A little winter gardening in California

It's time to start the garden year for 2015! I'm so happy I wet my plants. ;-)

It's true, that tomatoes and marigolds will come later in year, there are so many seeds to plant now, for growing your own food. Whether you garden in pots like me, or have a 1/4 acre plot, a big big backyard and front yard, there is simply no greater joy in life than to grow your own food.
You feel strong, you feel smart, you feel a connection with the humans from centuries past, and since you are what you eat......
doncha wanna eat good and healthy? Yes, you do!
Even if you can't grow everything, I can't certainly, but I can grow a lot of food in a few dozen pots and planters.
Follow along with me this year, because we are gonna see some miracles of life, and some of the best food any human has ever eaten!

 Oh yes you can!  if you live in a climate that has a few easy frosts in the winter, say below 32 degrees only a few times during winter, you can plant so many seeds.

Here's a short list of what you can plant, and what I planted mid January here in Northern Cali.

Spinach, beets, radish, lettuce, pak choi, broccoli, mustard, parsnips, rutabaga, and kale.  I always check the back of the package to be sure it says, NO GMO.
Why in the hell would you trust a for-profit corporation that specialized in pesticides to sell you seeds to plant for food?
GMO's are not safe for you. I don't plant them, and I sure don't eat them when I buy food at the supermarket. I have been buying organic, which is 100% NON-GMO, and I read all the labels to be sure it isn't GMO.

See, it will say on the package.  Here is a list of NON GMO seed companies.
The saddest news I have to report after almost 60 years of gardening, that MONSANTO now owns about 40% of the seeds sold in the US and worldwide, where GMO's are allowed, which is almost nowhere!!
They also own some HEIRLOOM names of very old seed varieties. How's that for Evil!!
Monsanto bought Seminis, "Seminis Vegetable Seeds, Inc. (“Seminis”) has grown to be the world’s largest developer, grower and marketer of vegetable seeds. Monsanto Company purchased the Seminis business in 2005. Seminis offers seed for commercial farmers and home gardeners. For the home garden market, Seminis offers bean, broccoli, cabbage, carrot, cauliflower, cucumber, eggplant, lettuce, melons, onion, peas, peppers, spinach, sweet corn, tomato and watermelon seed."

Beware! What home garden seed sellers are OK? Here is a link and a list.
Good Seeds........ 

This link to the Wayback Machine, the Internet Archive, has an article, a long long list, and it will take time to read, if you want to avoid Monsanto. And I know you do!

What seed companies took the Safe Seed Pledge?  Here is a list.
You can depend on these, and many others.
Renee’s Garden , Seeds of Change, TomatoFest Organic Heirloom Tomato Seeds, Lake Valley Seed,  Select Seeds Company, The Pepper Gal , Henry Field's Seed & Nursery Co., Seed Savers Exchange,  Ferry Morse Seed Company,  Johnny's Selected Seeds , Annie's Heirloom Seeds,  Nichol's Garden Nursery ,  Territorial Seed Company, Cooks Garden,  Ed Hume Seeds, Jung Seed Co. , and many many more.

2005, Monsanto grabbed approximately 40% of the US vegetable seed market - See more at: http://www.thehealthyhomeeconomist.com/the-four-steps-required-to-keep-monsanto-out-of-your-garden/#sthash.QlvfHe2a.dpuf

2005, Monsanto grabbed approximately 40% of the US vegetable seed market - See more at: http://www.thehealthyhomeeconomist.com/the-four-steps-required-to-keep-monsanto-out-of-your-garden/#sthash.QlvfHe2a.dpuf

first I had to pull all the dead plants from the frost last month, and here are the last blighty tomatoes. This year, I'm gonna start tomatoes that are blight-resistant.

Then in all my pots, I stirred in some organic compost, some chicken poop and stirred it up.
I made little indentations, and dropped in some seed according to the package instructions and gently covered them up, and watered with a gentle stream from my watering can with a rose.

A few weeks ago I bought a few pansies to brighten up the winter garden, and I trimmed back the alyssum, and gave the garden a general clean-up.

The potted garden is a little bleak, I'll admit, but it is nice to see what survived the frosts:
Alyssum, nasturtium (with a few damaged leaves), and all the perennials, that I just cut back to half, or some, to their stems leaving about an inch.

I also tossed in some winter flowers to bloom ASAP! These all have tiny seeds, so only cover them just slightly.... about 1/16" to 1/4".
Godetia, Evening Stock, Garden stock, calendula, more alyssum,  all are reliable early Spring bloomers.
I have some sprouts... so next bloggy post, I'll show pics of what some of the first ones up look like.

I fell into a burning ring of rain..

fun in the sun. Sunny days.....but as usual ........here in Hell, it's rainy and gray. From the LATimes comes..." a "ring of fire" will appear as the moon passes in front of the sun.
Just about every national park in the West is hosting some type of viewing party or astronomy fest Sunday to mark the heavenly occasion."



Yahoo News says "The advice: Either wear specially designed protective eyewear or attend a viewing event — at a planetarium or amateur astronomy club, for example — to avoid risk of serious eye injury."
on the other hand.......Sunflowers!!!

Pot in the garden

not that kind....the clay pots..the things that you put your plants in. Let's take a look around my garden in February after a snowy winter.... oooo, not cool, man.

I buy my pots at yard sales, and very seldom at retail, and I always will pay a premium for an Italian made pot. Why....because after 50+ plus years of gardening, I know that a cheap pot, ie, Mexico-made, will crumble and crack in the freeze-dry-sun-freeze cycle of a year outside. I'm lazy, I admit. And I'm a Californian...so I think things that live outside, should live outside all damn year long.........god knows I used to!! (damn you Washington, you suck).

Can you tell which pot is made in Italy, and which pot is made in Mexico??

OK, but what's going on with the clay pots?
If clay has too much "temper" or too little it won't be strong when exposed to temperature extremes. Posts from Mexico, like almost everything from Mexico is cheaply made.

Pots made in Italy, like most things made in Italy, are very well made. If you are gonna invest in good outdoor pots, please ask the vendor or garden store, where and how they are made, and, are they really outside pots? Can they live outside all year long? Must they be emptied in the fall and placed in a freeze-free storage zone?

this one says ITALY...it survived quite nicely!

DEROMA

What's "temper"? It's crushed gravel or sand, or other rock-type material that's added to clay in specific proportions, to be sure that the clay will stick together when exposed to harsh extremes.
Too little temper  or too much, will cause a pot to crack during the drying process, and certainly during firing and outdoor use. A cheapskate manufacture will skimp to save a few pennies per pot to increase profits. If you buy Mexican pots or now, cheap Chinese pots ...just be prepared to use them inside only, or empty and store them come fall. Outside uses require a quality pot. In the garden!

Garden! archive from 2009 & 1995...

I've been a gardener all my life...pulling weeds, which is a vital part of gardening, was my first job (that I remember) when I was 4, and got paid a penny a weed! Them's some big bucks.

I so clearly remember crawling under the big hydrangeas and the scent of the cool earth....the mystery of being the size of a bug under the big leaves and mop-headed periwinkle violet flower balls.......

so, I used to write a gardening column for Tacoma Monthly, then Tacoma Weekly...yes, that one!

I called it At Last A Decent Plot

I researched this article in the Tacoma Library downtown with child (Annie) in tow...she loved it...being inside the library all day...(no really!)

this was originally published April 12, 1995. I've added some internetz links because that is something one can do...that is not too possible with newsprint...much. Besides, I don't think the Google was invented yet.....wow, 1995. Let's go back to the Clinton days of yore, blue dresses and good wars, when acid wash jeans weren't yet ironic.
... I'll try to publish more  new/old articles from those days...and well, continue on writing, cause I like to do things...

Killer Chemicals

The recent subway poisoning incident in Tokyo may seem to have no relationship to gardening--but there is a connection. Sarin, the deadly nerve gas used in Tokyo, was developed during WWII by the Nazis.

American scientists regarding their own nerve gas during the war discovered that low concentrations of some lethal chemicals will act as pesticides, herbicides, or fumigators.

The end of the war left America's large chemical companies with vast knowledge of chemical killers. Knowledge they kept a top secret, right? Not a chance. Seeing the deadly chemicals as a potential money-making bonanza, they aggressively marketed them as new, modern solutions to the "bug problem".

The result has been that, as biologist Rachel Carson exposed in her 1962 book Silent Spring, chemicals synthesized into unnatural molecular chains have permeated nearly every ecosystem on the planet. Scientists have found post-WWII chemicals everywhere they've looked , including in samples taken from the top of Mt. Everest.

Many garden chemicals are billed as harmless, but don't bet on it. DDT, Chlordane and Dieldrin are "chlorinated hydrocarbons", while Sarin, Malathion and Parathion are "organo-phosphates".

Though anything made from elements native to the Earth is by definition, natural and organic, to make this a badge of harmlessness is deceptive. Chemicals in the DDT family are stored in the body. Both the FDA and EPA have agreed that there is no safe storage level because these chemicals interact with other chemicals, producing increasingly toxic results. Sarin and Malathion work on the nervous system, the effects resembling the alkaloid poison, muscarine.

So what are some chemicals to watch out for? Chemical nitrogens available so plentifully at nurseries -- Nu-Life-- is a common brand--work wonders for your plants. The nitrogen makes your plant's leaves green and encourages them to grow. While the nitrogen itself is a good thing, the concentrated chemical soup used to create chemical nitrogen, including ammonia and chlorine -- wreaks havoc on the environment. It's toxic to workers and the area around the chemical plant that produces it. It's harmful to nursery workers who deal with it. And, it eventually pollutes your local water supply.

Phosphorus is another gardening essential. Chemical companies mine rock phosphate, a wonderful source of natural phosphorus, and treat it with acid to create superphosphate. While your plants will become supercharged with phosphorus, they won't thrive. Why? When the superphosphate is added to the soil, it combines with the necessary micronutrients iron and manganese, making them unavailable to plants. Without iron and manganese, the plants become vulnerable to insect and disease damage. To an unsuspecting gardener, this action can create a vicious cycle.

The bottom line is that there is no need to use chemicals in your garden. Unadulterated sources of nutrition such as manure for nitrogen, crushed phosphorus rock for needed phosphorus, and wood ashes for potassium are available for your organic garden. Combined into rich compost, these sources will provide all the nutrients your plants need to stay healthy as well as capable of resisting insects and disease.

Hundreds of organic gardening books and magazines are available to help with basic information. One of my favorites is Rodale Press The Expert's Book of Garden Hints, edited by Fern Marshall Bradley. I also like Organic Gardening Magazine. Once obscure, it's now available on the magazine racks in most grocery stores. Besides information about organic gardening, you'll learn about the latest research on nontoxic insecticides and techniques to lessen the occurrence of fungus or bacterial attacks.

But what about chemicals used by large corporate farms? A scary example of chemicals resulting in tragedy occurred recently in Olalla. Two horses died from eating hay (grown in Eastern Washington) that had been sprayed with an organo-phosphate pesticide. The pesticide had drifted in from an adjacent potato field, said Cliff Weed, program manager for the State Department of Agriculture compliance division for pesticides.


Now that you're afraid of everything you might eat, remember that you're not gonna get out alive. Still the best cure for cancer is to try to prevent it. Requiring multi-national corporations to avoid using dangerous chemicals which contaminate our water, air and food should be an obvious step.

What can we do to save ourselves and future generations of children and wildlife? Make a personal committment to stop using dangerous chemicals in our own gardens as much as possible. Just as important, write letters to congress, imploring them to continue enforcing environmental laws. This isn't an issue that is liberal or conservative. Newt Gingrich and Jesse Jackson breathe, eat and drink the same food and water the same as you and I. Remember, the life you save may be your own.

######################################################

So there ya go....

across the street from the shop is a chunk of land at the top of a parking lot...I"m gonna just go over there and guerrilla-garden it....I suggest you do the same!

I hear Spring.

even though it snowed today....I Believe ! I believe....

the crocus and the miniature daffs do tell the truth....

Vintage rose garden floral sundress.....and pink sunglasses !

vintage Jamaican Pirate shirt and aviator sunglasses !

Baby pink baby duckies sweater....

Vintage Jantzen knee-knockers, capris, pedal pushers, clam diggers.....vintage Laura Ashley sailor dress....

60s vintage wrap around sunglasses, and a vintage Mickey Mouse tshirt...coming and going!

The bride/party girl/housewife/gardener wore black...

this week...there's a lot of black.
I like black. a lot. It's always right....here's a few looks from around the internetz, and then the new stuff in my shop...Including a jacket modeled on the suit that Marilyn wore when she married Joe DiMaggio in San Francisco in 1954. I got married in San Francisco, but I wore an antique lace 2 pc set I made myself...mmmm..must scan those photos.

....if I had to wear only one era, it would be, with no hesitation the 20s. Jazz Age, Roaring 20s....ha cha cha ! some of my favorites are the Gish Sisters, and Louise Brooks, and of course....Chaplin.

The Gish Sisters, Lillian and Dorothy, with a friend, Richard Barthelmess.

Theda Bara with a skeleton.

-------------------------
 a leather top hat.....I used to make these in the early 70s....

Cute 1969 pattern

from my new shop update...

this jacket is like the one Marilyn wore on her 1954 wedding day to Joe. Her's was a brown suit with a mink collar....but it was made up in black wool, mostly, with mink, fox or rabbit collars....so cute !

this pic is from the San Francisco Examiner newspaper