tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-79634644936512862512024-02-19T06:59:53.734-08:00Our Organic Urban GardenStories from our "Little House in the City". Follow a couple of novice gardners & their kids as we attempt to grow all our own veggies. Bake Our Own Bread. Compost. Seriously consider Getting A Goat & a Couple of Chickens. And maybe start a CSA.samanthahttp://www.blogger.com/profile/11566989970139614530noreply@blogger.comBlogger22125tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-7963464493651286251.post-16188192999126181792012-01-28T13:14:00.001-08:002012-01-28T13:14:19.009-08:00Yummy Kale Chips See the full gallery on Posterous I'm addicted! This is such an easy snack to prepare. And for someone who loves salty, crunchy snacks...satisfying!Take a whole bunch of Kale and tear it into bite size chunks. Remember that it will shrink when it cooks. Some people like to devein it but I love the veins.Grab a giant ziploc bag and fill it about two-thirds full with Kale. Add 2 - 4 tbsps samanthahttp://www.blogger.com/profile/11566989970139614530noreply@blogger.com0tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-7963464493651286251.post-80849698008918336132011-07-16T17:38:00.000-07:002011-07-16T18:18:13.000-07:00Sun-Drying TomatoesWe're drowning in tomatoes! It's that awesome, frantic moment when they all come in at once. If we were slightly better planners we'd stagger the planting times of our plants so they didn't all come in at once...but we're not!
We planted twelve different varieties of tomatoes this year. One of them is Principe Borghese, the traditional Italian tomato for sun-drying. We samanthahttp://www.blogger.com/profile/11566989970139614530noreply@blogger.com0Los Angeles, CA, USA34.0522342 -118.243684933.7354072 -118.50012840000001 34.369061200000004 -117.9872414tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-7963464493651286251.post-31769958422524927622011-04-11T11:19:00.001-07:002011-04-11T11:19:56.698-07:00Neighborhood Food ShareA quick post -- I was talking with a neighbor the other day about starting a bi-weekly fruit & veggie swap in our neighborhood. I've noticed the abundance of beautiful fruit on trees around the neighborhood that goes mostly uneaten. In trying to figure out how to organize it, I came across this article by Judith Gerber (@LAfarmgirl) on twitter. It's loaded with samanthahttp://www.blogger.com/profile/11566989970139614530noreply@blogger.com0tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-7963464493651286251.post-76552307067326935372010-06-14T12:22:00.000-07:002010-06-14T12:22:37.952-07:00a little braggingAte the first tomato (an Early Girl) and the first radish from the garden. Both thinly sliced & lightly salted. Used the peppery radish as the "bread" and the tomato as the filling. Yummmmmmy.samanthahttp://www.blogger.com/profile/11566989970139614530noreply@blogger.com0tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-7963464493651286251.post-26034678422511054922010-06-08T16:12:00.000-07:002010-06-08T16:12:26.912-07:00Spring CleaningAfter years of reading Real Simple Magazine's handy tips about organizing, scanning books about clutter, and watching TV shows like Clean House -- we've finally stopped philosophizing and taken action! The first step was a garage sale in May followed by a small Good Will donation. But the BIGGEST step (for us anyway) is addressing our enormous CD collection.
It started with an samanthahttp://www.blogger.com/profile/11566989970139614530noreply@blogger.com0tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-7963464493651286251.post-87070753043894364052010-04-07T15:08:00.000-07:002010-04-07T15:08:25.564-07:00The Tomatoes Are In!And with any luck at all we'll have our first harvest in June! This is our second attempt to create a summer garden that we can (hopefully) live on. We did LOTS of off-season research and I placed a special emphasis on tomatoes...because I love them so much.
I'll tell you about the other stuff we've got cooking later. For now, here are some things I learned in the samanthahttp://www.blogger.com/profile/11566989970139614530noreply@blogger.com0tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-7963464493651286251.post-2289737202215585992010-02-17T06:19:00.001-08:002010-02-17T06:39:42.586-08:00tomatoes!I was browsing garden websites this morning and discovered it's tomato time in Southern California!! As I clicked around from site to site I learned our last frost was 2/11 which means we can put our tomatoes in the ground! So if your favorite spring / summer harvest is the tomato I'll share with you the best guide I've found for all things tomato. My favorite starting place for garden samanthahttp://www.blogger.com/profile/11566989970139614530noreply@blogger.com0tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-7963464493651286251.post-20249603419182759722010-02-15T16:16:00.000-08:002010-02-15T17:22:26.255-08:00The Big Bust of Fall 2009Just because we haven't posted doesn't mean we haven't been gardening.The Fall 2009 garden was a bit of a bust. The area that produced such a prolific spring / summer garden last year seems to completely suck as a home for a fall /winter garden. As you can see in the photo nothing really took off. It all kind of got halfway there. The seeds for the beets & turnips were sooooo slow samanthahttp://www.blogger.com/profile/11566989970139614530noreply@blogger.com0tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-7963464493651286251.post-87620927718846593372009-09-12T12:34:00.000-07:002009-09-12T12:45:56.794-07:00Launching the Fall GardenWe've mostly neglected the garden for the last month. The most attention we've paid to our little plot has been to eat everything it harvests and battle unsuccessfully with those danged sow bugs that are ravaging the squash plants. While we've managed to harvest 10 or so squash (a first for us) our track record of being able to kill squash plants remains. We lost 4 seemingly healthy plants, samanthahttp://www.blogger.com/profile/11566989970139614530noreply@blogger.com1tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-7963464493651286251.post-68006915703576021902009-08-11T16:05:00.000-07:002009-08-11T16:15:58.662-07:00Salad Greens - This Weekend's ProjectI was browsing through the current issue of Sunset Magazine this morning over coffee and came across a gorgeous picture of a small but prodigious salad garden (above). It inspired me. This weekend, I'm going to use the create the perfect little raised bed in the front yard for our salad greens. And I'm even going to use our first batch of homemade compost!Everything I've been reading samanthahttp://www.blogger.com/profile/11566989970139614530noreply@blogger.com0tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-7963464493651286251.post-69298964875561625732009-08-04T11:16:00.001-07:002009-08-04T11:56:22.429-07:00What to Compost?I came across an article on PlanetGreen.Discovery.com called "75 Things You Can Compost, But Thought You Couldn't". It's a fantastic list. Here are some of the things I didn't know about (and there are alot of them!):FROM THE KITCHEN:Used paper napkinsPizza boxes, ripped into smaller piecesPaper bags, either ripped or balled upPaper towel rollsUsed paper plates (as long as they don't have a samanthahttp://www.blogger.com/profile/11566989970139614530noreply@blogger.com0tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-7963464493651286251.post-41814349146905445782009-08-03T16:30:00.000-07:002009-08-03T16:46:33.083-07:00Pill Bugs - An Update on the WarIn an earlier post I talked about our pill bug/ sow bug / rollie-pollie / Charlie bug problem and how to get rid of them without using chemicals. Nearly two months later we are (obviously) through the seedling phase and still at battle with these little buggers. We have managed to find an equitable balance. Or at least I think so. They get to have a squash or two every few weeks and Isamanthahttp://www.blogger.com/profile/11566989970139614530noreply@blogger.com0tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-7963464493651286251.post-68481913183941189332009-07-28T20:44:00.000-07:002009-07-28T21:48:17.218-07:00The Tomatillo - This Year's Great LoveWe rarely plant the same tomatoes every year. Despite our promises to ourselves at the end of summer that we will seek out the variety we relished from that year's harvest, by the following Spring we can barely remember our names let alone the tomato we so treasured months before. Every Spring there is an event here in Los Angeles called "Tomato Mania" - it is the Disneyland of tomatoes! There samanthahttp://www.blogger.com/profile/11566989970139614530noreply@blogger.com0tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-7963464493651286251.post-71121313872212340912009-06-10T01:45:00.001-07:002009-08-03T16:30:18.283-07:00How To Get Rid Of Pill Bugs - The ResearchOur beautiful raised bed garden has turned into a sea of potato bugs / pill bugs / charlie bugs / rollly-pollies / sow bugs. See that beautiful photo of my beans? They ate that entire row of young bean plants in a night and then started on an Early Prolific Squash. I have never seen these docile cute little bugs swarm before. They are voracious.Where did they come from? While we certainly Our-Organic-Urban-Gardenhttp://www.blogger.com/profile/02243943038642699412noreply@blogger.com18tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-7963464493651286251.post-28542928014436468172009-06-08T12:31:00.000-07:002009-06-08T12:37:05.162-07:00Using Gray WaterCalifornia is in the midst of a horrible drought and so we've begun using the gray water from the girls' bath to water the garden and lawn. So far, it hasn't killed anything (they use small amounts of soap) and it's fun for us. I suspect our neighbors think we have some serious plumbing problems as they watch the four of us hauling buckets of water out the front door and dump them on the lawn.samanthahttp://www.blogger.com/profile/11566989970139614530noreply@blogger.com0tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-7963464493651286251.post-15956655612239925752009-05-11T14:21:00.000-07:002009-05-15T10:59:52.938-07:00Community Gardens In Our Front YardThere's an interesting article in the Los Angeles Times Food section about a budding network of community gardens. This makes us very happy. In our dream of what it means to grow enough organic veggies and fruit to sustain our family, we realize we will likely need to expand our 14 x 7 foot garden and/or establish some sort of trade network with other gardeners. It appears as though samanthahttp://www.blogger.com/profile/11566989970139614530noreply@blogger.com0tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-7963464493651286251.post-45917085574074463452009-05-08T15:49:00.000-07:002009-05-08T21:25:26.193-07:00Composting: It's a Process Our composting has begun but, I must say, it's not the magical experience I've been reading about on blogs.a) it does smellb) we have LOTS of fliesI am now realizing that all of the blogging about how great composting is...the nature of it all...reminds me of what we read about breast-feeding. "Oh, the intense bond", "it's natural", "it's healthy", "it's so easy"... Breast-feeding was certainly samanthahttp://www.blogger.com/profile/11566989970139614530noreply@blogger.com1tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-7963464493651286251.post-89550359850105315782009-05-01T13:58:00.000-07:002009-05-15T15:23:11.000-07:00Well, If Google Does It...We've had pretty heated debate about the usefulness of Twitter in our house. But I found this little nugget today, under the hot top GOOGLE RENTS GOATS. I mean, if Google does it perhaps we should consider the goat. The Kids are sold on and it would be pretty great to see Monica milk the thing...samanthahttp://www.blogger.com/profile/11566989970139614530noreply@blogger.com0tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-7963464493651286251.post-39451061088732395782009-04-24T21:13:00.001-07:002009-05-15T15:02:08.652-07:00The Map of Our GardenHere's the "plans" for our garden. I'm pretty sure they're indecipherable to anyone but us. What's fantastic about this document (to me, anyway) is how functional it was. We played with a few different shapes for the garden and ultimately settled on this E-shape. We put the veggie plants where it seemed logical. We did some research in the incredibly helpful book "The Gardener's A-Z Guide toOur-Organic-Urban-Gardenhttp://www.blogger.com/profile/02243943038642699412noreply@blogger.com0tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-7963464493651286251.post-90442796391711451652009-04-24T11:40:00.000-07:002009-04-24T20:45:28.935-07:00Compost: The BeginningTHIS AREA WILL SOON BE HOME TO OUR COMPOST PILE!!!We're joining the movement!For the last two years, everyone we know has bragged and sometimes griped about their compost. We've watched as friends worked their way through two or three different compost bins, talked about the joys of "tea", and swore up one side and down the other that "compost doesn't smell". (BTW, we still don't believe that).Our-Organic-Urban-Gardenhttp://www.blogger.com/profile/02243943038642699412noreply@blogger.com0tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-7963464493651286251.post-29885270557713525262009-04-22T20:52:00.000-07:002009-04-24T20:27:43.524-07:00Lizard's Claw Fungus!!The recent heatwave - two days of nearly 100 degrees - gave rise to a weird fungus!!! It sprouted up like a healthy plant. Monica got in there, dug it up and it turns out it's a stinky fungus from New Zealand called Lizard's Claw!! What in the world?!?!We're guessing it came from the "organic compost" I bought. That does it! Only our own compost from now on! I hope this doesn't infest our whole Our-Organic-Urban-Gardenhttp://www.blogger.com/profile/02243943038642699412noreply@blogger.com0tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-7963464493651286251.post-63569754028331906402009-04-15T17:43:00.001-07:002009-04-24T21:10:01.904-07:00Our Garden's DesignWe created a 14 x 7 foot raised bed garden in a mostly sunny spot at the back of our yard. We created the raised bed out of cinder blocks that we bought at Home Depot. I price shopped and, with lots of encouragement from Monica, even tried to go the free Craig's List route but ultimately spending around $36 at the Home Depot ended up being the easiest and most econmical route. We decided to use samanthahttp://www.blogger.com/profile/11566989970139614530noreply@blogger.com0