School Garden in Summer July 6, 2009

We’ve been spending a lot of time at the nearest school playground this summer, since my daughter wants to keep her monkey-bars skills on the upswing. I hadn’t looked at the school garden in a while, but last week I peeked over the fence and saw what they’ve been growing.

This giant teepee looks like it was pretty easy/cheap to make, just super long bamboo stakes and some twine, plus some plastic edging material to outline the circle, keep the stakes seated, and hold the good soil and maybe even a little water in.

Peas are beginning to wind up the stakes, while beautiful purplish cabbage and broccoli expand to fill the interior.

Nearby, another bamboo structure, this time an A-frame trellis for tomatoes. I’m more used to seeing tomatoes in cages or trained against fences, so this open structure is a little different. I wonder if it will do the trick of keeping them from falling over? I guess it depends on how tall the tomato varieties are.

A few little hills of squash (or are they cukes) amidst the only weedy patch, with calendulas (edible flowers) in the background:

I’ve shown this concrete-block raised bed before, since it seems pretty easy to build and has the nice touch of a mosaic top. This summer, it contains many varieties of lettuce, so lovely in their contrasting colors, a pot of mint, and many many daisies. Those last may have crept in there as self-seeders, they do that in my garden at least. The big white barrel looks to be a rain collector – so they are teaching conservation and sustainability too, nice to see.

I’m kind of curious to see what happens at harvest time – do the kids at the summer programs eat salads and broccoli, or is it all just educational/ornamental?

I dream of having the time/energy/wherewithal to write a successful grant for our own school to become an Edible Schoolyard. We have the space, but I don’t know how much longer we’ll be in it since the district wants to shift things around in our part of Seattle – it’s hard to think of starting something like that and then having to leave it behind. Alice Waters started this program in 1995 at a public school in Berkeley, CA. The kids help plant, grow, and learn about where their food comes from. And then they get to eat it! Sounds pretty wonderful to me.

Blues for Over-Wintered Greens March 26, 2009

I know that over-wintering veggies and other edibles is a science. Someday, maybe I’ll bother to study it and then I won’t find myself wondering in the spring why I bothered.

My tendency is to buy starts in the fall or plant a few seeds, plunk them in the ground on the late side, and then watch it all sit there and do nothing all winter. Then, in the early spring, I spread some mulch, the temps start to warm up, things take off a bit, and then… most of it bolts during the two days I don’t bother to look at the garden.

Chinese mustard, probably on the spicy side when it was tiny – now it would probably singe our tongues off. Might have to look up recipes (alchemies?) for milder-izing it so it doesn’t end up being a total waste. A plus – the slugs ignored it entirely! Undoubtedly too spicy for them too.

Mesclun mix, probably one from Seeds of Change. Slowly, slowly… I think these might be salad-worthy in a couple of weeks.

Russian kale, starting to get a little bigger. Not sure what the ideal leaf length is for a good tasting harvest – I’ll have to hunt around for opinions, or please feel free to offer them here. I need recipes for this one too, but have also enjoyed it as an ornamental if nothing more, the filigreed leaf edges and delicate lavender ribs really get me.

I’m going to straight up admit that I just don’t get how to grow onions of any sort. I am too much of a numbskull to keep track of when they are to be planted and harvested, since it seems off from the rest of the garden. These might have been shallots at some point, they’re probably just compost now. Well, I’ll dig down and see what’s there. Maybe I’ll get a pleasant surprise.

Arugula, my favorite green and my one and only never-fail crop. Just put the seeds in whenever, it seems happy in any of my challenged gardens. A squirrel dug up half of the row and I never got around to re-planting it, but it has the best germination rate of any seed I’ve ever grown, no matter what company I get it from. If it’s all I grew, I would feel pretty invincible!

First volunteer flowers of the season, my trusty violas. Last year it was ‘Ultima Morpho’ that was everywhere, but this one I can’t name and it has been popping up in the parking strip. I don’t usually bother to plant seeds or get starts of these anymore, they seem happy to keep coming back and I (almost) never say no to a free plant.

I had what I thought was a fun idea back in the fall, to plant ‘Bright Lights’ chard starts in a circle at the center of the veggie garden. They would grow tall, I would let them look really sculptural for a while until the peas needed to go in, all would be groovy. Well, between the squirrels rearranging the starts and killing a few, the snows that crushed the smaller plants, and now the cold spring we’ve been having so far, I’m afraid it’s time to pull out these sad little plants that never grew. I’m not going to show a picture, it’s just too pathetic.

What is your experience with over-wintering your veggie garden? Do you plant it up or let it rest? Put in a cover crop or use a cloche? I want to do it better next year or not at all!

Gardening Tops the News March 9, 2009

I don’t usually do re-publish posts, but I got a pleasant shock this morning when the top story in the Seattle Times’ online edition was this: “Seed Companies Have a Bumper Crop of Customers”!

I can personally attest to this trend – after a few years of only picking up a few packets and relying mostly on starts, I am trying to do more from seed this year. I even got organic potatoes from one of the companies, Irish Eyes, mentioned in the article. Not sure where I will put them yet, always an issue (my 1/12th Irish eyes are always bigger than my veggie patch).

Gardening is the new black! Did you ever think it would become so hip and happening? Next thing you know, the cover of Vogue will feature models in muddy-kneed jeans and carrying Felco pruners will be as “in” as Prada handbags! Well, that might be taking it a little far.

Are you part of the new trend, or were you in the vanguard all along?

“Sustainabilty” Suspect? February 19, 2009

The theme of the NW Flower & Garden Show this year is “Sustainable Spaces Beautiful Places” so I was really expecting a lot of the show gardens and booths to showcase innovative ways for us to all make our gardens and public spaces more sustainable. So I was pretty surprised at the slim pickings I found on the day I attended.

The seminar schedule offered a few talks related to this subject, but none during the time I was attending. In fact, they seemed mostly to be clumped onto a single day instead of being spread throughout the week. Wonder why?

The very concept of a massive indoor garden show, where thousands of tons of plants, rocks, furniture, and sale goods are hauled in by gas-barfing trucks and then hauled back out again is, by nature, not very sustainable. In fact, it’s pretty wasteful! So the “theme” really felt like paying lip service to a hot topic without backing it up in reality.

I searched nearly in vain for any examples of edible plantings – a small container garden collection by local nursery Emery’s Garden was pretty much all there was, and although they did a great job of showcasing how beautiful vegetable planters can be, they were not in the high-profile “show gardens” space so they may not have had as much of an impact. (Caveat – at times the crowds were so thick that it could be I missed something!)

Aside from a few flower and veggie seeds for sale, there weren’t even very many food crop things to buy at the booths. I did see one kiosk of rhubarb starts and asparagus crowns, but I don’t think they were organic:

Raintree Nursery was there and they had a few things for sale, including mushroom-starter kits that could be fun to try someday. I do love shiitakes.

I was excited to go check out the “Green Living” section of the sale area but it was pretty small. Okay, unless I was really missing something, it was pathetic! One booth selling rain barrels,

some people offering lavender essential oil

and one lonely guy at a roofing booth – that was pretty much it. I hate to be cynical here, but if your whole show is supposed to focus on sustainability, it seems like there should have been a bit more. Did I miss some huge swath of the show because I was too frazzled to pull out the map and really study it?

I had hoped to come away with a lot of new ideas for how to set up areas of my garden to work more in harmony with the land and climate where it is sited. I guess I’ll just have to keep trolling the blogosphere and visiting the library! Did anyone else who attended find sustainable gardening products or ideas to take home? Please share, if so!

Gone to Seed January 29, 2009

So many gardeners have already marked their seed catalogs, sent in orders, and received their exciting little packages. The most enterprising have already even started their seeds growing. Me? I’m still in ponder mode.

My mom is a bigtime seed-starter and January is the month when she spends many an hour flipping through the seemingly mile-high pile of catalogs she receives every year. She asked if I would like to look at some of them, since I was only mailed a couple this year, so I took a gander.

(Top row, from left: Thompson & Morgan, Johnny’s X 2, Nicholl’s, Park, Tomato Growers, Seeds of Change, Abundant Life, and Territorial)

With limited time and brainpower (I would say lately, but I think it’s a permanent condition at this point), I was not able to peruse them as thoroughly as I would have liked. Also, even the most realistic estimation of my probable success with starting, planting out and caring for even a few varieties of veggies and flowers in my small garden would probably indicate that I shouldn’t order much, if anything.

But how to resist the siren calls of these catalogs, which promise ease of growing, deliciousness of produce, and the beauty and bounty of summer when it’s so cold, colorless and dreary out in January?

Just a few of the temptations I will probably resist (this year, at least): epazote, chamomile, “Caveman’s Club” gourd, black Spanish radish (nero tondo), Mexican sunflower, agretti (an Italian green), and scarlet runner beans (no trellis big enough). Also noticed some other unusual offerings, like salsify, scorzonera, wolfberry plants (goji), and a hardy olive tree. I didn’t even allow myself to look in the back pages of any of the catalogs, where all the fun garden gadgets and tchochkes are described so alluringly.

What will I actually order? Well, my mom is so kind to start many things for me every year, such as snap peas, bush beans, marigolds, lettuces, calendulas, pansies, parsley, and basil, among many others. I usually direct-sow arugula, mesclun, and nasturtuims and let sunflowers grow from seeds the squirrels missed the previous year. If I can dig down and remove some of the evil clay underlayer below my veggie patch, this year I might get a few root crops going – purple dragon carrots and Misato Rose radish (aka Red Meat in other catalogs). My mom and I agreed to both try Nero di Toscana kale (sometimes listed as dino kale) and multi-colored chard, to get our dark leafy greens. I’m on the fence about Hungarian breadseed poppies – I love the idea of something that comes up from direct-sown seed and grows to 3-4 ft. tall, but I wonder if I’ll regret its tendency to resow and crowd out other plants. Spinach, borage and gloriosa daisy will round out my order from Seeds of Change, since I want everything I can to be organic. I hope they have what I want still left by the time I get around to ordering, maybe this weekend…

Did you restrain yourself with your seed order this year, or did you get carried away on an imagined summer breeze and abandon all reason? Oh, and another question – do you bother with paper catalogs anymore, or do you do all your seed perusing and ordering online?

Donut Store Garden January 28, 2009

After a leisurely sushi lunch the other day, we decided to take a stroll around the Tangletown ‘hood (where Wallingford meets Greenlake in Seattle) to get some fresh, if cold, air and see what’s growing on the street.

Many businesses here don’t bother with street gardens, but we found one that bucks the trend – Mighty-O Donuts, Seattle’s own organic donut store. Yes, I said organic donut store.

I know you’re thinking, what’s the point of an organic donut? Well, I thought the same thing until I tasted their French Toast version that day and realized that I will be back for more in the near future. If I’m going to eat something basically unhealthy, at least it can be a little less bad for me (and the planet), right?

The shop front faces a small arterial, but the side is on a residential street, with many parking strip gardens of great and varied styles. Mighty-O has chosen to put in tough, easy-care plants and they are largely holding up well. Variegated black bamboo harmonizes nicely with the red store siding:

The bamboo theme continues across the street in the parking strip, partially camouflaging a power pole:

I wonder if it jumped from one spot to the other – bamboo is kind of notorious for doing that.

This plant hasn’t fared quite so well. Too much coffee and maybe a few impatient dogs, perhaps?

Northwest forest natives salal and mahonia (Oregon grape) are hardy, evergreen perennials for tough spots like this.

It always makes me appreciate a business just a little bit extra when I see that they have taken steps to beautify the neighborhood. Thanks, Mighty-O!

(Front door image courtesy of Potjie, via Flickr Creative Commons – since I forgot to take a picture of the actual storefront!)

Playing Tag January 18, 2009

I was never that into the game of tag as a kid. I hated being “it” and there always seemed to be an element of social aggression in that and many other playground games. My daughter must be a chip off the old block, since she doesn’t like these sorts of games either, and in fact often decides to opt out of playing them.

So when I was first “tagged” in the blogosphere, I totally flubbed it. There was only friendliness meant, but I couldn’t figure out if I wanted to do it and pass it on, hemmed and hawed and delayed, and in the end just lamely replied via a comment (sorry, Susan of The Bicycle Garden!) This time, I am going to do it right. Well, sort of. It seems that I am never quite able to play by the rules…

So, thank you to Aerie-el from Gardener’s Roost for inviting me to join in the game of “Photo Tag.” The rules are to go to the 4th folder in your computer where you store your pictures, select the 4th picture in that folder, explain the picture, then tag four people to do the same.

My digital photos are stored in alphabetically-ordered folders and are a big bone of contention in my household – there are way too many of them on the poor old computer and it’s getting very slow and sad as a result. Sorting through and archiving them is a big project for a quiet day that never seems to happen. I wonder if anyone else is in the same boat here? Digital cameras make it so easy to accumulate a frighteningly large number of images – I need to be more ruthless with my deletions but so far I’m not doing too well.

The 4th folder in my picture files is from October of 2006, when my folks made a long-anticipated trip to Italy and France and we went over to their place to do a few house and yard chores while they were away (kind of a miracle, given than the help almost always flows the other direction!). One of the things they asked us to do was to pick up and sort by variety the windfall apples that had accumulated since their departure. Our daughter, 3 1/2 years old at the time, got totally into the apple retrieval job – she was small enough to fit under the dwarf trees’ branches and could reach apples that were hard for the big people to get to. So, in the 4th photo of my “Apple Pick-up” folder, here she is all bundled up on a crisp fall day, about to go get another armload of fruit.

(Note the “footies” on the apples, a very labor-intensive but usually successful pest-protection method they started using a few years ago and that I have mentioned in a few previous posts.)

As for the final rule of this game of tag, I am going to steal an idea from another commenter on Aerie-el’s site and not designate the next four folks. If you have read this far and would like to participate, please consider yourself tagged!

Daily Freshness

Back in the early 1990s, I worked in a Northern California bookstore and spent all of my meager wages on, well, books. I hadn’t yet rediscovered the wonders of libraries (free books! free music! free movies!?!?!) and thought I needed to own everything I read.

One book that made a big impression on me at that time, although if I pulled it off the shelf now I’m not sure I’d still love it, was “Mating” by Norman Rush. I read it just before it won the National Book Award for Fiction in 1991 and garnered rave reviews (but then suffered a bit of a backlash from some readers who considered it over-long and pompously written.)

The novel contains a passage that has really stuck with me in the years since I read it. I’ll never find it to quote it accurately, as the book is 496 pages long, but the essence is this – one of the characters states that he needs to eat something fresh every single day. Even if it’s the smallest herb or tiny addition to an otherwise-dried/canned/reheated dish (a true challenge considering the character is living in the Kalahari desert at the time of his statement!), he just needs to have that one thing, every day.

For some reason this really resonated with me. I will freely admit to using canned beans, frozen blueberries, and a host of other pre-packaged foodstuffs in the interest of quick preparation and out-of-season variety, and I will never be one for the Raw Food bandwagon. But having something fresh, no matter how small, always makes me feel better, healthier, more lively. It’s one of the reasons that, despite being a big lazybones and not having a huge amount of free time, I have at least a small veggie/herb/edible flower patch every year.

I had thought, with our recent spate of awful weather, that there would be absolutely nothing left in the garden that could be eaten fresh as of mid-January. But to my great surprise and delight, the curly parsley in the parking strip patch had managed to keep a few stems around, and I was able to pick a good-sized one tonight to chop up for a quick red pasta sauce.

Something fresh, every day. It’s a lot easier to make that a reality when you can just walk out to the garden and snip something you grew! I’m just glad I’m not gardening in the Kalahari, I don’t think I would be up to the challenge.

Winter Crabapples January 7, 2009

After yet another snowfall the other day, I spotted this parking strip crabapple and had to stop, slog through the slush, and take some photos. I have complained about my own crabapples, which are spindly and perhaps have been poorly pruned, but these ones had a nice shape and the color of their fruit is really pleasing. Plus, they looked pretty with the snow melting off of them.

I’m not sure why the birds have left these alone – maybe they are too tart even for our avian friends? I know there are fans of crabapple jelly out there, it seems like kind of a green tomato thing to me but hey, whatever floats your culinary boat.

Raintree Nursery has a lot of crabapple varieties. They can be used as ornamentals, for their fruit (usually for preserves), and also as pollinators for regular apple trees.

Double take December 23, 2008

Are you ever just driving or walking along when you see something so surprising it stops you in your tracks and you practically get whiplash from turning to look at it? That happened to me the other day.

Snow had fallen on the ground, not a lot, not nearly as much as would eventually arrive, but a bit. I was heading back from the school run (they started two hours late, due to icy roads) when I had to stop the car, roll down the window despite the freezing temp, and take a pic.

What the heck are those orange things up in the tree? I thought persimmons didn’t grow in Seattle?!?! Well, I didn’t know palm trees did either, but I was wrong there too.

If you’re like me, you may find persimmons puzzling. Which one gets soft and can be used for baking (or frozen and turned into delicious “sorbet”, as I heard recently), and which is the one that stays firm and can be sliced and eaten raw? I don’t think I’ll ever get them straight, but for the record, Fuyus are the flat-bottomed ones that kind of look like round tomatoes – when slightly soft, peel, slice, and add them to salads. Hachiyas are the oblong ones, and they are super bitter unless completely, mushily ripe.

My horticulture book says Hachiya persimmon trees can survive zones 7-10, but this looks like it might be a Fuyu and I can’t find the zone info on that – I just hope it makes it through our tough week-long spate of freezing temps and mucho snow. I certainly enjoyed stopping to admire its odd look, with those blazing Mars-like orbs marooned high atop the naked branches of the venerable tree.