Garden On, Vashon

I padded around my garden this morning after last night rained most of the snow away. Not much damage at all. Good news, but surprising, as last night’s windstorm kept me wide awake, eyes peeled, listening to the deep booms—what I was sure were trees falling down. But it was my own dumb doing—I’d left the woodbarn’s door badly latched, and it was now wide open, making those “BOOM BOOM BOOM”s against the outside wall. The hair-raising consequences of closing the door  with a backwards kick.

After I put out the call for storm damage reports, Kathy Wheaton wrote that they’d had another deflation of one of their greenhouses. These greenhouses are walled with two plys of plastic separated by a foot of pressurized air blown in by a fan. One fitting got loose and was rubbing on the plastic, “causing a bigger hole, less air, flattened roof, heavy wet snow, and Oh My…! But the house is now repaired, we once against learned a lot, and are back to planting tomatoes, fuchsia baskets, and other fun things.”

“We have a fair number of customers with downed trees and limbs, lots of clean-up. But I have not seen much cold damage to the plants. The snow truly was a plant life-saver.”

Saving the Tire-Swing Apple Tree

However, Joe Curiel & Tony Raugust at Monument Farm lost a landmark—their “King” apple tree with the tire swing. According to Gene Sherman, 90-year-old grandson of the original owner of that land, that tire swing has probably been there since the 1950s. A Barnett family lived there then with a young boy and girl, and no family with children has lived there since.

Joe said the tree may have been there since the 1880s, and that’s possible: Gene’s great-grandfather Christopher Sherman came out from New York after 1877 and spent a couple years improving that land. In those days, “improving” meant planting fruit trees, digging a well, putting up buildings; once you’d done that, you could run to the local land office and “pre-empt” your property for 12.5 cents an acre, rather than waiting out the 5-year Homesteading requirement to get your land for free. Once it was his, Christopher passed the land to his son Salmon (the Island’s original settler) before heading back to New York and dying in 1889. The cherry trees along the driveway were probably planted by Christopher, said Gene, so it’s possible the old apple trees further downslope were as well.

 Anyway, thanks to great care and judicious pruning by the guys (Tony has a degree in horticulture), this old apple tree is still quite productive. So they were pretty worried when the ice storm did this to their orchard—

And quite bothered to find this on Monday the 23rd—

But they had a fix that they’ve tried before. They called Stew Nelson of Stew’s General Contracting (253-318-1719), who had dug their big marsh pond at the bottom of their land. Stew has heavy equipment, which he keeps in the yard behind Kevin Bergin’s yard next to Kathy’s Corner; though he lives in Gig Harbor, most of his work is on Vashon. But this assignment was unusual for him.

Joe & Tony wanted Stew to pull the tree back up.

And that’s what, after five hours, Stew and daughter Alex and their heavy equipment managed to do.

First they pruned off some of the top growth to lighten the tree, balance what must have been heavy root-loss.  Then they re-dug up the root-hole so the tree would have somewhere to land. Then they wrapped the center of long cables through cut pieces of garden hose around the tree, and secured the opposite free ends to his excavator and to his back-hoe, set wide apart at opposite corners of a triangle, the tree at the apex. Now HEAVE—and this triangle of tree and cables slowly tilted upright.

They pounded three eight-foot fence posts from LS Cedar at least 6 feet deep into the ground and wrapped the cables to them. Today (January 25) this is how the old King Apple tree stands—

Now the guys dropped a few bucks on THIS project. We’re talking two heavy pieces of machinery and two people for five hours. Still…here are the pickings of October 12th off that tree. At $1-2 a pound, a 200 lbs harvest, tell me—will saving this tree be worth it?

Good News! Long-time readers of my blog may recall that a couple winters ago, I wrote a review of various online vegetable garden planners. The best I found came out of the U.K.: “www.GrowVeg.com” allows you to create beds and populate them with icons of chosen vegetables that you pull down from a toolbar and expand to fill the bed. It makes planning visual, easy, and fun.

Territorial Seed Company has partnered with GrowVeg! TSC has put the GrowVeg planner on its website for TSC customers to use. Better yet, this planner is “stocked” with all of TSC’s offerings: when you pull a vegetable out of the toolbar, you can then select any of Territorial’s many varieties. It’s great to be able to visualize you want “Stupice Tomatoes” in this bed and “Siletz Tomatoes” in that bed.

After a 30-day free trial, there is a $25/year subscription fee—and if you created and saved a garden plan, you won’t be able to get to it until you subscribe. But it’s worth the price. For one thing, in Year Two you can wipe your garden clean of all plants without wiping away your bed layout. And to help with rotation—say, planting cabbage where you planted coles in earlier years—GrowVeg will redden any spots where cabbage has been planted in the past so you can avoid those areas that might harbor last year’s cole diseases.

Try it: go visit the Territorial Seed site, then click on the Vegetable Planner windoid.

Your winter garden planning just got a whole lot more interesting!

I have been meaning to post for weeks, but none of the topics I have had in mind have risen to the level of my usual verbosity. But I’m about to go into winter hiberation (actually, into a pre-Christmas rush of gift-making), so I thought I’d bid you adieu for 2011 with these few odds-n-ends appropriate to the season.

The “LIVING” PUMPKIN PIE

If you’re of a mind to have a “Living Tree,” perhaps you’d like this recipe for Weslie Rogers’ “Living Pumpkin Pie.” It easily won last month’s VIGA contest for best pumpkin pie recipe, with a “Jump in the Mouth” taste that surprised THIS judge, given it was made from “raw” ingredients. And have no fear: there are no eggs in this recipe. It’s that pretty pie on the left adorned with raspberries and holly, so very tempting to (from left) Madeline, Adri, and Ella Yarkin, who kept close enough to be first in line when the Selling of the Pies commenced.

Leslie sent me the recipe. She said she used a Sugar Pumpkin, rind and all. “Many squashes have an eatable rind, including the Delicata whose rind is quite delectable.”

The * LIVING * PUMPKIN PIE

First process the almonds to a meal, then add dates and process to get a sticky crust.  Sprinkle the pie plate with dried coconut so the sticky crust doesn’t stick!   Press the crust mixture in.  Juice the pumpkin (rind and all!..a small pumpkin will give 1 cup of juice.  If you don’t have a juicer, blend the pumpkin and strain, maybe adding a bit of water.)  

Combine all filling ingredients in a food processor, blend thoroughly, aiming for as smooth as possible.

Pour into crust and refrigerate for a few hours.  Voila!

CHESTNUTS

Across the street from the Vashon Athletic Club’s back parking lot, there’s a cluster of trees led by a Chestnut Tree. It was dropping its nut-containing burrs around my car in November, and finally I decided to take a couple dozen, roast them, see what the French Fuss about roasted chestnuts is all about.

Turns out, Dan Carlson sells chestnuts at the Farmers’ Market; they are also available at Thriftway. Dan tells me that most American Chestnuts in the USA succumbed to a blight decades ago; what chestnuts are here are mostly Chinese Chestnuts. However, that blight didn’t reach the West Coast, so we still have native Chestnuts in Washington. On Vashon, we have the state’s largest Spanish Chestnut, measured by Mike Lee for the state’s Champion Tree project back in the early 90s; this tree (at least then) was more than 21″ around and 77′ high. It stands at 17205 99th St. SW.

Dan says you can roast chestnuts in the oven after cutting an “X” into the flat area so the chestnut doesn’t burst. You can also boil them until the innards are soft, about 15-25 minutes. Then you marinate them in a sugar syrup laced with vanilla. Frankly, when I tried it, the vanilla overran all other tastes, so I haven’t yet learned what chestnuts taste like. But this syrup, I can tell you, is delicious on vanilla ice cream or as a glaze for a pear tart.

TRUFFLES

I could not believe it when I spotted these in the shelf above the Holiday Grape bundles. But there they were—actual truffles, in little clam-shells marked at $2, $4, $6 and $8 each. You may only get a knuckle’s worth, but you only need enough to shave paper-thin slices onto risotto or pasta or fondue. Do this in front of guests, and then after they’ve eaten it, announce that you’ve just serve them a $198 per pound serving! They’ll be IMPRESSED!

HOES FOR A GARDENER

If you’ve got a gardener to buy a gift for—particularly one with aging knees—let me recommend a Winged Weeder. It’s a hoe with a V-head that you scuffle along the ground. The head works on both the push & pull: push to slice roots of weeds just below the surface, or pull back to hook weeds and yank them out. The motion is kinda like vacumning, and with a long-enough handle, you barely have to bend to slide the head for- and back across the soil.

Island Lumber has them, but DO check to make sure it comes with beveled edges all around, both on the top and bottom surfaces of the “V.” You want a bevel like that of a pencil tip. If it’s not sharp, ask if somebody on staff will sharpen the edges on a grinder for you. True Value will also provide this service, so just ask. 

Colinear Hoes are also wonderful. Eliot Coleman, famous Vermont small farmer, has made them famous with his “razor on a stick” endorsement. It’s what I’ve used at the Food Bank Farm to get in tight around plant stems without bending over. However, no local stores carry these hoes, so try online.

HIBERNATION FOR YOUR BLOGGER

While winter rules, I’ll either be in my studio quilting or underneath my laptop writing my garden book, “Garden On, Vashon!” I’ve recently finished the chapter on growing wine-grapes and making wine on VMI, and I’ve pressed on to my “Falling Leaves, Falling Rain” chapter. I hope to take this book to press by the time a Christmas rules around (wish me BIG LUCK to make that NEXT Christmas!). Meanwhile, until the seed-starting season begins in March, dont’ expect to hear from your garden blogger very much.

So have a wonderful holiday season and satisfying winter hibernation. Catch you during the January thaw!

Our last three winters have taught me that a fall haircut for some woody shrubs helps get them through a hard winter. They are not so likely to sprawl open or break under the weight of wet snow, and there’s less tender plant growth to freeze.

So you go clip, then stand there with a handful of healthy plant feeling guilty about throwing half the plant away.

Feel guilty no more. Use those cuttings to propagate even more of that same shrub. Twelves lives from one! Who feels badly now?

That’s now Colleen James feels about it. “I just love watching all these little plants come to life. And I just hated pruning back my plants so hard, but once I figured out I could turn all these sticks into new plants, I felt so much better.”

I’ve joined her on a sunny, but cool October afternoon. She’s in full propagation mode, building up an inventory of hundreds for next spring’s Arboretum sale in Seattle. In her kitchen, stems with seedheads lay across shallow bowls that catch the dropping seeds. Her greenhouse is full of young, frost-tender plants, and her porch is her potting shed, lined with the gear needed for new plants—flats, bags of potting soil, trays for potting up.

She thrust a knife into a big bag of potting soil—the vanilla type, no fertilizer, manures, or hydro-gels added. “If you put a cutting into soil with fertilizer, it won’t root,” she said. She upended part of the bag into a big, high-backed tray, put an empty cell-flat on the soil and with both hands scooped soil across its surface. The individual cells, each the size of a bathroom dixie cup, filled instantly. “Much smaller than 1.5″ across isn’t enough room for the roots.”

“It’s important that your cuttings go into a clean environment—new soil, clean trays. I wash my used cell-trays in my big sink or the kiddie pool, adding about a half-cup of bleach to the water to sanitize. Underneath these cell-trays, which are pretty flimsy, I put these liners—” she waggled an open-bottomed tray at me—”that will stiffen the trays but let water drain out. Then, once you’ve got the cells loaded with soil, press it down a little with your fingers so it’s not so fluffy, then top off.”

Once we had three flats loaded with soil, we went around back to her lavenders. “See how much growth is on this ‘Fred Boutin’?” she ruffled its branches, each about 18′ long. “We’ll cut these branches back to just above the bare wood.”

Once Fred had his haircut, we proceeded to a nearly-white spanish lavender. The flowers, pale rose-violet at this point, were unlike the deep purples I associate with spanish lavender. Here, clearly, was something different. “I wish I knew what this variety is,” she admitted.”Isn’t it beautiful?” The foliage was so ghostly pale, it reminded me of dusty millers when they first broke on the gardening world 20 years ago. 

Back at the porch, Colleen’s instructions continued. “The best cuttings are from wood that’s not dead bare, but not young green either—it’s from wood that’s in-between, just starting to stiffen. So go up the stem just past where it’s bare, clip there and throw away that dead wood.”

She then took a single stem, yanked off the foliage from the first inch or so. “The roots will emerge from these nodes—these bumpy rings around the stem—and you want to peel away the bark a bit by ripping off foliage. There’s a hormone inside the plant that, once it feels soil contact, it goes into survival mode and puts out roots so the plant can survive. So we want to encourage that by ripping away the bark.”

She demonstrated how, with a multi-stemmed branch, you could peel off a branch and it would release with a cuticle of bark off the end. “That’s a heel cutting, and it will root well because there’s lots of inner plant exposed to contact the soil.”

Above the bared stem (or heel cutting), she left two inches worth—or two nodes’ worth—of foliage. If the cutting was already multi-stemmed, she trimmed all the little stems back, sometimes giving the leaf-tips a little trim. Every cutting, whether single or multi-stemmed, ended up about 4-5″ long. 

And into single cells she plunged each cutting until it touched bottom. Then she firmed the soil around it with her fingers. “You don’t want the stems TOO long especially if the flat will be outside, because the wind could move them around and open up air-holes around the new roots, which will kill them. This firming-down helps prevent that, and it gives good contact of soil against the cutting.”

We filled about six flats with the two lavenders. She figures she’ll lose about 30%. “I don’t use rotetone. Mostly, it’s a fungicide, and if you start with clean soil and pots, you really don’t need it. I haven’t seen that it helps a lot, anyway.”

Cuttings, even without roots, can be killed by excess water. “Give the plants a little water now to settle the soil. Through the winter, I only water when they are really dry, and I make sure the flats can drain. No standing water.”

When I told her I had really leggy lavenders, she suggested that I could layer the plant by drawing down the branches and pinning—or laying a big rock on—each branch down on the soil. “Eventually, those branches will root at the point of contact, though it might takes months. But then, you will have many plants, and you can pull the old leggy plant out and not have a hole in your garden.”

I told her I’d long had a copy of the Arboretum’s book, Cuttings Through The Year. “That’s the best book. And if you look under the section for October, you’ll see it has a really long list of plants that can be propagated now. It’s a good time anyway—who has time in spring? But things are slowing down now, and I have the time. And if I lose plants to winter, I’ll have a whole bunch of replacements ready.”

Looking at that book’s list for October, I see you can take hardwood cuttings now from aucuba, berberis, heathers, rock rose, cotoneaster, daphne (so UNwinter-hardy!), holly, bay laurel, honeysuckle, pieris, rosemary, sages, sarcococca, skimmia, viburnum, and vinca, among many others. 

So for a little winter insurance for your garden, take cuttings now. And watch for announcements of three classes on propagation that Colleen will teach: the first will be in December.

Last week, after putting out the request for green tomato dishes worth eating, I think I can now say that folks find that search a little like Kissing a Lot of Frogs In Order To Find the Prince. 

I heard plenty of comments like Gene Kuhns’ “I was not too impressed [with eating green tomatoes].  I ate them because I did not want them to go to waste.”

Then there are the Scarring Childhood Experiences, shared by Al Watts. “I am not a fan of green unripe tomatoes because my Grandmother was noted for her ‘Green Tomato Pie’ that she cooked and baked for us even though she was nearly blind.  I hated it, but it really wasn’t much different from green apple pie.”

Then there’s Karen Biondo’s stance that things should be eaten in their season (and, though she didn’t SAY this, that if the durn fruit hadn’t ripened in the season it’s supposed to, phooey on it!) Admitting she did not care for green tomatoes, she insisted, “It’s okay to be done with the garden at the end of the season. Appreciate it, be grateful for it, and TOSS IT!”

For those of you still game for the garden, who still have Kerr jars to fill, who have eaters that don’t say “Phooey!” and “Ick!”, here are some more recipes recommended by Islanders. These are more in the Preserves category: chutneys, pickles, and plus a mincemeat/pie filling that’s great for really cold weather dining.

Green Tomato Pickles

This recipe came from Mary Ornstead. Her source is Organic Gardening, Winter 2009-2010.  ”The recipe is from Renee Erickson of Boat Street Pickles, in Seattle no less, and it states that these are a ‘succulent condiment for hamburgers, roast chicken and charcuterie.’  You can check out www.boatstreetpickles.com per the article.”

In stainless steel saucepan, combine vinegar, sugar, salt and garlic.  Bring to boil.  When sugar is dissolved, add the tomatoes.  Simmer over low for 10 minutes, or until tomatoes are tender but not mushy. Strain tomatoes, reserving liquid in one container and tomatoes in another. Add tarragon to the liquid. Refrigerate both until cool, then combine. Spoon into lidded glass containers and refrigerate for up to 3 months.

Green Tomato Chutney

This from Carol Spangler, a fellow yogini who has helped us at the Homeless Dinners. She freezes hers in small containers “and have been happy to have them all year.” Such a chutney goes well with rice, meat kebabs or slices of ham, or in Indian dishes.

Use a food processor to chop the tomatoes and set aside.  Repeat process with apples, set them aside.  Chop onion and set aside. Place all ingredients in a large heavy-bottomed pot and cook over medium heat, stirring occasionally, until it reaches a jam-like consistency (about 1 hour).  As it begins to thicken, reduce heat to low and stir more frequently to prevent sticking or scorching. Store chutney covered in refrigerator and use within three weeks. 

Green Tomato & Apple Mincement / Pie Filling

The above recipe, with dried fruits used instead of onions and even more sugar added, becomes a hearty, sweet pie filling that I really enjoy once cold weather sets in. This is from Julia Rosso’s “Great Good Food.” Both this and the chutney can be “put up” in sterilized jars immersed in a hot-water bath while the concoction’s still hot. Quantities below will probably fill one pie (use a double-crust recipe of your preference) with leftovers for ice cream, yogurt, or a condiment for meats or indian dishes.

Place the tomatoes in a large stockpot and cover with water. Bring to a boil and blanch for 4-5 minutes. Drain. Add all the remaining ingredients. Mix well; bring to a boil over medium heat. Reduce the heat and simmer for 1.5 hours, stirring occasionally. Let the mincement cool. Remove the orange slices and cinnamon sticks and transfer to a covered container. Store in the refrigerator; because of all the sugar & acid, this keeps for a long long time (as in, months) in the frig.

NOTE: The mincement can be preserved in sterilized quart jars. Leaving 1/4 inch of headspace in the jar, seal and process in a hot-water bath at least 15 minutes. 

At GreenDale Farm, our 20 tomato plants are still loaded with fruit, red and unripe green. Anything with a bit of pink will ripen, eventually, if I move the fruit indoors where the temperature is 55° or better. But that leaves rather a LOT of unripe tomatoes that just won’t ripen, so for the last ten days I’ve been asking everybody “Do you have a recipe for green tomatoes that you actually LIKE?”

LIKE, because despite having Fried Green Tomatoes recommended to me constantly, I have yet to meet a method that turns those green slices into anything better than deep-fried hockey pucks. And I’ve tried. Last Saturday, I egged and dipped slices into cornmeal, panko, bread-crumbs, and combos thereof. While the vaguely ripe slices (as from the pink-in-the-center tomato above, an example showing how toms ripen from the inside-out) were somewhat tasty, the pure-greens were all, well, pucker-pucks. Surely there’s better things to do with all those green tomatoes?

When I put that question out there, Islanders, you came THROUGH!  Below you’ll find recipes that will take you from appetizer to dessert (oh LORD, the PIE!!!). Some recipes, I tried; some, I haven’t yet. To make this entry shorter, if the recipe’s already online, I’ll provide just a link. All meet the criteria of “Did you REALLY like it? Would you serve it to your guests?”

And message to VIGA: some year, we need a Green Tomato Taste-off. 

APPETIZER: Green Tomato Salsa  

Thanks to Kathy Bosler, who found this at Cooks.com. This works fine fresh or canned, and it would be good with some Truly Green Tomatoes, such as ‘Green Zebra’, mixed in.

Chop all ingredients and place in saucepan. Bring to a boil, reduce heat and simmer for 10 minutes. Then cool, or if canning, pour salsa into hot jars, seal and hot-water-bath for 30 minutes. Makes 3-5 pints. 

SALAD: Green Bruschetta on spinach or on toast

Chop 1-2 pale green or pinking-up tomatoes into 1/2″ chunks and marinate for a few minutes in olive oil & balsamic vinegar with S & P, maybe a little sugar if tomatoes are too tart. Then grill for 5 minutes with some minced garlic. Meanwhile, into remaining vinaigrette add chopped fresh spinach, cubes of fresh mozzarella, and more fresh basil threads (or, replace mozzarella with shavings of blue cheese and diced walnuts). Serve grilled tomatoes on the bed of spinach, or on toasts basted with olive oil & garlic.

ENTREE: First the Sauce, then the Green Enchilada Recipe

Buy a bag of tomatillos, an equal quantity or less by weight of green tomatoes, and about 25% that weight of yellow onion—a ratio akin to 4 cups tomas, 2 cups greenies, 1 cup onion. Also get a few hot peppers (hungarian wax or jalapeno), a handful of cilantro, lime juice, and some garlic. There are two methods, plus you could probably use the salsa recipe above.

Roasted & Food-Processed: de-husk and lightly wash the tomatillos; wash and core the green tomatoes; put toma/toms plus peppers on a sturdy cooky sheet and roast in a 375° oven for about 20 minutes, until tom skins are toasted & puckery. Pop peppers (whose skins should be browned) in a small brown bag to steam for 10 minutes, then peel skin, split & de-seed, and chop. Using a food processor or blender, grind tomas/toms, then peppers, then add about a cup chopped cilantro, a tbls. minced garlic, big splash of lime juice, S & P. Pack into pint butter-tubs or Seal-a-Meals and freeze.

Kettle-cooked: Under broiler, brown peppers until skin is darkened; bag & steam for 10+ minutes, then skin, seed, and chop. Husk and wash tomatillos; wash & core green tomatoes & chop. Mince the yellow onion and saute in big pot in a little oil until golden, then add garlic and saute until you smell it, then add the tomas/toms, and the peppers, lime, cilantro, a little cumin and perhaps sugar to balance the acidity, S & P. Cook until the tomatillos basically fall apart. Grind as above and freeze. 

Chicken & Cheese Enchiladas

Heat oven to 375°. On a counter, deploy your pint of sauce, your bowl of chicken/onion/peppers, and warming tortillas. Shred some cheese into meat bowl and mix together. In an 8×8″ baking pan, spread about 1/4 cup of green sauce. Across the center of a warm tortilla, make a fat row of meat mix; over it dribble a spoonful of green sauce. Roll up and place in pan. Repeat with all tortillas to fill pan. Cover roll-ups with remainder of green sauce so that sauce touches all exposed tortilla; scrape more cheese over roll-ups until lightly covered. Bake for 20 minutes until enchiladas start to golden. Serve 2-3 per person.

FINALLY—DESSERT—Green Tomato & Spicy Apple Pie

This recipe is from Renee Shepherd, famous seed-purveyor and cook. Since this is a long blog entry, I’ll just give you the link and the photo. Karen Brewer, fellow volunteer at the Food Bank, says she’s had a 100% green tomato pie this week and thought it too was wonderful. Who knew! But THIS recipe is TRULY WORTH EATING!!!

 http://www.reneesgarden.com/recipes/green_tomato_apple_pie.html

Feel free to send me your tried-n-true Green Tomato recipes. Next week, I’ll post what I couldn’t fit on today’s entry: preserves, pickles, chutneys, and a bundt/quick bread that the Food Bank volunteers wolfed down today.

First, some events coming up soon:

CiderFest is this Saturday, Oct 8, from 10-4. Drink fresh cider at the Farmers’ market; try varieties of apples at the Senior Center; try Ron Irvine’s hard cider at (I think) Cafe Luna later in the afternoon. Check out posters around town for more specifics.

Come help plant next year’s garlic for the Food Bank Farm this Saturday, from 10-4 at 24026 Wax Orchard Road. Hot drinks will be served.

Interested in food preservation? The Vashon Food Security has a lending library of canning equipment, plus dehydrator, food mill, pressure canners, vacuum sealers, and other stuff to help you preserve excess fruit, vegetables, sauces, soups, and even meats. They also have a DVD demo for sale at $5, and a resource pdf on Food Preservation: click for that info and how to check out the equipment.

The Wheaton Garden

Driving down the highway toward Burton, I used to pass this run-down homestead with some great old trees out front—particularly a weeping pink cherry tree. But over the last couple years, somebody’s been sprucing up the place, giving it new life and a big new vegie patch out to the side.

Turns out, this is the home of Kathy & Lloyd Wheaton, they of Kathy’s Corner. I asked for a quick visit a couple weeks back, asking particularly to come in late afternoon, when the last light is slanting down the side of the “Rock” and seems to pour right into her river of marigolds.

If, during this Friday’s Art Cruise, you will be motoring down to Silverwood Gallery, look to the east along the long flat above Morgan Hill. The yellows, golds, and apricot tones of her front garden cannot help but catch your eye.

Kathy’s family moved here in the 50s. When I got there, she toured me through Lloyd’s vegetable patch. “Once this whole hill was covered in peach trees: Red Havens, Veterans, Rochesters. I started picking berries on my 9th birthday, 25¢ a flat for berries, 30¢ if you filled up your punch-card.” 

At the “Corner,” they’ve been offering Lloyd’s tomatoes—102 plants’ worth—plus cukes, squash, beans, and six different varieties of corn. If you want to have ripe corn by July 10—as they did—you do what Lloyd did: pre-starting corn in trays in early spring.

As we walked along, I noticed a double set of wires running 6″ and 12″ off the ground. “This is our raccoon fence,” she said, “the raccoons can’t get underneath, and they’re too heavy to get over it without pressing down the wire.” The system, by “Patriot”, is charged by a solar panel that can electrify up to 20 miles of wire (whew!). One does have to look out for the wire grounding if a cornstalk falls over the wire and pressed it to the ground. At $200 for the system, it’s not cheap, but “the raccoons haven’t touched our corn since we put this up.” 

Shadows were stretching toward us as we ambled back to the front garden. There, Lloyd and her crew had surprised her with a birthday garden of shrubs and perennials. Helenium, penstemon, sweet peas, and cosmos ‘sonnet’ glowed hot in the last sunlight. “This hydrangea ‘Quick Fire’ is really fantastic, she said, gesturing toward a 3′ high shrub with big lace-cap blooms of pink and white. “It blooms in pink in June on old wood, then grows new wood and blooms again later on. The older flowers fade to white, but they look just as good as the fresh pink ones. And the leaves turn burgundy-red in fall.”

“I don’t know why people don’t use clethra more,” she said when I admired its white bottle-brush blooms. “This is ‘Hummingbird’—deciduous, it comes out with mid-green foliage, blooms with honey-scented flowers by August, and turns a clear yellow in fall. There’s also a pink variety called ‘Ruby Spice.’” 

In Pacific Northwest magazine a couple Sundays back, columnist Valerie Easton warned readers off the tradition of dividing perennials in fall. She noted the heavy losses of perennials to the early/late frosts and hard winters since 2008, and she recommended only dividing woody shrubs now. Mulch everything with a loose, fluffy mulch such as hay or mowed-up leaves, then divide the perennials in March or April when danger of frost is past.

Kathy has her set of fall plantings to recommend, and the woody plants in her list include boxwood, conifers, veronicas, callicarpia, red-twig dogwoods, barberries, and grasses such as carex. 

Her driveway dahlias were catching the very last light in their petal-tips as I was leaving. Sunset will be at 6:30pm this Friday, so if you want to enjoy a “Golden Hour” viewing of Kathy’s garden, start Art Cruising by 6pm and head for Silverwood’s hold-over of Ted Kutscher’s paintings, all of them baskers in sunlight as well. (Pause to admire Kathy’s golden plantings, but don’t linger: the dogs won’t welcome you.)

The Van Fleet pond, part of an Audubon class/tour this Saturday

A couple of Bog Wallows are scheduled for this Saturday morning, and neither one will get your fenders muddy. 

Tom DeVries, our high school’s science teacher, will lead three hour-long tours of the Whispering Firs Bog, starting with a 9am tour. This is more a “stand -n- listen” tour than a walk-about, though you will probably want to wear grippy mud-boots against a slippery shore. Other tours run at 10am and 11am: call the Land Trust to reserve your spot. It’s a $5 admission if you’re a Land Trust member; $25 for your whole family, which gets you Land Trust membership. Email beth@vashonlandtrust.org with your reservation.

It may strike you as odd, as it did me, that the TOP of our hump-backed Island features a number of ponds, bogs, and swamps. Why don’t they drain out or dry out during our droughty Puget summers? Are they an interaction between our Vashon Till and top-lying Recessional Glacial Outwash? Does the County give a care about these wet spots? Is it a bog, a fen, or a wetland? And will we need mosquito repellant?  Join me in hearing Tom DeVries unravel the mysteries of our Island bogs.

The other will be part of Alan Huggins’ “Enjoyment of Birds” series, which starts Wednesday tomorrow night at the Land Trust Building from 7-9pm. This first, 2-part class is on “Attracting Birds to your Garden, Naturally…” and features a Saturday, October 1st tour, 10-noon, of the Sara & Sam Van Fleet garden, which was on the 2006 Garden Tour and has been written up in Pacific Northwest magazine and in Fine Gardening magazine. The landscaping of the Van Fleet garden is centered around a BOG they found in their front yard; landscaped with wildlife in mind, it apparently hosts 70 different species of birds through the year. 

Other classes in the series—

Winter Water Birds

On Oct 26/Nov 2, Dr. Gary Shugart will introduce you to the goldeneyes, loons, grebes, buffleheads, and colorful ducks that will soon return to Vashon bays, shorelines and ponds for their fall & winter stays. Field trip Saturday, Nov 12.

Gull Identification

Gulls all look alike to you? Did you know we have eight different species here—just in January? Dr. Shugart will help you sort them out, via slides and a field trip. January 11, with field trip TBA.

It’s Only April, So Who’s Singing Outside My Window?

On April 11 and 18, Alan Huggins will introduce you to the “hardy winter resident robins, song sparrows, juncos, towhees, and others awakened by the surging hormones of their early breeding season. Get to know them by eye and ear.” Field trip on April 14.

Blasted Out of Bed by Birds in June?

Tis’ the season for birding by ear, as all those migratory songbirds arrive from the tropics and add their songs and calls to the soundscape. Classes are June 6 & 20th, with field trip Saturday, June 9th. 

Fee for each of the 5 separate programs is $30 for current Audubon members; non-members add $15 per household for a membership to Audubon. Contact Alan Huggins at alanhugs@comcast.net or phone.

from left in the "Jam" category: Wild Evergreen Huckleberry, Organic Nectarine, and Plum Framboise

VIGA held its “Jam, Jelly & Salsa Contest” last Saturday the 17th at the Farmers’ Market, and yours truly was invited to be one of the judges. When I arrived at 11, thirteen of the soon-to-be 15 competing concoctions were lined up in categories, each jar numbered, and new Farmers Market manager Rebecca Wittman was duplicating those numbers down a clipboard.

Rebecca has helped run the Heritage Museum’s Jam Contest in recent years, and it showed. She had pre-printed cards for each judge, showing the five categories—originality, color, texture, consistency, and taste—to be ranked from a low 1 to high 5.

I soon learned judging would be limited to us four: King County’s food department doesn’t want masses of public hands dipping into small pots of food. Though not very democratic or fun, it’s an understandable precaution,  even for our small crowd of four. We finally decided to give each jar its own spoon, from which we’d drop tasting samples onto our palms.

At 11:30, the palm-licking began. Not wanting to kill off my taste-buds too early, I started with the chutneys: peach, mango, and apple ginger. Here I have to say that in a chutney, riper is not better. You don’t want something that looks like jam on your lamb burger—you want chunks of fruit caught between tart and fully ripe, still firm enough to hold its shape against the vinegar every chutney contains. (And that bacon flavor—not my cup of chutney…) The winner: the Mango Chutney by Sheree Tomoson.

Savories was a catch-all-oddballs category with two entries: a spicy pumpkin butter and a gooseberry sauce, both excellent. The pumpkin butter was brightly colored and complex—a little sage note? very subtle. The gooseberry sauce—tiny brown seeds floating round gooseberry “islands” in a translucent brown sugar “sea”—would be wonderful on a big slab of ham. The winner: the Pumpkin Butter by Jasper Forrester of GreenMan Farm.

Salsas three were all pretty good: a hot green tomato salsa, an organic peach salsa, and the “Agnes” salsa, loaded with chunky variety in a peppery tomato juice. And this “Agnes Salsa” was the winner of this category, submitted by Jack Churchill.

Though the “Very Cherry” Jam soooo wasn’t, the blackberry jams were VERY berry:  though not terribly original, both caught their fruit at almost alcoholic peaks. The organic nectarine was very fruit-forward—something often buried under spices in other entries—as was the deeply complex Plum Framboise (framboise is french for raspberry). The Wild Evergreen Huckleberry Jam needed straining, in my opinion: the skins definitely had that wild WOODY note (but other judges liked that quality, so if that’s to your taste…). The winner of this category, and second place winner overall, was the Plum Framboise Jam by Shannon Flora, with a third-place overall win going to Allen de Steigner for his Wild Huckleberry Jam.

There was only one jelly: a crabapple ginger, glowing coral-rose in its tiny glass pot. But what a taste! Delicate yet full. Congratulations to Karen Biondo of K-Jo Farm, winner of the Jelly category and overall Grand Winner (beating the Plum Framboise Jam by half a point.)

Obviously delighted by her Big Win, Karen told me the recipe was inspired by memories of her Great Aunt Doris’s jelly. The crabapples came from old trees in front of the “O” space: 10 gallons worth of crabapples “the size of the end of your thumb” which came off the tree quickly. She cooked the apples and strained them overnight over a bucket to capture the juice, then added sugar to the juice in an open kettle over heat until it jelled, then jarred and placed in the usual hot water bath for sealing. Being made of crabapples with plenty of their own natural pectin, the jelly set up quickly within 20 minutes, and I can testify that it shakes like jelly’s supposed to.

After testing 15 sweet samplings, my brain was buzzin’ and the back of my jaw clinching from sugar overload. When I mentioned that, Rebecca, saying “Oh yah—I wanted you guys to try this—” and pulled out a jar of her own Apricot Jam. “Don’t worry—it’s low sugar,” she said. “I made it by pitting and halving apricots, cut side up, into the bottom of a big dutch oven, sprinkling the fruit with MAYBE a 1/4 cup of demerara sugar, and letting it all roast in the oven for a couple hours until the fruit melts down into this paste. What do you think?”

Warm, sweet, intensely apricot, with a toasted color—pretty good jam for such a little sugar. Good job, Rebecca, with your jam and with your Jam, Jelly, & Salsa contest. Thanks to Lindsay Hart, Rebecca, and Bernie O’Malley of East/West Produce for judging, and to all the contestants for their entries. Watch the paper—or contact Rebecca Wittman or Lindsay Hart—for details on the upcoming Pumpkin Pie Contest.

Colleen James, perhaps rationalizing her inclusion in the upcoming Farm Tour by wearing a stylish Italian zucchini.

We’re at harvest-time, and the To-Do List is growing as fast as an August zucchini. Summer’s cresting over the start of autumn, multiplying and overlapping tasks.

It’s a great time to divide and transplant perennials and small shrubs, and it’s time to get fall bulbs ordered at least, if not dug in. But meanwhile, the food garden is ripening fast and furiously. There’s more food than any family can eat, which means that somebody’s got to tackle freezing, canning, and drying, and right NOW, while the fruit and veg are at their ripest best. 

So a few odds and ends first:

• This Saturday, the Farmers’ market will host its Jams, Jellies, and Salsa Competition. Come taste and compare. I’ll be helping with the judging between 11am-12:45pm.

• Organic roma tomatoes at $1/lb at Thriftway—a screaming deal. If your garden (like mine) hasn’t quite ripened enough plum tomatoes to “put up,” you might consider supplementing your batch with these robust romas.

• Birder Alan Huggins and Vashon Audubon will offer a five-program series on Vashon birds. The first is Wednesday September 28th. All classes 7-9pm at the Land Trust building. Questions, contact Alan at alanhugs@comcast.net or 567-5166. You can probably find a flyer at the Land Trust building or the library.

• On Sunday, September 25 from 10am-4pm, Vashon hosts one of King County’s three “Fall Harvest Farm Tours.” (Look for a pretty large booklet/brochure put out by King County and WSU Extension on these tours.) Vashon Winery, Greeman Farm, and Island Meadow, Plum Forest, and Sun Island farms will participate. So will Colleen James, perennial plantswoman of Burton Loop. Suggested donation is $5 at the first farm you visit (beyond anything you buy, that is.) Leave dogs at home.

Dividing and Transplanting

With the heat simmered down and a protective cloud cover back over us, this is an excellent opportunity to divide and transplant perennials and small shrubs. The warm soil means severed roots will quickly regrow. But you’ll have to keep disturbed plants well-watered until fall rains kick in and take over that chore for you.

Colleen James propagates perennials at her home garden on the Burton Peninsula, so I consider her an expert on perennial upkeep. I asked her what plants are good to divide right now. She said to look for plants that aren’t blooming as much as in former years: it’s a sure sign they want dividing. Lift the whole plant and, if it’s gone hollow in the center, chunk off a couple daughter divisions with a shovel, sharp knife, or by teasing it apart between your hands. Big, tough perennials like daylilies may take two big garden forks, back to back, to pry the plant apart.

Replant the “mother” back in place, refreshing the soil with some compost and watering in. Then move the new “daughters” to new sites, also tucking them in with compost and lots of water. Don’t use fertilizer: you want the plant to recover, not have to put out new growth that will just be killed off by a frost in a couple months.

Here’s her list of perennials to divide now: Yarrow (Achillea); Lily of the Nile (Agapanthus); Tickseed (Coreopsis); Prairie Coneflower (Echinacea); Cranesbill (Hardy Geranium); Daylily (Hemerocallis); Bee Balm (Monarda); Phlox; Black-eyed Susan (Rudbeckia); Lamb’s Ear (Stachys).

You can add to that list, the following: Lady’s Mantle, Jack-in-the-Pulpit, Boltonia, Brunnera, Bleeding Heart, Epimedium, Irises, Peonies (3-5 eyes per division); Poppies, Penstemons, Solomon’s Seal, and Soapwort.

Some of these plants (particularly in Colleen’s list) will still be blooming. So cut all blooming stems back to the crown, fill your flower vase, then cut off any other dead foliage and stems and divide. By late October, new leaves may have filled in “mother’s” gap teeth, giving your garden a more filled-out appearance going into spartan winter.