🌱Seed 🙂Agree 📓Journal 📊Project
The Big Idea
I have decided to start a captains log style journal of my terraforming… I mean gardening mishaps and shenanigans. This is not at all performative or public facing writing but more reflective and for myself. I will honestly laugh if anyone ever reads this and think it is worth mentioning to me.
Related Notes: A Tea Garden Plant Care Plants Around Church LCOS Facility Pattern Language
7-2-25
I have this thing I do where I get really passionate about something and then kind of forget why. So this is an attempt to store some of those ideas, plans, crazy ideas and results of those crazy ideas when it comes to plants and working with the ground around me.
I have always been drawn to the idea of eating what you grow or being able to use things that came from your surroundings. But the over maintained and meticulous kind of gardening you usually associate with lots of vegetables or rose gardens, etc. quickly becomes a drag for me. So the idea of pushing and pulling factors and little levers in the environment and then letting things grow on their own is the overall philosophy I am starting with in this log. A more full description of one picture of this kind of wild gardening can be found here: Wild Edible Garden Design Pattern
So where am I now. Since moving to Santa Maria California it has been really fun getting to know this very unique growing environment. Anywhere that has real winter has a very set kind of cycle for growing and tending things. Here that is not as tight a reality. Although I did find out with a fig and lemon tree in my office that they still need to colder temperatures of “winter” and babying them thorough it in my office ended up stunting them. So the seasons are important but in a very different and unique way that I am still trying to wrap my head around.
Also I have had a but of a strange journey with gazanias. They are all over the church property and have so many fun colorful flowers. Eden especially likes picking them so I decided to collect some of their seeds and germinate them in my office. After I know have about twenty little plants sitting next to me as I write this I found out that they are minorly invasive in this part of California. So I guess I will grow a few for Eden but not but a ton of thought or work into trying to propagate them.
California poppies however are native and there is a little shoal of volunteers that have started to grow on the church grounds. I have collected some of their pods and am going to try a batch for germination once they dry out and I have moved the gazanias somewhere. Oh also I have just a few African violet seeds that sprouted we will see how they do too.
I also nabbed some matilija poppy seeds. I think I might have picked the pod too early and will be on the look out for a more mature pod but I am exited to try growing them too. They are a lot harder than the last two so will plan on tackling that in the fall maybe or even wait until next year.
My A Tea Garden has also been going well overall. I think I figured out how to get rid of the spider mites I had on my mint which is basically just washing to leaves a little while you water them. Also the fig tree that I did not bring in side is doing well and has some figs forming on it. I am also going to let one of the chamomile flowers go to seed so that I can plant the pot I have it in with more plants than the singular one I have we will see how that goes.
7-7-25
SO we are getting really close to closing on our house and it is really exciting to think about making the place our own. I have been thinking about the outside and have a few dreams.
- Grow sugar cane so that there can be full things we make fully from things grown in our backyard like lemonade etc.
- The kind that will grow the best that I could find is Lemon-Lime Sugarcane (AKA San Diego Yellow) Here is one place to buy it– Planting Justice
- Also an interesting site that has all kinds of resources from stuff like making beet sugar and who knows what else. https://permies.com/
- Also there is a very wild rosemary bush in the front of the house that I want to sprout cutting from because I think the main bush needs to go lol. https://www.gardenary.com/blog/how-to-propagate-rosemary
My Aspirations
the idea of wild gardening
linked with that is gathering and propagating naturally
harvesting and using things that grow
learning how to revitalize a bed with mostly the plants that are already there or in the area
Areas I am currently poking around in
LCOS church landscape
my office experiments
home plants
my little tea and herb garden