Why I Keep the Asters October 28, 2009

The asters that reseed vigorously in my parking strip garden are tall, leggy, often in the wrong place and prone to rust late in the season. But I keep them anyway. Do you know why?

Here’s another look:

Yes, for the bees. Most of the blossoms are gone by now (these photos were taken back in late September), but since there aren’t many flowers on the street still blooming at that time of year, I like giving my buzzing friends a last little taste of summer before it’s time to close up the honey shop for the year.

Do you have any plants you keep around mostly for the wildlife to enjoy?

Windflower Farm October 12, 2009

The Green Lake area of Seattle is swamped on sunny days by folks from all over the city, who come to walk, jog, bike or skate the lake’s 3+ mi. loop, enjoy its ample playground, or go for the goals on its many soccer fields. Houses are spiffy but street gardens are fairly scarce, probably since there is so much foot traffic and car inflow from outside the neighborhood.

So it was with great surprise and delight that I turned a corner there yesterday and found this view:

Varying fall tree foliage colors – check. Huge raised bed in the parking strip – yup. Massive pottery urns trusted to the elements and passers-by/would-be thieves – yes indeedy. But what really got me was that mass of Japanese anemones.

I have had limited success with windflowers in a couple of gardens, maybe I don’t water them enough or they don’t get the right amount of filtered sunlight. All I can say is, these people figured out how to grow them and then really went for it!

We were rushing past, late for lunch, needing burritos, but I wanted to stay in this unexpected approximation of a Japanese woodland for a while longer. I wonder what it looks like when the anemones go underground for the winter?

Pink in the Parking Strip August 28, 2009

Pink has never been my favorite color, in fact it is pretty much at the bottom of my list, but somehow it seems to have worked its way into my life despite my protestations. My daughter discovered it in preschool, it was like a social virus running from one girl to the next. Now, thankfully, she seems to be moving on to other colors, but in the meantime she still has pink clothes that fit and I’m not going to just toss them out because purple is the new pink.

In the garden, I love the soft whitish-pink of cherry blossoms, although my current garden does not have any. My mom gave me a ton of echinacea, which goes by Purple Coneflower but the purple has always looked more pink to me. Or maybe you could use the term “pinky-purple,” which my 2 yr. old niece taught me recently when she was visiting.

Although the pink of this Gaura is a little on the Pepto-Bismol side for my taste, it has bloomed its head off for months with almost no supplemental water and zero fertilizer in crummy parking strip soil, despite being a new addition in the spring. Its full name is Gaura lindheimeri ‘Passionate Rainbow’ and the purple leaves that it started out with have not been quite as apparent as I had hoped.

Every year, I say I will be more ruthless about ripping out the tall aster seedlings that reseed with wild abandon, but then I’m glad of them when summer begins its freefall into September and many of the other blooming plants start to give up. This is another pinky-purple one, and this blossom was the first to open of the many that will linger well into the fall.

Are there any colors that have crept into your garden (and your heart) despite initial resistance?

Parking Strip Raised Bed Update July 25, 2009

A few months ago, I wrote a post about a row of raised beds that had suddenly appeared in the parking strip of a house on our route to school. If you have a spare second, click here to see the “before” photos.

The other day, I was back by that way and almost crashed the car when I saw the transformation that had taken place. I guess the question of whether raised beds with good soil assist in the growing of delicious veggies in a tough spot has now been definitively answered. Check it out!

Tomatoes and nasturtiums with a simple wood frame trellis:

Carrots, lettuces and marigolds galore:

Broccoli, chard and a bunch of squash that is going to have to colonize the sidewalk if it gets any bigger:

One bed left, maybe for fall veggies?

The narrow bed on the arterial, no raised planter box but things still look pretty happy:

The furry farmer, who came out to see what I was doing:

The Seattle Times had this article on the front page of its online edition today, discussing the newly relaxed rules for growing veggies in our city’s parking strips. The revolution is underway!

My Garden is Smarter Than Me July 2, 2009

I lack the design sense to think up successful plant pairings, but sometimes a combination of self-sowers will show up that I find delightful.

I didn’t even know what Mexican Feather Grass was until you guys told me, but now I love it. I’m not sure where it came from, but I’m letting (some of) it stay in my parking strip. Ditto this coreopsis (of course I just bought one to replace one that died last winter, before noticing this one), which I can see has migrated from up the street in a neighbor’s street garden. The only drawback is that both of these are growing at the edge of the sidewalk, when they’d probably look better inset a bit. If I find a spare un-lazy moment, I might try to move them. Then again, if we never have any rain in Seattle anymore (there’s been nothing to speak of since early May), then transplanting should probably wait indefinitely.

Do you have any self-sown plant combos that you are enjoying this summer?

Cool Thoroughfare Planting June 24, 2009

Who says that major city thoroughfares and nice streetside plantings can’t mix? Someone in Seattle’s Wallingford neighborhood decided to buck the trend of boring parking strips along the busiest street in the sector, 45th Ave, and put in something really enjoyable to walk past. This strip is actually in two sections, separated by a crosswalk.

Even though cars, trucks, and buses thunder by regularly to and from the freeway, the neighborhood is actually very walkable and having some nice perennials to look at on the way distracts from the vehicular noise.

I kind of wish I could go back and start over in my own parking strip, choose plants more carefully and intelligently and have something harmonious like this. It does look like a designer was involved, but in a good way.

Epimediums, barberries, and small-leaf hebes are all tough, drought-tolerant plants that should need little or no care throughout the year. Grasses like the blue fescue below and a mass of Carex morowii ‘Ice Dance’ on the edge (guessing on that one) are also able to take the heat and keep looking good.

In the second part of the strip, purple spikes of Linaria harmonize with silvery groundcover and the brilliant orange of California poppies.

I missed the neighborhood garden tour, as it happened when I was on kid duty all day and I didn’t think she could hack it. Plus, $15 per person, maybe another year. Did any of you locals go?

Alien Seed Pods June 23, 2009

Yet another reason to love the species tulips that came up first and lasted longest in the parking strip this spring:

I just read recently that the trick to getting tulips to repeat is to plant them in an area where they receive little or no water during their dormant season. If they’re where it will get wet, it’s better to dig them up and store them until fall, so they don’t rot. I might have to go to the trouble, which I never have before, for these ones. They’re just too cool to treat as an annual like I usually do with tulips.

It’s weird to be thinking about bulbs now that the Summer Solstice has passed, but I’m trying to be good about letting my bulb foliage hang around as long as it needs to, so I’m grateful this bunch is at least not too ugly to look at amid all the surrounding greenery.

Do summer’s beauties make you forget about your little spring friends who are done for the year? Or do you miss them and think of them, even a little bit, sometimes? (I do.)

Streetside Potato Farm June 22, 2009

A couple of weeks ago, I took a stroll to the public library to return some overdue books and on the way I saw a raised bed in the parking strip I hadn’t notice before. It was a biggie, most of the width of the property, and pretty much a monoculture.

As of a few months ago, I might not have recognized this crop, thinking it looked a bit like tomatoes but not quite (they are both members of the nightshade family, along with tobacco, peppers and eggplant). Now that I am a potato farmer myself, on a much smaller scale, I realized right away that this gardener is gunning for a really big crop o’ spuds.

They were all planted in nice neat rows and hilled up (the new potatoes form between the original seed potato and the top of the hill).

Potatoes do take up a bit of room, so I can see why the streetside planter box was tempting to build. OK, it wasn’t quite a monoculture – there were some really massive rhubarb plants at the end of the rows.

I’d seen rhubarb on the street before but not potatoes. Urban farming is really catching on in Seattle, as is parking strip gardening. I love it when I see people combining the two!

(Oh, that whole signing off for the summer thing didn’t last long, did it? I guess I must be addicted to blogging. Not going to be a daily thing but when I can get to it, I will.)

I Sprung a Leek June 12, 2009

For the first time in many years, one of my over-wintered leeks (yes, just one, but it’s better than none!) grew to normal grocery-store size and I was able to harvest it. If I plant these again, I need to do some better research on optimal planting time and conditions, since I do love their flavor and it was fun to pick one right out of the garden. Here is mine, all cleaned up:

The roots had 50 tons of dirt on them, which made me think that I need to get a better set-up for washing veggies outside. I remember doing that when I was a kid, using a stiff brush to get the worst of the soil off before bringing in carrots and other tasty treats.

I had to buy a second leek to make one of my all-time most cherished recipes, Three-Onion Risotto (click here to find it on Food & Wine, which was my favorite cooking mag back when I had time to cook non-kid food), but did get to clip some fresh chives to use as a garnish. First real harvest meal of the summer, including outside leaves from the lettuce starts my mom gave me a few weeks ago. Yum! Eating anything good out of the garden this week?

Underwhelmed by Allium moly June 11, 2009

I should know by now that my impulse bulb purchases often turn out to be busts. I’ve had a few lucky finds (especially these species tulips, the hands-down winners of Best Bulb in my garden this spring) but the rest are usually either kind of boring or just too weird to be useful.

My hand inexplicably reached for a bag of Allium moly, despite the lack of an accompanying picture (should have been a tip-off) at the Arboretum bulb sale last fall. I thought, what the hey, never heard of these before, Allium are super trendy, maybe these will be fun.

Well, they might have their proponents (please speak forth if you are one!) or could be nice when massed among other colors or against a background of silvery foliage plants, but dotted in twos and threes in my parking strip, their primary yellow is just not that welcome in mid-June. I can barely stand plain bright shades of this color in the earliest of spring blooms (tiny narcissi are exempted, they’re so cute), and by this time of year I’m just aching for richer and more subtle hues. I do kind of like the semi-fan shape, different from the typical Allium globes, more like something you might find growing in a meadow somewhere.

Maybe they come in other colors? I could handle purple or reddish-orange or white, or even pink. I don’t generally have that much success with alliums, so maybe these will disappear after this season, never to be seen again. Next year, I’m just going to put a. ‘Globemaster’ on my list and stick with it! Did you have any disappointing bulbs this year?