Design Your Salad

The most important part of designing a vegetable garden is deciding what you want to eat for the summer! I love fresh tomatoes and anything that can be made into a salad. And I like a combination of warm season crops (tomatoes, beans, and lettuce), and cool season crops  (broccoli, cabbage, and carrots) to extend the season.

Size is another factor. My vegetable garden is pretty small—just an 8 feet by 4 feet raised garden bed. But I can expand my planting area by planting outside the garden box, either directly in the soil, or in a series of containers. Another thing I’ve been learning is that vegetables do not need to be planted is rows. You can plant smaller plants around larger plants, and continue planting in cycles as space opens up.

Another factor is what was planted the previous year. Some plants, like those in the nightshade family (tomatoes and peppers), deplete the soil. Other plants, like those in the legume family (peas and beans), augment the soil. Crop rotation helps ensure healthy soil and good harvest.

Salad 2010 - Here's a rough sketch of my vegetable
garden for 2010. The large rectangle represents my
raised garden box; herbs are planted outside the box.

Salad 2011. Notice the rotation of the tomato
plants and legumes inside the box. I also plan to increase
the quantity of herbs planted outside the box.

Many gardening books provide information about vegetable gardening. One of my favorite resources is the California Master Gardener Handbook; edited by Dennis R. Pittenger; and published by the University of California Agriculture and Natural Resources (publication 3382).

Adding Drip Irrigation to the Raised Bed

I learned almost everything I know about drip irrigation from the Rain Bird® web site: https://www.rainbird.com/. Resources include product information, videos, manuals, catalogs, and a reasonably priced design service. I also visited Home Depot to study the Rain Bird components they carry. Finally, I bought the Rain Bird Gardener’s Drip System Starter Kit, and experimented to see how everything works.

For the raised garden bed, the basic design includes two levels of irrigation – one outside the box to water herbs and shrubs, and one inside the box to water vegetables. The water source is a hose with a special faucet connection kit to prevent back flow.

Two levels of drip irrigation - one inside and
one outside the raised garden box.

The water source is a simple hose arrangement.
On the left, a faucet connection regulates
water flow and provides a filter.

The 1/2 inch brown emitter tubing includes emitters
built in at regular intervals.

Smaller 1/4 inch tubing takes water right to specific plants.
Special emitter connections and manifolds enable
you to vary water flow (1, 2, or 3 gallons per hour). 

By the end of last season, I determined I had too many emitters, and not enough water pressure. This season I plan to separate the two lines, so I can water outside and inside the garden box independently. One of these seasons I’ll add a rain harvesting system to complete the system.

San Francisco Garden Show – Edible Gardens

Yesterday my Aunt Char, cousin Jenny, and I attended the San Francisco Garden Show at the San Mateo Event Center. We sat in on several lectures, spent time in the Market Place (bought some amazing Rescue tape), marveled over the Bonsai exhibit, and drooled over the exhibition gardens.

Our first lecture was Edible Landscaping by Rosalind Creasy (www.rosalindcreasy.com). She showed slides of her front yard vegetable garden (she claims if you add flowers and box hedges, the neighbors barely notice you are growing vegetables in the front yard, instead of the back)! From the slides we saw, I believe it. To follow up, we visited the Edible Garden pavilion, which was full of creative ideas for growing vegetable gardens that are pretty, and work in small places.

We also learned how to transplant our Cymbidium and Phalaenopsis orchids from Debra Atwood of Napa Valley Orchids; and about soil composition from Jeff Lowenfels, author of Teaming with Microbes. We enjoyed the cooking demonstration (and samples) provided by Jeffrey Stoat, chef at Alexander’s Steakhouse in San Francisco (http://www.alexanderssteakhouse.com/san_francisco.html). He and his team prepared Oshitashi Salad (Dungeness crab, radish, and pickled carrots), and skirt steak rolls with cilantro salad. Delicious.

Replacing flower beds with vegetable beds.

Mixing herbs and flowers in a single bed. Notice the
wooden utensils used to label the plants.

Enjoying the garden show.

A small lettuce bed growing on top of a hay bale. Hay bale
gardening is an innovative way to garden. The tubes
in the background are potato towers, described on the
Sunset web site.

We had a great time together, and left feeling enriched with new ideas and possibilities. I loved the emphasis on growing edible gardens that are beautiful, economical, and tasty!