The Garden Blog

Here's the thing. The sun and I are not friends. I'm skin cancer prone and wear hats and major amounts of sunscreen. But the sun IS the friend to my little buddies in the garden and we haven't seen much of the big guy in a few weeks now. Hello? We need you here, dude. I promise to wear a hat.

In the last month, the tomatoes that popped up so quickly (they loved that mid-April heat wave) are now kind of lollygagging. I will say that the watermelon plants I got in Templeton are already making their move, especially the Chilean heirloom. Here's a recent photo, taken on May 23. If you compare it to the photo taken May 9 (the second photo in the May 9 blog), you can already see the difference, with the Chilean (top right) already inching its way up the trellis. Also in the new photo is a recent addition to the "watermelon patch" - a transplant I grew from a seed in the kitchen window. It's a Hokkaido Black Watermelon and is the speck of green to the right of the other two seedlings and next to the wood marker. They're supposedly very rare but somehow Jeff managed to get his hands on some seeds for one of my Christmas gifts. So I now have three different kinds of watermelon growing this year: the Iowa heirloom, which should provide the kinds of melons I had last year (BIG and green) and two types of black watermelons, the Chilean and the Hokkaido. I have two other Hokkaidos going (also started from those seed) over by the grape vine. Those went in awhile ago and are starting to rival the Chilean in movement.

A word about "awhile go" -- one of the things I'm learning from talking to more experienced gardeners is the importance of keeping a garden journal or log of when you do what. This way you can learn better what works and doesn't work. When I recently interviewed Memo Rodriguez, master gardener for the Bix restaurant in Napa, and asked him when he put in his English peas, he didn't say "oh, I don't know, maybe a couple months ago," he gave me a date: March 6. Because he had written it down.

As you may all recall, last spring I bought a watermelon seedling at a gardeners festival in Cambria because I thought it was funny that such a little plant could grow watermelons and, as the summer progressed, that little seedling turned into the Watermelon That Ate Cleveland -- growing to all corners of the garden and ultimately producing 10 watermelons in the 20-30-pound range (here's a photo photo from last September to give you a visual).

Naturally, I decided I should get a seedling from the same source for this summer's garden. How could I not? I'm still known in the garden as the gal who grows the watermelon (even the older couple two gardens down who don't speak English ask me about them).

This year. unfortunately, there was no festival going on in Cambria.

Here is my early spring garden. As you can see, it's quite different from the end-of-winter garden of late February (see blog post below from April 7). We have put in a bed that includes wildflowers from seeds I'd gotten from the Desert Botanical Garden last December, Dutch onions from the 99 cent store (the 99 cent store at Pico and Stewart/28th Street in Santa Monica often has plants and seeds sitting outside its doors); basil, cucumbers and orange peppers from Merrihew's Sunset Gardens on 15th and Ocean Park; and six seedlings from Tomatomania on March 28 in Encino (see Tomatomania story in the vegetables section). Oh, and the roses are blooming.

But I digress, for the first thing I put into the early spring garden was my grape vine. It's the white thing (well, it's in the white thing, which is known as a planting sleeve) you see against the wall to the left of the Frantoio olive tree.

Get it? Grape vine. Olive tree. Yes, this is my sad little attempt to create a feeling of Tuscany in my garden. At least, it's my image of what I think Tuscany is like as I've never been to Italy - even after taking two years of Italian in college.

The Westside of Los Angeles will be the site of a great event called the Gardens of Gratitude 100 Garden Challenge May 16-17. The goal is to plant 100 gardens in a single weekend. If you located in or around the Los Angeles area and interested in getting involved, see their information posted below. You can also visit the web site at http://www.gardensofgratitude. org

The Westside Permaculture Group and Sustainable Works Announce the 100 Garden Challenge

 Santa Monica, California – The Westside Permaculture Group and Sustainable Works are sponsoring the “100 Garden Challenge.”  The purpose of this event is to create 100 edible gardens in a single weekend to build and enhance our community, raise awareness about the benefits of locally grown organic produce, and inspire an appreciation of the gifts nature has to offer.  The “100 Garden Challenge” will be held Saturday and Sunday, May 16 and 17, 2009.

I don't know what it is about spring that makes one want to put things in the earth. Here in Southern California we can plant pretty much year-round but, as you can see from this photo of my garden taken in February, I have to admit I got a little neglectful this winter. Part of it was the watermelons grew through January so after I took them out there was a big question as to what to put in.

In the meantime, I continued tending the overgrown mass of sweetpeas against the wall, the two dormant rose bushes, the leftover herbs from the previous summer (lavender and Italian parsley and the catnip that won't stop -- anyone got a horde of cats that needs a little nip?) and the olive trees in their tubs (you can't plant trees in the ground at the community garden, although the trees were transplanted into bigger tubs and one of them looks to be growing an immense amount of little olive flowers).

So although, yes, this looks like a sad dormant little garden, there was some growing going on. But is was just maintenance. Nothing like what happened the minute it start to feel like spring. Again, in Southern California, it's not as much a matter of degrees as in length of days. I guess that's it. All I know is the time changed, the days got longer and I became obsessed with adding to my garden, building a bed, getting some new marigolds and basil and cucumbers and peppers and culminating in ... yes, TOMATOMANIA.