By Sharon Cohoon, Sunset senior garden writer
Adriana Martinez has restored my faith. For a number of years I was wondering if garden journalists were going to become an endangered species. Nurseries kept telling me that young homeowners were just not interested in digging, weeding, deadheading, pruning, dreaming up new plant combinations, re-arranging plants like furniture, and all the other tweaking that goes into creating an ornamental garden that previous generations of gardeners thought was fun. All they wanted was a landscape that looked respectable. Something they could just put in and forget about. The equivalent of plastic plants. What would there be to write about?
But now the same people who didn't think ornamentals were worth ruining your manicure for have discovered edibles. They're building raised beds, buying compost by the truck load, nurturing their own seedlings, researching organic pest control methods on the internet, and finding the whole process of harvesting things straight from their own garden enthralling.
Adriana, shown below with 'Green Zebra' tomatoes towering over her in her garden in Long Beach, California, is one of those new gardeners.
When Adriana responded to our July query asking to hear from gardeners who were finding ways to
garden in small spaces, it was the fact she'd painted her raised beds black that first caught my attention. How urban and edgy, I thought.
And totally in keeping with Adriana and her husband Hector's personality as it turns out. Both love punk rock music. (Hector used to be in a punk rock band and now brokers punk rock music for a living.) And the two have a wardrobe that is primarily black. "I have 20 black t-shirts," says Hector. Adriana even got married in black.
But Adriana's garden is not just about style. This gal's the real deal. She researches everything. She found the plans for the "perfect raised bed" in Sunset's pages. She checks in with Los Angeles Cooperative Extension regularly for monthly tips on vegetable gardening. She loves the whole adventure of growing your own crops. Bringing home a truck load of compost and shoveling it into their new beds. ("We always seem to pick the hottest days for the hardest chores.") Ordering seeds. ("I spent $52 on seeds when Renee's Garden seeds had their sale and could easily have spent twice as much.") Germinating seeds. ("I got a huge bag of Vermont Compost Company potting soil and a seed block for my birthday, and I was thrilled.")
I am thankful to have met Adriana. She restores my faith in the future of gardening. I just hope there are thousands more out there like her.
The Martinez's dog, Wrinkles, next to their fall crop. Photo by Adriana. For more photos of the garden, see Adriana's blog.
And here's how Adriana grew her towering tomatoes.
1. She started with good soil.
2. She watered deeply but not too often. Adriana drilled one-gallon plastic containers full of half-inch holes and buried them around her tomato seedlings up to the lip. She filled them with the hose when it was time to water. "It slows down the water and makes it go deep into the root zone," she says.
3. She feed her plants kelp. "I think Kelp Sea Weed Magic' is well-named."
