Dirt, Water, Sun

KALE AND BEET SALAD I picked several kale leaves from our hardy kale plants, that keep growing despite the warm days. I have learned how to massage the chopped kale with kosher salt, lemon juice, and olive oil. This makes the kale supple and moist. Then I microwaved the first beet from our garden and sliced it on top of the kale. And of course added the handful of peas I plucked from our pea forest. Added feta cheese. Delicious!

APRIL 27, 2016: Rebecca and I went to the garden today with Lena and Eden Along the way we stopped at Sunshine Gardens and got some small scalloped squash starters and decided to try growing eggplants also. Lena had fun, gobbling up plenty of pea pods to satisfy her hunger, and helped us plant the squash. She is proudly showing me the dirt of her labors in this pic.

April 22, 2016: If I go to the hydroponics store on Encinitas Boulevard the owner will give you worm tea - on Sunday’s he has a special brew going in the back of the store. I like to bring him a bag of veggies from my garden in exchange... these days usually kale and chard. I filled up up two jugs and then rode over to the garden to fertilize the leeks and the new plants. I hear it has magic properties! This time he told me the tea was full of tasty beneficial minerals.

April 16, 2016: We have grown Peas!!!!! Crunchy, sweet, tasty peas for salad. April has been sunny and hot, so I stop by the garden and water the peas on my way to work in the morning. Guess they like it!

April 4: The peas are climbing higher hanging on by tendrils to the netting, maybe the cloudy weather is helping them get a good start although it’s April- can’t wait to eat pea pods in my salads! I planted heirloom Armenian cucumbers with exotic white skins- I hear they are really tasty, Rebeca and I are planning on installing a wood lattice for the cukes to climb up on. And one lone tomato - Indigo Rose - in the center of the garden. They have a dark purple color and are really sweet. Hope we get some more of that promised El Niño rain.

March 2016: Time to plant sunflowers! Rebeca’s daughter, Lina, has decided that today is the day she is going to plant sunflower seeds in the garden. She wore her sunflower outfit to celebrate and showed us the sunflowers growing in other people’s planters in the community garden. Just like Mimi when she was that age - all she wanted was to plant sunflowers!

March 2016: Curly blue kale. It loves the chicken poop in the soil and grows and grows.  I harvest it often and it quickly grows more shoots.  This kale is crunchy and delicious. I am mainly using it in salads and stews, but I would love to find more ways to cook with kale. 

February 2016: CHICKEN MANURE!! I want to create the optimum dirt for my plants with organic fertilizer and yummy nutrients - Rebeca says use chicken manure. Taking her advice I amended the soil with bags of chicken poop, compost and soil with bat guano in it. This oughta be great food for hungry seedlings! I am going to plant leeks by seed, I have never grown them before and have heard some gardeners comment that they “haven’t had much luck with leeks”. We shall see, I love cooking with leeks - I hope these seeds take root. I also planted curly blue kale from starter plants and chard, and arugula from seeds.

February 2016: Chard rocks! Its soooo easy to grow ... and healthy!

Hope its not too late for planting peas, these plants have to be encouraged to bear fruit before June! (I’ll sing to them…)

November 22, 2015: Our plot at the Encinitas Community Garden! We got dirt - we got rows - we got irrigation! Paul and I worked all day shoveling dirt into all the planters at the garden, then picked the one we wanted - it gets lots of light. I am so excited - to be part of this group of gardeners, and experiment with new vegetables and organic gardening. So lucky to be able to use Rebecca’s advice and green thumb, maybe we can grow plants we can actually eat.