Redwoods

One of the last redwood giants.

Picture from http://ngm.nationalgeographic.com/redwoods/gatefold-image

The redwoods are like home to me. I can't explain my connection in words really. We went to visit my grandparents in Trinidad, CA a few times a year, but those visits forged a lifelong, almost visceral connection to the forest and the ocean. According to the city of Trinidad's website, it's the smallest city in California - but it's precious to me and I think my cousins all share in that attachment. Trips to Trinidad allowed us to explore through Grandpa's Forest, to walk down to town on our our, to take hikes on Trinidad Head, to watch the stars at night with no street lights....

Grandma's house was special. There were the little tree frogs that lived in the stump out front, huckleberries growing wild just out the back door, and tons of places to wander.

This month's National Geographic has a beautiful feature story about the redwoods. Go read it.

I Will Soon Be Very Sick of Eating Tomatoes

Here at our housing complex run by Farm U, you can sign up to get a community garden plot. Since our existing outdoor space consists of (1) a concrete, fenced-in patio almost completely screened of sunlight; (2) a concrete patio that is regularly terrorized by the neighboring dogs (so much so, in fact, that we can't really use it at all - dog poo smells terrible); and (3) a small patch of land that I commandeered from our former neighbor that doesn't really belong to us, and which I already planted with sunflowers [Quick sunflower note: most of the sunflowers I planted in that spot died, since I waited too long to put them in the ground and they were all weak and falling over. I started some new sunflowers inside and planted those earlier. They are now flourishing], we jumped at the chance for a community spot.


After the-longest-winter-in-the-history-of-the-middle*, the weather finally calmed down right after Mother's day enough for us to go investigate our plot. We had asked for half a plot (about 8' x 16'), so were surprised when we were given a full plot (16' x 24'). We weren't sure what we were going to plant, but now we could plant even more of it.


Our first task was to put up a fence, since the rabbits around here are fruitful (and cotton-tailed cute) and deer live right next to our plot. After a trip to the local chain hardware store for supplies, we constructed a pretty sweet fence, using plastic stakes, wooden stakes, wood lathe, and 3-foot chicken wire. We're pretty confident that the fence will keep out rabbits, since we staked it down to the ground, but we're pretty sure the deer could just walk through it or jump it. We have some home remedy type ideas to keep them out, but we haven't done anything just yet - please let us know if you know of anything that might work.


After constructing the fence and raking out all the hay, we drove over to our local, actually local, plant nursery, which was super cool. We ended up buying a bunch of starts and seeds, most for about $1.50 each, some $1.50 for 3. That seemed cheap to me.


A couple days later, we got down to the plot, fence still standing, and put everything in the ground. We have lots of good stuff, too much of which to list, so here's the schematic we drew up after we planted:

(click on the picture to actually be able to read it)

And corresponding photo of the actual planted garden (looking southwest towards the big pumpkin):


Anyways, within 2 days of planting everything, we left town for a week to go to a wedding in Arizona. We were worried that everything would die from lack of water, but the opposite happened. It rained almost everyday we were gone, and now things are looking good. We already have some cayenne peppers that are maturing. The beans and peas are all coming up. The tomatoes look happy and we've had to pinch a few flowers already (although one of the Romas is dead, I think). The sunflowers are already ridiculously large. And that 'Big Pumpkin' - it's supposed to grow to 100-lbs. Only the watermelon doesn't look so happy right now. It's pretty exciting.

The only thing is that Kimberly left for Mexico today. She'll be there for 2 months, leaving me in charge of all garden matters, including pruning, weeding, eating, and (potentially) canning if the Romas decide to mature really fast. And as if to taunt me, we are having insane thunder storms right now, with the same predicted over the next few days. I'm a little worried that everything is going to drown now, rather than get killed by drought. This gardening thing is nerve wracking.

Anyways, I posted some pictures on Flickr and I will try to keep the blog updated as things progress. I also just got a call from a friend that he's been given permission to plant some stuff on a vacant lot near work, so I might put some more stuff in there, like more 100-lb pumpkins or huge watermelons. Because if there's anything I'll need, it's more produce.

*verified by real Midwesterner

An Open Call to our Former Plants

I was going to put my sunflowers in the ground this morning. Then I saw that the temp was 45 degrees at noon and that there was a chance of a frost and snow overnight, so I didn't. It's almost May.

In light of this delay, I started thinking of all the plants we had in Portland, but which we gave away right before we left: the hot-pepper plant, the strawberry pot full of succulents, all the spider plants and mother-in-law tongues, the aloe, the fig trees, the jades, etc.

I was wondering how all these plants are doing. I know some of the people that read this have some of them, so I'm looking for updates. I know one of the fig trees was planted in the ground, but is it still alive? Maybe bearing fruit? Did the succulents grow and multiply as fast as they did 2 winters ago? Is the pepper plant still alive, providing wonderful little hot peppers?

So let me know in the comments if you know how our plants are doing. The memories will get me past the snow tonight.

We'll Always Have Sunflowers

When I was a young lad, I attended catholic school. I was never rapped on the knuckles by any of the nuns. In fact, I never had the honor of being taught by a nun, like my brother (although I did have one teacher named Ms Love, who in retrospect, was definitely a 'christian hippie' who lived on an island commune in Vermont when she was younger).

[Here's a fun tangent: the school and church parish I attended, and also where I was baptized (I think) and first communion-ed, was one of the parishes closed and sold by the Massachusetts Catholic Diocese as part of the settlement in all those child abuse scandals a few years back. They sold the complex to the local Greek Orthodox church, who needed to move out of their beautiful 'National Register of Historic Places' church into a larger space. A guy I hung out with and his family was big into the Greek church and they were enlisted to help renovate the new church to make it more Greek Orthodox-like. As part of the renovation, they removed the catholic alter, which was made of solid marble. They were just going to throw it away, so my buddy took it home. It now resides in his home as a beautiful bar. I don't know if this is awesome or sacrilegious, but at the least, it is a fine example of re-using old materials.]

Before the school closed and I was forced to enter the hell that is the public education system (joking, where else could I have learned to swear like a pirate?), my brother and I used to walk to school everyday. I remember this one house always had sunflowers along the sidewalk. And not little sunflowers, but the gigantic ones that get like 10 feet tall with heads bigger than human torso. I always thought they were cool, thinking it must have been a huge undertaking to grow such massive cool things.

When I moved to Portland permanently, Kimberly and I found a nice little bungalow with a very supportive (read: easily convinced) landlord who let us do whatever we wanted with the yards. We decided we would grow some veggies, including tomatoes, tomatillos, and various types of peppers (one of which we were able to successfully keep alive over 3 winters and we subsequently gave away when we left: if you are the person who we gave the plant to (and I honestly don't remember who has it) and you happen to read this, let us know how it's doing. I miss those little hot peppers).

We also decided to grow sunflowers.

Now, at this point, let me explain: I'm a city boy. I had a grandfather who had a great garden, and a long line of family that were farmers in Italy and my mother, grandmother and uncle have amazing green thumbs (green hands really), but I grew up in a suburb. I was never involved in the planting of anything, nor was I particularly interested. So when we bought the sunflower seeds, I was convinced that there was ABSOLUTELY NO WAY that giant sunflowers were going to grow out of these little sunflowers seeds, which looked like the ones I used to chew and spit when I was in Little League. Boy, was I wrong.

That year, we had sunflowers that got to about 8-9 feet. The heads had to be at least 18 inches across. They were gigantic. We salted and roasted the seeds and had enough for the whole winter (actually, my friend/workmate Eugene ate them all while sitting in a cold room doing filing, but that's another story for another day). People walking with their kids would stop and walk up next to the plants, admiring them. It was like a mini-community center, where people would gather to talk about their day.

It was fun. So I decided we needed to do it again.

We bought seeds a few weeks back at our super-great local nursery. And again, I was not sure that these were the right seeds. How could a 8-10 foot plant grow out of these tiny things. Impossible.

Despite the terrible weather we are still having (apparently, we moved to the Middle just in time for the worst winter in memory) I decided that if there was any chance of getting 10 foot sunflowers, I needed to start the seeds. But not outside. Not until July, apparently.

About a week ago, I planted about 13 seeds in pots, and placed them in front of the window with the rest of our young plants. Then I sat down, sad that I needed to wait 5-15 days for them to sprout.

But the package was wrong. Only a couple days later, the sprouts, well, sprouted. And they won't stop growing. A couple have to be 2-3 inches already. I worry they will fall over, since they grow towards the light and are sometimes almost horizontal. When I rotate them, they straighten up and lean the other way within hours. It's amazing. If they keep growing at this rate, they'll be 10 feet tall by June.

But now I'm worried that the plants are going to get too big for their pots before the weather takes a permanent turn for the better. What do I do then? The root structure was pretty large before, so I don't think larger pots is the answer, unless I only want to do one or two.

Please, please, please weather, get better. Please. I mean really, it's almost Tax Day, we shouldn't be having snow storm warnings anymore. Please get nice.

Having a gigantic plant grow out of a seed that is about 1/4 inch big in only a few short months has to be one of the most satisfying things you can possibly do as a garden/plant activity. If/when we ever have kids, I am growing them every year, just to reinforce to them how cool plants are. I will grow them with my niece 1900 some time.

Anyways, here's a couple pictures of the sprouts in various states of growth.

Come on weather, help us out.