Food and Flowers
Thought for the day, on the arrival of the final shipment of vegetable seeds: What made me think I had room to plant 7 varieties of peas?
Thought for the week, on lusting after a truly gorgeous, frighteningly minimalist modern garden seen in a magazine: What makes me think I could ever give up summer bulbs?
Even a brief pass through the catalogs of Willow Creek Gardens and Corralitos Gardens is enough to produce a wish list of gladioli, eucomis, tuberoses and dahlias that would fill about a quarter acre I don’t happen to have.
But how to choose? If your dahlia collection included
Babylon Bronze
and you were not all that into dahlias, would you really need
Blown Dry
Read More…
Are you seduced by curvy Golden Crescent beans? By blue purple Purple Dragon carrots, pear shaped orange Jilo Tingua Verde Claro eggplants or yard long Red Noodle beans?
Red Noodle beans on the vine
Welcome to the club. I’ve never been able to resist oddball vegetables – show me a shape or color that’s different and bam, it goes on the order list.
This has been happening for 30 years and although most of these bizarro thrills have been consigned to the dustbin of “interesting experiment,” quite a few have become staples in our gardens.
STAPLES
* Ronde de Nice zucchini, not the best for slicing but ace for stuffing.
Ronde de Nice en route to stuffing
Read More…
Part 1 ( choosing varieties) here. Recipe hints that started all this here.
Please pretend that Mr. Earl is licking his lips because he just ate some delicious winter squash; I don’t happen to have any pictures of squash growing techniques.
satisfied cat, no squash in sight
Technique # 1: Real Estate Rules! Location, location and location are fertile, well drained soil in full sun. “Giant garden” would seem to be equally essential, given the size of most winter squash plants, but that’s not true. The giant area in full sun is pretty much a requirement, but the only part of it that must be gardenly is the spot where the seeds are planted. The rest can be an open field full of weeds if you add a few refinements. Read More…
(* If you got here looking for pumpkin pie, rather than the other way ’round, there is now a detailed recipe.)
From the practical point of view, winter squash is a funny place to start this year’s food garden posts. The growing part is easy enough but the finding room part is hard. You can get a whole summer’s worth of beans and tomatoes and herbs and flowers and greens and garlic (and more), out of the amount of ground it takes to grow a modest crop of squash.
Squash patch @ 12 x 40 , self @ 4’10”
But it never hurts to Know Your Food; I promised back with the squash recipe hints that the garden part would come soon and seed ordering time is galloping toward us apace.
So is plant ordering time. And garden design time and all the rest of it. There are a few tips about coping in New Year Portfolio Analysis, Garden Division.
Meanwhile,back in the truck patch:
I’m not sure why, but we’re in the midst of a great squash boom.
Catalogs are crawling with scrumptious-sounding options: Pink Banana, Honey Bear, Sweet Dumpling… It’s easy to decide Long of Naples is probably too big (20 – 35 pounds) and Lady Godiva, a tasteless number grown for its “naked” seeds, probably doesn’t merit the space. But how do you decide whether to throw in your lot with, say,Galeux d’Eysines? Read More…
Or is it The Seven Pillars of Horticultural Wisdom, or the Ten All-time Top Garden Tips?
As everyone’s resolutions remind us, something there is that loves a number attached to advice, a number smaller than the one I regard as most realistic: The Twenty Three Thousand, Four Hundred and Sixty Two Things It’s Important to Remember Before Getting Out of Bed.
So be warned. I haven’t really honed it down to only seven; these are just the first seven essentials that came to mind when I decided to do this. And not in order, either. (details after the jump)
* Make Compost
The compost bins at Stonecrop
* Use Compost
* Plant Crops in Wide Beds
* Mulch
* Feed the Soil, not the Plants
* Share Something
* Be There
Read More…
First the good news: There’s no bad news. Dahlias are easy to grow from seed; dark foliage gives Bishop’s Children a striking presence that doesn’t depend on the flowers; and a single packet of seeds is a plant explorer’s cheap thrill: you never know what you’re going to get but you’re bound to get something worth keeping and keeping dahlias is easy too.
In my experience, flowers come mostly in red-orange and deep reds like the one above the rock wall. Foliage is mostly that same purple and mostly dahlia shaped.
a typical Bishops Child dahlia
But
Came from the same packet, so you never know. You can’t really tell from the picture but the leaves on this plant are deeply cut, almost scalloped, and as you can tell they’re a lot paler.
To get flowers the first year, start seeds early (mid-March if you’re in zone 5). Read More…
And so do butterflies — a big vote for single dahlias, is why I mention it.
This is one of the Bishop's Children, more about them soon
I’m lucky – there’s help. Always a good thing and especially a good thing when there are a lot of large plants and rather a lot of window surface.
Window surface?
You betcha. This is not about housekeeping points; cleaner they are, the better for the plants. It’s amazing how much light can be blocked by even a light coating of dust.
Bill clowning around with the equipment. ( Myself I wouldn't put the anti-static glasscloth in my mouth. But I would have it in hand - very useful)
It’s also nice to have someone who can do the heavier lifting.
the invaluable Kristi Niedermann's back - yes grammarians, I mean both of them.
The awkward, @ 15 pound pot is about at the height of my chin. I could have dealt with it by myself but I’m glad I didn’t have to.
Kristi and begonia, front view
That’s a Begonia fuchsiodes, named for the drooping, fuchsialike flowers.
begonia fuchsioides in red. It also comes in pink.
Read More…
Well, the summer squash actually, because that’s all we plant in Maine.
cousa squash plant hit by frost
The winter squash is – or more accurately was – down in the much larger Hudson Valley vegetable garden. Bill got it all harvested before frost descended, reminding me yet again that the (once) well-known poem, The Frost is On the Punkin, by James Whitcomb Riley, makes absolutely NO sense unless “squash” means “squash vines.” If you let frost land on the fruits themselves, rot will spread from the frosted part and the squash won’t keep. Click here for more about winter squash, including recipe tips, here to read the poem, relic of another time in many ways yet not without its virtues. The second stanza gives you the flavor:
| They’s something kindo’ harty-like about the atmusfere |
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| When the heat of summer’s over and the coolin’ fall is here— |
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| Of course we miss the flowers, and the blossoms on the trees, |
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| And the mumble of the hummin’-birds and buzzin’ of the bees; |
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| But the air’s so appetizin’; and the landscape through the haze |
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| Of a crisp and sunny morning of the airly autumn days |
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| Is a pictur’ that no painter has the colorin’ to mock— |
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| When the frost is on the punkin and the fodder’s in the shock. |
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Catalogs and garden centers sell you dahlias in the spring, at planting time. Friends and neighbors give you dahlias in the fall, at dig-up-the-tubers time.
Could the red and white one be dahlia 'Mary Eveline'?
This dahlia surely has an official name (might be ‘Mary Eveline’), but as far as I’m concerned it’s ‘Carol’s Wine,’ because my dear friend Carol gave me the start tubers now many years ago.
Like potatoes, dahlias multiply. First one tuber becomes two or three, which is nice. Next spring you can plant them all together and get a big fat bush. By fall the bush has made seven or eight. Not so convenient but still ok; dahlias are easy to divide and there’s usually room for another plant. Read More…
