Turtle Farming

I've always had an interest in growing things, since my days of working at the Geneva Greenhouse through high school, so I recently signed up for an 'Urban Farming' class at a place called Silverlake Farms here in LA. The class was an intro to growing vegetables, and they went over the basics of what we needed to do to start our own veggie farm. One thing about living in a city like this, is that no matter what your hobby, you're going to find a lot of interesting people that are involved in the same type of thing. Case in point, was the couple that ran SilverLake Farms. They are an awesome couple, Tara and Beat (pronounced Bay-ot) (In typical Mitch-fashion, I thought his name was Bear, which is what I called him the entire class.) Good ol' Bear was walking around the Franklin Hills community garden while we were learning about soil, and I glanced over to him as he was doing a little weeding. Apparently weeding involves eating, because he started pounding down all the flowers that were growing around the weeds like he was at a buffet. I started busting out laughing, elbowing Mike at the same time to take a look.

At the end of class, Tara gave us a tour of the garden, and she gave us a sample of a celery plant that she was growing. No joke, it was the best celery I ever tasted, I ate it all the way down to the leaves. We also sampled some Asparagus that was growing right out of the ground, I ate the entire thing it was so good. Right when I finished it, Tara mentioned to me "Mitch, be careful, I knocked a slug off of the bottom part of that piece I gave you." Uhhhh....thanks for the heads up Tara.

The class gave us a starter set of seeds, and we had our choice of what vegetables to pick. We opted for beets, cucumbers, heirloom tomatoes, romaine lettuce, eggplant, summer squash, and parsley.



This would compliment well our grapevine that is growing like crazy, as well as an avocado tree that I'm growing from a pit I stuck in the ground, and a pumpkin vine that is growing from seeds I stuck in a pot after Halloween.





I had such a good time that I emailed Tara letting her know that if she needs any volunteer help at their community garden, I'd be happy to help. Here was her response:

"I would like to take you up on your offer.  Are you available Tuesday 16th to help my husband install a small irrigation system at the Silverlake Community Church?  ....I'm hoping you can help.  It's a volunteer job....We could also use an extra pair of hands on Wednesday, Thursday and Friday of next week...  My husband has to install an irrigation system for a job in Studio City.  He could definitely use some help."

Soooo, to make a long story short, I took a 1/2 day off of work to see what this is all about. Turns out volunteering=digging a ditch for 4 hours in the Valley in order to put some piping in. This experience has temporarily ended my volunteer activities for the time being.

But back to the farm....

I had seeds, but no where to plant them. So I called a guy who builds custom planter boxes. English is his second language, here's how our conversation went:

Me: "You were recommended to me as someone who could build a planter box for me."
him: "yes, yes."
Me: "I'd like a box that's 4 ft long, 2 ft wide, and 2 ft deep."
him: ...
Me: "hello?"
Him: "Wait wait, give to me again."
Me: "4x2x2, etc etc."
Him: "..." "..."
Him: "$40"
Me: "Tell you what, I'll give you $80 if you can give me that box, two smaller ones, and deliver it to me."
Him: "......"
Him: "$90"
Me: "Oh yeah, how about $85?"
Him: "...." "Haaaahaaaahaa"
Me: "OK ok, you win, $90 it is."

So we got the boxes, they delivered them from the Valley down to our house, and these things were freakin' huge. So the next dilemna was to find the dirt necessary to fill this box, for our vegetables. Kelly came up with the idea that people give soil away on Craigslist, and lo and behold; we found 'Ed' a gentleman in Culver City who was getting rid of all of the soil at his house We emailed for me to come pick some up. But before he could give it to me, he first wanted to learn what I was going to do with it. Like, he wanted to screen me first to see if I was going to put his soil to good use. When I told him I wanted to grow vegetables, it seemed to pass his litmus test. I went to pick up the dirt with two garbage cans, he helped me fill them up and lift them into the car, and they filled the box half full. So I drove back again on Saturday, and got two more garbage cans of dirt, and finally had enough soil for our seedlings to go in. Ed and I became such buddies that he also dug up two of his red leaf lettuce plants for me to plant, and about 1/2 dozen radishes. Nice guy.



I'm happy to say that the soil is in, the seedlings are planted, and I'm planning on having a bumper crop soon, followed by a raging party where we get to eat all of our produce. Stay tuned.