Kieu and Joe"s Urban Deck Garden - July 15, 2013

Our deck garden is 12x10 foot and we grow everything in pots. The tomatoes this year look so much cleaner since Joe started to twine them by first cutting the lower stalks and leaves and attach the twines to the top trellis. This method makes them "indeterminate" because they can grow, supposedly, indeterminately. Once he twined them, they look stronger. In the video I forgot to mention about our Malibar spinach and the blackberries. The Malibar spinach (rau mồng tơi) is a popular Vietnamese spinach that is used for soup. But Joe picked a leaf one day and we ate it raw ... delicious! The blackberry doesn"t do very well this year but our blueberry plant does.

We must have about 20 volunteered tomatoes. Volunteer means we didn"t grow them. Our dog Junior must have spit the seeds of the tomato out last year when he ate a raw one. He is blind and his sense of smell is amazing. He only eats ripened tomatoes or strawberries. Our strawberries are doing very well this year in the hypertufa pot that Joe made. He used a rectangular ice chest as a mold to make this pot. It"s very heavy and it seems like a lot of plants don"t survive in this pot, but we finally found the right plant for it.

Our Arbol chili (black chili peppers or ớt chỉ thiên -- meaning chili that points to the sky) is doing real well after Joe cut it back to almost nothing. I bought it at a Vietnamese store and it has no bugs, whatsoever. A lot of plants that we bought from various nurseries have bugs that can be devastating to our garden. Even with careful visual check before we buy them, the bugs or problem may be in the soil.

We don"t use any pesticides so each morning and afternoon or whenever we can, we look for horn worms (they have little horns on the head), cabbage worms, their eggs and other bugs such as white flies, etc... What gives them away is their black droppings on a leaf below where they are chomping on our plant. Just flip the leaves above it and if you"re lucky they"re still there. Otherwise you have to look at every leaf on the plant. No wonder organic foods are so expensive. But they probably are grown indoor to avoid bugs brought by birds and other flying insects.

We grow many things we like to eat, either from plants at nurseries, seeds thrown into the pots directly (mostly carrots) or indoor first under artificial lights. Once they get big enough, we transplant them outside. We used to do a lot of hydroponics but the nutrient solutions can get expensive and checking the pH of the water can be tiring.

We"d love to have more spaces to grow. My parents had a rubber plantation in Viet Nam and my mom grew pineapples, mangoes, corn, etc... My dad planted many fruit trees and vegetables when we first came to the U.S. and I used to work in the garden with him. He turned our back slope of the house into a stair garden. I used to take the stairs down to walk to San Diego State University to go to school. We"d love to have more land now to grow, but from the video, you can see what you can do with a small space like ours.

I love to take pictures of plants and foods from our garden. Will upload some pictures soon.

Thank you for watching. I videotaped this myself with my iPhone4. No editing. A little shaking... Hope I didn"t give you a headache! :-)

You can send comments to our non-profit at www.leaguefit.com
See more pictures of our vegetables and herbs with recipes and nutrition tips at:
http://www.leaguefit.com/pdf/Joe%20and%20Kieu"s%20Herbs%20Garden%202012-%20part%201-%202%20col.pdf

P.S.: our plants in this video: Thai basil, chives, lettuces, blueberries, lemon grass (cây xả), Elephant ears (cây bạc hà), Malibar spinach (rau mồng tơi), carrots, flax seeds (hạt lanh), blackberries,squash, cucumber, tomatoes (various types including grapes, purple Russian, San Marzano,... indeterminates), purple basil, amaranth (rau dền đỏ), strawberries, cactus, other flowers I forgot the name, a Christmas shaped tree -- to the left of Buddha statue, cilantro, carrots, rosemary, St. John"s wort, oregano, cherimoya, Arbol chili (ớt chỉ thiên), and other chili peppers etc...)

No occupation is so delightful to me as the culture of the earth, no culture comparable to that of the garden. But though an old man, I am but a young gardener. - Thomas Jeffereson

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