Gardening

Vegetable Gardening With Dogs

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Gardening, Tomatoes, Vegetable Gardening
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We love all dogs and live with an elderly Doberman Pincher. But gardening with dogs can definitely have its challenges, especially when your trusted companion has a taste for heirloom tomatoes. On the right, the aftermath of one of our dog’s nightly tomato raids, this time targeting our healthiest and most productive vine, a variety called Giant Syrian. The dog has managed to claim all but a few of the tomatoes off this vine, knocking off many unripe ones in the process. FYI, the Giant Syrian tomato is our favorite variety this year, producing large, flavorful and meaty fruit. Hopefully the Doberman will leave a few for us. [Update: an alert reader has pointed out that tomatoes are toxic to canines. The ASPCA says that the green parts are toxic, but others claim that both the ripe and unripe fruit are also a problem.]

On the subject of tomatoes, here’s a very beautiful and useful website with pictures and descriptions of many heirloom tomato and vegetable varieties: the Heirloom Vegetable Archive.

Ramshackled!

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Resources, Urban Farming
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We had the great pleasure this weekend of meeting the folks behind the paradoxically named blog Ramshackle Solid. Both of our “compounds” have a wonky old house sitting on an awkward hillside, so we had a lot to talk about and we look forward to visiting the Ramshackle casita one of these days. In the meantime, due to the wonders of the internets, we can all take a tour via the blog. Make sure to check out their whimsical rebar bean poles, pictured above, complete with instructions on how to make one.

In August, Way Too Much Squash

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Gardening, Mistakes, Vegetable Gardening
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On the left a zucchini. Do I need to say anything about zucchini? What to do with it, perhaps, since prodigiousness is the zucchini’s modus operandi, but that bottomless subject would be best left to the proprietor of a an all zucchini blog. Rather, let’s take a brief look at the specimen on the right.

Meet the awkwardly named Early Prolific Straightneck Summer Squash. It’s an open pollinated heirloom variety named as an “All-America Selection” in 1938 (AAS is kind of like a dog show for seeds run by the National Garden Bureau). We grew our EPS from Botanical Interests seeds we got at our local nusery.

Our EPS squash has lived up to its name, having grown rapidly, producing tasty summer squash with a zucchini-like flavor and consistency. Unfortunately, all squash that we have grown here has been subject to powdery mildew, a white fungus that spreads rapidly across the leaves of the plant. Our coastal climate, with hot days and cool, moist nights is not the optimal growing climate for squash, which prefer dryer conditions. We’re not big on spraying stuff (even if it’s harmless–we’re also cheap and lazy), so next summer season we’ll search out varieties resistant to mildew. For those of you who are also cursed by mildew, here’s a list from the University of New Hampshire Cooperative Extension (PDF) of mildew resistant squash and pumpkin varieties.

So now, dear readers, please tell us what the hell are you doing with all that squash you grew this summer . . .

The High Cost of Golf

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Lawns, Thoughtstylings
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Though I’m partial to my Xtracycle cargo bike, once in a while I’ll rent a pickup truck to haul some big items. Yesterday it was time to get a bunch of straw bales to use as bedding for the chickens. While driving by a public golf course on the way to the feed store, the windshield suddenly shattered startling me and my passenger, Ari of Islands of LA, who had come along to help out. Instictively, we ducked thinking that someone was shooting at us. Though my heart was racing, I soon realized the culprit: a errent golf ball sent hurdling over the fence by some anonymous, impossible to trace Tiger Woods wannabe. We circled back to the club house to file a report with the manager of the course and begin the long tedious process of settling the insurance claims.

So what does this have to do with urban homesteading? A lot. It’s time for another anti-golf rant. Here are my problems with golf (especially municipal golf courses):

1. The colossal mis-allocation of land. Wouldn’t a lot more people benefit from a large community garden instead of a golf course? Most people in Los Angeles and many other big cities live in apartments and don’t have any space to grow their own food. Meanwhile, waiting lists for plots in community gardens grow longer for lack of space. Most neighborhoods, of course, have no community garden at all. According to the City of Los Angeles’ 2006-07 budget, city run golf courses account for 1,500 acres of LA’s meager 8,520 acres of developed park land, meaning that 17% of park land is devoted to wealthy, middle-aged men with a taste for polo shirts and plaid pants.

2. Unfair subsidies. That errant ball came from a course owned, paid for and maintained by the City of Los Angeles. I’m sure the municipal courses bring in revenue (the city budget reports $18,000,000 from golf course use fees), but I doubt this offsets their costs (I was unable to find the cost of golf facilities in the same budget–coincidence?). I suspect we all pay for these city golf courses through our taxes. The city of Los Angeles operates the largest municipal golf course system in the United States according to the Mayor’s 2008-2009 budget. I love sports, participate in a few and believe that recreational facilities should be subsidized. But I also believe in a return on that investment. We should subsidize recreational facilities that encouraging physical activity, health and well being. Investing in initiatives and facilities that get people to exercise pay for themselves in the long run in reduced health care costs and a healthier, happier population. But is golf the kind of exercise we should subsidize? No way. Especially since on many courses, including some municipal courses in Los Angeles, players are required to drive a golf cart to speed play and increase the number of people who can use the course at any given time. I also believe in democracy. I say let’s put it to a vote: should the city fund golf courses or soccer fields? I suspect, in Los Angeles, soccer fields would win by a landslide.

3. Water. We’ve got a many year long draught here in the southwestern U.S. that shows no signs of letting up soon. Modest water rationing requirements are in effect, but that municipal golf course green I was forced to visit looked, well, very green. The amount of water used to irrigate the world’s golf courses could support 4.7 billion people at the U.N.’s daily minimum according to the Worldwatch Institute. Let’s not even get into the deleterious effect of herbicides. And while we’re on the topic of water I’ll point out that the two city running paths I use have no drinking fountains.

4. Golf kills. If I had been on my bike or going for a run I could have been killed by that ball. The supreme irony is that the stretch of road on which my rented pickup truck’s windshield was shattered is the same spot where the Department of Water and Power puts on a lame, drive-through Christmas light show that is, in effect, a city sponsored multi-month traffic jam. They ban bikes during this period because they say it isn’t safe. My friends Stephen and Enci have pointed out to our city officials that banning bikes on a city street is a violation of the state vehicle code that defines bicycles as vehicles. So far the light show, despite opposition from neighbors and the Sierra Club is poised to continue this winter. But I digress. Let’s just say that I’ll think twice before I ride down this street on a bike again, and it won’t be because of the light show.

The Griffith Park municipal course, from whence that windshield smashing golf ball originated, is the birthplace of the municipal golf course system in the U.S. It’s well past time for government subsidized golf to end. Let’s tear up those courses and go for a run, play some soccer, create wildlife habitat and plant some food.

A Grand Tour

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Resources, Urban Farming
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Say howdy to Wendy and Mikey, intrepid homesteaders from Truth or Consequences, New Mexico. Thanks to the wonders of internet video we can all see what they’ve been up to: a long list of activities that includes, papercrete, oyster mushroom cultivation, DIY drip irrigation, vegetable gardening, rainwater harvesting, dome building and more.


The Grand Tour from Mikey Sklar on Vimeo.

Wendy and Mickey blog about their activities at blog.holyscraphotsprings.com.

Here at Homegrown Evolution we’d like to start featuring more profiles of what you, our readers, have been up to. Please drop us a line, a link, a video or some photos–we’re interested in any effort, from the simple to the grand.