Happy 2010!

It's a New Year in the garden and I was thinking about the successes in our kitchen garden at the restaurant this past year, so here's my "Top Ten for 2009".

#1 Lemon cucumbers...terrific producers & yummy taste, a big hit with customers visiting our biointensive garden. My niece Corrina likes to eat them like apples!

#2 Big Boy tomatoes...Farmer Dave gave me my first seedlings for this type of tomato and they were the best I ever tasted. Our below the soil tape watering system proved to be great for these, and we yielded a huge crop.

#3 Little Finger eggplant...crazy producer, I picked this variety up at the bi-annual Pepper & Tomato show at UC Fullerton's' Arboretum Sale last spring, and it's still giving us delicious eggplants about 4-5" and very tender.

#4 Fino Verde Basil...this was a type of basil I planted in our 14' basil bed. Beautiful mounds of small delicate and very fragrant basil, makes great pesto!

#5,6,& 7...Arugula, Mizuna, and Ruby Straw greens. These great "cut and come again" greens are wonderful for salads and side dishes. You can trim these down, and in a few weeks they'll re-grow. Also terrific when seeds are successively planted every two weeks for harvesting throughout the season.

#8 Pineapple heirloom tomatoes...big beautiful, reddish-yellow color and the flesh is like eating a peach!

#9 Poblano Chili...great roasted on hamburgers and long harvest season.

#10...De cicco broccoli...tender tasting and the leaves can be used in risotto and pasta.

So there you have it, my favorites for 2009. I'm very fortunate to have a community of fellow gardeners and friends to make this year one of growth (both in the garden and personally), and I am grateful for all of them.

I look forward to another successful year playing in the dirt!!

Cold Weather Hits So Cal

Temperatures dropped to the high 40s low 50s this week, down from 70s last week, causing chaos in my garden. I had to work quickly and cover my seedlings with frost blankets to keep them from going into shock. I lost half a bed of greens, the ones in the shade. If you can't afford the frost blankets, shredded newspaper, straw or good old fashioned burlap works to cover, insulate and keep the soil protected. My young broccoli plants took a beating from the wind and rain and fell over. I was able to stake most of them. With the ones that didn't make it, I harvested the leaves and Chef made a delicious broccoli risotto. The remainder went into the compost bin. The advantage of the raised beds and the biointensive gardening method is the healthy soil and good drainage, so my crops will withstand the weather.

Grubs

Eeeeuw! As I was turning over the soil in one of my raised beds to prepare it for planting cool season crops, I came across a fat white caterpillar type grub, with a red butt! My soil was full of the wriggling pests. After a little research, I discovered they were the larvae of the Japanese beetle – not a friend to my kitchen garden. I found them in three of my 14 raised beds. The same three that I had amended in early fall with compost purchased from a new source. They must have been in the compost. To rid my soil of these grubs, I mixed one part Ivory dish soap to 10 parts boiling hot water and poured it over the soil of the beds. The culprits squirmed up to the surface and I scooped them up and threw them away. Those that didn’t make it to the top, died in the soil. As I turned over my soil, I discarded the remaining grubs. I am so glad to be rid of them.

Biointensive Method of Gardening

My first job was to create a kitchen garden in a 30-by-50-feet plot of asphalt, adjacent to a popular Orange County Restaurant. We built 14 raised beds and used the biointensive gardening method to fill them with cut-and-come-again lettuces, lemon cucumbers, tomatoes, squash, radishes, melons, beets, herbs and more. Fresh, homegrown vegetables that are served in the restaurant. In each of the redwood beds, I dug down extra deep, loosening the soil to a depth of 24 inches. This aerates the soil, giving the roots plenty of space to grow straight down, improving water retention and allowing a healthy growth of microorganisms. Close spacing of plants increases the yield and creates a vibrant mini-ecosystem under the canopy of leaves. Companion planting attracts helpful insects and repels harmful ones, and planting items in rotation helps maintain soil health. We used a tape irrigation system, which is buried under the soil and delivers water directly to the root of each plant. I've been so pleased with the results.