So, here’s what happened to the new garden beds we dug into the lawns on the suburban farm this year. Remember the front lawn garden beds? Well…we didn’t add much of anything after we dug up the sod. We purchased a couple of bags of compost at the store and tossed them in just for good measure. None of our homemade compost was added – nor any other soil amendments. The soil beneath the sod made my heirloom tomatoes look like crap, although they’re actually still producing – miserably.

Nope, no nematodes here.

Okay seriously, so what happened here? Well, I pulled up one of the tomato plants and took a look at the roots. I was looking for signs of nematodes. Since there were no nodules clinging evilly to the roots, I crossed a nematode problem off the list. My best guess is verticillium wilt. Which sucks, but there’s not way of knowing how it initially got there. Could have been brought in by one of the plants (I had only purchased 5 heirlooms – the other 21 I started myself) or it could have been in the soil. Whatever.

Now, these are some bitchin’ heirloom tomato plants…

This was a marvelous experiment because have you seen the pics from the back lawn garden beds that I started as compost sandwiches? AMAZING. (How thrilled was I since I recently told the whole world in my book to make these?) These tomato dudes grew to over 8 feet tall and were not amended with anything – nothing all season. I didn’t add more compost nor compost tea – nada.

Which was hard for me to resist since I knew if I had added the compost tea they would have grown even taller…but I was in experiment mode. So, I just watered them. Interesting, yes? This doesn’t mean that if you make compost sandwiches that you’ll never need fertilizer or amendments – it just means that it’s entirely possible that you won’t.

The Fairy Tale eggplant did just fine.

Back to the front garden bed. I did have some successes out there even if the tomatoes in that bed were an epic fail. The Fairy Tale eggplant is doing terrific. Not mind blowing – but nice. And I was quite pleased with my ‘Golden Midget Watermelon’, too. Don’t let your eyes deceive you when you look at the pic. These melons are ripe when they’re golden…they’re not dying on the vine or anything.

Totally happy with the ‘Golden Midget Watermelon’ out front.

I have to throw in a picture of the apples on my columnar apple trees – they look fab if you ask me. Columnar apple trees are a must on the suburban farm. They grow straight up and you can collect a dozen of them if you’d like.

Many thanks to Suburban Farmer who has graciously invited me to write this guest post to shamelessly promote a good thing: Common Ground’s 4th Annual Edible Landscaping Tour is coming up this Saturday, July 24th, 11AM to 4PM.

This self-guided tour of suburban gardens features ten homes in the Palo Alto area, plus the Common Ground demonstration garden. Last year, I was simply amazed at the creativity and variety of of the suburban gardens. It was a lot of fun to talk to the gardeners about their experiences and vision, and to gather ideas. Many homes also kept chickens, and some had beehives.

All used organic practices and composting, additionally, some had systems to recycle greywater for the garden. I was thrilled that all of this was going on in my area, I had no idea! I also really enjoyed showing our garden (our home was part of the tour) to visitors and telling them how our ideas evolved, and the special challenges we tried to design around (we have two large dogs).

The tour is $35 per person, but the proceeds go to Common Ground (a non-profit). If you haven’t been to their garden store in Palo Alto, here’s your chance! The store has a wide variety of products to support organic gardening, plus classes, books and their own newsletter. I particularly love the plant starts I find there- many unique heirloom varieties (seeds too).Participants will meet there first to pick up maps and a tour book. You can register in advance online, or on the day of the tour at the store.

More information can be found at:
The Common Ground website
and at my blog site where I tell our story (pictures too) of our garden transformation and our experience on the tour last year:
Urban Artichoke

And if you live in Mountain View and have (or are planning) an edible garden, please contact me through my blog. I’m looking for gardens in Mountain View for next year’s tour.

Urban Artichoke

Urban Artichoke’s edible front yard.

Urban Artichoke’s edible backyard.

Oh yeah, the clouds part for a day or two, but is it enough to keep me from whining about the fact that we might as well be carving pumpkins? No. I’m a California girl and I want my sun, dammit. (Call me childish or call me determined – it is what it is.)

Yesterday, I decided to shed my Grinch attitude and look for positive signs of the warm growing season to come. Embarrassingly enough, the signs were everywhere. I’ve now decided that things are moving along, if not a a rapid pace, they are moving along and I’m going to be okay with that – yes, I am. Because I’m saving up the rest of my complaining for July, when you know it’ll be too damned hot for me.

This is a ‘Black Krim’ tomato that’s clearly an over-achiever. While I was tickled to see this tiny fruit make its appearance, I thought it was little bit show off-ish if you ask me. This is May 17th.

And because I’m just smitten with the way this turned out; here’s the top of my hanging basket out front. The heirloom lettuces ‘Mervielle des Quatre’, ‘May Queen’, and ‘Petit Rouge’ are practically frolicking in this ——>

There’s even some baby apples on my columnar apple trees out front. The things that happen when you’re walking around bitching, right?

Husband-extraordinaire literally flipped the sod over (Thankfully, there was a chiweenie nearby to supervise).

No turning back now…

Getting closer to the planting stage.

Okay…so the neighbors have moved from suspicious to curious. At least I think that was curiosity I saw on their faces. Several days ago, We performed suburban blasphemy and dug a garden bed into the front lawn. This is going to be for real experiment because we just didn’t have the cash to bring in a bunch of great soil and we used our finished compost for the beds out back.

So, we simply flipped the sod upside down and gave it a few chop-chop-chops with the shovel (which isn’t nearly as sharp as it looks). We did buy a few bags of garden soil and a few bags of composted steer manure. But I promise you, it spread out across the top and added maybe 1 inch of good stuff. The heirloom tomatoes, watermelon, eggplant and runner beans will all have to gather the strength of their ancestral roots (sorry) and survive in basically the under-carriage of my sod.

Of course, I will certainly be amending them as the season wears on, but lets see if we can get an abundance of food with that yummy (*ahem*) soil that the land developer left us.

Addendum: I’m 100% sure that I’ll have to battle some sod that survives the chopping. However, lack of funds is lack of funds and I wanted my plants, dammit! (See my comments to Meghan below)