Wild Asparagus: Sneakier than I thought

I've been reading other foraging blogs, and I recall one in Washington State I was particularly jealous of while reading about the wild asparagus to be had. It turns out I have it here too in Southern California! There has been this annoying vine that sprouts up every year and covers my equally annoying and spiky bushes that came with the house. I was watering about a week ago, and thought "No way!!!" There were asparagus-like shoots popping up out of the ground, morphing into those annoying vines. I felt amazed and incredibly stupid at the same time. Here is a picture of a shoot. They grow  bit more spindly and wacky than farmed asparagus.

It turns into this vine. It is less ferny than the intentionally planted ones I have and more spikey.

Don't eat the berries I would assume. 

It's the end of October, but not the end of gardening yet!

It is nearly Halloween, and the best gardening news I have right now is that, yes, there is an appropriate vegetable to be growing this time of year here. It is a round zucchini varietal, and I am chuffed to see a few that are well on their way!

I have 4 plants in one of those self watering planters from gardener's supply. The roots aren't so big on squash and these plants really love their water. They look like they are doing awesome in this setup. They were planted in the last few days of September. I will definitely add this variety into my seasonal rotation. They are absolutely thriving in my backyard.

I would like to add, I normally have the worst time with powdery mildew on any type of squash, and the problems have been minimal with this "(Cucurbita pepo) (aka Eight Ball, Round Nice)" variety. 

HAVE to recommend this cookbook!

I recently received this cookbook in the mail. It is truly awesome for a few reasons if you ever plan to live out of your garden.

1) The recipes uses only one or 2 of anything:
   
I don't know about you, but since my yard is pretty tiny, I don't have 3 pounds of any one thing lying around. If a recipe calls for 2 carrots, 2 beets, and 2 rutabagas, that is more in line with what is ready to be picked at my place at any one time.

2) The recipes are more method than masterpiece:

Improvising. Improvising is exactly what you need to do when trying to eat what you grow. You might have an awesome recipe you just love, but unless you can adapt it to what you actually have on hand in a tasty way, it does you no good. The book talks about substitutions, and offers similar recipes using different veggies you might have on hand.

3) There are a lot of vegetarian recipes that are NOT COVERED IN CHEESE. 

This might not mean a lot to you, but it does to me. I LOVE the fact that there is a maple-balsamic vinegar root vegetable recipe, a coconut-jalapeno butternut squash recipe, and 100 more recipes that are flavorful and reasonable enough in calories and nutrition to use on a daily basis. The number of vegetarian recipes that are put out there that are 1000+ calories per serving are as offensive as they are uncreative and unoriginal. Anyone can take a piece of zucchini, slather it in cheese and spices, and make it taste good. To take vegetables and flavor them in a way that is different and interesting without taking the easy way out and covering them with fat, salt, and cheese shows a great amount of creative effort. I would like to give a big finger wag of shame to those of you (and you know who you are) who throw a cheese covered veggie casserole or lasagna into you cookbook or on to your website and think that is good enough to widen your audience.

The number of unhealthy pizza-tarians out there is offensive and insulting, not to mention confusing to the omnivore population when they are trying to make a suitable menu item for the "other people" tagging along in a group at a restaurant. And no, I am not claiming to be a vegetarian again. My previous dietary post is still accurate. However, subbing mass quantities of cheese in lieu of meat is unacceptable and unhealthy. If you don't want to eat animals that is fine. If you think food is unpalatable unless it is covered with butter and cheese, you shouldn't call yourself a vegetarian, because you don't actually like vegetables. You like cheese and butter. Pick a new title. 

Enough with that rant.

4) There are TONS of recipes. This isn't one of those cookbooks with a dozen or so recipes with stories, pictures, and anecdotes filling the rest of the pages. There are so many recipes, it is almost guaranteed that there will be more than a few you will want to immediately try.

I recommend this book to ANYONE AND EVERYONE who gardens, forages, eats seasonally or would just like to start paying less taxes into the machine by becoming more self sufficient or buying less processed foods. 
  

Finally posting some gardening pics

I've been meaning to get some pictures of my garden up to hopefully inspire people to start one if they haven't, as well as welcome some helpful hints my way. I have a crap-tacularly small city yard, and have been trying to do the best I can with the space. To that end, there is a 3ftx3ft self watering planter from Gardener's Supply that is just amazing. (I don't receive any kickbacks for saying that.) The plants seem to grow almost twice as fast and you can fit more plants in a smaller space with self-watering containers because they don't compete with each other as much for resources.


Here's what I have in it right now:


In the center third, I have 3 vertical towers with 8 "oh so sweet" watermelon plants. I may sling the melons for support soon, but for now the vines seem to be holding up fine.

In the front third of the planter, I have some beets and carrots. The beets are just about done. I have a few chickens running around willy-nilly in my backyard and although the planter has chicken wire and a row of buckets surrounding it, they still stretch their neck out and sample the beet leaves a little. I've decided I can live with the amount of damage since the setup still keeps them from causing any catastrophic damage.

The back third of the planter has 2 grape tomato plants. To keep them from overcrowding the planter, they are woven through the chicken wire into the asparagus bed. Only the roots are in the self watering planter. It seems to be supporting them pretty well too.

Here is the asparagus bed with the tomatoes poking in to. It is about 3ftx4ft. I would like a bigger one, but that's all the room I have unfortunately.

In the corner of the self watering planter between the tomatoes and the fill tube there was just enough room to squeeze in a couple of basil plants. I put them there because I read it would ward off tomato hornworms. I haven't had a problem with them this year, but cabbage moths seem to like the basil plants:( Just need to keep the cabbage moths away now. Still working on my no-pesticide approach it seems.... 

 
So that's it for now. I feel that is a lot of garden for the space, and I highly recommend these planters. I have more going on in other containers and on the side and front of the house. I will post more later. Anyone reading this tell me what you think!

Do Ladybugs eat Milkweed bugs? Yes they do!

In addition to a minor aphid problem on my anise, I had hoped and guessed that ladybugs would help me with a milkweed bug problem that was forming again this year. Last year they completely DEVASTATED my milkweed, and that milkweed was for the monarchs, not the milkweed bugs:( There were some extremely sad and undersized caterpillars eating what few leaves remained after the infestation. I bought 2 tubs of ladybugs today and sprinkled a few on the milkweed as a test, and ha! I caught 2 humping while the one in front was eating a milkweed bug, with another eating one right beside the happy couple. Check it out!

Note: I apologize for the less than perfect photo. My camera was not really intended for macro shots, and the ladybug instructions said to release them after ideal lighting conditions when it is cooler.