My New Garden

Being green is important to me, both personally and professionally.  When we remodeled the building we put extra effort into making it as green as possible, and even got our green certification from the County.  At home we have also made a big change.

Last year we took out the lawn in our back yard, we put it into a compost pile and spent the winter with an adobe back yard.  For those who do not live in this area, adobe is a very heavy black clay soil.  You can even bake bricks out of it to build things (the early settlers did this).  It's also sticky and messy and gets everywhere.  Over the spring we dug trenches and added watering systems for pots and planter boxes.  Last week the planter boxes got filled and this weekend (for me Tuesday/Wednesday) I get to plant.

The crux of all this is we save all that water without the lawn and I finally get a real garden.

For a chef this is not an easy task… what to plant?  I have decided on a mix of flowers and fruits and veggies.  Already in the yard is a 5 in 1 Apple, 4 in 1 pear, a Meyer lemon bush (second love of my life to my husband, they are most flavorful lemon and have a touch sweet), a thornless Black Berry, and 2 apricot trees.

One planter that has the compost already has two types of pumpkins, a green variety and a French cooking pumpkin.  Both are great for decorating, the French pumpkin is the one that I used in the whole baked pumpkin recipe.  I planted them together one has a variegated leaf, I can't wait to see which is which.

A couple of things I am looking for is a Crane melon , yellow cherry tomatoes, and I already have a Hillbilly Deluxe Tomato.  I choose the Hillbilly deluxe, bought one last year from Soda Farms just for the name and fell in love, it's a great meaty slicing tomato with orange variegation each one weighing in close to 1 pound.

Opal and Thai Basil are a must, then a couple of Squashes and maybe some fun peppers. 

I was excited to find lemon cucumbers on of my favorite heritage veggies. They are a round cucumber that ripens to a lemony yellow color. I prefer to pick them younger at a pale green when they are more tender.

I am interested in a black watermelon. I have never grown watermelon before. The black is a small to medium size- prefect for 2 people

Anyone have any suggestions for some unique or heirloom veggies?

Not a lot of time for gardening this time of year but I can get them in and wait.

I'll add a photo of my new raised planters in a couple of days.

They came out very nice.

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