This is just a quick post to introduce you all to our newest family member, Piper. She is the smaller one in the front and has been with us for a little over a month.

The bigger one in back is Samson, who has been with us for a little over a year now. Folks who follow the blog or follow me on Twitter know that Samson is the one who eats my strawberries and knocks the bell peppers off of the plants as soon as they get big enough to play with. Well, now Piper is getting in on the gardening fun by being quite the digger!

Here is what she recently did to the corn I had planted this year...

Here is the before...

And here is the after...

So, I guess we won't be having any corn this year!

It was super important to us that Samson pick his new friend -- rather than us picking a friend for him and hoping they got along. I think it worked!

We adopted both Samson and Piper from the Santa Paula Animal Rescue Center (SPARC), which is a no-kill shelter in Ventura County (SoCal).

If you are in the 805 area and have room in your home for a furry friend or two, check out their website or make an appointment to see the many cats and dogs that need a good home!

These are my first carrots of the year and I can't get over how cute they are!

Last year was my first year growing in our coastal Oxnard backyard after moving back to SoCal from Seattle. Since Oxnard is filled with farms and known for its agriculture and a climate that lets you grow just about anything, I figured having my little backyard vegetable garden (mostly a juicing garden) would be a total breeze.

Ugh, I was so wrong!

Last year was my worst gardening year ever. First I had fungus on every squash plant in my garden, then I had aphids like you wouldn't believe, then Samson kept eating all of the strawberries and knocking the peppers off the plants to play with them, then I had some night-time visitors demolishing everything, and then I had blossom rot. But that wasn't all.

My plants suddenly started dying and not doing as well. It took me a while to figure out the problem, but when I went to test the soil, I found a grub. So then I did a little digging and found disturbed root systems and so many grubs that I couldn't even count them if I tried.

So, after finding the grub infestation and not being able to find a cruelty-free way to save my garden without killing the grubs, I basically gave up.

...Until winter...when the grubs go deeper into the soil and wouldn't be so interested in my roots. Come winter, I planted lettuces, kale and chard. They took forever to germinate, but when they did, they did just fine. As you can see, they are still producing.

I've planted lots more since then and everything is going well, but it is almost time for the grubs to return to the surface and get ready to become beetles. So that means they are probably going to be feasting on my roots again. I'm crossing my fingers that they let my garden live! 

Here are some more garden pictures and updates on how things are going so far this year:

I have never grown radishes before, so I was super excited to see these little fellas popping up so soon after planting the seeds! As you can see in the front row, my parsley seeds are still deciding whether or not they feel like germinating. I'm giving them another week, and then I will be replanting that patch.

In the back row behind the radishes, those are cherry tomatoes and kale.

Last year, I planted marigolds in the open spaces in the cinder block garden borders. The hope was for them to work as natural, cruelty-free pest control, but I feel like I only had so-so results. So this year, I went ahead and planted kale, chard and lettuces in the open spaces.

If you are planting in cinder blocks for the first time, I recommend planting kale or chard in every other hole (instead of every hole) to give them more room to grow and to make sure no one is blocking anyone's sun.

I'm trying corn in one corner of my garden this year. Somehow this bean sprout is mixed in with the corn planted along the borders in the cinder blocks. Well, at least beans and corn get along!

My night-time garden visitors were demolishing my collard greens this winter, but they seem to have moved on, and we are now getting some good collards!

The lemon tree (in the middle) is the most productive of our younger fruit trees. We have an old orange tree that was here long before we were, but we planted the other trees. So far, we have lime, lemon, plum, kumquat and pomegranate.

The kumquat tree gave quite a bit this spring (even with a significant caterpillar population munching on the leaves), and I'm hoping for another harvest in summer. The wind blew away all of the plum blossoms, so I don't know how that might affect pollination (I need to look that up). The lime tree gets lots of blossoms but very few fruits so far.

We also have an avocado tree out front, which is technically a sucker off of an old avocado tree that was chopped down before we came along. It gets blossoms but no fruits. We aren't expecting it to ever fruit, but we are keeping our fingers crossed, since it is the size of a tree, so I hate to kill it to make room to plant another one. My Dad -- who has about 150 avocado trees on their ranch -- thinks it is quite humorous that we won't give up on our sucker, but we aren't losing hope yet!

I really want some more fruit trees, but I don't think we have any more room.

What I love the most about the above picture is that little parsley plant right in the middle. I didn't plant any parsley in this bed. As you saw, I planted it in front of the radishes. However, I did let my parsley go to seed last year, and I think we can all see where one of those seeds ended up.

So the parsley I planted is still not doing anything, but this little gal is coming up just fine. I also found another one in the gravel by the fire pit. Letting stuff go to seed can lead to fun garden surprises!

Rather than giving up on growing strawberries (since Samson loves them), I decided to try growing them in containers this year. While they are out of reach for Sam, now the birds are feasting on them. We have managed to each eat one strawberry from the garden this year. They were delish. I hope I can come up with a way to save a few more of them from the birds.

Rather than using the trellis you see in the background for beans this year, I am using it to try to keep Samson out of the corn. We will see how that goes!

Other stuff I have planted so far that I will have to post pics of soon include chayotes, jalapenos and cucumber. I planted a few pumpkin seeds, but I'm losing hope that they will germinate.

How is your garden going this year? I would love to see pics -- post them on the Facebook page!

Oh -- and tips! Do you have vegan gardening tips, organic gardening tips or tips for making the most out of a juicing garden? Please share them with us!