Lessons from the Garden: Broccoli

I hadn’t planned on growing broccoli until one of the local community gardens had a seedling sale. We stopped by for herbs; the broccoli was just a why-not addition. It’s growing like mad. Broccoli does well here.

Lessons from the Garden: Arugula

If I plant all of the arugula seeds they will all grow and flower before we can eat it all. This happened last year too. Which is why I had so many arugula seeds to plant.

Question of the Day: Are Tomatillos Tomatoes?

As the mother of a five-year-old who’s never gotten over her “why?” stage, I answer a lot of questions. I’ll start to occasionally post the more interesting ones here. I’ll always cite sources and make no guarantees that the answer is complete, or even, you know, right (though I will do my best).

No, though tomatillos are related to tomatoes. And I love them and the enchiladas verdes they make possible.

Ocassional Photo: Star Jasmine

I love the little star jasmine flowers and the way they smell. So when I realized the the big bush in the side yard was, in fact, star jasmine, I was ecstatic.

Ocassional Photo: Birds of Paradise

Still love the birds of paradise, people.

Gardening: Sage

Sage has purple flowers. I had no idea.

Occasional Photo: Rose

The family that owns the house we rent does an amazing job with the garden. I used the calla lilies for a previous occasional photo, today it’s the roses. They smell so damn good and the color is so rich. I love them.

Occasional Photo: Seedlings!

See the little green dots? Those are the arugula and radishes sprouting! Yay!

Occasional Photo: Birds of Paradise

I don’t care how gaudy they are, I still love them. Apologies for the poor photo quality, I couldn’t go into someone else’s yard just for a closer picture.

Occasional Photo: Palm Tree

The landlord for the new house does a fabulous job at maintaining the lawn / garden. There are a ton of flowers, not just the calla lilies. There’s also a palm tree. I kind of love the palm tree.

Occasional Photo: Flowers

There are a ton of calla lillies in the yard here in the new house. I like them.

Occasional Photo: Tulips

I freaking love tulips. In Seattle, April and May were always tulip season. However, Disneyland had a bunch blooming while we were there. Changes in latitude… I bought some this weekend, convinced that they’re in season for California.

Lessons from the Garden: Oranges

There is an orange tree in the corner of our backyard. It’s neglected. I never water it, I never prune it. I do like smelling the blossoms in the spring. Pruning, I’ve been told, is the key for citrus trees. If you trim the branches back, you get lots of flowers and therefore lots of fruit. Since we don’t do that, we have about three oranges. Maybe that’ll change once we own our own house. For now, we’ll live with it.

Occasional Photo: The Garden in Winter

A quick garden update: the succulents and some herbs are doing quite well in these rainy, short days.

Lessons from the Garden: Chives

Chives are tricky for me. I need more than I can grow in this little pot, but I use them so rarely that I never think about getting more. I’d really like them to spread more on their own – aren’t plants supposed to reproduce without my help? Maybe if I repot it… And buy a second plant.

Lessona from the Garden: Succulents

Succulents: they do well in the dry climate here. If I want to make them flower, I water them. (Power over nature!) I should get more of these to increase the number of plants in the backyard without increasing our water use.

Lessons from the Garden: Parsley

Parsley is easy to grow in containers in small amounts. The problem is that every other recipe calls for it, and small amounts don’t cut it. This is another one, like sage and onions, where the main lesson is: Plant More.

Lessons from the Garden: Rosemary

Rosemary grows everywhere, though better in some places than others. We bought a small plant in Seattle almost a decade ago that did well there, despite the fact that we almost ate all of it because of a brief obsession with rosemary focaccia bread. We put it in the back of our car and moved it to Atlanta with us, and it practically exploded it grew so fast. I don’t know how many times we repotted it, but one of the first things we did in our house was plant it in the yard.

Alas, professional movers won’t touch plants, so when we moved to San Jose we left it behind (along with all our other plants which included the Christmas ficus). We bought a new one when we got here and it’s lovely. It constantly has purple flowers and that’s never happened before. It smells good too.

Everyone should grow it.

Lessons from the Garden: Garlic

Crazy Cousin Eddie asked in the comment on the below post if I grew garlic too. Yes, yes I did. It failed quickly. I’d read that all you have to do to grow garlic is poke some holds in the soil and drop in a few cloves. (The garlic from the grocery store works fine for this.) I did that and it sprouted almost the next day. Unfortunately, I did it in a small pot – too small. There wasn’t enough room for it to grow, and the plants died.

It was too bad. We live in ideal garlic-growing conditions – garlic’s the whole reason that Gilroy was founded, as far as I can tell (a small town about 30 minutes south of here). Now that I’ve got some larger pots available, I’ll definitely try again.

Lessons from the Garden: Green Onions

The green onions did phenomenally well. They shared space with the lavendar in one pot and carrots (pictured below) in another. I would like more of them, onions are such a useful ingredient. Too bad we’ve eaten them all.