tos – but I think that we may finally be learning that if you can’t eat it all, and if it makes it difficult to harvest, then you probably don’t need to grow it. And we especially don’t need to grow things which can’t be preserved easily, and which we don’t eat ordinarily. Eggplant falls into that category – the category of “one plant, maybe, if there’s room, and if the plant is free.”

That’s the problem, actually: the majority of our plants tend to be free, because other gardeners (soft-hearted lot that they are) have planted, intending to “thin,” and end up simply giving away their seedlings. So, they look at us, and we must have “sucker” writ large across our foreheads, because we end up with all manner of things to plant, unless we want to kill them off. So of course we plant them. And water them. And buy replacements when they get eaten by the gopher, because we can’t bear the empty spot where once was a plant.

Let the chaos begin.

Kitizawa Seed: kitazawaseed.com/
Find a CSA: localharvest.org/csa/
Riverdog Farm (our CSA): riverdogfarm.com/
Morning Sun Herb Farm: morningsunherbfarm.com/

Quick update: I made our purchase from Kitizawa, and can expect delivery in a couple of days. I guess I’m weak … ’cause I really couldn’t resist:

• Akehime, Hybrid Winter Squash, Baby Kabocha
• Sweet Mama, Hybrid Winter Squash, Bush Type Kabocha
• Fairy, Hybrid Winter Squash
• Armenian Cucumber
• Prik Ki Nue Rai-Thai Hot Pepper
• All Red Leaf Amaranth
• Red Noodle Yard Long Bean
• Tsu In Yard Long Bean
• Nozawana Turnip Green
• Celtuce (Stem Lettuce)
• Atomic Red Carrot
• Cosmic Purple Carrot

So, I really am going to stop. No more purchases. Except for the Collards, and the Tomatoes. Really. Honest.

This work is licensed under a
Creative Commons Attribution-Noncommercial-No Derivative Works 3.0 License.