Hiatus

Firstly, THANK YOU. I really appreciate your kind comments and supportive emails. It’s hard not to feel a little dorky. =)

The garden is at rest this week. My house is getting fumigated for termites. Fun! Wrinkles is visiting his second family. Rocky has been at the pet motel/hospital since Tuesday morning and is being neutered today. Sniff sniff. And I am commuting from Ontario, CA because H is taking a very important exam. Fingers crossed.

So, what’s a vegan in the IE eat? Beside the massive sack lunch I packed for the week I visited Veggie Era in Upland and picked up freakishly good vegan food. More on this later!

Rocky managed to sit still for exactly one second. Get behind me Satan. This is as close as Wrinkles will get to him.

Neko Case for Best Friends Animal Society

My best bud can be a jerk sometimes. For instance last night he woke up at 2:30am and stared into oblivion. He would lie down, sit up, lie down, sit up, and repeat. Here’s the problem, his erratic behavior takes place on our bed. For you see Mr. Wrinkles shares a bed with mommy and daddy. He is only used to the comforts of a warm bed with maximum stretching capacity while his parents are relegated to a corner of the bed.

Wrinkles gets two walks a day, home cooked food (along with veggie kibble) everyday, and unconditional love. He’s a pain in the neck and I can’t picture life without him.

ANTI will donate $5.00 to the Best Friends Animal Society every time a blog reposts Neko Case’s new track People Got A Lotta Nerve. If you have a best bud like mine or just love animals you should do the same.

*The promotion will run from January 13 to February 3, 2009. The song will remain on my blog till then.*

And Then There Were None

Yesterday I yanked out my mythical 7' tomato babies. The plants were covered in flowers but they weren't producing the healthiest of tomatoes so it was time to let go and get the bed ready for spring.

After removing the tomato plants I sowed New Zealand White Clover cover crop and added Martinez brand compost. I'll be amending and testing the soil often and will continue to add compost.

Crops left in bed above: radishes, lettuce, mesclun, garlic, shallots, cayenne, and jalapenos.

We harvested the last brandywine and beefsteak tomatoes along with several green green zebras and sun gold tomatoes. Good thing I have a great vegan fried green tomatoes recipe.

I also transplanted Lettuce, Container "Garden Babies," Spinach, Baby Leaf "Catalina," Kale, "Dwarf Blue Curled," Onion, "Yellow Granex," and Rucola. Except for the rogue Rucola from Italy, seeds are from Renee's Garden Seeds and Botanical Interests and all seeds sowed germinated. Who needs a 401(K) with that return on investment?!

My biggest challenge during the next couple of months will be to not sow any seeds that need transplanting into the garden soon; like lettuce and radishes. However I plan on getting a much earlier start on spring so my kitchen table will be seed starting central.

Till then Wrinkles and I will be tending the onions and continue to pick the cabbage worms off of our remaining crops.

Wrinkles Cares

And we plant with others in mind!

From the Wrigley Association Newsletter:

Wrigley is Going Green members gathered on November 8th to fertilize the 150 trees that were planted in Wrigley last November. The task of tapping fertilizer spikes into the ground followed by watering took only a couple of hours on a beautiful Saturday morning. A special thanks goes goes out to Mauna Eichner, Lee Fukui, Brenda Martinez, Vernon Rudd, and Adriana Martinez for making this essential task fun and rewarding. We also enjoyed having a mascot, Wrinkles, around to supply the cuteness factor.

Story continued in the newsletter.

Sunset Magazine-Fresh Dirt Blog Feature

Sunset Magazine featured us and our edible garden on their blog, Fresh Dirt, today. "Wrinkles” got in on the action as well.

Full Story:
http://freshdirt.sunset.com/2008/11/one-thing-im-th.html

One thing I'm thankful for -- a new generation of passionate gardeners

By Sharon Cohoon, Sunset senior garden writer

Adriana Martinez has restored my faith. For a number of years I was wondering if garden journalists were going to become an endangered species. Nurseries kept telling me that young homeowners were just not interested in digging, weeding, deadheading, pruning, dreaming up new plant combinations, re-arranging plants like furniture, and all the other tweaking that goes into creating an ornamental garden that previous generations of gardeners thought was fun. All they wanted was a landscape that looked respectable. Something they could just put in and forget about. The equivalent of plastic plants. What would there be to write about?

But now the same people who didn't think ornamentals were worth ruining your manicure for have discovered edibles. They're building raised beds, buying compost by the truck load, nurturing their own seedlings, researching organic pest control methods on the internet, and finding the whole process of harvesting things straight from their own garden enthralling.

Adriana, shown below with 'Green Zebra' tomatoes towering over her in her garden in Long Beach, California, is one of those new gardeners.

Continued At:
http://freshdirt.sunset.com/2008/11/one-thing-im-th.html

Wrinkles and His Harvest

Well, he mostly watched the vegetables as I toiled in the garden. I came up short on my goal of sowing Onion-Yellow Granex this weekend. These onions must be transplanted six weeks before the average first fall frost. We eat a lot of onions so I'll attempt again this Wednesday.

I harvested a little of everything yesterday. Mostly I was trying to make room for more seedlings that needed transplanting. Left to right, Mustard Greens-Southern Giant Curled, Bok Choy, a bearss lime, Beets-Detroit Dark Red, Onion (thinnings)-Bianca Di Maggio & Rossa Lunga di Firenze, dill & cilantro.

What do I do with two sugar snap peas?!

The Apple Of My Eye

And the reason I do not consume animal products. He makes me proud.