I know I've mostly been posting about problems with my summer garden, but it's not all floppy stalks and lazy cabbages. There have been some positive vegetable garden developments as well.

My first tomatoes ripened recently, and more are on the way. The little fruit below is an heirloom variety grown from seed called Mexico Midget. As the name implies, these tomatoes are quite tiny. But, they're tasty--kind of tart, actually--and very cute. I have several more plants of this variety with lots of green fruit, as well as some Hartman's Gooseberry tomatoes in the process of ripening. The Austin Red Pears are kind of taking their time, but they'll be along in a few weeks.



In addition to my tomatoes, I've harvested several handfuls of green beans. I'm growing a bush bean variety called Empress. The plants have been very productive, despite their small stature. I eat the beans raw, fresh from the garden, and they're crisp and delicious. Fresh green beans are one of my favorite summer foods.



Many other plants are blooming, and should produce fruit soon. My summer squash have made a few male flowers, and I might have a small golden zucchini harvest soon... if I'm lucky. Yesterday, I noticed the first white flowers on a few pepper plants. And, on Monday, my strawberry plant finally bloomed. This seems late for a strawberry, but I read somewhere that some varieties produce all summer. So, hopefully this one will make some nice fruit.



My corn is slowly but surely growing taller and the stalks are thickening. I hope to see some ears in the next few weeks. My winter squash is sprawling, but has yet to set any fruit. We'll see how that goes. And my eggplants are making lots of thick, fuzzy leaves, but no flowers just yet.

So, hope is in the air in my little garden. I think it's possible that I'll have some impressive harvests in the next three or four weeks. I shouldn't speculate, though. I don't want to jinx it.

This month has been a productive and exciting one in our ongoing kitchen project. The most exciting improvement, so far, has been the addition of much-needed countertops.

A couple of weeks ago, Dakota brought home the lovely, hand-made butcher block top pictured below. It's smooth and square and perfectly sealed, and I love it. Plus, the butcher block is a re-use, so the materials cost nothing. Dakota cut and glued together strips from a hard maple tool* left over from a custom table he made for a designer client.



The butcher block top sits on our kitchen island. It sticks out farther on one side, so that we can pull up a stool and eat, or just hang out in the kitchen while someone else is cooking.

Last weekend, Dakota cut the Richlite counter tops that we're using in the rest of the kitchen. Richlite is a sustainable building material that looks and works in a way similar to slate. Here's the description from the company website:

Richlite® is primarily paper treated with phenolic resin and baked to create a solid sheet. During the production cycle the layers of paper are gradually crossed-linked with each other to create solid, durable sheets... Richlite® paper comes from pulp that is derived from trees, which is produced from paper purchased from FSC-Certified sources and/or recycled paper.

In addition, if you're concerned about such things, Richlite doesn't off-gas and they create no hazardous waste during the production process. It comes in a variety of nice colors, it's scratch and stain resistant, and you can put hot pots on Richlite without damaging it. In the shot below, the countertop hasn't been sealed yet. In it's final form, it will be a bit shinier.



Dakota took great care in cutting our one sheet of Richlite because, besides being green, it's kind of expensive. Although, I believe it's pretty comparable, price-wise, with many other common countertop materials. My parents actually gave me this particular sheet of black Richlite for my 30th birthday. Great gift, huh?



Tomorrow, the painted cabinets are getting a layer of sealant. Once that's done, we'll be able to attach the countertops permanently. I am pretty psyched to have them installed. It's been okay working with cutting boards on top of raw plywood cabinet tops, but having the real surfaces will make cooking so much nicer. And, our green kitchen will be that much closer to completion.

* A "tool" in this context is a sort of mold around which a metal table top was spun and bent.

We've been lucky in Southern California this summer. So far, the temperatures have been relatively mild. But, the last week or so, it's been hot enough to weigh in on the effectiveness of our cellulose attic insulation. And my decision is... it's great!

During the day, the house is noticeably cooler than the outdoors. I haven't found myself sweating while doing light cleaning on a weekend afternoon. And when I come into the house after working in the garden, it's feels nice and cool--not stuffy.

That's all great, but the true benefit of the insulation comes at night. Previously, the house would feel warm and stuffy in the evenings. Now, it's just as cool as it is outdoors. On previous summer evenings, we would sit in the living room with as few items of clothing on as possible, trying not to sweat. Now, I wear thin sweatpants when relaxing after work. It's that much cooler!

My final piece of evidence is this: We have yet to dig out window air conditioner out of the garage. The insulation is working so well that our bedroom is cool enough to sleep in with just a few open windows and a ceiling fan. The cheapskate in me is delighted by how much we're saving on our energy bills.

So, with all this evidence, I can definitely recommend that everyone upgrade their attic insulation to R-30. The insulation, along with the solar attic fan and our indoor ceiling fans, has really made living in Los Angeles without central air conditioning easy. And even if you do have central air, I'm sure your energy bills will go way down with the new insulation.

Last winter was my first time growing cabbage, and I am not sure I really got it right. Most of my plants were destroyed in a particularly brutal soil-ravaging by the local gang of skunks. (Or at least that's who I've decided to pin the crime on. It could have been raccoons.) One hardy purple cabbage survived. It's been slowly and steadily growing over the past five--yes, five!--months.

Cabbage on February 15


Cabbage on March 7


Cabbage on May 4


Cabbage on May 31


Cabbage on July 3


So, as you can see, my cabbage has been growing very, very slowly and still has only formed a rather puny head. At this point, I'm thinking of just harvesting the damn thing. It's taking up a valuable sunny spot in my upper bed, and, at this rate, it won't have a sizable head until Christmas.

Odds are, the cabbage head won't even be that tasty since hot weather apparently makes cabbage bitter. But, I plan to eat it no matter what. I put in all this time growing it, after all.

I'm not sure if I'll grow cabbage in my next winter garden. They're pretty, but they take up a lot of space. If I do grow them, I plan to research exactly how to make them happy. Five months for one tiny head of cabbage is not an experience I want to repeat.

Since I'm new to potato growing, I am hoping someone with a bit more experience can help me figure out what--if anything--is wrong with these potato plants. They have been happily growing in their bags over the last month or so, but, all of the sudden, things seem less promising.

I have two primary concerns:
(1) Their stalks have flopped over.
(2) They don't seem leafy enough.

I had been trying to keep the soil in the potato bags moist, but I also don't want to over-water them. Now, I'm not sure whether I need to water more or less. I added about an inch more compost to the bags, in case that would help, and also fed the potatoes with some liquid organic fertilizer that is high in potassium. I haven't seen any bugs hanging around, so I don't think they're under attack by a garden pest.

I have removed quite a few yellowing, dying leaves from the stalks. And some of the leaves currently on the plants look like this:



Usually I don't worry too much about dropping leaves, but the potato stalks look really bare. Could they have some sort of leaf blight? I was thinking it might be too hot for them, but it's really only gotten into the 90s a couple of times this summer, and my gardening book says potatoes are pretty happy up to 85 degrees. So, what could be bothering my potato plants?

As you can see, I'm feeling a bit anxious about my potato crop. To be honest, I'm into the nervous phase with my entire vegetable garden. Everything is producing baby fruit, but nothing has ripened for harvest yet. I have had several experiences in the past where everything goes wrong at this particular phase--withering squash, pepper flowers that won't make fruit, blossom-end rot on tomatoes--so I'm worried. This is the phase where I start reading gardening message boards and getting confused by conflicting advice about nitrogen levels and how many inches to water your zucchini. Perhaps I just need to chill out.

But anyway... Does anyone have some potato growing advice? Should I be concerned about the floppy, spindly plants? Or should I just calm down and cross my fingers that tubers will eventually form inside those big green bags?

If you're growing a garden, one thing you can count on is that there will be bugs. If you're growing fruits and vegetables organically, there will be LOTS of bugs. Some will be friendly, many will be annoying and a few might be worth killing. Of course, the insects in any garden vary by region, crop and landscape. Here are a few I have encountered, and some lessons I've learned while trying to deal with them.

Did you know that you can grow your own exfoliating luffa? I only found this out last year. Before that, I was under the impression that luffas, like natural sponges, came from the ocean. Nope! Turns out, they're a gourd. So, of course, I decided to grow some. Unfortunately, it took me a little while to find and order some luffa seeds. I may be planting them too late this year, but maybe I'll get lucky.

To give myself a jump start, I tried sprouting some seeds before planting them. I put a few luffa seeds in a wet paper towel, slid them in a plastic bag and set it on a sunny windowsill. Apparently, luffa seeds really like the heat. In about a week, I had some nice little sprouted seeds.



I planted these seeds in some compost-rich soil in my Cow Pots. From what I have read, luffa doesn't like to be transplanted, so the Cow Pots are perfect since they just got directly into the ground with the plant. A couple of seeds have already come up and should be ready for in-ground planting next week.

Now I just have to figure out where to put them. Apparently, the vines get very big and like to climb fences. Perhaps I'll try them down at the bottom of the yard on our chain-link fence. The soil isn't great, but it's nice and sunny down there.

I will be very happy if I manage to actually grow and harvest some luffa this year. If I get enough, I could give them as Christmas gifts. I could even make some soap or candles to go with them. For a DIY gift-lover like me, that would be a dream come true.