Vino

In the last few years I have become increasingly interested in sustainable living.  As a result, I have been keen to start my own edible garden so that I could  “walk the walk” when it comes to eating locally and responsibly. Determined not to be discouraged by the rather dismal performance of the peppers and herbs that we tried to grow last year, I spent this spring reading books on growing vegetables and taking classes on victory gardens.  During one of these classes, I was making conversation with a co-student, ruing the fact that I had little to no space in my tiny Los Angeles balcony and that I was #238 on the waiting list at Ocean View Farms, our local community garden. As luck would have it, this student had until recently been working as an associate gardener with someone at Ocean View and was looking for someone to replace him. The rest, as they say, is history!

I have thoroughly enjoyed working with Therese (whose plot it is) at Ocean View. We planted all the seedlings for the season in May. Since then, we typically meet at the garden once a week to work on weeds, trimming and general garden maintenance. It is not easy work but I am always amazed how time flies when I am there. This season we grew some lettuce, a couple of varieties of tomatoes, Japanese cucumbers, scallions and basil… salad anyone?! I drew inspiration from the garden and decided to try growing a few herbs and vegetables at home as well. Since we did not want water from our pots to drip into our neighbour’s balcony, Adit made me a self watering container. I planted some basil, eggplant, red peppers, parsley, thai pepper and jalapeno pepper in the container, and some cilantro in a pot. Oh, and we also bought a miniature Mexican lime tree.

We have had plenty of success and some failures with our mish mash of      vegetables. At home, the jalapenos and parsley have  done  really well. The thai pepper and red pepper each produced two of their kind and decided they were done. And the red peppers also decided that they did not, in fact, want to turn red and were happy staying green. Our eggplant seems to not know how to turn its many flowers to fruit. In hindsight, I think I got zealous and planted too many things in our not-so-big container. Well, lesson learned! The limes have a longer maturity season so hopefully there is still hope that it will eventually bear fruit. Not to forget our cilantro plants which did fantastically for a while but then could not keep up with our insatiable appetite for the herb. My solution to that is to grow even more of it than I already am, but we will see how that goes next season!

At the garden, the tomatoes are just starting to ripen and it looks like we have some yummy tomato-filled weeks to look forward to. It has been a season of bounty as far as Japanese cucumbers and basil is concerned. Raita with cucumber, cucumber salad, quinoa salad with cucumbers , cucumber sandwiches, pesto,  stir-fry with basil, basil with mozzarella and tomatoes, etc have made frequent appearances in our meal plans these last few weeks! The scallions and lettuce did quite well too. We also had some impromptu snow peas and arugula, besides some delicious blackberries which Therese had already planted before I got there.

Not bad for a first season, right?! As we enjoy the last of the produce from the garden, it is time to start planning for fall. I am already keeping a list of what I would like to grow and making notes so that I do not repeat the mistakes of this season. Check back in a few months to find out how it goes