Farewell, Tasha Tudor

It's hard to tell how much the world will slow down to notice that a woman who felt no need to move with the times is no longer with us. Tasha Tudor, author, illustrator, gardener, mother, maker of dolls and dollhouses, and a women who just seemed to have the inside track on how to live a wonderful life with very little, died yesterday at the age of 92. The LA Times has a wonderful obit that fills in some interesting details of her life, but the most telling detail is in this quote from Tudor herself:

"I believe in moderation in all things, except gardening and antique collecting."

I wish I could have known her. I bet I would have learned a lot.

Water Rationing

We got the word a month or so ago that EBMUD, our water utility district, was instituting emergency mandatory water rationing. Single-family homeowners were asked to reduce their water usage by 19%. Today an article in the SF Chronicle reports that water usage has only dropped by 4%, not the 15% overall drop that EBMUD was looking for. The article reports that there is a conspicuous lack of brown lawns in the bay area, indicating that perhaps people are not really making a full effort. (And keep in mind that this is the very environmentally-conscious San Francisco bay area we're talking about!)

It's hard to say why people might not be taking the call to conserve seriously. When the mandate from EBMUD was first issued, the Chronicle reported some people saying things like, "I'm not giving up my pool!" and indicating that they would probably just go ahead and pay whatever penalties they get charged with. I've heard of people in some of the posher areas of the east bay having water bills as high as $1000 (before water rationing or any penalties--that's just their regular usage). My water bill is typically about $52 every two months. A few times it's gone as high as $60. My usage runs from a low of 47 gallons/day on average during this year's rainy season, to a high of 84 gallons/day during last year's dry season. A 19% reduction would mean I'd have to bring my average daily usage during this dry season down to 68 gallons--not impossible, but challenging. But I have to say it annoys me to no end that I should have to scramble to cut back another 16 gallons when there are so many water-hogs who just can't be bothered with cutbacks at all.

Last year I smothered the front lawn and put in mostly drought-tolerant plants. I mulched and I've cut back watering to about every three days--about the most I can cut back given my sandy soil without plants really suffering. In the back, which is also lawnless, I hand-water about every three days, and for those plants that need a little extra (tomatoes, roses, and new seedlings) I collect water from the kitchen sink and bathroom to provide an extra dose. It will be interesting when I get my next water bill to see if this has had any impact at all.

Bloom Day

Just a few shots from the garden:

Poppy

Snail vine

Last of the sweet peas

Pumpkin in the vegetable garden

Baby zucchini

Clematis

Got your bumper sticker yet?

A New Look for An Alameda Garden

If you dropped by this site in the last few days, you may have caught this blog in the middle of a major redesign. What can I say? It was time for a change and I was lucky enough to catch a web designer friend with a little time to spare. Thank you, Mareev!

There are still a few changes to come, but the new look is now pretty much in place. Let me know what you think!

Where Organic Gardening and Meditation Meet

Don't miss the New York Times article today about Wendy Johnson, one of the founders of the organic garden and farm project at the Green Gulch Farm Zen Center across the bay near Muir Beach. Johnson is one of the pioneers of organic gardening in the U.S. as well as a Buddhist meditation teacher. As the article points out, long before Michael Pollan and Barbara Kingsolver wrote about mindful eating and growing and the relationship between the two, Johnson was living it, growing organic produce for the famous Greens restaurant in San Francisco. I've just received a copy of her new book, Gardening at the Dragon's Gate, and will be reviewing it here next week.

Wrapping Up Propagation Month

After taking a couple days off from the trials and tribulations of trying to propagate something different every day, I thought I'd post some conclusions I've come to:

1. Of all the different seed-growing methods I tried, one stood out as a clear favorite. If you're going to plant anywhere but directly in the ground, then soil blocks are definitely the way to go. Jiffy plugs suck. They really do. Forget about them. And sowing in flats is convenient for storing on a greenhouse shelf, but it makes transplanting the seedlings more time-consuming and traumatic for all the little roots. Seed blocks on the other hand make transplanting a breeze, plus you can control the soil mix, plus you don't have to worry about having a bunch of little pots or cell-packs laying around. More control, less stuff, happy seedlings. What's not to like?
2. It really does seem that just about all of my seed-starting adventures would have been greatly helped if I'd had a heating mat or two. Heat can really make seeds pop.
   
3. Those gel-rooting cups I tried to root salvia and catmint cuttings in? Don't waste your money. Every one of the cuttings got funky, and even though the package says you can just take out a cutting that isn't rooting and put in a new one, there's no point in putting a fresh cutting into what's supposed to be a sterile gel when it's obviously contaminated.
4. Actually, I had a hard time with almost all of the cuttings I tried to root and I think the problem is that they just weren't staying hydrated enough. It's just so much easier to root cuttings with a mist house. I did some searching on the Internet and found a couple of sites describing small mist houses that people built for under $100 using a set of shelves, some plastic sheeting, and some inexpensive misters and a timer. I'd like to try putting something like that together one of these days.
5. There are a couple things I didn't get around to doing that I still hope to get done. One is to air-layer the camellia at the side of my house (or maybe the really pretty white one at my friend Mark's house). The other is to do some budding on my cherry tree.
   
6. Lastly, I have to say that I had a lot of fun doing all this propagating and I look forward to doing it again next year.
   

I'm afraid that May, however, will have to be Weeding Month. That I'm not looking forward to.