Here is my early spring garden. As you can see, it's quite different from the end-of-winter garden of late February (see blog post below from April 7). We have put in a bed that includes wildflowers from seeds I'd gotten from the Desert Botanical Garden last December, Dutch onions from the 99 cent store (the 99 cent store at Pico and Stewart/28th Street in Santa Monica often has plants and seeds sitting outside its doors); basil, cucumbers and orange peppers from Merrihew's Sunset Gardens on 15th and Ocean Park; and six seedlings from Tomatomania on March 28 in Encino (see Tomatomania story in the vegetables section). Oh, and the roses are blooming.
But I digress, for the first thing I put into the early spring garden was my grape vine. It's the white thing (well, it's in the white thing, which is known as a planting sleeve) you see against the wall to the left of the Frantoio olive tree.
Get it? Grape vine. Olive tree. Yes, this is my sad little attempt to create a feeling of Tuscany in my garden. At least, it's my image of what I think Tuscany is like as I've never been to Italy - even after taking two years of Italian in college.
I've had two olive trees for about five years now -- the Mission olive is to the left of the vine/sleeve (just out of the photo). Jeff gave the seedlings to me as a gift for my birthday about five years ago after I learned from my great aunt that one set of ancestors had come out to California to grow olives in Claremont. It was supposed to be a semi-retirement for this particular great great grandfather and, according to family legend, it ended up killing him.
No, I don't think Jeff was trying to kill me when he gave me the trees. I just happen to love olive oil. And wine. And the thought of one day making it to Italy.
The olive trees spent four years on our back porch in tubs. These are the larger tubs that we transplanted them into when I got my community garden a year ago after they outgrew the smaller tubs and I learned you're not allowed to plant trees in the ground (which, of course, makes sense). I have had one harvest of about a dozen olives from the Mission olive ( a California variety) and it looks like I will a good harvest this year as it's full of little buds. The Frantoio - the variety used in a lot of Tuscan olive oils -- has not given me any olives but it is at least much happier now that it's in my community garden and the larger tub.
Before ordering my grape vine, I consulted the "Western Garden" book by Sunset (available through our link with Amazon) to determine the best vine for my little plot. I went with a Muscat as it was both good for my particular zone (Sunset zone 24; USDA zone 10) and the grapes are good either as table grapes or for wine. Who knows, there may be a jigger of wine in that vine some day.
I ordered my vine from http://www.mypersonalvineyard.com, which had a good selection and sells two-year-old vines that have been "cut, grown for one year, grafted and grown for another year - and then stored in cold storage until delivery." I ordered the vine in January and it arrived in early March. The vine comes with a planting sleeve or planting carton - the big white thing -- which is made of a light cardboard. The company won't guarantee a vine without it as vine roots are susceptible to dehydration without the protection of a carton.
The vine is then submerged into a hole 18 inches deep, leaving maybe 1-2 inches of the vine stem above the soil level. That's pretty much what's there now, although I have noticed some small green leaves growing when I peek behind the carton to see how it's doing.
Putting in a vine is definitely not something that provides any kind of immediate gratification. But I love knowing it's there and growing and am excited to see how things continue. And besides, for immediate gratification, I have my tomato seedlings - which have already grown a good 10 inches since I put them in the ground a month ago. Soon, I will have tomatoes and basil. Add some mozzarella and drizzle on some balsamic and there's that Tuscan feeling all over again. Or, at least, what I assume is that Tuscan feeling.