California Plants

Southern Giant Curled Long Standing Mustard

Southern Giant Curled Long Standing Mustard is a vegetable we’ve test grown in recent months with great success in San Francisco, CA. If it can grow here, with our intermittent fog, it can probably grow for you. As with most vegetables, Southern Giant Curled Long Standing Mustard likes a lot of sun. It can tolerate up to a half day of shade. It is fairly pest and disease resistant. We believe this is due to the rough texture of the leaves, and of course the breeding. This vegetable can have leaves cut consistently and keep producing. Because this is a leafy vegetable, it can be grown for quite a bit of the year in most climates. As with most vegetables, it likes rich aerated soil, not to dry out for too long before next watering, and good air movement. When cooking this vegetable a few ideas are steaming it, cooking it in olive oil until it turns dark green, or including it in a dish. It seems to us to be most similar to Kale due to the texture and flavor of the leaves.

When we began testing growing super sugar snap peas, we thought we may have the same results we had with some various beans. Most beans we have tried in San Francisco, CA, have not done well. One is doing well, and we will write about that one when it matures.

Super Sugar Snap Peas, on the other hand, are a delight. These peas grow fast, and are strong. We planted them with a well drained potting compost mix in a big container. We took a couple of tomato cages and put them in as we planted seeds so there would be something to cling to. As they sprouted, they grew about a foot and finally reached out and started to cling to the cage. It gets pretty windy here at times, and luckily these peas are very tough. From other peas we tried that didn’t do well, the keys to growing good peas is:

1. Putting them in their final location when planting so there is no chance of breaking stems.
2. Planting them from seed so they acclimate to your weather.
3. Covering the soil with a fine wire mesh until seeds sprout so that birds and animals don’t dig out the seeds and eat them.

We have found that growing any vegetable from seed, if you have the patience, can save effort in the long run. Not only does this save money, but the seeds acclimate to weather best. High yield gardening is a great way to grow lots of good vegetables in a small space.

Super Sugar Snap Peas just under two months old from seed in a garden container

After extensive research how to keep gophers and moles out of our garden, we have a favorite technique to keep them out of our vegetables. Normally, these techniques can be used to get rid of gophers and moles:

- One can use a mole trap or gopher trap
- A solar device with a high pitched noise can be used
- A gopher trap or mole trap can be used
- A gopher probe can be used
- Control for gophers can be used without poisons
- Gopher bait or mole bait can be used
- A wire mesh / chicken wire can be used

In your garden, you may find one of the above techniques suits you better than another. For our plants in the regular garden, we choose from the items above. For our vegetables, we choose to ensure a whole area is gopher and mole proof. To do this, we build a box that they cannot get in and plant the vegetables with high density gardening. The box below cost less than $50 to build and fill with excellent soil.

To build this we went to the local hardware store and got wood, screws, nails, and wire mesh. The idea here is to have a rectangular box that has mesh attached securely to the bottom. The box in the photos below is 4 x 8 feet. This is done with two 2 x 4’s that are not cut, and one cut in half. Three long screws are used to hold each corner together. Short nails or staples (we used nails) can be used to attach the wire mesh to the bottom of the wood rectangle structure. As the mesh we used was 2 feet wide, we wired two rolls of mesh together and unrolled them while attaching together.

To attach the mesh to the wood, we used a small nail, hammered it in 2/3 of the way to hold a section of the mesh to the wood, and then hammer and bend the nail to secure that piece of mesh from moving. Then five inches over would be the next nail. This particular mesh is coated with vinyl so will hopefully not rust for a long time. Because the metal mesh coated with vinyl has very small squares, a mole or gopher cannot chew or crawl through the mesh. At worst, a gopher or mole may chew roots of vegetables that are below the wire mesh.

Vegetable box built not to let gophers or moles in

In the below photo you can see the two sets of wire mesh are stitched together. We used small pieces of wire every two inches, twist tied, to attach the two rolls of wire mesh to each other.

A closeup of the corner of the box built not to let in gophers or moles

In the below photo it can be seen that we have three screws holding the 2×4’s together. Before we put in the screws, we drilled holes most of the way so that the wood would not split when we put in the screws. The soil we used to fill this up was 3/4 compost and 1/4 manure. If seeds are being planted in the soil, then the top half of the soil should not have manure mixed. This is what we did, mixing the bottom half with the manure and the top half being just bagged compost. Since this compost is from a store like Home Depot or Lowes, it is composted of quite a bit of ground wood which will take time to break down. The wood will take some nitrogen from the vegetables as they grow, so we will use an organic fertilizer and top dress with a bit of composted manure when plants are all sprouted and doing well. Here is better compost. This resource tells all about composting.

The box has been placed cage side down and filled with soil

Once this box is growing vegetables, we will post updates.

Or, one can just give up on getting rid of gophers and celebrate them. Here is one item that can be used to dance with them and celebrate them. I suppose this could be given as a joke to a friend with a gopher problem.

Of course our number one use for vegetables can often be food, raw or cooked. In our testing with vegetables, many have beautiful flowers. If they can bloom, they can also go to seed. Watching some vegetables bloom does usually mean the vegetable will stop producing sooner. But the seeds one can gather can be very used to ones climate. It also feels good gathering seed, saving money, and having fun with it. In the photo below, this dwarf kale plant has been flowering for about a week so far. Many flowers are still yet to open. it will try to attract insects to pollinate it from other Kale plants. Once seeds have been set in coming weeks, seed pods will develop, and eventually those seeds can be collected. Here is an excellent curled kale to grow from seed.

Dwarf Kale Flowering

Growing Cherry Bell Radishes is almost as fun as you can have vegetable gardening. This is a pretty standard radish, similar to Sparkler. This radish is disease resistant, fast growing, and prolific. I like that any bugs that get on leaves generally do not bother the radish itself. Many people choose not to eat radishes from the store since they are a root vegetable, so often higher in pesticides. But, at home these can easily be grown organically with an organic fertilizer in the ground or in a pot. The roots do not generally go deeper than 4 - 5 inches, so if using a pot, it does not need to be too deep. In fact, if using a large pot, some plastic bottles or old containers from your recycling bin can be used in the bottom of the pot before adding soil to help save on the amount of potting soil you will need.

When potting, I would recommend using potting soil for sure, since it is lighter and better drained than many other kinds of topsoil. Here is a sample of a good potting soil. When planting, I place seeds about 2 inches apart. For sure I recommend not putting more than one seed together, since as the radishes grow, they can compete and deliver a smaller radish vegetable. The space allotted for each plant is important. It is generally not a good idea to plan to thin plants later since radishes grow fast. Also, since the germination rate of radishes is generally high, and the germination speed fast, they deliver radishes fairly fast from seed to production.

Cherry Bell Radishes generally germinate within less than a week. You can usually harvest them within less than a month. If you want to make them larger by using more organic fertilizer and waterings, they may take a bit longer to mature. The longer one waits to harvest them, the slightly tougher they can get. There is a certain point where they are full size, and if not harvested, they may split and go to seed.

Planting Cherry Bell Radishes, I lay the seeds on the soil and sprinkle a centimeter to half inch of soil on top. If sprinkling a centimeter, then as the radishes mature, the red color of the radish can be seen above ground partially. If planted an inch in depth, the red on the radish cannot usually be seen from above ground. When harvesting radishes, I would recommend pulling off any soil and putting that back in the hole. After that I would recommend cutting off the tiny root at the bottom as well as leaves at the top and composting them.

To wash radishes before eating, they can be put in a strainer, or a handful rubbed/rolled together between the hands under water. Radishes can be used in salads, dishes, and eaten on their own. The photos below show radishes growing in a pot, and one radish pulled out of the soil. Purchase 600 Radish Cherry Bell Seeds from Amazon.com.

Growing Cherry Bell Radishes in a Pot

Radish

Romaine Lettuce ‘Parris Island’ has been quite the performer so far. I would recommend starting out this lettuce from seed. We found that given good spacing between plants, at least 6 inches, this romaine lettuce produces and produces. Either it can be cut about an inch from where each of the leaves grows, to wait for all new leaves to grow, or better it can be picked from the outside in.

Always leave at least ten leaves in the inside to give the plant strength and photosynthesis. The outer larger leaves can be picked for a nice salad. We would recommend growing lettuce staggered, meaning starting new lettuce from seed every month. This ensures that as any heads of lettuce no longer perform, others are coming in. Romaine Lettuce ‘Parris Island’ matures in about 70 days, and likes well drained soil. I fertilize with an organic fertilizer
every month, and mix compost and aged manure into the soil. Purchase Organic Parris Island Lettuce 400 Seeds 3 Grams.

Romaine Lettuce

Growing Dwarf Blue Curled, Vate’s Strain Kale can be a pleasure. If you didn’t have Kale until recently, as is the case with me, you’re in for a nice surprise. Kale flavor reminds me of a cross between broccoli, spinach, and cabbage. It is generally a deep green or blue. The leaves look a bit like lettuce or parsley, but more firm, and whitish at the edges. Kale is generally not eaten raw, but rather cooked in a bit of oil in a pan. Some varieties, such as this one, have so much flavor that no salt or seasoning is needed. This variety at times tastes as if salted, at other times tastes as if it has been seasoned, and yet other times just tastes nice and green and leafy. I believe the flavor comes from how it is growing. The better the soil it is growing in, the more flavor it will have.

Kale is easy to grow from seed. It generally sprouts within a week or two. I plant Kale plants close to each other, and thin them out within a month or two once they get 2-4 inches in height. They don’t mind being transplanted. Kale loves full sun. I generally have found that Kale does best for eating when I pick the outer larger leaves and leave at least 5 inside to keep growing out. As you can see, to have a notable size snack of Kale, you’ll need to grow a number of plants. You can fit about ten mature plants in a 5 gallon pot. From seed to full grown, this variety of Kale takes about 60 days. Roots go about 6 inches deep.

I put compost in the pot when planting seeds, and top off the pot with 2 inches of sterile soil on top. This makes sure the seeds will germinate when planted in the top half centimeter, and also gives them great nutrients once they are growing further. To fertilize, I always prefer an organic fertilizer. The numbers will be lower, but it will still work well.

Kale is also very beautiful. My favorite thing about Kale is that it is disease resistant. Cabbage worms and other insects do like Kale, so just be on the lookout for them.

Growing Kale - Dwarf Blue Curled, Vate