Gardening Activity

I have a pretty minimal larder this year. Mostly because I spent more time cleaning the house and seeding the grass so we could sell our house last summer. The good news is - we have a beautiful new home. And the bad news - I have to go to the grocery store a lot more than Id like.

I have a good supply of garlic - I got that crop in the ground before we started the home-selling stuff. Its really nice, with big cloves and holding fine (even though we dont have a cool place to store it - thats another story: our new house doesnt have a basement yet. Well build one this spring.)

I also have a couple nice shallots left. (I grew shallots for the first time last year and was really pleased with these. Ill grow them again this year.) I have a lot of dried chilis. I grow a cayenne and a Thai hot chili every year. These thin-walled chilis air dry easily on a plate my counter top. I also have a couple bags of dried herbs. These are plants I cropped short when we left our old house. I have dill, sage and oregano.

And I have a little bowlful of dried beans. I tried to grow crops of Jacobs Cattle beans and black turtle beans, but only ended few of the former. And, then I grew Fortex green beans, but didnt harvest them in time so they matured and dried. So I have a fairly unattractive and very small bowl of dried beans. Nevertheless, Im saving them and looking forward to a special chili meal. I do have great plans for next years larder (“A garden is never so good as it will be next year" - Thomas Cooper ). I am hoping for shelves full of canned fruits, tomatoes, pickles, dried chilis and herbs, baskets full of potatoes, sweet potatoes, squashes and dried beans, a fridge full of beets, cabbages and carrots, and maybe even a freezer with pesto and roasted peppers. OK, a few winter radishes too for my martinis....

My title photo was looking a little frumpy and off center so I decided to do something about it. I photoshoped the photo and re-sized it to actual fit. After that the photo looked like it didnt fit so I found a new template that is more toned down in terms of colour. I think I am pleased now but still not 100% sure. Any ideas for changes?

I also have a post up about the fence I am building below:

I guess Ive always thought that gardening was creative, but it wasnt the first thing I thought about in a 12-week class focused on the book, The Artists Way (Julia Cameron). 

I thought I wanted (and needed) to draw, paint, and do watercolors and pastels to be an artist.  Well, I know those activities are wonderful, and Im trying to find the time to play with some of those media, but... in the meantime, Ive also realized that writing, photography, blogging, and gardening are equally compelling creative pursuits.

Collage as inspiration for garden studio

As part of each book chapter, there are LOTS of tasks - which our facilitators encourage us to do. 

Yikes.  Its a lot of work (and soul-searching) in the process, but its concentrated my attention on how much my surroundings (garden) and creative space (whether called a study or studio) are important.

I love the view from my study at home in the Piedmont (the header view), and Ive missed that sense of place a bit this summer in the mountains (although there are many other wonderful aspects, and Im totally grateful for being able to have the space and time!)

Potential site for garden studio

Im hoping to build a small garden studio below the cottage in the mountains.  It would look out into the  forest and be surrounded by native woodland wildflowers.

Ive certainly been reminded of how creative gardening is as an activity and how important it is to have a sense of place and being supported in your surroundings.

Erythronium americanum (Trout lily)

Most of the trout lilies in the Woodland Wildflower Garden (at the South Carolina Botanical Garden) havent flowered this year, following two summers of excessive drought and heat.  But this one was an exception, in full flower today.

Wednesday nights -3° finished off my TPS experiment for this year - an early August sowing. But two of them show great promise I think just for the sheer number of tubers set. And they look big enough to save (see coin) and plant out in the spring!

Some time ago I did a post on growing perennials in grass, actually the second most read posting I have done. This is something of an unrealisable holy grail for many of us, the idea that you can have roughish grass with wildflowers and perennials growing in it. Our native grassland flora here in Britain and north-west Europe is very low on really bright ornamental species and there is so little that flowers after mid-summer. William Robinson suggested doing this in The Wild Garden, published in 1870, but he actually had very little experience of doing this when he wrote that book; in fact it was early in his career, and very much a rhetorical book rather than a practical one. It is a book which really does not deserve its reputation.

The tough reality is that in our maritime climate with its long growing season it is very difficult to get perennials established in grass. Most ornamental perennials originate from more continental climates and do not grow until temperatures reach a certain level; consequently they are dormant for the winter. Our native grasses and a few wildflower species like creeping buttercup grow at lower temperatures, which effectively means off and on through the entire winter. They inevitably take over so that any attempt at combining native grasses with ornamental perennials results in rough grass with steadily vanishing perennials. The only thing which can stop this happening is if they cannot get enough nutrients.

Three years ago, in April, I visited the Oudolfs (who live in the eastern Netherlands) on a radiantly sunny weekend. Piet was setting out a new planting, on the site of the old nursery sales area, where plants were lined out in pots. They had put down sand many years ago to provide good drainage and it was into the sand that some Calamagrostis Karl Foerster and some perennials: heleniums, asters, eupatoriums, vernonias etc. were going. Piet told me he was going to sow the intermediate spaces with a wildflower seed mix i.e. mostly grass with a native forb element.




I must say I was a bit sceptical. If I tried this at home, the grass would run rampant and swamp everything. But - three growing seasons later, it looks fantastic. Really fantastic. Really super low-maintenance fantastic. Piet has pulled it off, again!




The perennials have all formed good clumps and flower well, although at a shorter height than they would do normally. The grass and wildflower mix has formed a dense sward but with a relatively low grass proportion. In fact a lot of it is yarrow (Achillea millefolium). It is very biodiverse - simply as a wildflower meadow it would be a great success.




The reason must be the sand. Despite many years of having nutrients washed into it from the container plants in the nursery, it must still be very too low in nitrogen and phosphorus for grasses to be able to dominate. The result is a true and very rarely seen balance between perennials, with their clearly defined growing season, and grasses and other wintergreen species, which can grow all year round.



It really is a triumph, and illustrates very beautifully and dramatically that we must not give up on trying to achieve perennial meadows. Substrate is clearly everything, which is good news for those on sand, or post-industrial waste! The rest of us, on the fertile and moisture-retentive soils which gardeners and farmers have traditionally regarded as desirable, if not essential, can only look on in admiration. Or buy several lorry loads of sand.
I am not sure of the sand depth here, my guess is probably 30cms  or so. This may be important; many perennials are able to get their roots down deeper than our native turf-forming grasses, which are very superficially rooted and are therefore unable to access deeper nutrient and moisture resources.

Another point on how to encourage perennials and forbs vis a vis grasses. I just saw James Hitchmough on a trip to Sheffield and he tells me that at the Olympic Park they had some marquees and other temporary structures covering ground over the winter. In the spring where the ground had been covered, the forbs grew very well, but much of the grass had died. Grasses have very little ability to store nutrients in their roots whereas most forbs do, and so they are at an advantage in this situation. Differential starvation. Mimicking, he says the effect of heavy winter snow, which is one reason why places like central European mountains and central Asia have such fantastic wildflowers and so little grass - so-called herb fields. Winter covers for wildflower meadows? Whole new market for geotextiles? Who knows. Try it and see.

More pictures here.

It poured yesterday. Lots of rain. Our small bog will be happy, as will the sedum garden.

It looked like a tropical rain forest.

Winter break in the Caribbean last year introduced me to leafy amaranth, a totally delicious cooked green. 

Red amaranth (from Evergreen Seeds)

The woman I bought it from (she had a small garden near our cottage in Dominica) called it spinach, but its actually Amaranthus viridis, a leafy vegetable thats grown throughout the Caribbean and called callalo. Its a popular Asian vegetable, too.

I posted about it after returning -- it was such a remarkably tasty warm season spinach-like vegetable, I couldnt believe it wasnt more popular here in the Southeastern U.S.  I tried to grow it this summer, but was thwarted by hungry critters, who yummed up the young seedlings. Presumably woodchucks or squirrels.

Celosia argentea

But I was noticing the volunteer plants in the Childrens Garden that looked remarkably similar.  Theyre Celosia, a large-plumed variety thats self-seeded abundantly for the last couple of years.

And sure enough, theyre a relative of amaranth (in the same family), and have been used in a similar way in parts of Africa, and elsewhere, too. 

Interesting!  Ill have to harvest some young plants tomorrow for a second trial. 

The older larger leaves that I cooked as a trial for lunch today were good, but it was hard to evaluate their taste, as Id stir-fried them in sesame oil!  They were quite tender, though, so promising.

Much cooler than normal, we had another fabulous spring day here in the Carolinas. I was whining about our exceptionally cold and rainy winter weather through late February, but March and April have been quite nice. 

Weve had only a few hot spells, along with lower than normal temperatures.  Now, if rainfall amounts get back up to normal - were still three inches short for the year - that would be great!

This big one was hiding near a old tree stump. (I normally harvest them at the size of the one next to it). Notice its size relative to the cutting board. Yikes!
Amazingly, it was still quite edible, roasted in slices with garlic and olive oil.

The yard-long bean vines in the satellite garden are starting to produce -- need to knock off some aphids (their one pest) with some water.

And, all of our tomatoes love the heat and dry weather that weve had, as long as we water. Its hard to imagine all the rain that folks up in the northeastern U.S. and Midwest have experienced this summer.

Summer Street cottages

The Cottage District (Summer Street and 16th Street) was our morning destination for the Garden Bloggers Buffa10 meet-up.

These areas are totally packed during Garden Walk, for good reason.

Apparently, there are lines to visit every garden, and the streets are mobbed with visitors.

We made an enthusiastic group despite the showers.

This was the most crisp and sweet watermelon Ive ever tasted! It was small but really yummy. My cantaloupes didnt ripen fully, even in the long hot summer we had this year.

My seed potatoes arrived in the mail today. I have to get their bed ready and get them planted - next weekend.

I have just finished taking a party of Gardens Illustrated readers around the Midwest – based on Chicago and St. Louis. It’s been more or less the same group who have accompanied me to Holland, Germany and Sweden before – so something of a reunion, and all rather jolly. Wonderful hospitality in the Midwest – you kinda feel they don’t get too many visitors from Europe looking at gardens or showing an interest in prairie wildflowers.

No-one in the US asked me the obvious question – what interests a group of Europeans (2 Germans, 1 Italian, 9 Brits + 3 Americans and an Argentinian) in a purely North American habitat. It’s a good question and seeing as nobody asked it, so I’m going to try an answer.

“Prairie” has become, over the last three or four years, a much abused word in both English and German garden-speak, with lazy journalists using it to describe any planting based on herbaceous perennials with a few grasses thrown in and a vaguely naturalistic aesthetic. The popularity, and consequent debasement, of the word started with folks like me, and James Hitchmough and Cassian Schmidt, using it to describe an essentially ornamental but very strongly naturalistic and bio-diversity-friendly planting style using a lot of North American species.

So, the hypothetical American asks, why do all these Europeans so love our prairie?

1) Much of our herbaceous border flora is North American in origin, introduced mostly during the 19th century: asters, goldernrods, rudbeckias etc. We have a history of more than a century of cultivating and hybridising these plants. It’s not surprising we want to see them in the wild and find out about new ones we might want to grow – like the vernonias (ironweeds) which were never introduced until recently.

2) Word has got out that prairies are fascinating natural habitats, so like our much-loved European meadow habitats – but bigger (all things American are bigger of course), more diverse and, crucially, with a fantastic late flowering season. Every prairie is subtly different, and within itself there is a great ebb and flow of species, depending on factors soil moisture, depth, chemistry, shade etc. To anyone who loves plants and plant communities, prairie is endlessly fascinating and beautiful.

3) Our own flora is a bit limited – thanks to the chilling and scraping action of frequent ice ages and the geographical boundaries placed on plants’ reconquest of old territory, the European flora is just less diverse than North Americas, particularly on more fertile soils and at the end of the season. Britain’s flora is just plain impoverished (only 100 more than the 1,400 strong flora of the Grand Canyon National Park).

4) We don’t have to worry too much about invasive aliens. Our flora has colonised vast areas of North America, changing, damaging, and in some cases eliminating, entire ecosystems. The truth is that the North and Central European flora is an incredibly aggressive one, and at home very effectively excludes ‘intruders’. Anyone who gets hot under the collar about Japanese knotweed needs to spend a few days in the company of the enormous numbers of European species which have spread over thousands of miles of North America. So, we can feel relatively relaxed about having fun with other people’s ‘natives’ in our gardens, confident that they won’t jump the garden fence and smother a few hundred acres before you can say ‘William Robinson’.

5) Then there is the odd familiarity/unfamiliarity of the North American flora and much of the landscape – the wooded hills of eastern Missouri look like much of France and the lumpier bits of Illinois could easily be Norfolk; Wisconsin practically is southern Sweden. The plants are all members of familiar genera or at least families. There isn’t too much of the feeling like you have landed on another floral planet. But there is still the excitement of new species, but growing in familiar-looking habitats. Being in a prairie itself is like being a kid again, amongst grasses that are at or above head height. It is familiar enough to feel safe, different enough to feel gently exotic.

I love being out in the garden, listening to birds, working the soil, and connecting with nature. Im totally grateful, and perhaps (in the developed world) we need to be a LOT more mindful of what it means to produce food, grow flowers, and give back when we can.

I have a freezer full of bounty from our garden over the last growing season, but its not enough to sustain us for the rest of the year. Thats where farmers come in.

Those bags of lovely Green Giant Yellow Gold Rush potatoes (from somewhere in the Northwest?), the fresh shitake mushrooms (from the mountains where my favorite local grocery chain is based), the fire-roasted canned tomatoes from Muir Glen, the rice from Lundberg Farms and Texmati; these arent the work of small farmers, to be sure, but farm-based companies that produce quality products.

Ive been re-reading Barbara Kingsolvers amazing book, Animal, Vegetable, Miracle, and been quite impressed (awed, actually) at how much she and her family could depend on their local food shed, in addition to ALL that they grew on their Appalachian farm of 25 acres or so.

In recent years, Ive been trying to focus my buying efforts towards local and sustainably-produced foods, paying attention towards source and production. Its an exercise in both awareness and being grateful!

just a quick tip for today.

dont forget to save your eggshells for use in the garden. crushed eggshells provide a great source of calcium for your plants. tomatoes, in particular, love the extra calcium. the crushed eggshells also provide a deterrent to garden pests such as slugs. a win-win, right?

before using them, you need to bake the eggshells in the oven for about 10 minutes. let cool and then crush them around the base of your plants.

do you use eggshells in your garden? if not, give it a try.

In just about a month, Ill be visiting gardens in Germany and the Netherlands for a couple of weeks on a self-guided garden study tour.

Ive been wanting to do this for several years, after I started learning more about the new wave gardening trends practiced by Dutch, German, and English garden designers, creating naturalistic gardens, and often using many of our North American natives.

It should be quite interesting.  Ill be visiting Piet and Anna Oudolfs private garden during their open days, as well as Mien Rhys garden, now open to the public.  There are a number of other destinations on the itinerary, too, Hermannshof and Weihenstephan. The latter requires dealing with Oktoberfest visitors, so I may not make it there.  Well see. But there are lots of other gardens, natural areas, and cultural sites to visit, too, so Im totally looking forward to the traveling.

I spent a year in Germany as a post-doc almost three decades ago, so it will be interesting to return.  My gardening companion and I went to an International Botanical Congress in Berlin back in 1987, and spent 3 weeks traveling in Germany, Austria, and Northern Italy, but we havent visited Germany since, choosing more far flung places to travel to (the exception have been trips to Northern Italy in 2001 and Southern Italy in 2008).

Im currently immersing myself in reading and listening to German (its amazing how much that I still comprehend), and enjoying reading gardening blogs in German, too!  Its great fun to be able to listen to podcasts, read magazines online, etc.

We bought a bunch of 2 x 6s for my new raised beds. 15 and 12 lengths for the long sides of the beds. With all this snow, itll be a while before we can use them, but were ready.

Skippy loves to pose!

Spring is a little over 30 days away so I started some spring greens. They include Winter Density Lettuce, Shanghai Bok Choy, Tatsoi and Boston Lettuce. I also started a couple trays of Alisa Craig onions. I am hoping to plant out the greens in the polytunnel during the first week of March, weather permitting of course.

The seeds I started late January are also doing well, here are some photos of them:



On the weather front, this week is bringing a much needed warm up. Friday is forcasted to be 10c (50f). I hope this is a trend that will continue! The sun is feeling warmer, the birds are starting to sing, bring on spring!

Even though its just the end of February, more spring wildflowers are appearing.

There are more Chrysogonum virginianum (Green and Gold) flowers along the Heusel Trail (at the SC Botanical Garden) along with the first (small) flowers of bloodroot (Sanguinaria canadensis).  Its surprising to see bloodroot now, but with Trillium cuneatum and Erythronium popping up, too, Ive been on the lookout for them and its been warm the last few days. 


This post, from March 26, 2010, showed a huge clump of bloodroot in our front wildflower border (it hasnt reappeared, probably due to drought and heat over the last two summers without supplemental water) as the gardeners were away.  But its offspring are flowering now, as there were quite a few seedlings that appeared in two years following.

Sanguinaria canadensis in the front border, March

Last year, I made mention of bloodroot on March 23 and its fruits on March 28 in posts (so Im a full month ahead this year!)

Soviet Accident Prevention Posters @ How to be a Retronaut

We have been putting a lot of work into the front area of our community gardens. We would like a nice inviting grass area with the garden plots behind. And nice grassy paths between all the plots.

Its wonderful how native grasses seed themselves naturally if an overgrown area is mowed. We have just finished leveling sufficiently to run a lawn mower. Heres the view just after the very first mowing. Isnt it beautiful!!

We will be holding a work day tomorrow to continue working on the grass. I havent done a very good job of circulating information on this event, but it will be held from 10 am -12 noon tomorrow (Saturday). Please come and help us. Bring weed whackers lawn mowers, clippers, or rakes.

We will flatten the front area at the far right of the photo - in front of the new plots. There are rock and debris piles to remove and dirt pile to flatten. We will also mow/weed whack/clip the grass in the paths. I have done about 1/3 of the paths so far, and it would be good to get then all done this weekend.

I enjoyed seeing a whole flock of baby bluebirds foraging in the freshly mowed area the other day. A clutch of 4 or 5 was recently hatched from a box in the meadow. Bluebirds like areas with short grass and perching posts. Our mowed entrance not only looks neat and is a good place for garden events, but its also a valuable wildlife habitat.

Other reasons to come and help out with the path work: I will bring FREE COFFEE and its fun to work together with other gardeners.

Another event to mention is the Solstice Garden Tours that will be held on Sunday June 20 at the Belmont Victory Gardens. An informal event. Our first time trying this. This will run 11 am - 1 pm. Come enjoy the results of the path and front area work we do the day before!

One crop that has been growing well in spite of there being no sunlight is the beets. Weve eaten a few of the Bulls Blood (on the left) and there are enough Lutz (right) to see us through until spring and then some.
The beetroot looks set to be in fashion this year, a superfood even, topping Dr. Jonny Bowdens list of 11 best foods you arent eating. While he stipulates that beets should be eaten fresh for maximum antioxidant power, it is frozen blueberries and canned pumpkin which finish in 10th and 11th places respectively. Ms. Parker-Pope who writes the column (and has never cooked a beet) dug deeper in a follow up article. She asked a Leading Beet Expert Irwin L. Goldman, point blank, why it is that the beet is getting no respect. "They are a huddled masses sort of food. They are thought of as peasant food and old-fashioned," said the Beet-Believer,[but] "They really are wonderful, and there are a lot of good things that you can do with them." (?)
Yeah, anyway, I really like them, most especially baked. But Ive only just found out (and not in that vacuous bit of reportage) that not everyones pee is pink the next day. The ability to metabolize the betacyanin is controlled by a single genetic locus and people (like me) with two recessive genes will pass the pigment in their urine.

Filtered light through the trees in the ravine is a wonderful way to start a weekend morning.

The light, especially when its a bit foggy, is glorious.

View from the kitchen