Welcome back! Today we'll be diving right into our garden building, but first, I'd like to orient you. Our house is tucked into a rolling hillside, about midway between the ocean and the summit of the Santa Cruz mountains in San Mateo county. We're at 1,100 feet above sea level, and face due west.
These hills were cleared in the 1800s for cattle ranching, and this spread has been cared for by the same family for generations. There are a dozen or so homes scattered about the property; ours is the highest. It's just below the arrow in the picture (click any photo to see it larger).
This is the view from the same spot looking east toward Skyline Boulevard, which runs along the distant ridge. That's Langley Hill on the left. On the far side of the ridge is the Santa Clara Valley, where I grew up. These days, except for the odd horse or two, the ranch is largely populated by deer, wild turkey, owls, hawks, turkey vultures, quail, mourning doves, wood pigeons, red-winged blackbirds, finches, juncos, blue jays, swallows and hummingbirds.
It is a busy, busy place.
This is where we'll begin. When we moved in last fall our landlady referred to this area as a "blank slate." As a landscape designer, those are magic words indeed. And yet, I would never presume to put a typical "designed" landscape here. This is a ranch. Form follows function, and form is on a budget. We wanted whatever we put here to fit, and to work, and to be as affordable as possible...and of course, I want it to look beautiful and interesting too.
There will be lessons, I'm sure. This is a wild, windy hillside, not the sheltered redwood valleys I'm accustomed to. Even the most protected spots on the property are vulnerable. We want to approach structures like chicken coops and greenhouses mindfully. It's nice to be flexing my design muscles again, with a spouse who loves to build things.
First things first. We needed to protect the garden from deer. I had used this kind of fencing on a project before, and was impressed by how unobtrusive it was. If we're going to intrude upon this bare field, at least we won't block the view!
After Hector the handyman mowed the grass very short, we staked out the area our 100' of fence would cover. We used the same kind of metal t-stakes found elsewhere on the ranch. A few are askew. I can work with that! I think it took less than an hour (using a fence post driver). They seem pretty sturdy, and I'll be reinforcing where needed as I fine-tune.
So, with deer fencing, there's always this deal with the gates. But who wants to mess with making a gate at this stage. Right now it's a couple of flaps, I will figure out something later.
So, for perspective (and posterity) this was happening the first week of April, 2020. It was the height of no toilet paper Covid-19 lockdown. I have continued to work from home during the pandemic, and thankfully work has been busy! But the days were getting warmer and I was anxious to get my cool season vegetables started, so I just slapped down a few pieces of cardboard, filled as many of my old grow bags as I could with the six bags of potting soil I could fit in the back of my car and we were in business.
This is the nicest seed collection, and I highly recommend them. No frills, just seeds in little plastic packets, 32 open-pollinated heirloom varieties of all the basics was a relief to find because, you know what? In April 2020, seed companies are running out of seeds! In APRIL! This is unprecedented. I know this because I worked for Renee's Garden Seeds for several years and remember the rhythm quite well. You don't run out of seeds until summer, that's a pretty hard rule. It was surreal. I did buy some of Renee's wonderful seeds, I'm sure you'll meet them later. But this little silver packet got everything started.
So on a brisk, sunny day in mid-April I planted beets, spinach, parsnips, carrots and peas. Such a comforting early spring bunch! They seem to be thriving in our cool, often foggy climate.
So here's what we're working with, soil-wise. Or, more accurately, trying to avoid disturbing too much. Our meadow is gopher heaven. You can sit here and hear them munching underground, and watch whole plants disappear into their holes. Most La Honda gardeners plant in sturdy, gopher-proof raised beds. Once we have gardened here a season we may build something a bit more permanent. For now I wanted quick, effective, easy to work with and affordable.
Sheet mulching is my new best friend. With good packing cardboard and grow bags you can make a robust instant garden just about anywhere. The cardboard does a good job of smothering the (mostly shallow-rooted annual) grasses. It's very pleasant to walk on too. As the cardboard melts under the grow bag a root/soil bond is established with the ground beneath, which helps bag-grown plants find deeper sources of water, as the roots can permeate the bottom of the pot. You have to be aware of this, and try not to move containers around when the plants get bigger. We're double and triple-layering the cardboard in the pathways; once everything is planted and settled we'll cover with wood chips. Since we are ordering a lot by mail these days AND pay a lot to have our garbage/recycling hauled away, this is an excellent use for all the boxes!
By the way, I hope you like sunsets, because there will be sunsets. This is the view from the front porch, looking west towards San Gregorio.
By late April it was time for bees! We had met with Ray from NorCal Bees before the quarantine, but had to wait for a swarm to be available to get a hive. Ray knows what he's doing, and had us set up in a jiffy. It was the first nice weekend in awhile and we were excited to get our bees! Ray is a great resource for San Mateo County, along with the county Beekeeper's Guild.
We love having the bees around, and it has been fun watching them orient themselves to their new location, mapping out their nectar sources, and training new bees to do the same. Their comforting buzz is a nice backdrop to the garden, and neither of us bothers the other (although they will bump into you if you stand in their flight path).
We have really enjoyed the opportunity to shop local as we build this garden. One disadvantage to grow-bag gardening is the investment in a HEAP of new soil the first year. Thereafter we'll recycle old soil; mixing it with new compost. We get this amazing planting mix from Wheeler Farms, up the road toward to coast in San Gregorio. A nice man named Peter brings it up and dumps it right there on the tarp for you. Beautiful. I can breathe easier, because now I have seeds, bags, dirt, and a fenced garden. Game on!
Here, have another sunset. We don't get them like this every night; the fog regularly rolls in long before sundown. You can bet, though, that if the sun is out, we're on the porch watching it! I've always been a sun-tracker - I want to know where it rises and sets at all times of the year. Our internal sundial for this bit of land is being set during this first year.
Yay! the next bit of garden infrastructure has arrived; two metal raised beds that will be the centerpiece. I like some things fixed in a garden, to build around. One bed will be dedicated to strawberries, the other is tentatively slated for salad greens, but that changes almost daily.
The new beds are open-bottomed, so we'll need to line them with hardware cloth before we can plant. During quarantine, hardware cloth has been surprisingly hard to find. I hope it's because other people are building gardens too.
Next up in the livestock department: part of my stimulus check has been invested in a nice chicken coop! I've wanted chickens ever since meeting these girls at garden writer Rosalind Creasy's house in Los Altos, many years ago. They lived in a charming coop in her front yard and were an integral part of her garden (and her neighborhood). We can't wait to have some girls of our own. I have 10 massive railroad ties to work with, and am busy working out the best layout for coop, covered run and fenced yard, probably combined with some sort of greenhouse or hoop-house (which would fulfill a decades-old dream).
Speaking of livestock, my old readers will remember my cat Haku, who appeared regularly in my posts, and is still is our official greeter. He's now 17 and a little crotchety, but he loves the new house and garden and has adapted well. Warm railroad ties, we find, are his new favorite thing to lie on. He no longer hunts and the quail can walk right by him (if you know quail, you know how amazing that is.)
And now Haku has a friend. John's dog Milo is a wonderful addition to the family, and he and Haku get along quite well (meaning, they pretty much can't see/ignore each other, as well as enjoy each other's food). Unfortunately, Milo's favorite balls are the exact size of gopher holes. There have been many losses. It is, however, amusing when we step on one and make it squeak.
Switch up! You get a sunrise this time. Isn't this amazing? The fog traces the exact route of the road going to the ocean, which is about 8 miles away (as the crow flies!)
The beets are up!
And the peas!
And the carrots!
And the spinach! Don't spinach seedlings look joyful?
Plenty of other goodies crowd our window sills, awaiting sunnier days and nights that stay firmly in the 50s (which we will hopefully see in May!)
One last April sunset. What a month. While it is exciting to start from scratch, it's also a little frustrating. I like things settled in, to know what goes where, to have what I need to do the job properly. April was decidedly unsettled in so many ways. My "keep calm and carry on" nature has been tested as the world up-ends around us. There doesn't seem to be much good news.
And yet, we are so grateful to be in this beautiful place, gainfully employed, with outdoor projects to provide some balance to the horrors of the news cycle. We are prepared to stay home, and are quite literally digging in for the long haul.
I hope that each of you are doing well, and if you are thinking of starting a garden, follow along! Next up: May!
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