Merritt College Landscape Design

In addition to working in my garden, I have a few private garden clients and have been taking classes at Merritt College in their terrific Landscape Horticulture department. So far I'm in the Intro Landscape Design class, learning the software program SketchUp Pro, and taking Freehand Drawing for Landscape Designers (trying to learn how to create drawings that don't look like a 3rd grader did them...it's slow going :).

Here are some examples of what we do in class:

Fall is here!

We've had the very first (tiny) bit of rain and more is in the forecast. The weather changed in the last two days- it's much cooler during the day and mornings are damp. The summer annual flowers are almost done and the squash are curing in the garage. 

kabocha squash from ONE plant

tomatoes are still ripening

the apple tree produces delicious apples, but coddling moth is a problem

one of 4 "Long Island Cheese" squash

a few eggplant- now baked and in the freezer awaiting Eggplant Parm

peppers did well- Anaheim, Poblano, Jalepeno, and Banana

Summertime in the garden

What's happening in the garden? The two watermelons I planted in the front yard have barely grown. But this last-minute purchase of a kabocha squash at the Sebastapol farmers market has more than fulfilled my vision of squash plants running around the front yard. This is ONE plant! 

There are quite a few little kabocha squashes forming on the vine. I'm super excited- they are my favorite winter squash variety- so good in Thai-influenced coconut milk soup with shiitakes, green beans, ginger, lemongrass, and Thai basil.

The front yard flower bed is abuzz with bees and putting on quite a show for the neighborhood. I bought that Helianthus annuus at The Watershed Nursery. The zinnias are from seeds- not native but a flower that I love and have always wanted to grow. They suffered and died in all my attempts in foggy SF, but are absolutely the star of our sunny front yard this year!

20 July 2021

2 August 2021

13 July 2021

The backyard veggies are still producing. We have eaten a lot of beans- the yellow beans were especially productive and even when I thought the vines were done producing I still harvested another healthy portion. Cherry tomatoes have been going for a few weeks.

                                                    Sunday 1 August 2021

The larger tomatoes are starting to turn red! The peppers look fantastic and winter squashes are turning the warm tan of butternut squash and bright pumpkin orange.

I've also been able to get some new seeds started in the raised garden bed after struggling with cats using newly sown beds as litter boxes (yuck), finally resorting to chicken wire and sharp-side up skewers. Also, I was having trouble keeping the seeded areas damp since the veggies are watered with drip lines. My solution was to put in a few long 1/4" lines with no emitters and a 360* sprinkler stake on the end. It's worked perfectly! I can easily turn off the water on the sprinkler as needed by twisting it closed. Finally, the fall crops of carrots, beets, kale, green onions, and lettuce are sprouting.

 

Not everything has been easy- the aphids and cabbage white larvae have done a lot of damage to the Brassicas, and the Wisteria we (Juan Rapido) dug out this winter has root sprouted with a vengeance and is growing EVERYWHERE in the upper garden. Our winter project is clear- once the late summer crops of tomatoes, squash, and papers are done we'll be digging everything up and trying to find those roots.

The plants grow while you're not looking!

 Juan Rapido and I made a getaway to an even hotter part of California for 5 days and when I returned I was astonished to see that the winter squash vines are creeping under the orange tree and towards the edge of the upper terrace. They are huge! And there are a few squashes forming under those leaves, which is even more exciting. 

Meal planning has started to revolve around what's ready to eat and has included fava bean and mushroom risotto, Caldo Verde, Tahini dressed roasted squash and green beans over salad greens, and a tofu + shiitake stir-fry of carrots, green beans, and kohlrabi with Thai Basil pesto. 

Eggplant flower and tiny Chaterais melon

Native flowers in the garden

I'm so excited to plant wildflowers native to our area in the garden and plan to collect seeds from them to sow in the front yard this fall. Here are the flowers!

Baby blue eyes
Nemophila menziesii

Tidy Tips

California Buttercup

Gilia tricolor 

Veggie garden update-harvests and pests

lower raised bed on 4 May 2021

The first plantings have been harvested and I've turned over a few areas of the garden beds. We had a good crop of turnips, only to learn that Juan Rapido is not a fan of the turnip or the (I think, tasty) greens. The kohlrabi is doing well and has been incorporated into coleslaw, stir fry, pan-roasted veggies, and crudite. Also in the harvest basket: lettuce, dill, arugula, basil, cilantro, peas, kale, radishes, and a few strawberries plus Alstroemeria flowers which have been blooming since we arrived in November!

green cabbage white butterfly 
caterpillar & damage

The pea plants are looking a little wan and I think it's time to start more seeds. Lest you think that seasoned gardeners don't have their challenges: the neighbor's cats who use my newly seeded beds as a litter box, cabbage white butterfly larvae chewing their way through the Brassica patch, and aphids on the greens. I started checking the undersides of leaves several times a week to remove pests. I'm also getting used to how often and how much water the plants need- certainly more than in foggy San Francisco. In this year of serious drought, we are capturing water from sinks and showers inside the house as much as possible but I do still need to supplement with irrigation and hose water regularly.

It's exciting to watch the first zucchini, peppers, cabbage, and cauliflower emerging and it seems as if the melon vines grow overnight! I also thinned the swelling apples from the backyard tree leaving only 2 per spur. More than that will result in smaller fruit and be too heavy for the branches.

Garden planning and planting

I like to keep track of what's happening in the garden so I made a garden binder for myself. I can record what seeds I sow- variety, brand, age (both directly in-ground and in our 'greenhouse' aka Juan Rapido's sunny office window), where plants are in the garden, when I plant, when I harvest, etc. Data keeping over time aids future planning- if no seeds spout from a package after a few tries then those seeds are no longer viable; if I plant a variety of pepper that does well and we love, I want to remember for next year. I also created a multi-year garden journal- just a notebook with a page for every day of the year. When something notable happens, I make an entry for the year and jot it down- bud break on the apple tree, first daffodil, or tree planting.

Since I have nice new rectangular garden beds, I decided to try using the square-foot gardening method. In this, you divide your garden bed into square feet- either physically with string or lath, or conceptually (I used a sharpie on the top of the boards). Then into each square foot a specified number of crops can be planted. I made guides with cardboard to help with spacing. But you can get fancy and make yourself dibbles. For example, in one square foot, you can grow 4 lettuce, or 16 radishes, or 1 broccoli. I started by drawing a plan of the garden, assigning each location a zone number, downloading and printing some grids, and putting this all in my binder. Each 4'x4' or 4'x5' or 4'x6' part of the garden has a grid where I write the date and crop planted. I made a quick list of what I thought I'd want to grow, how many of each plant to plan for, and thought about spacing out harvests over time. How do you think about what to grow? Ex. We eat radishes. But they grow quickly and I don't need more than 5 or 6 a week. So every two weeks I plant a square foot of radish seeds (16). We eat one cauliflower/ Romanesco/ cabbage a week so I planted the new 4x4 raised bed with the first round of Brassicas and I'm saving the middle section of the 4x12 bed for the next round. Those seeds just sprouted this weekend! Having a grid and a plan means I can think about what will go where before I even start sowing seeds.

I also watched the sun/ shade move around the garden before starting. The shady area under the Ceanothus is reserved for leafy greens that don't like too much heat. This past weekend we picked up our plant order from the UC Cooperative Extension Master Gardeners of Alameda County and filled in what they didn't have from Western Garden Nursery in Pleasanton. Sunday was spent adding Sure Start organic fertilizer, plant supports (cages, stakes), and planting the summer crops, mostly in the upper beds. Living somewhere with sun and heat for the first time in 23 years I'm excited to try a few tomato varieties, peppers, melons, winter squash, and eggplant!

At this point, most of the garden has been planted and we've already had two salads of radish, lettuce, & arugula. The next project will be to finish extending the irrigation system to the new beds.

Crop list

Burbank Tomato

Sungold Cherry Tomato

Purple Cherokee Tomato

Sugar baby Watermelon

Sun and Moon Watermelon

Jaune de Canari Melon

Charentais Melon

Black Beaty Summer Squash

Long Island Cheese Winter Squash

Koginut Winter Squash

DiCicco Broccoli 

Snowball Cauliflower

Romanesco

Early Jersey Wakefield Cabbage 

Green Beans (variety)

Jalapeno Chili Pepper

Anaheim Chili Pepper

Sweet Banana Pepper

Poblano Pepper "Hot Caballero Red"

Fava beans 

Marketmore Cucumber

Tendergreen Cucumber

Sumter Cucumber

Black Beauty Eggplant

Oregon Sugar Pod peas

Kohlrabi

Blue Vates Kale

Lacinato Kale

Red onion

Hardneck garlic

Purple Top Turnips

Red Beets

Bloomsdale Spinach

Mustard Greens

Basil, Italian Genovese

Basil, Thai

Radicchio

Butter lettuce

White bunching onion

Cilantro

Arugula

Dill

Early Scarlet Globe Radish

French Breakfast Radish