La Nina, Costa Rican coffee, street water saves, and Victorian Kitchen Gardens II





We've been talking about how cold it is along our Central Coast, but just the opposite effect is occurring in Costa Rica.

 Their coffee production has dropped 25% because of high temperatures for the last 6 years. Coffee farmers are having to give up growing coffee unless they can move up to the higher altitudes (lower temperatures) that the coffee prefers. (See http://www.latimes.com/business/la-fi-coffee-20110323,0,2770618.story. )



Leigh Adams' gutter diversions

On a more cheerful note, somebody has figured out a way to divert  run-off water and save it to feed the ground water. Not sure the method used is very practical as it involves getting permission from your city to make drainage holes in the curb.This does not strike me as something cities would be enthusiastic about...

  However, it's an entertaining article and it seems, strangely to have  almost vanished from the LA Times archives . (The article ran March 12, but it is archived under March 4, 2011.) For you conspiracy theorists there there.....Maybe the LA Times doesn't want us to try this at home?  Emily Green wrote the article  which it talks about a garden in Altadena full of new fruit trees, all of which are being watered with diverted rain water from the gutters.http://latimesblogs.latimes.com/home_blog/2011/03/leigh-adams-john-lyons.html. The gardener created a swale to absorb the street water.

The latest news along our Central Coast is we are officially out of drought mode. First time in many years. Do you think the water rates will drop?  Noooooo...

Forcing pots

Meanwhile, back at the vegetable garden,our Victorians had brought forcing and blanching to high art. The handsome terra cotta pots in the picture were used for forcing  rhubarb, blanching celery  or asparagus. The gardeners also simply wrapped the plant to be blanched in straw and tied it with a raffia ribbon. Lacking the pots, we could do that. To blanch celery the kitchen gardeners also planted celery in a trench and slowly filled it in as the plants grew. (Can't see why celery shouldn't be green, but chacun son gout.)

A modern methods the Victorians  would have loved are :


row covers


  Row covers--  protect the starts from cold, wind and insects. These let in 75% of the available light. 

For smaller gardens and impatient gardeners the water wall will radiate heat to the plant at night. This kind of booster was not necessary in years past, but  we are ready to try it on  Early Girl tomatoes and  Japanese eggplant eggplant, remembering if the soil hasn't reached 65 degrees----- it might not do much good. It would probably work if it stops raining.

water wall

Last is the mulch to heat the ground around the plants-- lets through water and holds the radiant heat of the sun. Several kinds are on the market:
red or black plastic, or biodegradable. Biodegradable makes the most sense.

Biodegradable mulch

 Note: all these things are available at Territorial Seed Co.

Next: Victorian Kitchen Gardens III ( Grapevines at Blenheim,)  Founding Gardeners and Rethinking California Lawns