Category: local garden center

Taking care of your roots

~ Homo neanderthalensis ~ 2 Comments

Root vegetables that is!

Every other Tokyo market turnip is maggot eaten. But the two I’ve eaten so far have been safe. I’ve been tossing the duds. I suspect no matter how mild a San Francisco spring and summer are- turnips are a winter crop, if only because of the damn cabbage fly.

Lesson learned.

But happily cabbage fly ignores carrots and potatoes, my other root vegetable loves. (And beets, but that’s another post)

Anyways, I ripped out the last of the carrot bed today.

Most of the carrots left were certified messes, except for a few really nice Kuroda, that got a nice trip to the sink to clean them and are now living in the refrigerator til I eat them up.

Now the trick with growing carrots is that if you fertilize them too much or use anything with too much nitrogen, you’ll get great big bushy tops and not so great roots. And it’s carrots- the roots are the whole point. Enter- neem seed meal.

Specifically formulated as a fertilizer for root veggies, note the potatoes on the box, neem seed meal is great for helping your root veggies grow great without putting too much energy into the inedible parts.

Score one for my new job, I’d never heard of the stuff until I started working at Sloat.

And yes- it’s from the same plant that neem oil is from.

Kills bugs grows carrots, what can’t the neem tree do!

Also it smells amazing. Like- I should be putting this on steak before grilling it amazing.

Don’t eat this stuff.

But yeah it smells finger licking good.

ANYWAYS.

Kuroda carrots are wonderfully sweet, but their main advantage is that they handle hotter temps better than most carrots. Considering that these carrots will be maturing in late August, one of the hotter months in my fair city, I’ll take it.

I spaced my carrot seeds appropriately this time instead of willy-nilly.

Now it’s just a matter of keeping everything moist until they germinate.

Now onto the potatoes!

It is high time I filled up those bags with soil for maximum spud production.

I put a good fistful off the neem seed meal in each bag and then spent the better part of a half hour wrestling soil into bags that would rather not be filled. You have to cover as many of the lower leaves as possible because covered leaves equals more spuds.

And I love spuds.

Boom! Filled bags!

I watered the heck out of all of them, and hopefully the tops will grow more, and then I’ll fill the bags completely to the top and then by August/October I’ll have more potatoes then I know what to do with.

Here’s hoping!

Yerba Buena

~ Homo neanderthalensis ~ 3 Comments

So one of the perks of my job is getting to see all sorts of really interesting plants the days they come in. Because before I was only really at my local garden center every so often for soils and plants- I’m sure I missed plenty of really interesting things just because they’d all sold out before I could get to see them.

Here’s a good example.

This beautiful trailing mint is Yerba Buena. If you know anything about the history of my hometown, you’ll probably know that during the years of Spanish occupation- San Francisco’s name *was* Yerba Buena. The name only became San Francisco after the Mexican-American war.

Literally translated, Yerba Buena (there’s some real nomenclature confusion with this one, the scientific names are many- some say it’s in genus Satureja, others say Micromeria or Clinopodium. My plant label says Satureja but apparently molecular evidence says otherwise.) means “good herb”. When the Spanish missionaries first stumbled upon the area of land that would become San Francisco, they found this plant in abundance, a creeping perennial that grows all over Northern California.

To add to the nomenclature confusion- it is sometimes referred to as “Indian mint” which is a common name that can refer to many different plants. It was used as food and medicine by the indigenous Ohlone, and to this day makes a really nice tea that various herbal medicine types claim will cure your ills.

I don’t need a cure all- but I love mint and mint relatives, especially this glorious specimen. The smell is incredibly pleasant- minty but not like a sharp minty smell, more soft and… honestly it defies description. This is a plant which odds are will just not be available to you unless you live in Northern California, but I highly recommend it if you can find it. It likes shade and is a real creeper- cascading over a pot so delicately.

Can’t wait to try to make tea from it, can’t wait to see if I can propagate it from cuttings.

I love my new job!

The herbs await…

~ Homo neanderthalensis ~ 5 Comments

I knew getting a job at my local garden center would be dangerous. Here are 8 new herbs for the herbs beds waiting to be planted tomorrow. Of course working means less blog time, so my apologies for the upcoming lessened frequency of posts- but it is my dream job so…

Yeah not sorry. Can’t wait to put that borage in! Soon!

April planting part 1

~ Homo neanderthalensis ~ 3 Comments

Well almost April, as it’s March 31st. But it’s basically April, and it’s time for some planting.

But I’m exhausted- so it’s part 1 and tomorrow I’ll finish it up.

First off before I planted anything, hell, before I even went to the garden center, I mulched.

Here’s some mulch around the baby green beans, and there’s also fresh mulch around the baby zucchini and purple peas. Water retention- weed suppression- mulch is good.

Unfortunately I made the executive decision to kill the mystery mole pepper. It’s just a mess. It was falling over and has looked like death for weeks.

RIP pepper plant. I’ll get another pepper (or peppers…) later this year- I have the little lipstick pepper seedlings growing, though those won’t be ready for transplant til May or so.

I really wanted a 6 pack of haricot vert seedlings- that’s what I got last year and they’re great green pole beans, but for whatever reason they did not have them today.

They had… a lot else.

I’ll discuss the gigantic squash plant(s) and tomatoes tomorrow, along with the belle of the ball, a Marion blackberry- but it was also herb time. That’s what I had the energy to plant today- tomorrow is vegetable and fruit time.

Here’s my new chamomile. I’m a confirmed insomniac, so I drink a fair amount of teas and tisanes. Might as well grow my own.

I also got a few new curly leaf parsley, as my current ones seem to be going the way of the dodo. What I love is that the parsley types have such grand names. The type I tried to grow from seed was just “green moss” but the two plants I put in were “green river” and “Aphrodite”.

Aphrodite!

There’s my new “Aphrodite” parsley. You can see the sort of meh plants next door- the “green river is farther to the left.

My final herb was one I’ve always wanted to grow, not for culinary use per se, but because it smells good and can attract bees- and for its long long history.

This beautiful mint is pennyroyal. Pennyroyal is an ancient medical herb that in the days before modern medicine would have been a major part of the herbalists toolkit. It is also somewhat toxic. Not as much as other herbs- if I really wanted to eat some I’d probably be ok- but it can damage the liver. I like it as a sort of botanical momento mori- a reminder of how important some of these herbs were to our ancestors. And it’s flowers attract bees! So more bee food- and a nice smell. That works.

I’ve marked out where the veggies and fruit are going in tomorrow, but I’m so tired so that will be tomorrow’s task.

Soon.

Part two of new raised bed adventures

~ Homo neanderthalensis ~ 1 Comment

The day has arrived!

Soil has come!

Holy crap I am tired.

That is a huddle of twelve bags of soil. Boy howdy was that a trip. Never been happier my dad has a Subaru. Not sure how I’d have gotten it home otherwise. I got some… other things at the local garden center but they’re another post.

First step was lining the already cardboard lined beds with newspaper…

Second step was dirt. So much dirt. I added some worm casings in to help it absorb water- important since some of these beds will in a few weeks hold cucumbers and zucchini.

There are the other two new beds- being watched over by the plastic owl guardian.

I have so many seedlings growing so it’s nice that the space is finally here for growing.

I’ll grow more beans in the backs of two of these beds, zucchini in one, and cucumbers in another. It’s all a matter of staggering my growing so that I’ll have harvests all through summer and fall though, so I wouldn’t be surprised if a few of these beds are empty for a few months. At least I’ve gotten it done.

I am so tired.

Needed chervil, got a little excited

~ Homo neanderthalensis ~ 6 Comments

It was actually clear and sunny today! Clear, sunny, and FREEZING. So typical February weather for this neck of the woods. It looks like that’s the last of the rain for a bit, until maybe April.

Which for me meant it was time to take the bus to my local garden center! Well buses plural as you have to take two. Point is- it’s doable to hoof myself from my neck of the woods to their neck of the woods and pick up a chervil plant sans car.

I can’t get all the soil I need for the new beds yet- that’ll take the car. But it’s just a chervil plant! That’s not heavy!

Pictured: chervil. Chervil is a French herb, part of the group of herbs traditionally called “fines herbs” along with parsley, tarragon and chives. It’s ever so slightly anise-y and it’s a good time to plant it.

Of course the problem is… it’s never one plant.

It’s three plants! And three seed packets and… not pictured… one small pot.

It turns out I had a bunch of coupons from Sloat and it was a good time to use them. That’s my excuse and I’m sticking to it!

Yes I know I know I’m taking two buses home what was I thinking?

Well. Now that the mint thunderdome is over (Roman mint won) I wanted two good dedicated mint pots for my tea and for mint’s bug repelling qualities. So I got a lovely strawberry mint and a delightful pineapple mint.

So I managed to fit the seed packets inside the pot- and I balanced the plants in a cardboard box they gave me on top of the pot, all in my bag.

This was a fun ride home.

Eh exercise is good for you! Today was just an unexpected arm day.

Also there was a train dog.

Here he is- judging my life choices.

Don’t worry my fine canine friend- I’m doing that too.

Final haul which is living on my dryer until I can put things in the ground and in pots- it’s a really nice pot and it was really well priced and I needed something with a lip like that for sunflowers so I’m not apologizing at all.

The seeds were a surprise but a welcome one.

I’ve been thinking of putting in sunflowers for a while, mom tends to not be allergic to those and I’d like some color in the garden. What’s really nice about the packet I chose is they’re a pollen-less hybrid meant for florists. I don’t care too much about the need of florists, but no pollen means no sick mother! And while there’s no pollen there is nectar so the pollinators will be happy.

I also got a packet of that funny romanesco broccoli. It looks like a fractal and it tastes delicious and cabbages grow well here so eh why not.

And finally I got a packet of purple snap peas because I am a sucker for a purple vegetable.

I have absolutely no excuse for that one.

I apologize for nothing.

Now if you excuse me I have to put ice packs on my arms.

Ow.