Visitors Revisited

I want to revisit some of the many people who have visited our garden over the past year. I don't remember all of the names, and I didn't always remember to take pictures. Just please know that having the chance to meet you and the opportunity to share my experience with you has been a blessing in itself. Thanks. 




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LiPo Ching, San Jose Mercury News, Taking pictures for the 2012 Wishbook

Not really a visitor since this is their yard, but always a joy and a sense of hope!

Volunteers from Church of the Chimes on planting day 2012

Church of the Chimes.



Sophia and Master Gardener Karen.

The very first group of people to visit the garden before it was even planted. They installed the drip irrigation system in no time at all just because they could. The only name that I know is Yonara from Veggielution.



Sylvia Romero, myself and Malin Ramirez on delivery day, 2012.



Jay Pecot, photographer and really good digger.



Guadalupe Perez (and hummingbird)



Carolyn Kamaya, Master Gardner and mentor.



Laura, Sylvia, myself and Patty. Learning to preserve from Sylvia.



Red Tail (or Cooper's?) Hawk. I'm not an expert and he's not exactly a visitor as he rules the area, but isn't he amazing???



Anne read about our program in the SJ Mercury News Holiday Wishbook 2012 and came to see one of the gardens.



Anne and Dennis from the President's staff at Santa Clara University.



Hector and Tawna from La Mesa Verde, harvesting the peas.



Ladies from the San Jose Garden Club.

Gabriel Valle-University of Washington, Sociocultural Anthropology Phd program

Tim and Helen from AG Innovations

I know that this is Katie from the Health Trust on the left and Evelyn from Americorp (at the time) on the right.



Thanks to all of the people who took the time to visit our program and again I apologize if I forgot to take pictures or didn't remember your name. As always, it's a work in progress, and a joy.
 

San Jose Garden Club

 I had the pleasure of attending a meeting of the San Jose Garden Club(http://sanjosegardenclub.com/) last month with Malin Ramirez. They are supporters of the La Mesa Verde program and some members have visited my garden.This was an opportunity to share with the whole group what we've been doing and our vision going forward. We also took advantage of their knowledge and got their advice on amending the soil this season, where to get soil and compost in bulk and anything else we could think of while we had the chance! Thanks for the continued support!!

Saving Seeds

Saving seeds from the spring garden. I just dried them for a few months. Now that I'm sure that they are dry,  I'll put them away until later, although I think that I could plant the marigolds, lettuce and cilantro now. I also saved and dried grean beans, but I can't remember where!!!


Lettuce




Marigold




Morning Glory




Cilantro



Santa Clara University Visitors

Earlier in the season Anne and Dennis from the President's Staff at Santa Clara University came to visit a La Mesa Verde Garden. They are visiting programs in the area and ours was one of them!

It's Broccoli!

This is what I have been most excited about. How broccoli grows seemed like such a mystery, but there it is! I had thought that without all the leaves on the trees we would have much more sun in the winter, but I forgot that the sun is in a different position in the winter. (Forgot or never knew!) Let's just say the beds are sun-challenged. The broccoli was planted September 30 so it's been just about 4 months. It was under attack by cabbage worms at first. Once my gardening mentor, Carolyn Kameya, showed me how to spot and remove them, the plants have done well.

Cabbage Worm

First Snap Peas!

This is the first flower of the first snap peas this season. So pretty!

Unwelcome Garden Pests!

 Imported Cabbage Worm!! These are on the red cabbage, I also found them on the bottom of the broccoli leaves. You may have to look really hard to find them but if your leaves have holes and/or are chewed up, this is probably the problem. Look for the white moth/butterfly with a black dot on the wings in your garden and get rid of it and any of it's green velvet worms!

Cool Weather Crops-A Whole Different Garden!



Peas after one week.




Red Cabbage




Spinach

 The winter garden is a whole different experience from the spring garden, so far. There's a lot said about delayed gratification, but I guess cool weather means slower growth. That's ok, it's just different.

And...let's talk about pests. Slugs, birds,squirrels and clover. All have attacked and it's only been twenty-four days!

We've added an "overflow" area. In the few weeks before the winter planting we dug up an area by the fence and added in food scraps to prepare the soil for extra plants. It's flat, not like the raised beds. Evidently that's an open invitation to slugs. I tried beer in a shallow pan-didn't work. The next night I went out with a flashlight and picked them out-Gross! I have tons of oyster shells because I can't throw them out (hoarder?)so we added an oyster shell border, knowing that they don't like sharp edges. Can't really tell if that's working because they ate all of the lettuce and most of the chard in 3 nights. the next thing that I'm going to try is replanting the lettuce and bordering each plant with pennies, since they also don't like copper.

I can hardly wait for broccoli, cabbage and peas!!!

Ok my bird loving friends, please help me identify this gorgeous predator visiting (I hope he's just visiting) the garden. Hopefully he'll scare off the squirrels and not snack on my hummingbird friends!

Fall/Winter Crops

After 5 months it's time to plant the Winter Garden already. We planted the cool weather plants on Sunday, when it was like a million degrees outside. Here's a look at the new garden:

Doesn't look like much yet...but just wait!

Chard

I can hardly wait to see how broccoli grows.



Peas already look like fun!

The Final Harvest

September 29, 2012. The final harvest of the Spring/Summer Crop. Whoa! There is so much more than I expected. The plants really camouflage their fruit. The way the program is designed, the first year we follow the plan, just like it's given to us. (pretty much) So, the plan says to pull out the spring plants to make room for the cool weather plants. It was pretty much finished anyway but look at everything that we harvested!

Canning Workshop

One of the optional projects that graduating La Meza Verde familes chose was food preservation. So, last Friday Sylvia came down from San Francisco with her husband, Bill, and brought all the things that we needed.

Laura, Sylvia, Debbie, Patty



Laura, Dora, Sylvia

Sylvia, Dora and the stuff.

Sylvia, teaching as usual.

We had the workshop at my house. Because it's so close and  there's a stove it fit the criteria. Altogether there were 10 of us if you count the boys. That's the most people that I've had in my house in a long time.
I spent 3 days giving my dingy kitchen a much needed cleaning!!I had been nervous but by Friday AM it felt so good to have everything decluttered and clean. Luis pitched in and cleaned and painted(?) the bathroom and washed the outsides of the windows, even though it was his birthday.      
By the end we had made pickeled jalepenos with carrots and veggies, strawberry and blackberry jam. It was so much fun to cook with other people! Sylvia was awesome! I was inspired!         
Since then I've made a birthday cake with the strawberry jam in the middle, canned a jar of green beans, made zucchini parmesean and I might make biscuits tonight to go under the blackberry jam!

Malin, Debbie, Sylvia

My idea of canning involved bushels of fruit or veggies, steam, sweat and so much time. It never occured to me to just put up 1 or 2 jars at a time. What a concept. Thanks Ladies.