July 29, 2014 by Born To Organize

Nymph: Science vs Mythology

Pumpkin beginning to turn orange

a minor female nature deity typically associated with a particular location or land form. Different from goddesses, nymphs are generally regarded as divine spirits who animate nature, and are usually depicted as beautiful, young maidens who love to dance and sing; their amorous freedom sets them apart from the restricted and chaste wives and daughters of the Greek polis. They are believed to dwell in mountains and groves, by springs and rivers, and in trees and in valleys and cool grottoes.

Cool!

Unfortunately, I haven’t seen any of those in the garden. On the other hand, a biological nymph is:

the immature form of some invertebrates, particularly insects, which undergoes gradual metamorphosis (hemimetabolism) before reaching its adult stage.^[Unlike a typical larva, a nymph’s overall form already resembles that of the adult. In addition, while a nymph moults it never enters a pupal stage. Instead, the final moult results in an adult insect.

Oh-oh.

With all my due diligence, I missed a few of the squash bug eggs. The following video tells the rest of the story:

I removed the offending nymphs and even more eggs this morning, but it was impossible to get all of them. I’m going to figure out a way to create a barrier between the pumpkin and the bugs without harming the bees or the plant. Stay tuned.

Freshly hatched squash nymphs

Squash bugs overrun a pumpkin leaf

Squash bugs: off the vine and into the bucket

July 28, 2014 by Born To Organize

Mid-Summer Caretaker and the Mighty Seed

By the calendar, it’s mid-summer here in California. Our growing season is longer than most, given our mild climate and rich, agricultural soil. That said, pumpkins and sunflowers adhere to their own cycle and that cycle is coming to an end.

July growth

Fading vines as all the energy now goes to the fruit

Like many things in life, the anticipation often outranks the reward at the end. It’s the growing that brings so much pleasure. It’s also humbling to realize that much of what’s happening outside these four walls has nothing to do with me. Nature knows what she’s doing. While a bit of help from water, fertilizer and nutrient-rich soil is a must, once provided she can take it from there.

Sunflowers bowing from the weight of the seeds

A bit of water pools on the underside of a sunflower

I tend the garden anyway, battling drought conditions, air pollution, nasty bugs and the adorable menace, the western gray squirrel. I’m a caretaker more than anything else.

Squash bug hide and seek (we’re still here)

Once you’ve gardened, it’s impossible to feel the same way about the fruits and vegetables that make it to your table. Something as tiny and unassuming as a seed has all the DNA it needs to know when and where it should grow and for how long. Helpers, in the form of pollinating bees or seed-scattering birds, also play a role. I’ve gardened my entire life and I’m still in awe when a seed cracks the earth and a leafy green sprout appears.

According to Boundless Biology:

Seed plants are cultivated for their beauty and smells, as well as their importance in the development of medicines. Plants are also the foundation of human diets across the world . Many societies eat, almost exclusively, vegetarian fare and depend solely on seed plants for their nutritional needs. A few crops (rice, wheat, and potatoes) dominate the agricultural landscape. Many crops were developed during the agricultural revolution when human societies made the transition from nomadic hunter–gatherers to horticulture and agriculture. Cereals, rich in carbohydrates, provide the staple of many human diets. In addition, beans and nuts supply proteins. Fats are derived from crushed seeds, as is the case for peanut and rapeseed (canola) oils, or fruits such as olives.

We live in an amazing world.

July 25, 2014 by Born To Organize

The Plot Thickens: A Bit of Garden Humour

Here’s a little garden humour as you ease in to your weekend: My sister sent me this story a few years ago. It always makes me smile. I don’t know the origins, so I’ll extend thanks to the universe and the anonymous writer of this tongue in cheek tale. Enjoy!

Plotting Tomatoes:

An older gentleman living alone in New Jersey looked forward to planting his annual tomato garden, but it was strenuous work. The ground was simply too hard. His only son Vincent would usually help him but Vincent was in prison. The man wrote a letter to his son describing his predicament.

Dear Vincent,

It looks like I won’t be able to plant my tomato garden this year. I’m just getting too old to be digging up a garden plot. I know if you were here my troubles would be over. I know you would be happy to dig it for me, like in the old days. I’m feeling a little sad. I hope you are well.

Love, Papa

A few days later he received a letter from his son.

Dear Papa,

Don’t dig up that garden. That’s where the bodies are buried.

Love, Vinnie

At 4 a.m. the next morning, FBI agents and local police arrived and dug up the entire area without finding any bodies. They apologized to the man and left. That same day the man received another letter from his son.

Dear Papa,

Go ahead and plant the tomatoes now. That’s the best I could do under the circumstances.

Love you, Vinnie

I hope you’re smiling, too.

July 24, 2014 by Born To Organize

Heirloom Tomatoes: My Garden Darlings

If you’ve been following along, you know that I didn’t plant a single tomato plant this year. Hard to believe, eh?

Self-seeded or Volunteer Tomatoes

Last year my friend Doug gave me several varieties of Baker Creek Heirloom tomato seeds. I planted them in my City Picker but they were slow to grow. I hedged my bets with an organic nursery plant and finished off the summer with tomatoes to spare.

This year the heirloom tomatoes self-seeded one box over. Further, a variety of tiny cherry tomatoes flourished out of the bottom of the rotating compost bin. Two additional plants showed up in the gravel walkway, a larger cherry tomato and another heirloom. What a bounty!

April 9, 2014

Tiny Cherry Tomatoes

Mini cherry tomatoes

Since a speck of a tomato seed managed to sprout through a crack in the rotating composter, I felt compelled to let it grow. I staked the plant when it showed signs of surviving the season, and eventually it produced small, bright red fruit, just like you see in the grocery store. Of course the problem with most tomatoes from the store isn’t the appearance but the taste. These tiny tomatoes are flavorless. What a disappointment.

Cherry Tomatoes: The Sequel

More cherry tomatoes

At the back of the garden, leaning up against the house, is another volunteer. This one produced larger cherry tomatoes, also a brilliant red. They’re a bit sweeter than the tiny cherry, but again bred for appearance and not flavor.

Baker Heirloom Tomatoes

Heirloom Tomatoes

Tomato gold! These are the sweetest, juiciest and most prolific tomatoes in the garden. Honestly, there is no turning back once you’ve tasted them. What luck to have an entire crop of these delicious fruits. I sliced open several today for seed saving, but plan to do all my vegetable seed purchasing from them in the future. In case you’re interested, check out Rare Seeds Baker Creek Heirloom Seeds.

From there About page:

The family works extensively to supply free seeds to many of the world’s poorest countries, as well as here at home in school gardens and other educational projects. It is their goal to educate everyone about a better, safer food supply and fight gene-altered, Frankenfood and the companies that support it.

You can also follow them on Facebook.

What to do with all those tomatoes:

Vegan kabobs for the 4th of July

Made with tomatoes, onions, red peppers and vegan Field Roast ‘sausages‘.

Fresh basil and tomatoes.

Eat them straight from the bowl.

Freeze them, then turn them into salsa

Sarah the Gardener taught me that not only can you freeze tomatoes, but that the skin falls off of them when they’re thawed. Mike made several batches of tasty salsa. Here’s a similar recipe.

And of course share with anyone who’s interested.

How do you like your tomatoes?

Tomato, basil mozzarella salad

July 21, 2014 by Born To Organize

I Say Potato

Harvesting potatoes

Every family has their cultural staple. We grew up eating potatoes. My mom baked them, added them to her delicious stew and on the occasional Friday we had what the Brits and Canadians refer to as chips, aka French fries. Potatoes were tasty and filling and in my modest culinary repertoire, a fine addition to any meal

Potatoes remain a favorite, even though they’ve fallen from favor as a starch. Brown rice is tasty and so is couscous, but potatoes are my go-to comfort food. I love them.

Still, I didn’t set out to grow them. For me, part of the fun of gardening is watching things grow. I love the wild trail of a pumpkin, the abundant tomatoes, and a myriad of flowers. Potatoes become potatoes under ground.

I tossed a few sorry-looking potatoes into the compost bin and nature took over. Who knew? Apparently they are pretty easy to grow. The industrious Fran at The Road to Serendipity advised me to leave them in place till they flowered. The plants passed the flowering stage and started producing fruit, which, incidentally, is toxic.

I harvested the lot of them on Sunday and gave the harvest to my sister for her soup. She makes a big batch each week, then takes it for lunch. She’s a good cook with a small appetite so this will last her a week.

Small but plentiful

You can buy ‘new potatoes’ at the market, so hopefully the tiny potatoes I sent home are equally tender and tasty. Unlike tomatoes, you can’t take a big bite and know right away if they’re good.

Sharon’s Harvest

Do you have a favorite starch? Is it one you grew up with or something you discovered along the way?

What I say is that if a man really likes potatoes, he must be a pretty decent sort of fellow.
—A. A. Milne, English writer (1882–1956)

July 18, 2014 by Born To Organize

Computer Woes

My trusty laptop gave up the ghost today. It’s been sending subtle and not so subtle signs for weeks. My live in tech support, who also has a day job, tried his best. It seems my hard drive may be in park for good. I’m glad that all my photos automatically back up to Google. Here’s hoping the rest of the backups are in order.

With luck, I’ll be back in business next week. Have a restful, hassle free weekend.

🌱🌺🌺🌺🌺🌺🌺🌺🌺🌺🌺🌺🌱

July 17, 2014 by Born To Organize

Smiling Sunflowers

Incoming bee

Okay, technically sunflowers don’t smile. The effect is pretty much the same, though. When I look out my window they’re waving in the breeze, nodding their sunny flower heads and vibrating with bees. Maybe I’m the one smiling, but either way it’s contagious.

Bees move between the sunflowers and the pumpkin vines

The tallest of the sunflowers is my height: 5’10” or 177 cm. It was the first on the scene. I planted a variety of sunflowers this year, so each one is a bit different. One of the flowers just reaches my knee.

Brothers and sisters

Knee high sunflower

Yesterday I gently untangled a few overzealous pumpkin vines, redirecting them back towards the deck. As soon as the sunflowers go to seed, they’ll be overrun by squirrels. I don’t want my furry visitors trampling the pumpkins in their quest. Sunflower stems are sturdy enough to support the heavy seeds. They are not, however meant to withstand the added weight of a squirrel running up and down at snack time.

A little history:

Sunflower (Helianthus annus) is an annual plant native to the Americas. It possesses a large inflorescence (flowering head). The sunflower is named after its huge, fiery blooms, whose shape and image is often used to depict the sun. It has a rough, hairy stem, broad, coarsely toothed, rough leaves and circular heads of flowers. The heads consist of many individual flowers which mature into seeds, often in the hundreds, on a receptacle base. From the Americas, sunflower seeds were brought to Europe in the 16th century, where, along with sunflower oil, they became a widespread cooking ingredient. Leaves of the sunflower can be used as cattle feed, while the stems contain a fibre which may be used in paper production. – Wikipedia

Sunflower bud, about a week before it bloomed

Ready to meet the world

Bronze-centered flower

Here’s a story that will leave you smiling like a sunflower:

The Fukushima Sunflower project is now following the lead of Chernobyl, and fields of sunflowers are bursting into bloom across this contaminated area of Japan. Volunteers, farmers, and officials planted the flowers so that they can absorb the radiation that leaked into the soil from the region’s damaged nuclear power plant. There are concerns that the contamination is mainly in the topsoil and that the roots of the flowers are too deep to absorb it. Time will tell whether this project will be a success.

Officials are hoping that the local economy will benefit as much from the project as the environment. They are hoping tourists will come back to the region to admire the sunflower fields. Due to this magnificent flower’s ability to assist in getting rid of nuclear waste, it has become the international symbol of nuclear disarmament.

I’m smiling. How about you?

Sunflowers along the deck

July 16, 2014 by Born To Organize

Asparagus Fern: Keeping it Green Since 1988

Hydrangea with a side of plumosa

Earlier this week I filled a vase with flowers in lovely shades of pink. I added sprigs of Asparagus Fern ‘plumosa’ for a light, feathery touch

In my apartment-dwelling days, I did most of my decorating with live plants, including these ferns. My Asparagus Plumosa started out as two, seventy-nine cent house plants. They lived on a lace-covered trunk next to my bed in Campbell, until they started to outgrow their pots. The plants came with me from Campbell to San Jose and eventually Fremont, then back to San Jose.

When we bought this house in 1996 my tiny ferns were in a pot too big to lift alone. By then the thorns were mighty fierce. It would be a challenge to transplant. I let it be for a few more years, but the sides of the large, plastic pot started to crack. Worried that the plant would die with so little leg room, Mike maneuvered the pot, split the sides and planted the fern where in now resides. The roots were happy to be free from that pot, and the fern lives on.

History of Ferns

I wish I had pictures of my traveling fern in those early days. Do you ever wonder how we managed life before digital? Back when film was at a premium, and you had to pay to develop photographs, you chose your subject wisely. Digital photography is liberating.

Plumosa growing strong since 1988

Lovely new growth

Lindy-Lu under the fern.

Thank you, Boomdee for your July 15th comment. It inspired this post.

July 15, 2014 by Born To Organize

Pumpkin’s Progress: Growing Like a Weed

Pumpkins grow like weeds. That’s a good thing. Within days of planting, flat, white seeds crack under the warm soil and sprout. Cotyledons give way to true leaves and off they go. Leaves and stems shoot up so quickly that if you stood still awhile, I’m sure you could see them grow. I’m a fan of every stage.

The size of the leaf is a good indicator of the size of the fruit to come.True leaves are prickly and so are the stems, which are hollow. They remind me of large, green drinking straws. Stems and leaves lead you to think you have a small shrub on your hands, but then strong, curling tendrils appear and the plant takes off down the garden path, up the trellis and around the bend.

A decade ago, before we knew a thing about growing pumpkins, a self-seeded vine grew across the path, into a garden bench, and out the other side. It eventually set fruit, a lovely, heart-shaped pumpkin that hung from the garden bench door. We left the door open the rest of the season, delighted at the rambling pattern and the speed at which it grew. My boys were 3 and 6 that year, so you can imagine the daily joy of discovery. We headed out back in those early fall days to see what those pumpkins were up to.

It’s been such a pleasure growing this year’s crop in EarthBoxes™. They’re right outside my kitchen window, so I see them several times a day. We sit on the deck in the evenings and on weekends, and now feel like we have a ‘fourth wall’ on deck. The pumpkins and sunflowers together formed a beautiful screen.

Here’s a look at their progress since early May.

May 3, 2014

My stenciled EarthBoxes™ planted with three types of seeds: an assortment of saved seeds from last year (the mystery box) along with Botanical Interests ‘Jack-o’-lanterns’ and ‘Luminas’.

May 11, 2014

Hearty seedlings in just one week.

May 30, 2014

About thirty days in, and look at them grow. You can see the start of the sunflowers near the lawn, also started from seed. I’ll write more about them later this week.

June 13, 2014

I added trellises to allow the vines to grow up as well as out. The birds land there, before diving in to the sunflower leaves. Why won’t they eat the squash bugs instead?

June 30, 2014

Golden flowers attract bees and wasps. I love spending time out there in the morning before the heat descends. It’s a challenge photographing the bees. They move in and out of the flowers with speed and efficiency. I still try though. I have about 75 blurred photos, but I refuse to give up.

July 4, 2014

The vines got a bit of window dressing for Independence Day. They’re beautiful on their own, but a little red, white and blue called attention to their magnificence. They’re wilting in the heat in this picture, but a long drink after dusk set things right.

At the risk of stating the obvious, I love growing pumpkins. Thank you for following along with my gardening obsession.

July 10, 2014 by Born To Organize

Pitching Tents: Fantasy vs. Reality

As kids, we loved pitching tents. We never had a real one, but improvised with bed sheets, blankets and our coveted, ladybug-patterned sleeping bags. Something about summer screamed “pitch a tent!” so we did.

The year I turned thirty I planned a camping trip with a friend in Hawaii. Permit in hand, we would camp for two or three days, then move into a hotel for the rest of our stay. She borrowed her friend’s tent, but didn’t know how to set it up. After struggling for hours, we gave up. We went to a camping store where I bought a two-person tent for $99. It was an unplanned expense, but a necessary one. Lessons learned.

1989: The Tent

We spent one horrible night camping before cutting our losses and moving to a hotel. The tent was fine, but the campground was overrun later that evening with a crowd of young men, drinking and shouting into the wee hours of the morning. This was not the serene, camping-on-the-island-of-Kauai fantasy we were after. Though nothing bad happened, we spent a long, scary night in that tent. We realized how vulnerable we were.

I pitched that tent a few more times over the years, once at the Monterrey Bay Jazz Festival and again at Big Sur. One of the trips was the beginning of the end of a relationship. On another trip I discovered a black widow in the corner of my tent. The third and last time I planned a trip, the Bay Area suffered at 7.2 earthquake. The trip dwindled from 12 friends to 2. We went anyway, but looking back, it just felt weird. Forgive the following abhorrent cliché, but I am not a happy camper.

Backyard Camping

When the boys were young, I set up my old tent a few times in our back yard. When their interest waned, it was easy enough to put it away. Looking at these photos reminds me how good I have it at home: the perfect pillow, a firm mattress and a nice hot shower down the hall.

2006: Playing Monopoly in the back yard

Fairy Garden Camping

Today I relived my let’s pitch-a-tent sensibilities with an inverted pumpkin flower. I draped the golden tent in a verdant corner of the fairy garden. Tucked inside are a pair of pink sleeping bags with a scattering of fragrant blooms nearby.

This is the fantasy I dreamed of when I pitched that first tent in Hawaii nearly 25 years ago. Lush, idyllic, and without a single shred of reality. Meanwhile, my reality is pretty darn good.