2024 Garden

Adventures in an Urban Kitchen Garden

Notes

Vegetables

A journal of sorts

2023

		October & November
		December

Journal

October 8, 2023

Ten years of deferred yard work. It was much worse on the
morning of October 7th, but I spent a day hacking at the vines and
some other preliminary stuff. It was pretty awful; too awful to document.
This photo below is a radical improvement on what was !!

The side yard heading towards the back.

The area I call the 'Annex'. Space I picked up because
the neighbor's house was encroaching 16" into my
property the full depth of the lot and this space made me whole.

This is the area behind the kitchen. This is what you see when you
get to the corner of the kitchen after coming down the side.
The annex is to the left of this area. Some of the initial hacking
of the vines is on the ground. The vines were good for privacy but
I will need every ounce of sunlight I can get with condos behind and
next to me blocking the sun.

This is the view from behind the kitchen. That's the corner
of the laundry room. The main part of the back yard is
where that blue plastic container is.

I don't have a photo of the main part of the backyard, which
is located west of the bedroom and bathroom, and directly
in back of the garage. It was the worst part of the property
mostly because being totally out of sight, it was entirely
out of mind. The only window in the bedroom looks out
over where those terra cotta pots are.

November 4, 2023

It took almost a month to get here, but this is the main part
of the backyard after I got most of it organized. It's still awful.
Please note the firewood behind the rusted kitchen cabinet.

The trashcan is full of weeds and stuff. Before I was finished
I had filled the equivalent of 100 garbage cans with leaves,
branches and weeds.

November 5, 2023

The annex is starting to take shape.

As is the area behind the kitchen and laundry room.

November 6, 2023

It's an old house. About 100 years old. I find it hard to
justify spending thousands and thousands of dollars to
pay someone to paint it and I'm way too lazy; besides,
I kind of like the way it looks. This will be "Tomato Row"
eventually. Just for reference, this is what this part of
the yard looked like 12 years ago (the last time
I had a garden):

4342

I had been working on trimming trees for weeks by this
point. Piles twice the size of this blockedmy
garage every week for four weeks. By Thursday morning
(trash collection day) I could barely get through my gate.
These piles were in addition to the green and blue cans
full. I used my neighbors and mine; putting out at least 8
cans a week plus the piles !!!

This was the reason why:

Bear in mind, this picture was shot in 2021. The trees had
grown considerably by two years later... This horrible job
entailed getting a full panapoly of tree-trimming
gear and getting to work. I will state for the record that
Jameson pruning saws are great.

November 12, 2023

Three old cedar beds (2 are 3x6, one is 4x8) filling up
with home-made planting soil. Behind them are my ancient
containers with their galvanized inserts protecting the
soil within from varmints. I have bridged them with yet
another raised bed using some of the many bricks I have
been schlepping around with me for decades.

November 13, 2023

The crack.

Another view.

After the demolition.

After the concrete was gone only the roots remained.

After removing all of the debris.

Note the firewood I created out of the fallen ficus tree
on the left side of the yard.

There was a section of concrete about 10' x 10' behind the bedroom
wall which was raised up about 6 inches from the roots of the
60' ficus tree which had fallen in a windstorm many years ago.
It was clearly time for the concrete to go. And it went.
I still had the problem of what to do with the firewood, which
had more or less rotted away over the last 10 years or so.

November 19, 2023

A hole in the ground where the concrete used to be.

A solution to the firewood problem. I would bury it under another raised bed where it would eventually decompose, like Mozart in his grave.

A beautiful 3' x 6' cedar raised bed has appeared, coffin-like, to enclose the old firewood.

More soil has been created, and in about $80 there will be enough to fill in this box.
I am pleased with the solution to the question of what to do with all that mangy old firewood. This is the ficus wood we're talking about, not the 20+ year old pine firewood that was hiding in the firewood rack in the photo from November 13th .

Yes... the firewood problem I am starting
to realize that I could dig to China and still
not be able to bury it all.

Also, an occasional, but persistent, rodent problem was annoying
the shit out of me, so I decided to try something fun for a change.
I invested in a swimming pool of sorts, with a cunning diving board.

The idea was, the rat would climb the stairway to the
heavenly recreation area, step on the diving board
(drawn by the intoxicating aroma of peanut butter which
was speared at the back of the yellow point) and have
itself a lovely swim. The problem was that it seemed
to prefer the plastic.

November 20, 2023

The annex continues to improve as the organization method comes into play. There's madness in that method.

I had some yellow benches. I thought they might go here. As usual, I thought wrong.

This is where the bbq station will be; mostly because it realy can't go anywhere else. The big plastic thing, which is purportedly a storage unit for rolled-up ephemera is full of mesquite and pecan chunks for the bbq.

The fucking rat came back for another meal. He's really starting to piss me off.

November 22, 2023

Firewood problem solved:

"Free firewood!" in Craig's List and dudes with firepits
couldn't believe their luck. Me either.

Signalling virtue like all get out; I have three, yes, three
compost bins. One needs a lot of mulch when one plans to disguise
all that concrete that wasn't dragged away with softness under their feet.

And lastly, for now, I figured out a way to keep that fucking
rat away from the plastic:

Clad in aluminum; that ought to do the trick.

November 23, 2023

I won't hide my shame. When I spent many hours moving
the pine firewood from the backyard to where it was possible
I might actually burn it instead of ignoring it (out of sight,
out of mind, remember?) and breaking down the rack I had built
more than 20 years ago I found a nice big opening behind the
firewood where the little shits had been situated. It looked like this:

Also, my neighbor's hedge trees had been encroaching onto my
property for a long time and were overhanging my own roof, making
my fireplace hazardous. So after spending weeks on my own hedges
I had to trim his fucking trees too.

This wasn't a finished job; but it is now...

November 24, 2023

About ready for the fifth, and last, raised vegetable bed.

This is the reclaimed pine firewood area; I will need
somewhere to actually do gardening work eventually.

November 25, 2023

The fifth bed is in. Now I just need another $80 worth of
soil, peat moss and perlite and hours with my home-made
sifter and it'll be full. I will also need to do something
about those grotesquely overlong polycarbonate panels.

November 26, 2023

Now you see it:

Now you don't:

November 27, 2023

When I dug out the hole under the 4th raised bed to make room for the rotten ficus firewood I had three bins full of whatever passed for soil in the hole.

This is what passed for soil. A bunch of rocky shit !!

Here's a closeup of it. It's totally worthless rubbish.

But then ... my trusty redwood double-frame with a nice square of quarter-inch chickenwire hardware cloth comes to the rescue. That thing weighs 8 or 9 pounds empty.
I have hand-sifted hundreds and hundreds of pounds of soil through it over the years.

This is what gets sifted out. Rocks, and some mini-branches.

What's left is mixed with peat moss and perlite (or vermiculite) and ends up looking like this.

It then moves into the coffin. The coffin holds approximately 26 cubic feet of goodness.

I'm sure you were wondering about what happens to the rocks that got sifted out and rejected for gardening purposes. They got stashed here. More on this later.

So, the polycarbonate panels got cut down
to size and look much better covering the
raised beds. Covering them keeps the cats
and rats and squirrels out and keeps the
weeds down; not to mention denying rain
from making all that nice soil muddy.

November 28, 2023

I can hardly believe this is my back yard.

November 29, 2023

The pine firewood has been a hazard for a few days here
in the front of the house. But the old firewood rack has
been cut down from 8' wide to 5' wide and refurbished
with some new 2x4s and the like. Chickenwire hardware
cloth will help to keep some of the vermin out hopefully.
Not a fan of rat condos...

November 30, 2023

A temporary roof embellishes the new woodpile. Cutting
the size down means it won't all fit anymore.

December 1, 2023

First fire in years. All it took was moving the wood to
where I didn't mind going and getting some. Just
in time for what will be either the hottest or the
coldest winter in L.A. history.

December 4, 2023

It's like ... the making of garden soil never ends ...

December 6, 2023

Let the fun begin !

December 7, 2023

December 8, 2023

I cheated on myself at Anawalt Lumber.

Some lettuces, snapdragons and cauliflower. I have
to look at something for the next few weeks...

December 9, 2023

For now the "Sonnet Yellow" snapdragons will hang
out with Bob.

The lettuces should be safe from the squirrels behind
the electric fence.

Some of these soil blocks are loaded with fresh seeds.
Others are loaded up with seeds that are more than
ten years old. I can tell you now they aren't really viable.

December 11, 2023

This is a woodpile I can live with. After I burn up all
the wood I will turn the rack into a greenhouselet.

December 14, 2023

This all seemed very promising but I forgot one thing.
Seedlings need light. I didn't understand how much light.
I have never grown in the wintertime before; all of my
good growing was in the spring/summer when the sun
is strong and directly overhead and stuff. These seemed
wonderful but they all got leggy. I think of them as my
children, sort of, except that they are basically priceless
in the sense that the seeds don't cost anything, really.
The soil blocker cost as much as all the seeds I'll buy
this year together, and if the seeds fail, the soil can be
remolded into a new soil block. So I don't lose sleep over
the fate of seedlings - I can plant a thousand more if I have to.

December 17, 2023

Three of my six cheater cauliflowers

My cheater lettuces.

A good look at the inside of one of my worm bins.

December 18, 2023

Radish seedlings two days after starting them.

Pea seedlings looking good.

Got my first haul of worm castings. Ended up with between
five and ten pounds of brown gold with so much more in the bins.

December 19, 2023

Cheater lettuces coming along nicely.

Leggy seedlings. How do you spell 'doomed' ?

December 23, 2023

These were those pea seedlings just a few days ago.

Snapdragons and violas and some fennel.

December 24, 2023

Finally got the supports I wanted in for the chickenwire.
Eventually there'll be crosspieces so I can do removable
roofs, etc. to protect the crops from too much sun, or birds
or whatever as needed.

December 25, 2023