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My Currants are Flowering!

The yellow splotches on the upper left side of the photo are currant flowers! I’m so excited!

Living on a 1/4 acre lot that contains house, swimming pool, and three car garage/driveway, doesn’t leave as much room as I would like for growing things. As a result, I’m a bit ruthless. If plants don’t flourish or serve a purpose, I pass them on to a new home or compost them. I’m also forced to grow things a bit closer together than most would consider ideal. But as a student of the John Jeavon’s Bio-intensive method of gardening, I also know that traditional spacing of plants are not always ideal for my triple-digit, dry summer climate. In fact, “crowding” my plantings can create beneficial micro-climates that help hold the moisture in the soil. That’s my reasoning, and I’m sticking to it, unless of course, it doesn’t work!

I’m lousy with logging dates of plantings (which is why this website exists!), but I believe I started my elderberries and currants from seeds in 2007. My seed source was www.bountifulgardens.org and I highly recommend them as a source of sometimes difficult to find herbs and vegetables.

Elderberries and currants aren’t common crops here in California’s Central Valley and I wasn’t at all sure they would make it. But guess what? They are flourishing! I’m on my third year of elderberry harvest and this is the first year my currants have flowered! I’m keeping my fingers crossed that I might get some actual currants from them this year! In the picture below, you will see just how closely I push my plantings! You will also notice how tall the plants are. Due to family medical issues, I wasn’t able to prune this bed over the winter. What does this mean? I’m going to need an extremely tall ladder to harvest my berries! I should also note that although you can’t see them in this picture, I also have groundnuts growing. They vine up the elderberries wonderfully well and have the same watering requirements – definitely a successful match-up. And of course, if you look close enough, you will notice the peppermint and lemon balm attempting world domination. Don’t worry – my dehydrators are at the ready and I foresee a couple of gallons of dried mint leaves in my very near future!

In this small bed, I have elderberry, currants, and ground nuts living in harmony. And of course, lemon balm and peppermint have also somehow magically appeared!

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Redneck Grey Water System

Until this year, California has been in a severe drought.  Watering has been severely limited.  So, while I was willing to let what little lawn I still have left go brown, I needed to come up with a system to capture the grey water from my washing machine to keep my roses, iris, and redwood trees alive. This is a post I made on another forum in 2015:

Okay, after several hours of contemplation, measuring, and more research, I decided to follow the KISS plan. The upside is that my laundry room will only look like crap when I’m doing laundry instead of having a plastic flexible pipe running along the wall into the bathroom and out the bathroom window. Although I got the most darling little wall hooks to hold the flexible tubing with . . .

I just have to find out where our spade drill bits are. Dh used them last and they weren’t put back where they usually go. In the meantime, my elaborate plans ran up a hardware bill of almost $90 in parts. My new plan will cost $25.78 and while not a permanent set up, it sets up and tears down very quickly and will ultimately be more user friendly without making our house look any more redneck than it already does!

I’m following these plans:’
http://www.instructables.com/id/Simp…ywater-System/

and I’m mostly following the warnings from this site:’
http://oasisdesign.net/greywater/misinfo/

The one exception being is that I will be draining directly onto my backyard grass, which I know is a “no-no” but I have three large redwood trees and I’ve always deep watered them by flooding the lawn. I’ll take the necessary precautions and I’m not overly worried about safety hazards in that area. Most of the water will go into my rose & iris beds and my potted ornamentals. I’ve got to get this done. I promised myself that I wouldn’t do anymore laundry until I finished this project and I’m almost out of clean underwear!

 

This is my elegant set-up! It ended up leaking when the barrel was full, but not when I filled it partially full for my test run. Since then, I’ve fixed it with a bit of silicon. The hose runs through the garage to the front yard or I run it out the back door to the back yard. Not the least bit elegant but fully functional and I did it all by myself! (I am not a handywoman) I’m thinking that if I really get into this, I can put a diverter valve under the laundry room sink and hook up my hose directly under the sink. But that will take a bit of plumbing know how, which I don’t have!

Update:  This system has worked well for me and is still going strong two years later.  I have to confess that during exceptionally busy times in my life, I don’t bother with this set-up.  But I really like the Oasis laundry soap and use it regularly.  I think it important to use bio-compatible soap whether you’re watering your plants or flushing it into the sewer.

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Why an Online Journal?

I’m not the most organized of individuals.  Sometimes I feel like a juggler with far too many spinning plates in the air: mom, caregiver to elderly parents, teacher, musician, avid reader, and then there’s my gardening interest. Okay, gardening passion.  Okay, OKAY, gardening  addiction!  I love to be out in the yard growing things.  But it’s not necessarily about the kale, which is not my favorite vegetable but it grows really well and it’s extremely nutritious so I plant and eat it.

Gardening allows me a bit of alone time.  I can plug into a podcast or play some music and mindlessly weed the cabbages.  But on other days, I can  mindfully work out a personal issue while dead heading the roses.  Gardening is my “me” time.  And of course, my garden will often reflect just how little me time I sometimes get.

This isn’t one of those immaculately kept garden blogs or gardens. This is here so that I can track my favorite recipes or look back to see what month did I plant my bush beans last year.  When I post pictures, you’ll probably be able to spot a few weeds and if I’ve done my job, they are edible weeds!  This is here because I’ve posted thousands of posts on various boards only to have them disappear and I’ve had to start my research over.

So, welcome to my messy mind, my messy journal, and my wonderfully messy and edible garden!