Our Winter Vegetable Garden

Favas n' peas

It's a blessing and a curse to live in a year round growing climate. Winter here in Southern California is the most productive time for most vegetables. It also means that there's no time off for the gardener or the soil. In the interest of better note keeping, what follows is a list of what we're growing this winter in the vegetable garden. We'll do an update in the spring to let you know how things grew. For those of you in colder climates these would be "cool season" vegetables and it's never to early to start planning.

For just about the tenth season in a row we've sourced all of our seeds from two venerable Italian companies, Franchi and Larosa. Why? You get a ton of seeds in a package and they've always, without exception, germinated well and yielded beautiful vegetables most of which can't be found in even the fanciest restaurant in the US. Frankly, every time I try another seed source I'm disappointed. I also like Italian cooking with its emphasis on flavorful ingredients prepared simply--no fussy sauces or complicated recipes.

Salad Makings

First off an endive and escarole mix from Franchi Seeds recommended and sold to us by our friends at Winnetka Farms. Looking forward to this one.

"Cicoria Variegata di Castelfranco"
A  bitter and beautiful chicory, also recommended by our Winnetka pals along with:

"Lattuga Quattro Stagioni"
A butterhead type lettuce.

Arugula "Rucola da Orto" from Larosa seeds.
You can never plant enough arugula, in my opinion.

Greens

Rapini "Cima di Rapa Novantina"
I grow this every year. It's basically my favorite vegetable--much more flavorful and easier to grow than broccoli.

Spigariello broccoli.
A large plant resembling kale. You eat the leaves and flowers. Used in “Minestra Nera” or "Black Soup," which consists of this vegetable and cannelini beans. More info here.

Fava and bush peas
I've rotated in legumes in the bed we grew tomatoes in during the summer. The fava came from seeds saved by the Winnetka farm folks and from our own garden. The bush peas are "Progress #9" from Botanical Interests.

Chard "Bieta Verde da Taglio"
A tasty, thick leaved chard from Franchi seeds.

Dandelion greens, "Cicoria Selvatica da Campo"
A truly idiot proof vegetable. Bitter and easy to grow.

Parsnips "Prezzelmolo Berliner"
The first time I've ever tried to grow parsnips.

Radishes "Rapid Red 2 Sel. Sanova"
Mrs. Homegrown complains that I never plant radishes. This year I addressed that grievance.

Beets "Bietolo da Orto Egitto Migliorata"
A repeat from last year, these are tasty red beets.

Buck's horn plantain also known as "Erba Stella"
An edible weed.

Stinging nettles
One of my favorite plants. It's begun to reseed itself in the yard. Useful as a tea and a green.

For more information on when to plant vegetables in Southern California, see this handy chart. And let us know in the comments what you're growing or plan to grow during the cool season.

Beer Can Shingles

A neat idea via the Uncomsumption blog. Bricoleur Billy Robb took a bunch of beer cans, flattened them and ran them through a custom made die. The result: tiles for the roof of a chicken coop. It's reminiscent of Houston's renowned beer can house:

The Beer Can House

You can read Robb's beer can shingle directions on an Instructables.

Slaughtering Turkeys for Thanksgiving

A noble Royal Palm tom. This photo by Kevin Saff. The rest are ours.

This post is not for everyone, so we've concealed most of it behind the jump. This week we helped our friend, Steve, slaughter and dress four turkeys for Thanksgiving. There will be pictures, so those of you who are interested can get some idea of what the process involves.

Steve is an especially conscious carnivore, because he raises and slaughters all the meat he eats, and he does this in a small back yard in Los Angeles. This means he does not eat a whole lot of meat.

DIY Wall Mounted Wine Bottle Vases

These wine bottle wall vases (via Dude Craft) are proof that the interwebs occasionally echo with good ideas. A variation on the wine bottle tiki torches I linked to earlier, you can make the hangers with parts from the plumbing isle. See Design Sponge for instructions on the torch version. Having seen two houses catch on fire in our neighborhood this year, I'd recommend the flower vase.

Bagrada, The Bad News Bug

Homegrown Neighbor here:

I've been busy in the garden lately and one of the reasons I'm so busy is that I'm battling a new pest, the bagrada bug (Bagrada hilaris). This new pest made its way to the U.S. recently. It was first found in L.A. County in June 2008. So far in the United States it is only in Southern California and in parts of Arizona. If you live in a northern climate, hopefully you will be spared the spread of this heat loving pest.

I tend a garden in one of L.A.'s hottest microclimates. Even when the mercury is over 100, bagrada bugs seem to do just fine. And unfortunately they love a lot of our favorite garden vegetables such as broccoli, kale and cauliflower. The local nursery says they are destroying the allysum as well. In my garden they have been particularly devastating to an heirloom broccoli raab and some wild arugula. They also are munching the caper plants. Actually, they don't munch, rather they suck juices out of a plant.

The nymphs are small and resemble a ladybug. Mature bagradas are black with orange markings and look like a beetle. They are often seen in mating pairs. They reproduce quickly and lay their eggs in the soil. Apparently insecticidal soap can help control them but, because they are so new to the U.S., little is known about their ecology here.

I hope some natural predators show up on the scene soon!

I'm trying to control them with diatomaceous earth, soap sprays and organic insecticidal oils. But I'm being really careful about the soaps and oils to be mindful of the bees in my garden.

I think that one of the keys to being a good organic gardener is observation. So I've just been watching the bugs, trying to handpick them and wash them off. Diatomaceous earth doesn't affect the bees, so that is a good thing. It seems to help at least. But after a few days of no beetles, the population seems to explode again. When the populations get too big I've been spraying with neem. But I never spray near the flowers that the bees like the best. So it's quite a challenge, since the bees are all over. I've decided to try to spray only after dark now, when the bees have gone to bed.

UC Riverside Center for Invasive Species Research fact sheet on bagrada can be found here.

Mr. Homegrown here: I found one peer reviewed study related to Bagrada hilaris controls, which you can access here.  The study found that the most effective treatment is the systemic pesticide imidicloprid which, unfortunately, is also deadly to pollinating insects and is a substance I don't believe should be on the market. The study did show that starting plants at a cooler point in the season reduced heat loving bagrada bug numbers substantially. Confusingly, Bagrada hilaris is sometimes referred to as the "harlequin bug" which is also the popular name for a similar insect Murgantia histrionica.

Gift Suggestions, from the Other Half

Mrs. Homegrown here:

Of course Mr. Homegrown didn't ask me for input on "our" holiday gift guide. Not that I dispute his choices...but I do have some of my own.

These are the 4 most thought provoking books (in this topic area) I've read this year:

The first two are closely related, as they are about the horticultural practices of Native Americans in California. You might remember me writing about them earlier.  Apologies for the California bias:

Healing with Medicinal Plants of the West, by Celia Garcia and James D. Adams, Jr., Abedus Press, 2009

Co-authored by a Chumash healer and a USC pharmacology prof., both of whom write for Wilderness Way magazine. A fascinating resource documenting both historical uses and current scientific opinion on our native plants.

My post on it is here.





Tending the Wild: Native American Knowledge and the Management of California's Natural Resources by M. Kat Anderson, University of California Press, 2006

I'm still fascinated with this book's thesis: that California Indians actively managed the California landscape, shaping it into the verdant paradise that awed the first European settlers to arrive here. They were practicing food forestry in it's most advanced form, as well as wild life management.

This book also introduced me to a concept I'm also still trying to wrap my head around: the idea that plants need us as much as we need them. Our relationship is symbiotic.  Paradise isn't wild. Plants want to be tended, and they miss our hand. Seems these days we're either entirely ignoring them or micromanaging them--mandating monocultures and whatnot.  My original review here.

***

The second two suggestions are also related to one another, being about people who are passionate about DIY living. We've also talked about these on this blog. And yes, in the spirit of full disclosure, we know both authors and we're mentioned in both books. It doesn't make them any less inspirational for me.


Made by Hand: Searching for Meaning in a Throwaway World, by BoingBoing co-founder and Make Magazine editor in chief Mark Frauenfelder

A quote from Erik's review:  Made by Hand is not a how-to book it is, paradoxically, the most practical DIY book I've read in a long time. Why? Because it's all about facing that fear of failure, the single greatest obstacle to actually getting out there and doing things.

Radical Homemakers: Reclaiming Domesticity from Consumer Culture, by Shannon Hayes.

Despite some internet flapage, the movement she describes is not about putting women back into a state of servitude, or about forcing everybody to wear hair shirts for the sake of abstract, green ideals. I think she does a fine job of showing that homemakers encompass both genders, and that these ideals are neither abstract nor trendy. Radical homemakers work from a place of deep passion and resolve. It's not for everybody, but it's probably for more people than we think. If that makes any sense at all. A good discussion-starting sort of book.

Our original review.

Our Holiday Gift Suggestions

That dreaded holiday seasons is just around the corner. With unemployment still high we hope that many of you have negotiated a family gift truce to limit tedious shopping. Or perhaps you're making things to give away.

But if you still need to get a little something for that special homesteader on your shopping list, we've got a few suggestions from our Homegrown Evolution Amazon Store. Even if you just click through the store and buy something else, your purchases will help support this website with no additional cost to you. Here's a few suggestions from out list:

Edible Landscaping by Rosalind Creasy

Rosalind Creasy just came out with a completely rewritten version of her classic book Edible Landscaping. The book is full of dazzling photos, helpful design suggestions and a long plant list with detailed growing and harvesting directions. I've been carefully reviewing this book as we redesign our yard. Especially helpful has been Creasy's suggestion to draw a plan, to scale, and create lists of design ideas and problem areas. Going through this process helped me spot a few issues that I otherwise would have missed.

Haws Watering Can

 

The Haws Practican Plastic Watering Can – 6 Liters is the Cadillac of watering cans. I don't know how I survived without this thing. For starting seedlings, nothing compares to the gentle rain this sturdy, well made can produces. Yes, it costs a lot more that most watering cans, but it will last a lifetime and pay for itself in healthy seedlings.

REOTEMP Compost Thermometer

 

At a raffle we recently attended at the Huntington Gardens a gasp actually went up from the crowd when this item, the REOTEMP Backyard Compost Thermometer, came up. It's a handy tool to assess the health of your compost and judge when its time to turn. I use it all the time. 

The Urban Homestead by Kelly Coyne and Erik Knutzen

 

Then there's our book, The Urban Homestead Your Guide to Self-Sufficient Living in the Heart of the City, now in a revised edition.  Enough said.

The Complete Idiot's Guide to Beekeeping

If you'd like to get started in beekeeping there's only one book out there that I can recommend. The Complete Idiot's Guide to Beekeeping by Dean Stiglitz and Laurie Herboldsheimer. It's the only beekeeping book that advocates a completely natural, no-treatment method of beekeeping.

Perennial Vegetables by Eric Toensmeier

 

Perennial Vegetables: From Artichokes to Zuiki Taro, A Gardener's Guide to Over 100 Delicious and Easy to Grow Edibles  by Eric Toensmeier is the perfect gift for the permaculturalist on your list. With it you can design a food forest of hardy, easy to care for perennials that provide food, medicine and habitat for beneficial creatures.

Teaming with Microbes by Jeff Lowenfels and Wayne Lewis

 

When it comes to gardening, it's all about the soil. Teaming with Microbes: The Organic Gardener's Guide to the Soil Food Web, Revised Edition by Jeff Lowenfels and Wayne Lewis summarizes the pioneering work of Elaine Ingham who views soil not as an inert list of chemicals, but rather as a living "soil food web." You don't feed the soil, you feed the organisms that inhabit the soil that, in turn, form beneficial symbiotic relationships with plants.

The Modern Utopian

 

Our publisher, Process Media, has come out with a collection of writings from the 60s and 70s back to the land era, The Modern Utopian: Alternative Communities Then and Now. The book is a collection of first person accounts and underground journalism from the period. Some communities are still around, but most failed. This book takes you inside this turbulent era to show what worked and what didn't.

These books and garden items and many more are available in the Homegrown Evolution Amazon Store. Thanks for your support!

Behold the Western Electric 500

There's much to love about the Western Electric 500 telephone. It's easily serviceable and built like a tank. Why? When it was manufactured you didn't own your phone, the telephone company leased it to you. This relationship served as a powerful incentive to manufacture a device that would last. In the 90s I went through three or four cheap cordless phones that broke after a few months of service. I switched back to an old touch tone phone (a Western Electric 2500) that has served us well and doesn't put out potentially cancer causing radio frequency waves like cordless and cell phones do. My WE500, a thrift store purchase, sat around for years until I decided to fix a wiring flaw that silenced its bells.

The WE 500 should be the poster child for Mr. Jalopy's Owner's Manifesto as it adheres to all the tenets:  The case is easy to open, all connections are labeled and subassemblies dissemble with ease. Virtually all repairs can be done with a screwdriver. And phone companies, to this day, stick to backwards compatibility--you can still use a dial phone to make a call. Someone send a memo to Microsoft and Apple!

The WE500 does lack a few features. The dial doesn't work with phone trees (but who likes phone trees anyways?). The WE500 has no GPS capability. It's incompatible with apps from the iPhone store. Worst of all, you can't take it with you on trips to the market or hardware store. It must remain plugged into the wall.

On the other hand, Starbucks will never be able to use the WE500 to suggest nearby locations. When I'm at the hardware store, contemplating threaded fittings, nobody can reach me. And I'll not lose productivity with my WE500 since you can't use it to play games or "Google" things.

Lest this turn into an anti-technology rant, let me praise the wonders of the interwebs for providing the schematics and instructions I used to get the bells of my WE500 ringing again. And I like contemplating the possibility of pairing the WE500 with Google Voice all in the service of a blog about getting in touch with the natural world. After all, why get lost in a dialectical struggle between iPhone addicted hipsters and the Amish? As Ted Friedman puts it, "we are all - human, animal, machine, plant, stone, wind -- part of the same integrated circuit, inextricably enmeshed in multiple feedback loops."

Still, it's good to examine those loops critically, on occasion. I'm reaching a point where I can no longer deal with the volume of incoming emails and still have time to make and do things. I can remember the days before answering machines and call waiting. If you weren't home the caller would just have to try again another time. But you can't go back. At least I can still enjoy the electro-mechanical bells of the WE500.


The Western Electric 500 served from 1949 to 1984. The one I fixed was manufactured in 1961 and refurbished a decade later. Read more about the WE500 as well as excellent repair instructions for many different old phones here.

Oatmeal: It's Not Just for Breakfast Anymore

(we've really gotta get us a live-in food photographer)

Mrs. Homegrown Here:

Okay, this is one is a little weird.  I'll tell you right off that Erik won't eat this stuff (it just seems wrong to him), but I love it.

I'm exploring the world of savory oatmeal. I'm sure there are savory oatmeal recipes on the web, but I haven't looked because I'm enjoying working without a map.

What I'm doing right now is making oatmeal with seaweed in it, inspired by both my love of Japanese style breakfasts, and half remembered things about the Irish eating dulse in their porridge. I don't like sweet cereal, so this suits me fine in the morning--but I also like it for lunch or dinner.

What I do is start the oatmeal water boiling and toss in shreds of dried seaweed. I've been using roasted nori, the sushi sheets, and also the flavored nori strips, because that's all I have on hand. But there's a whole world of more interesting seaweeds to try--including dulse. Anyway, after I shred a lot nori in the water, I add a dash of tamari and a dash of soy sauce, then the oatmeal. And finally I stir in a big pat of butter. This doesn't jive with the Japanese thing so well, but I find butter just takes the whole thing up a notch in terms of savory, unctuous goodness.

I think this would be spectacular with a little salmon on top. And I'm going to move forward and try adding things like mushrooms, or cooking the oatmeal with stock.

Do any of you make savory oatmeal?

How to Process Carob

Before. Photo by Bill Wheelock.

Our neighborhood has an abundance of carob (Ceratonia siliqua) trees that, around this time of year, drop thousands of pounds of pods. Now many of us may have unpleasant associations with carob as a 1970s era chocolate substitute, but the tree has a long history in the Middle East, where it's used to make a tea, as a source of molasses, as a vegetable and as animal feed. The "locusts" that John the Baptist dined on were not insects but, instead, the pods of the carob tree.

After. Photo by Bill Wheelock.

In the Middle East carob has a reputation as a famine food. According to the carob article in Wikipedia the people of Malta ate carob pods and prickly pear fruit during WWII. How appropriate then that my neighbor Bill Wheelock, who just dehydrated a huge batch of my prickly pear fruit (and faced the thorny consequences), took on the onerous task of figuring out how to dry carob pods and process then into a powder using common kitchen appliances. He has authored a handy step by step guide on Instructables on how to process carob.

As a drought tolerant tree that produces hundreds of pounds of pods each year, Ceratonia siliqua definitely should be included in any food forestry plant list for of our Mediterranean climate. So if that quantitative easing thing doesn't work out, at lease we'll have the carob and prickly pear.

Parsley in a window...

...is a very good thing.

I remember to use it, and I use more of it. Parsley keeps well this way, too. This bunch lasted a week.

Back to the Ranch

Ranch photo from the Huntington's Ranch blog.

I've never had so much fun at a symposium as I did at the Huntington's urban agriculture blow-out this weekend. The two day event launched the Huntington's new experimental urban agricultural station known as the "Ranch" and featured a diverse bunch of speakers. The Ranch will provide much needed information on edible landscapes and food forestry, particularly for those of us in the southwest. Designed by Scott Kleinrock, the Ranch, with its combination of fruit trees, intensive vegetable plantings and California natives is already stunning--by next year it will be a paradise. The Ranch has a blog at http://huntingtonblogs.org/theranch/.

Some highlights from the symposium after the jump:

Skid Row Community Garden Gets SIPs

Novice gardeners + hot rooftop accessible only by many flights of stairs = perfect opportunity to use self irrigating pots.

Two master gardeners, Anne Hars and Maggie Lobl asked me to show them how to put together some SIPs (read more about what a SIP is here) for the Los Angeles Community Action Network, which works with homeless and low-income residents on skid row.  Hars, Lobl, myself and a bunch of folks from LACAN put together a few SIPs and planted vegetables on the LACAN rooftop. The plants are thriving in a space where previous attempts at container gardening met with mixed success.

Gardening, like all the ways we humans interact with our surroundings is all about context. If you've got soil, as I'm lucky to have, work with that first. But if you have only a sunny rooftop or balcony and/or limited gardening experience SIPs are a great tool. They almost guarantee success, which is encouraging for people who have never gardened before. 

Read Jeff Spurrier's article about the LACAN SIP garden in the LA Times, "Skid Row Community Garden: bounty by the bucket."

New Parkway Planting Rules for Los Angeles

Neatly mowed bermuda grass and weeds--no permit required!

The city of Los Angeles just announced new guidelines for parkway plantings that replace the old rules prohibiting anything other than turf and approved street trees. Now residents can plant ten different species of drought tolerant turf alternatives in addition to approved street trees and drought tolerant turf species. It sounds great . . . until you read the fine print.

Those drought tolerant turf alternatives, which include chamomile, yarrow and even strawberries, must be kept "mowed." If you want to grow any of these plants taller than 2 inches or ones not on the list you've got to submit drawings, apply for a permit and pay at least $400, possibly more. Ironically, the cover of the guidelines shows a picture of a mature yarrow plant of the sort you'd have to go through the permit process to grow under the new guidelines.

The bias towards turf and turf substitutes in the guidelines, according to the city, is to provide, "obstruction free pedestrian passage," and "an open line of sight between the street and abutting property." The reality, in my opinion, is that the guidelines are more about facilitating automobile convenience since pedestrians don't really need to use the parkway, it's really only for hopping out of your car. As for the security issues hinted at in the "open line of site" phrase, a recent study by the Forest Service confirmed that parkway plantings that obscure line of site can increase crime. So, in my opinion, it's perfectly reasonable for a city to discourage shrubby plantings in parkways as LA's new guidelines do. But why ask for a permit for the privilege of growing something between 2 and 36 inches other than the need to fill the city's nearly empty general fund?

If anything the city has it backwards. After all, I doubt many homeowners are going to get down on their knees with scissors to trim their turf alternatives. Instead it will be yet another chore for LA's legion of gas powered mow and blow "gardeners." Why not charge a permit and fees to have a lawn or lawn substitute and give a free pass to drought tolerant plants under 36 inches in height? Or, better yet, simply give a small property tax break to anyone who installs drought tolerant, plants that that provide habitat for beneficial wildlife. It's a program that might pay for itself in reduced storm water runoff, just to name one benefit. 

Another concern the city has is liability. If someone trips on a tall plant I've put planted in the parkway the city could be sued. It's a curious argument to make considering that Los Angeles has essentially given up on sidewalk maintenance. A landslide that closed a sidewalk on nearby Sunset Blvd has languished unrepaired for eight months. They've also given up on maintaining boulevard median strips--most are at least knee deep in weeds.

Alas, this is a typical policy move for Los Angeles. They jump on the bandwagon, but get all the details wrong.