Chile Negro de Arbol

This is the first year that I have grown the Chile Negro de Arbol, and it has produced. The plant is about 4 feet tall, fuzzy, and a greenish/gray color. The peppers turn from green, to black, and finally red, but I like to pick them when they are still black.

I am told they are very similar to the Vietnamese Black Dragon, Goat Weed, and Black Chile Verde, and sometimes have brown or purple on their tips.

Here is the first batch, which will be dried because the plant keeps on cranking out these firey little black devils.

Harvest Monday

Each Monday, Daphne's Dandelions hosts Harvest Monday, where garden bloggers submit links to their posts summarizing their harvest for the week. This is my first submission, and I am glad to join the tradition.


We had a light harvest this weekend. The weather was beautiful, and I spent only a few fleeting moments in the garden. The surf was very small, but the water was crystal clear, the sun was warm, and I had to get wet. I ended up longboarding at Cardiff Reef on Saturday, and saw at least a dozen Garibaldi. Garibaldi are a bright orange damselfish, and look like a giant goldfish. They are quite beautiful in the clear water, zipping around as we glide over them.

After the surf, I picked some purple top turnips to thin the box. I have far too many turnips at this point, and need to find a new way to prepare them because my wife did not care for my mustard sauce a few weeks back. I also picked some hot peppers - a Jamaican Gold Pepper, and a Bhut Jolokia. I gave the Bhut Jolokia away, and still am not quite sure what to do with the large crop in the garden.

Rounding out the harvest were a few Passion Fruit, Portuguese Dairyman's Kale, and arugula.

We ended our weekend with a Halloween party for a bunch of small kids, ages 4 months to 3.5. They got to trick-or-treat around the garden, stopping at cardboard houses we constructed. It was adorable, and really fun. Stay tuned for a post later this week of the highlights.

The Great Caper Experiment

There is excitement in air, but I think I am the only one around here that senses it. I finally planted my caper seeds today, and it has been a long time coming. I love capers - salted,  pickled, in a mustard cream sauce, as a pizza topping, on a bagel with lox and cream cheese, or in a puree, they are amazing little things.

Capers are the unopened, unripened flower buds of the Capparis spinosa plant. They taste a little like lemony olives, and grow all over the Mediterranean basin. There are stories of capers growing wild, out of stone walls in Croatia, which is something I would love to see.

I first bought a plant a few years back, and without doing much research, planted it in the ground. My soil is very sandy, and tends to drain slowly. The plant isn't happy in this spot, but it does come back every spring with new leaves and flowers. Perhaps someday I'll move it to a better location.

In 2010, I stumbled upon a fantastic gardening blog, From Seed to Table - http://fromseedtotable.blogspot.com/. Michelle lives in Carmel Valley, on the Central California coast, and has a climate somewhat similar to mine. She has a caper obsession, and is a tremendous resource for sprouting and growing them. She was also kind enough to send me some seeds of a Croatian Caper in early 2011. While it was too late to plant them last year, now is perfect according to her instructions which can be found at her blog, under the page, My Caper Obsession - http://fromseedtotable.blogspot.com/p/my-caper-obsession.html.

According to Michelle, she has the best luck sowing the seeds between September and November, and leaving them in a moist, cool place until late winter. In late February or early March, they should be moved to a warmer spot where they can get some sun, but also not dry out. They should germinate in two to three weeks after that. I potted mine up this morning in some seeding mix, and placed them under a banana tree where they will stay until early March. The little potted trees behind the capers are cherimoya seedlings I planted a few years back. They really need to be repotted. 

When I moved the flat this morning, I found a little salamander underneath. I think he is a Garden Slender Salamander, and now has the job of protecting my capers.

Hopefully we will see some activity come spring 2012 - stay tuned!

Welcome to Our Home

Welcome to our blog, and welcome to our home. We moved into this concrete block house a little less than two years ago, and it has been a tornado of activity ever since. The home was built in 1947 as a beach cottage, and we are within walking distance of one of the few San Diego point-breaks. The original backyard was a tennis court from the 1970s, broken and crumbling. It was removed, and we started on our garden. We removed the lawn and planted some natives, and some fruit trees. If all goes according to plan, our son Ezra will be raised in this home. Here is a tour:

Side yard surfboard rack with a Bonzer Egg and an 8'8" Vaquero pin-tail by Marc Andreini.

Lemongrass 

My wife loves Dahlias and Chrysanthemums.

View of the garden, and the path to nowhere - definitely a work in progress.

My beloved Curry Leaf Trees, aka Murraya koenigii. Expect some posts about these trees and some recipes.

Our son has his own garden box, where he can dig, plant, and destroy anything he wants, no questions asked.

Passion Fruit – We have had hundreds of these round, amazing fruit this year. If you have any nice recipes, please let me know. We have bags of frozen juice just waiting for something new.

We planted this entire box with garlic on 10/15/11. It’s our first time ever growing garlic, and it should be quite interesting to see how it does in San Diego.

We let the herb garden go nuts. All the flowers attracts bees, which is great for the open pollinated veggies, which is 99% of ours.

Here is one of our girls. For some reason, they love to lay eggs in the feed bucket. They have great nesting boxes, but refuse to use them.

The coop, built on stilts to use some space that otherwise was wasted. We have three Delawares, and three Araucanas.

My wife asked me for a new shelf unit for the patio to house some crafting supplies and toys. I used some old pallets, and I am quite proud of the finished product.