Urban Home Gardens (part 2!)

Oh my gosh, it's all grown up! Check this out,

Top left hand corner, that's the arugula, with the lovely spring blossoms at the top.  It's about two and a half feet now, and it took me by surprise because I realized I didn't actually know what arugula looked like outside of a bunch at the market. I guess that's a step up from not knowing what arugula is at all, but is just one more showcase of my paltry agricultural skills. Or, rather, my fledgling agricultural skills.

I must say, once this garden was planted, it was quite the independent offspring. I watered it a few times, and Kimi planted an additional Shisho leaf, but for the most part; Matt planted it, it flourished. 

 Kimi chopped up in a salad the other day. To the right of the arugula are some fiesty bits of kale. Traveling downward one encounters the Shisho leaf, an absolutely magical edible her that is as ubiquitous in Japan as basil. It's that little leaf underneath your sushi. 

We also have a wide array of lettuces in the middle. From this adventure, I've discovered that lettuce is very hard to keep clean. I marvel at how relatively dirt free the stuff at the market is.  

See the thyme at the front? That thyme took so long to grow in. It thus became the butt of many jokes, "Stop taking your time, thyme!"

In the foodie world, there's always thyme for puns. 

Once again, a billion times thank you to Matt from Urban Home Gardens in Mar Vista. Thank you for making us such a beautiful garden, and being a pioneer for love, ecology and agriculture. 

Garden! Part 1

I've wanted to plant a garden since November. It was my New Years Resolution. I set intentions, I hyped up my roommates, I set "gardening dates". January comes around, and no stone's been turned.

Here's the thing: I don't know anything about gardening. And that really bothers me. Knowledge is power, and freedom. My ignorance keeps me from being self-sustaining, and feeds my underlying anxiety of dependence to industrial food production, and even on external, albeit organic, food production. Since last year, I've made some improvements. I've cut some of my whole foods shopping sprees by subscribing to a CSA and bike down to the farmers markets after class on Sundays.

But I remember how powerful and independent I felt when I learned to cook. Learning to grow is the next step! Gardening seemed like such a new world, however, that with all my desire, I got overwhelmed.

Clearly, it was time to call in some professional help. So we called up Matt Van Diepen, owner of Urban Home Gardens in Mar Vista. Matt agreed to take up the task of taking out scraggly dirt lot into a thing of organic beauty.

Here are some "Pre" pictures of our backyard, that, despite the artistic glare, really aren't pretty. We've got an old chicken coop in our backyard. Lots of boards, stones, dirt but not the healthy kind, an old monitor....really. This actually isn't the real before picture- that would just be too much to look at. This shows how Matt segregated a section of our backyard essentially plowed it.





Here's stage 1. Matt comes over to our house.

Kimi and him plan out the backyard (I'm away at the moment). Kimi is attempting to plan out aesthetics, while Matt is calculating exactly where our backyard gets optimal sun. He segregates the area, tills the soil and gives us instructions on how to water it. The next days, he's over with shovels, pick axes, and a whole bunch of mulch on a rubber carpet.

Kimi, Kimi's brother Tommy, and I gather around and attempt to help, waiting for Matt's instructions on how to best approach the topic.

Matt throws the leaves into the central garden plot and shows us how to combine them with the existing soil. He divides up the ground using the boards and rocks in the area, and show us how, already, our soil is becoming more fertile. We have good land here, he says. We just have to dig it up.

Check out our escapades below;