What I'm eReading...My Tiny Plot

My Tiny Plot is one of the many gardening blogs I have in my Google Reader subscriptions. I have now idea how I first discovered it, but I love the garden diary and excellent pictures. This is also one of the many UK blogs I follow. I am a bit of an Anglophile and the Brits just seem to be so passionate about their gardening it is hard not to like them.

"My Tiny Plot is the diary of a small vegetable patch in Bath, England. I’m all about growing vegetables and eating fresh produce. And more recently turning that produce into yummy and exciting baby meals!"

Related articles by Zemanta

• Concrete Bag Retaining Walls from Dirt du Jour (welchwrite.com)
• Review: TB57 Lithium Ion Battery Cordless String Trimmer / Weed Trimmer (welchwrite.com)
• Green beans from the garden picked today (welchwrite.com)
• Los Angeles Watering Restrictions (welchwrite.com)

Compost harvest and vegetable bed prep

My gardening task for the day was to empty out Composter #2 for the first time and then use that compost to prep the small bed outside the kitchen. Most of the finished compost from Composter #1 went into this bed last season, but I wanted to add some more before turning the ground and trying some shade tolerant vegetables in this spot. We tried tomatoes here last season, but there just isn't enough sun for something like that. I mentioned some shade tolerant veggies in a previous post here.



Composter #2 has more compost than I thought. I had opened the bottom door to check in it a few weeks ago, but it looked like it was still cooking. I needed to make some space in it for more kitchen scraps, though, so I started digging some from the thin layer at the bottom. I quickly found that the compost in the middle was completely ready and was hidden by a small covering of uncomposted leaves and such. I ended up with about 4 -5 cubic feet for the new bed. Cool!

I sifted this compost and then spread it on the new bed and used our new electric cultivator to give it all a good turn. The bed looks good and ready for us to do some shopping for seeds and transplants.

Related articles by Zemanta

• Family Time with Vegetable Gardening for Kids (backyardgardeningtips.com)
• Cheap, Healthy Food Through Vegetable Gardening Information (hbb2obm.com)

Time to find some shade vegetables

Image via Wikipedia

Although I didn't really believe it at first, there are some vegetables that will grow in part sun. I am going to head the the nursery this weekend and find some that will not only grow in the little bed outside the kitchen window, but also be something that we will actually eat.

I am a fussy eater, so that could be a challenge, but after doing a bit of research on the Net I find that kale, oregano (I know, a spice, not a vegetable), broccoli, cauliflower and a few others might do OK here. I plan on pulling out the little electric cultivator and perhaps working in some more of our homemade compost.

I also plan on putting in some salad mixes. According to some sites, growing this in partial shade, especially here in the hot San Fernando Valley might help to keep the lettuce from bolting as the days start to heat up.

This little project will help me complete a long list of to-do items so I am looking forward to it. Too often, I can come to dread various gardening projects, but this one holds a lot of interest for me.

Here is my list of things to accomplish fairly soon, if not this weekend:

• Visit nursery for transplants and seeds
• Empty mature compost from both compost bins
• Work compost into the bed using electric cultivator
• Plants seeds and transplants
• Adjust/fix soaker irrigation system to minimize leaks
  

Tomato vines are done

Image by pictoscribe via FlickrWell, the tomato vines are finally done. They have turned brown all the way to the top, so it is time to pull them out and see what else we can put there. The Fall is planting time here in LA, so I need to hit the nursery and get some ideas.

We didn't get many tomatoes from our 3 plants, but I suspected as much, as the location didn't seem to get enough direct sun during the day. The mature trees shade the house and garden quite a bit, so growing food stuffs is a little difficult.

Still, Rosanne really liked having fresh tomatoes around, so I will have to look for a better growing location for next year.