The seranos that grow outside my kitchen window

These puppies are absolutely beautiful! They're a bit sweet, but still spicy and really juicy. They seem to taste better when I let them turn red on the plant. Whatever I can't eat, I let dry out. Next time I make tamales, I hope to use my dried seranos to make my chili paste. Awesome!

Update: Not Your Mom's Astray Herb box

A year has gone by since I build this herb garden and although the plants in it are doing really well, the box is not.

This is the front view of the bottom of the box.

This is the side view of the box.

Looks like I'll have to come up on some sturdier recycled wood or buy some. Anyone got plywood and 2x4's? I can pick it up, just let me know... zofeone@gmail.com

Back Yard Green House

Before Mel and I left for our New Year's vacation, I built a small green house over our garden bed. I wanted to make sure our plants, mainly the tomato plants, survived the winter. Here's how I did it.
First I built this frame at the end of the garden bed. When I sized up this project, I found that the back fence was really sturdy as well as having small holes in just about the right places to attach bailing wire for my frame. So that's what I did. I built the frame and securely attached it to the bottom of the garden bed 2x6. Then I carefully drove in some roofing nails that I had into the top of the frame. These nails are what I fastened the bailing wire to.
After securing the bailing wire to the fence and my frame it was time weed the garden bed and put some clear plastic over it all.
At the bottom of each side, I stapled the plastic to the bottom of the bed. For the front I just folded the excess plastic around, like I was wrapping a present. For the time being I used duct tape to hold it all in place.


Since building the green house, several problems have arose. One was rain. As it turns out, the 2x6's that were used to frame the garden bed were not as securely fastened to each other as they had appeared. Regardless, I don't think this structure secure or not would stand up to a large puddle of water on it's roof. As it turns out, the frame I built was pulled over due to a puddle on the roof. Luckily our house sitter worked it out temporarily while we were out of town. However there is more bad news. Late last week, I was getting ready to fix it, when I came home from work to find the plastic all gone. Bummer. Unfortunately there are a lot of bums in Downtown San Jose with sticky fingers.... And of course now, we seem to be going through some sort of warming trend, so I have no need for it at the moment. When it decides to get cold again, you'll be able to find me back at the drawing board.

Not Your Mom's Ashtray

So I had this herb garden that I built completely out of recycled wood and word got out about it and some friends of mine asked me to included it in an art show. Sweet, I thought. No one's ever asked me to put anything in an art show. Andrew and Val even offered to pick it up and transport it in their truck. On the way there it fell apart in the back of the truck. Bummer, right?

Well Andrew offered to let me rebuild it at their studio, since I had enough recycled wood to re-create another herb garden. Here are some of the photos from that day.

Since I had more of everything, in a sense, plus the proper space to build in, the new box came out wayyy better. By the time this happened I had accumulated much more wood to start with. Plus it was better quality. The first box was made of plywood and brads. Not strong, plus it was poorly designed. Thanks Andrew for the screws! I had some of my own, but this contribution came in really handy.

Funny story about the paint. Back in June of 2009, Mel and I were packing up to move. To find boxes, we drove around a couple of times a week behind big stores and strip malls. One Saturday morning we scoped out this huge Asian shopping area on the corner of Story and McLaughlin. It felt weird to me, so I drove and made Mel go into the dumpster compounds looking for boxes. After the second one I asked, "so did you get any boxes?" "Nope but I got some paint!" So anything that needs to get painted, gets painted with this paint. Would you believe that it matches our house? It's a little darker, but our house is orange with green trim.

The original herb garden box started off with "Not Your Mom's ASHTRAY" painted on one side. I did this because Mel and I are always making "your mom" jokes and because I didn't want people who might be partying at our house to put their cigarettes out in our herb garden. On another side I painted "TASTE ME". On the front I painted "Herbage" and on the back, Mel's idea, "Spice Up Your Food With Love, Add Me".

One of the problems I had was with the soil and unfortunately that carried over into the exhibit. Around the time that I built this box, a friend of mine dug out some of his basement. I didn't realize at the time that, duh! this dirt is mostly clay. I had some major drainage problems. Plus another friend had over watered it while we had been on a road trip a couple of weeks earlier. The exhibit lasted for 2 or 3 weeks. When I Mel and I put the dirt back in while setting up the box at the gallery, we put a layer of rocks and tried to take out chunks of clay, while mixing in dry, fertile soil. Still no bueno. Most of our herbs made it through the show and made it through the replanting of the box. After the show, I took out all the dirt again and put it back in small layers in order to let the soil dry out.

Since then, only the Italian flat leaf parsley and the chives managed to survive. The tarragon, sage, pepper plants, garlic chives and thyme all passed. However I have since replanted other herbs and plants. Right now I have spinach coming up and looking good. The drainage issues seemed to be resolved and recently with the storms that have moved through the bay area, have had a healthy amount of water.