Thursday, April 22, 2010

Earth Day Excursion

It was very cold and wintery this afternoon, threatening rain. I felt a bit sorry for the farmer's market, since I have found that it is poorly attended when it is cold, so I decided to stop by and see what is new.
This was my first visit since the market changed location, and I'll tell ya, I was really happy to see how spacious it was, compared with the old location. The place was just crowded with lots of moms and strollers, plenty of toddlers munching on carrots and strawberries.
Now that I am not confined by the 100 miles, farther-away farm-fare looked pretty inviting. I picked up a very large avocado, a basket of crisp Oxnard cucumbers, a 3-pack of Oxnard strawberries, and a bag of Northern California raisins.

Sunday, April 11, 2010

Malabar Spinach

Today I took a bit of time for the backyard garden, before the rain starts. I have plenty of smaller cat litter buckets that I use for hauling soils and compost, and they are neatly lined up underneath the roof drip-line to catch any new rain.
And I have another reason not to believe much gardening advice I read on the internet. A couple of years ago, I brought home a cutting of red malabar spinach. I planted it in a tub and left it for a couple of years, with hardly any care. I was afraid I had lost everything during last year's hard frost and the flooding of my basket of saved seeds during a storm.
The barrel is now mostly filled with errant Detroggia beet seedlings, but I started pulling out those that didn't look like beets. Now I realize that most were all malabar spinach seedlings. As I started to transplant them, I noticed tons more seedlings. I can probably get 50 or more seedlings if I want to take the time to transplant them. I read that the seeds don't germinate well, and I sure don't believe that anymore.