But reader, I need to commiserate with you. I need your insight, your tips, your fellow tales of woe. Because in my garden, it’s Rocky 3, Karen ZERO.

My new kitchen garden, as some of you know, has been under development for months. First went in the four triangle beds last fall. Then in went the cover crop. Then we built a new rubble wall, 30 feet long and 4 feet tall, to prop up its boundary slope . In front of that went a new flower border to edge this potager.

You can imagine my dreams of edible gorgeousness: rainbow chard and raspberries, pea towers fronted by massive purple cabbages, spiky artichokes posing like living sculpture in front of a wall painted orange.

Now imagine my dismay when, one morning, I found my dreams turned like tossed salad. The cover crops of grass, vetch, pea & clover had been pulled and flung across two of the triangle beds. Six-inch holes were pawed into the dark humus. 

I couldn’t figure out which varmint to blame, because I’ve seen both deer and raccoon tracks in the soil. But I knew that raccoons have raided my husband’s birdseed on the other side of the house: we’ve had staring contests with them through his window. And my compost pile has been dumpster-dived any number of times, even though I’ve thrown a weighted tarp over it. THAT’s not the crows.

So, I tried to net my triangle beds against the raiders (see “A much-considered mess” posted Dec. 30, 2009). When that failed, I took Ken Miller’s advice: put in a deer fence.

I bought 1″ metal conduit poles, stabbed them 30″ into the ground and spray-painted them black to make them invisible against the dark forest. I bought an endless roll of 7.5′ deer fencing—the kind with 2″ cells—and wrestled it onto the poles, holding it with zip-ties that came either from my pocket, or off the ground where they’d fallen.

And because a web site on deer fencing warned that deer could crawl, I added skirting all along the bottom, burying it under sods, wiring it to the top course of the rubble wall, or  stiffening it with a stick or heavy-gauge wire painstakingly woven in and out, in and out, of every couple 2″ cells (by then, I’d run out of zip-ties).

We made rustic gates. We made temporary gates. We closed off a breezeway we use constantly, opting instead to “go through the garage.”

And keeping in mind the raccoons, I fastened fencing to pole-tops with fragile “break-away” rubber-bands, thinking that the raccoon’s weight would break the rubber-bands and the fence would flop backwards, throwing Rocky back where he came from.

Finally, yesterday, at 4:30pm, all was finished. I had my gloat and my husband’s applause, and in a moment of hubris, I stood our empty-but-still-fragrant compost pail right in the middle of the most frequently hit triangle bed, and then thumbed my nose in Rocky’s supposed direction. Just TRY to get THIS, I was thinking.

Next morning, I woke to find the pail on its side, scraped clean, next to a new 6″ deep hole.

And I do believe, for the first time in my life, I felt MURDEROUS INTENT.

So readers: I am sure you too have your own Coon Tales to share. As Joe Yarkin, Maury island market farmer, said at the Food Summit, “There’s more raccoons on this island than people.”

I have visions that, unless something is done, when I plant my seedlings out they will end up as Scattered Remains across my garden beds, savaged by You-Know-Who. Readers, I need your War Stories. I need your BATTLE PLANS.

What I’m NOT going to do, is to relocate the food source to OUTSIDE the fence. I had a friend, once, who decided to feed the coons instead of fight them. Whenever I visited him, his basement picture window would be lined with raccoons, up on their fat haunches, scraping at the windows until he threw out more dog food. 

So readers: what’s YOUR solution to a raccoon problem? Send me your stories either as a comment here, or to karendale@centurytel.net. I’ll collect and post them sometime this spring.

This little darling is cyclamen coum (judging by the leaf shape and early spring bloom) in Julia Lakey’s backyard garden in Upper Gold Beach. A perennial that grows from a tuber, these smaller cyclamens prosper in part shade—they’re a good choice for under trees. Julia has beautiful soil, fed annually with six truckloads of horse manure in sawdust sweepings. All this, for a yard only suburban in size: no wonder the soil is so open and rich. She let me take handfuls of daylilies that were growing into a trail, and I do mean BY HAND; her soil was so friable that I was able to sink my hands in, lift and easily divide plants notorious for hanging onto the earth and each other. Another lesson learned from another gardener.

Kathy Wheaton Update:

I visited Kathy’s Corner this morning and found a few perennials on my Wish-list. And I found Kathy at the cash register, her injured arm pressed tight to her body in its brown sling. She saw me, took a step back, and said “I can’t begin to tell you how much I appreciate how supportive this community has been. Last week I was this close” (pinching her thumb and finger close together) “to calling it quits altogether. But what people having been doing for us has just filled up my heart again. I still have the surgery to pay for, the bills to pay for, and the money wasn’t there, but now…”

She said she lost “THOUSANDS” of starts: this year’s geraniums, fuchsias, and all the plants she propagates for her hanging baskets. But again, people are helping. “You see that guy? He just gave us 50 rhodies to add to our inventory. He’s just a regular customer.”

Keep the support coming, folks. The “benevolent account” that accepts funds toward her surgery payments is at Chase Bank (formally WaMu).

Seed potatoes

And if you want plants, you’ll find her nursery all spiffed up with some new stock (though the pickin’s are  still a little slim), plus about nine varieties of seed potatoes in bins to the left of the office door. Fingerlings, yukon golds, russets, something called ’satina’, and other varieties for about $1.49/lb. Just in time for March 17, St. Patrick’s Day, the temperate zone’s traditional spud-sowing day.

Buy them early so you can “chit” them before planting; that is, you expose the seed potato to cool light so that the eyes sprout a bit. This might take 1-2 weeks. By the time eyes form, the spud might be turning green—that’s okay—and you cut the spud into chunks with at least 2 eyes per chunk before you plant it.

Fish Compost

Huhh???  I’ve heard of old-fashion “fish-head fertilizer,” but I was surprised to see “Fish Compost” on Kevin Bergin’s lot sign. So I called him. “It’s Oly Mountain Fish Compost: fish waste + regular compost. Look it up on the web,” he suggested when I asked for more details. He’s selling it $50/yard—$5 more per yard than CedarGrove compost.

Online, I see that it’s made by North Mason Fiber Company, using fish from hatcheries, processing plants, and fish farms. They say they get the fish into the compost “within five minutes” and process it for two years. It’s apparently certified organic for organic agriculture. Here’s the link if you’re interested:  http://www.northmasonfiber.com/pages/olymtn_details.html. 

And does it stink? “No—not unless you stick your nose in it,” said Kevin.

Vashon Food Summit

I went to the Food Summit film festival last Saturday and enjoyed myself—this food summit is proving a great opportunity to share and compare with your fellow Island gardeners. The grapevine growers really missed a true gem: the short documentary “Portrait of a Winemaker: John Williams of Frog’s Leap” the short documentary by Deborah Koons Garcia.

The actual Food Summit starts at the high school with a 7pm talk Friday by EagleSong of RavenCroft Garden in Monroe, WA. This herbalist is also the designer and director of the kitchen garden for the new Herbfarm Restaurant in Woodinville (please bring slides!) She’ll talk about food security and (presumably, because her nonprofit RavenCroft Garden is devoted to “Community Centered Herbalism”) the interaction between food production and community.

Workshops and panels fill Sat/Sun, with a full of schedule of things like “Raising & Butchering Hogs”, “Growing for Market”, “Finding Joy in Canning, “Mushrooms for Food & Soil,” and the one I’m eyeing, “Artisan Blue & Hard Cheesemaking.” Though all the events are free, some of these desirable workshops request advance registration against limited seating. There will also be a community dinner (bring a vegetable for the soup!) and a contra dance Saturday evening with caller Larry Muir.

I’ll be there hosting the Seed Exchange, where you can bring excess seeds to exchange for others. I’m testing the existing stock right now for viability. Bring a few, take a few—or donate a few cents toward the Summit and I’ll let you just take some.

Check out the Food Summit’s full schedule of workshops, events, tables, etc at http://www.vashonfoodsummit.org

Pruning an Old Orchard

Our neighborhood has a community orchard of mixed fruit trees: english walnut, plum, italian prune, fig, cherry, and apple. They are of standard size, and with years of neglect some of them have gotten pretty darn tall, infested with mistletoe, snarled with crossed branches and winter-kill. But at our last community meeting, we realized that nearly every family had checked out the orchard this summer and had either snagged fruit or was disappointed to find they’d been beaten to it. So we voted to try to bring the orchard back into production.

That, according to Michelle Ramsden, our hired orchardist, will take a 3-year schedule of pruning. She came last Sunday to instruct and advise our work party of nine. First, she gave us a short lecture about removing only about 30% of the branches this year, removing first those suckers growing straight up out of main branches (“they’ll have a smoother texture and go straight up”), crossed branches and deadwood, and then too-long branches running parallel to the ground (“they won’t be able to hold the fruit without drooping into the reach of raccoons and deer.”) 

With three orchard ladders, a nifty little chain-saw, and some younger-than-midlife-creaky men playing monkey in the trees, I suspect we took rather more than 30% of the branches that should be removed. But after four hours of a beautifully clear end-of-February day, our dozen trees looked more open and definitely shorter than before.

And if you attend the Food Summit, you might see some of our trimmings, because Barbara Wells loaded up the back of her Mazda with pruned branches, well-budded, in hopes of forcing them into bloom for giant bouquets to decorate the high school lobby.

My "Mrs. Moon" rose

Can’t argue anymore: when croci and daffs are up, cherry trees bloom, cover crop grows, and a squeezed dirt clod breaks up when thumbed, it may be winter by the calendar but it’s spring in ground and air.

The yellow bloom of forsythia is the traditional signal that’s it’s time to prune your roses. (As if their canes breaking out in leaves weren’t signal enough.) Grab a bucket and your felco hand loppers: the bypass kind will make kinder cuts than the anvil style, where one blade smashes against a flat-edged blade. 

Then go appraise your first target bush. Mine—which we’ll call ‘Mrs. Moon’ as once labeled though none of my rose books nor the Internet can find a rose by that name—grows in habit like a floribuna tea or an English/David Austen rose. That is, it’s shrubby, taller than wide, with 3-6′ canes growing from a graft just above ground level. And as you can see from the photo above, it throws plenty of flowers per branch.

Over the summer, it threw several 6′ canes, which you can see in the “Before Pruning” image. The December freeze also left its legacy of dead wood, usually those stumps above prior year’s pruning cuts or new spurs too skinny to keep from freezing through. In fact, as I went through my roses I saw a lot of winter-kill even of the thickest, oldest branches.

All that winter-killed, dead wood has got to be pruned away. Take it down to the base of the brown, even if you have to cut right above the graft, near ground level (you might need mightier loppers for this. Try to make a cut at an angle so that rain will drain off the cut. Also cut out any crossing branches.

After that’s done, start pruning back the new, thin wood at the top of the green branches. You want to prune back to pencil-thick green limbs, down 1/3-1/2 the length of the total branch (see red lines in the “Before Pruning” photo).

Sadly, at least on this bush, that means snipping away a lot of branches that are sprouting leaves. But I am consoled, because I can “read” from prior year’s cuts that from those cuts the bush will grow new and thicker stems instead of these spindlies. All the better to support those heavy sprays of flowers to come.

Where to cut? Look carefully on the pencil-thick stem for a dark ring, not much thicker than a pen line, that goes around the whole stem. You’ll find them every 4-6″ or so. A good one will have a tiny bud knob on it. Make an angled cut 1/4″ above the ring, with the top of your cut arcing above the bud. The plant’s energy rising up that stem will push the new growth right out that bud.

Once the spindlies and deadwood are off, then you can get artistic. Now, it’s about shaping, about aiming the new growth to reach into the open spaces between limbs. For that, you find buds pointing toward those open spaces, and cut there.

When you’re done, your rose bush will look quite ungainly, all knees and knobs and knitting needles bristling with thorns as in the “After Pruning” photo above.

Dump your bucket of prunings into your brush-pile (not into compost) or burn them. Then feed your rose with aged compost, manure, or rose food, well scratched into the earth. Roses, like prima donnas of the ol’ Italian opera, are heavy feeders. Carol Arnold once told me that a scoop of epson salts helps them take up nitrogen. And David Austen, the famous breeder of those English roses, says they also love a fertilizer heavy in potash.

As for climbing roses, the only pruning you need do is prune out old dead canes and any deadwood you can reach. Feed them now, too. Rugosa roses just need to be shaped and their wizened rose hips cut off.

You can prune and shape other summer-blooming shrubs and perennials now, too, such as lavender, santolina, asters, daisies, and potentilla.

By April your roses will have leafed out and, by June, will be blooming like mad. And I’ll be sniffing them and decorating them with snippets of my True Love’s Hair to keep Bambi from loving them to death. Everything needs pruning sometime…

Friends, this long-time anchor of our gardening Island NEEDS OUR SUPPORT—AND PRONTO.

From Sally Fox, 2/20/2010:

“I am writing to friends, Garden Club members and island gardeners who may shop at Kathy’s Corner or know Kathy Wheaton (THE “Kathy”).  I spoke with her this morning while I was doing research for a Beachcomber article on our island nurseries.  I know that the recession has been hard on all of our nurseries—and I care about them all—but what I heard  from Kathy had me in tears.

I had to do something.  I am writing because I know some of you may want to help or can spread the word.

Last year was a very tough year for the nursery business.  The recession has been hard and margins are very slim. Kathy was just hanging on.  Then, this past  December during the cold snap, Kathy and her husband suffered some disasters: one  greenhouse came apart (killing most of Lloyd’s prize jade plants), a furnace failed in another greenhouse (killing the new starts), and one of her trucks died.  All of that was very very difficult and they weren’t sure how they would make it.

Then it got worse.  Two weeks later Kathy fell, shattering her arm (a complicated break at the shoulder).  The doctors have said it may be months before she is operational and she may never recover full use of her arm.  On top of needing cash to keep her business alive, Kathy will have huge medical bills, (fortunately she has insurance, but  she will still be responsible for 20%).  

Kathy isn’t asking for help—but she needs it. I want to make sure that she can stay in business. She has to find a way to get cash in these next VERY critical weeks. 

I wanted to do something.  So I took out my checkbook and decided I could gift her some money, buy a gift certificate, and tell my friends.  

And I was hoping that some of you would want to do the same.  Please spread the word.  On Monday, I am hoping to set up a bank account for donations, but you can always drop a check off at the nursery. [This "beneficial account for Kathy Wheaton" is being set up at Washington Mutual—now Chase Bank— and will be ready for donations on Wednesday, Feb 24.]

When I asked her how she keeps going when it is so difficult, she said: “Vashon people are amazing.  The customers are amazing.  Their desire to keep us here is what keeps me working.  It is what keeps me going.”

Creeping rosemary seemed planted in every container, parking strip, and drainage-pond verge. I’ve never thought of it as a landscaping plant en masse, but it looked great in long swaths on a bank, blooming its ghostly blue in the late winter sun. Unlike the pencil-thin junipers and Russian Olive trees planted everywhere to evoke Tuscany and the Mediterranean, creeping rosemary does just fine in the Puget Sound, provided it has excellent drainage. I once grew it in a sand-filled trench.

Speaking of things Tuscany, the truly fun discovery of the trip were the proliferation of Olive Oil stores—at least three just in the “town centre” I was hoteling in. Sis and I were snagged in a “WeOlive” boutique, where the fat, affable proprietor thrust thimble after thimble of oils and vinegars at us. Who knew black cherries could make such a sweet balsamico? Apparently the olive growers of California have joined cooperatively and created oil boutiques modeled after wine tasting cellars. Their price of $1/ounce for their bulk oils or vinegars may SEEM cheap  (who can’t afford $1 per?), but I saw later at our local grocery that a good balsamic vinegar can be had for .50¢/ounce. But the experience of standing there guzzling and comparing the good stuff? Priceless.

Speaking of Cost Comparisons: Catalog vs. Store Rack

I was pulled yet again toward the seed racks in True Value today: the Ed Hume racks seem particularly well-stocked with new varieties, as if they hope for a repeat of last year’s run on vegie seeds. I’ve been curious to see whether the price is better from the seed catalog, or if stores mark up the prices on the seed racks. Apparently not, at least for Territorial Seed Company: prices are the same whether you buy straight from the catalog or off the seed rack. Your selection is about 100% larger in the catalog, though, and it comes with more information. So if you DO buy off the rack, do pick up a catalog if for the growing information alone.

In the Perennial Garden: Clean Up, Transplant, and Divide

Since we seem to be further along toward spring than the calendar suggests, this is a good time to clean up the garden and to divide or transplant perennials. You can trim the winter-kill of perennials back to their crowns, and with a sharp snips you can “de-dead-leaf” plants that look tatty, like lady’s mantle or bergenia. The grasses—all except the razor-sharp ones—you can comb with your fingers to pull out dead blades and bent stalks. 

I usually move shasta daisies in March, but as long as your soil is not water-logged, moving them now assures them enough spring rain to establish new roots. Other plants to divide and/or transplant include the summer bloomers like rudbeckia, echinacea, dierama (‘angel’s fishing rod’), epimedium, daylilies, catmint, sedums, agastache, alchemilla (‘lady’s mantle’), and asters. When opening the earth for these, loosen the soil with a handful of compost or aged leaf mould: this will feed the plant, as well as provide good drainage should our early spring do an about-face.

Less than a week after I placed my order, the seeds from Nichols Garden Nursery in Albany, Oregon have arrived. So many dreams in such a little package!

Not an Octopus, but a Pea

Last week, I wrote about starting a seed germination test. Some of last year’s seeds didn’t seem to sprout so readily, so I wanted to test them for viability before finalizing this year’s seed order.

I tested pac choi, two kinds of peas, carrots, beets, mesclun, and two varieties of lettuce, ‘red romaine’ and ‘prizehead.’ It’s not difficult: you sandwich 10-12 seeds between damp layers of paper towels, press together lightly to make good contact with the seed, then seal the towels in a plastic bag and park the packet in a warm, dark place. Check every couple of days until they sprout: toss the seed packet if you get less than 75% germination.

The closet with the water heater worked well: within 24 hours, the dry, wrinkled pea seeds had plumped up and within 48 hours, that long tap-root on the left had erupted out one end. One week later, you can see that the pea has developed multiple roots, plus a stem so delicate that when I opened up the paper towel sandwich, it broke.

Most of the seeds had 90% germination, with the exception of the ‘prizehead’ at 21 of 29 test seeds, and ‘red romaine’ with 12 of 16 test seeds. If I grow these at all, it will be in 2″ cells that I’ll grow as transplants so that I don’t end up planting “duds.”

A Seed Exchange at the Food Summit

In hopes of encouraging further diversity in our gardens, I’ll be handling the Seed Exchange at the Food Summit March 5-7. You may have seen this box before at the Saturday Markets: Cathy Fulton of Mariposa Gardens has charge of it during the year. Bring some seed, take some seed.

Some of the seed in the box is getting old, so I’ll test it for viability before the Food Summit. (Note that, while many seeds can last a few years if stored in a cool, dark, dry place, allium seeds are usually good for only one year.)

When you bring seed to share, the box has envelopes on which you can write the seed variety, year issued, and any notes you’d like to add—even your name & phone number if you’re open to being consulted. 

Sounds like the kids from school are also going to bring new seed they bought in bulk and divided as part of a class project. So there should be some Good Stuff to make your garden even more interesting this year.

A Classic Sign of Late Winter

Lastly, some late winter classics: these snowdrops blooming across the street from the Burton Post Office. 

• Cathy Fulton will be talking about the Food Summit at this week’s meeting of the Sustainable Practices Committee, Thursday, 7pm at the Land Trust building.

• Ivan Weiss wants you to know he has farm-fresh eggs available for “the going rate” ($6/dozen) at his farm in upper Burton. Call ahead: 463-HOGS.

• Seattle’s Flower & Garden Show starts Wednesday and runs through this weekend. DIG will be there in the Vendor’s section, and local garden girl Patty Campbell will give a seminar on “Flower Pot Produce” at 5pm Sunday in the Mt. Hood room.

The Sap’s Rising, making Saps of us all

Have you noticed? The weather, the croaking frogs, and the American Capitalist System are conspiring to convince us it’s spring. 

This has been the warmest January on record: 48° on average, a full seven degrees warmer than the usual low 40s. With the jet stream sending foul weather to north and south of us, our plants think they’re getting mild spring weather. My wallflowers are trying to bloom: they normally blossom in March, with tulips. Just south of town, the forsythia hedge in front of the “Holiday House” is dotting itself yellow. And near the Athletic club, a couple of cherries have sent up a soft-pink cloud of bloom.

These so-called “autumn-flowering” cherries are meant to bloom in late winter. THEY’RE on schedule, but the rest of us, humans and plants, are being led down the primrose path. Our area almost ALWAYS has what I call a “January Thaw” when the oddly-warm air fools humans and flowers alike to think we’re getting an early spring. Our sap is rising, we’re ready to open the wallets and flush out some green. And the shops are ready for us…

Seedy Temptation

As you enter Thriftway through their primrose-lined entrance, you’ll find the seed-packet racks blooming with new arrivals. 2010 Seed packets from Ed Hume, Botanical Interests, and Territorial Seed Company can be found at True Value, Thriftway, Island Lumber, and Country Store (they also carryseeds from  Abundant Life, a company supplying organic and biodynamic seeds that was bought by Territorial seven years ago.) 

Country Store told me they’ve been fielding questions about seeds from eager customers for weeks now, and they are already selling seeds to folks who say they’re planting soon.

But for hobby gardeners, it’s still too early to sow. We may have the warmth, the seed-rotting rains may be averted (for now), but what we don’t have is solar power. Stray sunbeams may have played upon my greenhouse enough to warm it to 60°, but only from 10:30 to 2:30—about two hours shy of the bare minimum for healthily growing plants.

I suspect only the most favored sites—  top-of-the-island farms with open southern exposures like Plum Forest and Island Meadow—will start seedlings this early and only in their greenhouses. As Leda Langley told me last year, “most gardeners get stuck starting way too early, then end up nursing their transplants along for way too long.” Most seedlings only want to be in their little pots for about 4 weeks, yet our earliest frost-free day, according to Ed Hume, is March 24. 

It IS a good time to plan your seed order

In any year, late January through February is THE time to order seeds. If you order now, you’ll receive your seeds by late February, which will be a safer time to sow.

I spent last Saturday buried under one laptop, two gardening books, and five seed catalogs, typing my “Seed Spreadsheet” into google-docs as fast as my eyeballs could pull info from pages. Into this spreadsheet I’ve listed the plants I want to grow, noting varieties recommended by Steve Solomon (“Gardening West of the Cascades”) and Sylvia Thompson (“The Kitchen Garden”). With that list in hand, I can quickly scan the catalogs for those varieties and enter their prices/weight for a quick cost comparison when I’m ready to order.

I hope to diversify my plantings even more by trading for other’s extra seeds through the Seed Exchange at the Food Summit, March 5-7. (More on that in a later blog.)

While you’re at it, test your old seed

Before you order, you could test your old seeds—even last year’s packets—to see whether the seed is still viable or whether you’ll need to buy replacements. Here’s how to do a germination test:

• find a dark, warm place: the closet where the water heater lives, on top of an appliance with a pilot light, near the woodstove.

• Take two sheets of paper towel, lay on over the other, and moisten the upper half on your counter or a cooky sheet. A misting bottle works great.

• Take ten seeds or so from an older packet of seed you want to test. Spread those across the moistened sheet. Fold the bottom of the towels over this layer of seed, and moisten again so the sheets are damp but not dripping.

• Place this folded sheet into a ziploc bag. Seal and place in the dark, warm spot. To keep track of what’s in the bag (in case you’re loading it with several trials), take notes on the bag’s exterior or on a separate sheet of paper, not on the towel itself—wet ink RUNS, remember.

• Open and check seeds daily for sprouting. Within the week if they’re good, they’ll begin to sprout. Your packet may show the expected minimum germination rate (Johnny’s and Territorial for sure). If you get germination much less than that—or under 75%—either sow them as transplants so you won’t plant dudes, or replace the packet.

This idea comes courtesy of today’s Thriftway temptation: a special issue magazine from Taunton Press called “Starting From Seed.”

 Hey, I’m not immune! I may not buy THAT it’s spring, but can I resist buying INTO spring? Not a chance…

So what’s making the difference? Vegetables, of course: we have to buy them now that the December freeze turned my winter garden to mush. Still, “twice what it was” doesn’t tell you much about what you saved by growing your own.

But Nancy Lewis-Williams, Master Gardener and teacher of last year’s popular vegetable-growing class, HAS kept a running tally of what her harvest has been worth to her pocketbook. From June through December first, she weighed all the produce she’d harvested and kept a running tally, in pounds, of 33 different crops, from apples to zucchini. 

“Well, maybe 75% of it—I didn’t count the stuff we ate right off the vine,” she hedged. “And it also doesn’t include all the greens we grew in early spring, before I started this count.”

Her computer went on the fritz the same week I asked for her end-of-harvest totals, so I stepped in and looked up current prices at Thriftway. So here’s another hedge: we didn’t use height-of-season prices (except for the raspberries, which I had recorded for myself in Quicken when I bought a half-flat this summer).

Given all these qualifiers, what did we find? That Nancy had harvested nearly $500′ worth 0f organic vegetables per MONTH from her 2000 s.f. garden. 

The harvest total was worth $1810, using winter Thriftway prices for non-organic produce. If compared to organic prices, the harvest would be worth $2952.

“And I’ve still got a month’s worth out there in leeks, kale, carrots, chard, turnips, rutabagas and spinach,” she said.

The Big Pay-offs

The big pay-off, both in weight and in dollars grown, was from POTATOES. With a pound of seed potatoes for “Rose Finn Apple Fingerlings” from Ronnigers in Colorado (www.ronnigers.com), her return was hundredfold: 110 pounds worth $440 smackaroos. She also planted around 10 lbs of seed potatoes for regular spuds and got 250 lbs in return, worth $250 or $500 at organic prices. 

Leda Langley told me last spring that you get the biggest bang in calories and productivity/acre with potatoes, and here Nancy’s proved her point.

Other seeds with a large return, literally, were: TOMATOES at 109 lbs, worth at least $218 and probably well over $300 organic; 95 pounds of WINTER SQUASH (delicate and butternut) worth $1 per pound; 36 pounds of CUCUMBERS worth $72 or twice that if organic; LEAFY FRY GREENS like kale, chard, and spinach that come bagged at premium prices anywhere from $4-6 per pound. “I didn’t count all the corn: I must have pared kernels off of hundreds of ears.” 

If you’re a fruit-fancier willing to pay for fresh off-season berries, you might want to invest in a few bushes and a freezer. Nancy’s 28 pints of RASPBERRIES were worth at least $65 compared to in-season local berries, or $448 compared to last week’s Chilean winter imports at a Buck an Ounce. 

Other results: HERBS: 13 handfuls worth $65; 15 lbs of LEEKS worth $45; 32 pounds of BEETS worth anywhere from $1.50/lb to $5/lb for organic; 29 pounds of CARROTS worth from $22-30; 15 lbs of CABBAGE worth 50¢ a pound but four times that organically. 

The Investment

My husband, always the skeptic, pointed out that there’s costs involved: water, fertilizer, seed trays, seed. 

“And you HAVE to have a deer-fence,” Nancy added when I asked about her costs. Deer-fencing runs about a dollar a running foot; you could fence a garden her size (2000 sf, equal to a 40′x50′) for  $100 plus the poles and gate materials.

Looking at her records, she estimated she spent $100 on seeds, $30/month on water, and $100 on organic fertilizer and amendments. Given that one doesn’t water in three of the months of her trial, that’s approximately $300 a year to install a 2000 s.f. vegie patch producing $3000 worth of food. That’s a tenfold return for your money.

Now Nancy’s put in a greenhouse last year; with such a large expense, you’re looking at costs close to what the author of “The $64 Tomato” ran up. But you don’t have to spend a lot on gear, as Steve Solomon points out in his latest book, “Gardening When It Counts: Growing Food in Hard Times”: you can direct seed instead of growing or buying transplants, you can start warm-season fruiting plants in a sunny window, you can blend your own fertilizer, and you can restrict your tools to a hoe, a bow rake, a good shovel, a sharp knife, and a hose. 

You may not be able to grow as large a bounty as Nancy did, but most folks DO realize some savings. In a poll done last year by the National Gardening Association, they found that “a well-maintained food garden yields a $500 average return per garden.”  

So save yourself a few or a LOT of bucks: Grow Your Own.

Stories I’m working on:

• A Seed Swap at the Food Summit Meeting: bring some, take some.

• Gates for deer-fencing

If you have ideas for stories or inputs on the above ideas, comment here or write me at karendale@centurytel.net.

Nothing like a warm winter sun-break and a bit of chain-sawing to warm a girl up. Sunday night’s wind brought down a small hemlock, already bone-dry and perfectly placed: right next to a road, its butt end still hinged to its stump, the trunk held three feet off the ground all its length. With the sunshine and a newly-sharpened chain,  it was a pleasure to work. Hope you got a chance at the sunshine, too.

The News:

I got this notice from Cathy Fulton today: she’s planning a Vashon Food Summit ”for People Who Eat” this March 5-7. Meetings for volunteers will be held later this week at the Vashon Library (see details below).

Cathy’s web site on the event (link below) says the event is “for Islanders to meet and share information and experience on most any topic regarding food and its impact on Vashon Island. Broad topics include Raising Food, Acquiring & Preparing Food, and The Food Economy.

The purpose is to encourage Islanders to become more aware of the food we eat, to eat more food closer to its source, and learn how to prepare good food more economically. Raising food and food prep will be key areas. We’ll also explore how the way we eat is ultimately a political act. There will be lectures, workshops, panels, organization tables, a “Stone Soup” dinner, and a “Food Celebration.”

The only volunteer meetings for those who would like to help with the Vashon Island Food Summit ( http://vashonfoodsummit.org/) are being held this week at the Vashon Library. The meetings will be Wednesday, January 20, 7:00 pm and Friday, January 22, 11:00 am. You only need to attend one meeting–they will be identical in subject matter.  If you cannot attend either meeting, but would like to like to be involved, let Cathy Fulton know by email or phone: cathy@MariposaGardens.org, 463-5652. 

 A preliminary list of volunteer opportunities can be found on her website at: http://vashonfoodsummit.org/index_files/Page363.htm

And also: mark your calendars for a return of last year’s popular Vegetable Growing Classes: two weekends later, on March 20 and 27, taught again Cathy Fulton and Nancy Lewis-Williams. Nancy and I are developing an article on “The Dollars You Can Save By Growing Your Own.”

Bob Dale’s Hot & Sour Noodle Soup
When the rains return, here’s a very peppy, winter soup that will cheer your bones.

Take a quart of chicken or turkey soup stock, put in kettle and on medium-high heat.

Into the pot add:
1 cup white cabbage, shredded into 1/4″ ribbons
1/3 cup shredded carrot (about 1/3 a carrot)
1 green onion, sliced thin on diagonal
1 celery rib, diced to 1/4″ pieces
Season with:
1 tbls “Sriracha” chili garlic paste (less if you like it less hot)
1 teas. soy sauce
1 teas. rice vinegar
1 teas. rice wine
Once soup comes to a boil, add a handful of wheat noodles (we like straight “Marco Polo” noodles: a hand-grab around a quarter-coin’s thickness is enough for two people).
Stir so noodles don’t clump, then reduce heat to simmer and cook for about 10 minutes, until noodles are al dente.
Thicken broth to a silky texture with 1 teas. cornstarch dissolved in 2 tbls. cold water. SERVE.

With rain predicted through the end of this week (and with credits at both Island bookstores), I decided to ask some of the Island’s best gardeners & farmers for a list of their favorite garden books. And I checked on availability of many of these through the King County Library System (more on that below).

(PS: As the rain just WON’T quit, I also got online and ordered seed catalogs. Most catalogs are bulk-mailed this month, so get on their lists now. For me, some Must-Haves are Territorial Seed Company* (which bought Abundant Life Seed Foundation of Port Townsend, another good one), Johnny’s Seed Co., and The Cook’s Garden* (*Local stores will offer their seeds in carousel racks later this winter.)

Thanks to Joanne Jewell of Plum Forest Farm, Chandler Briggs of Island Meadow, Chris Greenlee, Mark Musick, Nancy Lewis-Williams, Cathy Fulton, March Twisdale, Julia Lakey, Michelle Crawford, Colleen James, and Anita Halstead for sharing your favorites!

Favs of the Farmers

These first two are touchstones of my own library. The last book, I’ve checked out at least twice when I’ve had a good growing summer (which is about two months too late, as you’ll see).

Steve Solomon’s “Growing Vegetables West of the Cascades” and “Gardening When It Counts: Growing Food in Hard Times.”  Do ALL our local farmers have this book? It’s now in its sixth edition (2007); Chris Greenlee says “Much of what Steve wrote about earlier, he’s refuted in his later versions.” Hummm… might be time to retire my 1989 copy.

“The Maritime Northwest Garden Guide” by Seattle Tilth. This year-round guide to growing organically in the Seattle climate delivers a ton of information within helpful month-to-month “To-Do” chapters. Islanders Rob Peterson, Joanne Jewell, and Kathryn True all worked on the 1998 edition, and Joanne reports that a new edition is in the works. 

Binda Colebrook’s “Winter Gardening in the Pacific Northwest.” Lots of personal observations on vegetables and techniques that work for the winter garden. TIP: if there’s the chance you might want to extend your growing season, get this NOW and read by July.

More on Growing:

I was thrilled to find at Granny’s last week John Jeavons’ classic on bio-intensive gardening “How to Grow more Vegetables.” Some of my correspondents liked:

“Better Vegetables Gardens, the Chinese Way” by Peter Chan. Chris Greenlee says “I love the simplicity.”

John Seymour’s “The (New) Self-Sufficient Gardener.” Joanne Jewell: “It’s so beautiful, and it’s good for home gardeners.” Amply illustrated, like all DK publications.

“Gaia’s Garden” by Toby Hebenway. Cathy Fulton (Mariposa Gardens, the Compost Fest) says “This is a very accessible book about permaculture. I checked it out of the library three times, then gave up and bought it.”

Anything by Eliot Coleman, says Chandler Briggs: “The New Organic Grower” and “Four-Season Harvest.”  Fascinating tools and techniques of an extremely successful organic grower in New England.

Nancy Bubel’s “Seed-Starting” and “Root-Cellaring” are essential handbooks for Nancy Lewis-Williams, who will rerun her popular vegetable growing classes this March.

Michelle Crawford, tomato diva of Pacific Potager, recommends “The Art of French Vegetable Gardening” by Louisa Jones.  Beautiful photos of all seasons of the ornamental kitchen garden, with great text; I first saw this awesome book at Michelle’s “Kitchen Potager Salon” last February. She also likes “Organic Farming” by Nicolas Lampkin… an English book, but similar to our climate. ” I must have read it 7 times.  Very good explanation of soil chemistry, how nutrients are released, etc. “ 

Links to our Land

As I’ve said before, Michael Pollan’s “Omnivore’s Dilemma” pushed me to grow more of my own food, rather than depend on “industrial food.” And as one season bends toward another, I felt kinship with Carol Williams as she gardens and writes up a year in her bio-dynamically influenced backyard, in “Bringing the Garden to Life.”

For his winter inspiration, Chandler Briggs is reading Wendell Berry’s “The Unsettling of America” and Wes Jackson’s “Becoming Native to This Place.” 

Speaking of being in place, Anita Halstead loves “The Authentic Garden: Five Principles for Cultivating a Sense of Place” by Claire Sawyers: a book about seeking design inspiration not in Europe or Asia, but in the environs we live in.

Lewis-Williams is savoring “Gardening at the Dragon’s Gate” by Wendy Johnson, a Zen Buddhist who is Head Gardener at San Francisco’s Green Culch Farm Center. “It’s one of those books you read a few pages at a time to make it last.”

Eye-Candy: Ornamentals

Les this list become dominated by vegetables, I asked Master Gardener Colleen James, whose Burton perennial garden was profiled here a few weeks ago, to contribute a few. 

One of them, I had just read: “Perennials: the Gardener’s Resource” by Susan Carter, Bob Lily and Carrie Becker. “This has replaced the Sunset book as far as perennials go,” Colleen opined. This coffee-table reference is written by three local experts, covering 2700 species and cultivars, their demands, upkeep, and performance, with commentary.

“Anything by Beth Chatto: her “Drought-Resistant Planting Through the Year” on gravel gardening is what really got me going,” said Colleen. “She turned a parking lot into this big drought-tolerant planting of all these flowering, gorgeous ornamentals—and she never waters.”

James also turns to Jane Taylor’s “Plants for Dry Gardens: Beating the Drought”  (“we’re only going to see more drought in the future”), “Covering Ground” about ground covers by Barbara W. Ellis, and “Seedheads in the Garden” by Noel Kingsbury.

Another from Nancy Lewis-Williams is “Passionate Gardening” by Lauren Springer and Rob Proctor. It too “emphasizes perennials for low water and extreme climates. And it’s got great photos to drool over.”

Garden Design

When I need to design a large area, I often have a stroll through “The Book of Garden Design” by English designer John Brookes. And like Anita Halstead, I find local writers Ann Lovejoy’s “Organic Garden Design School” and Valerie Easton’s “A Pattern Garden” both full of eye-candy—much of it from around Seattle—and practical hort advice.

Postscript

I checked on many of these books in the King County Library System and found high demand for a few—Colebrooks’s on Winter Gardening and “Root Cellaring”—and Seattle Tilth’s book has 19 holds on its few copies, so you might as well buy it.

Finally, I want to thank Julia Lakey, she GAVE me one of her favorite books: “Let It Rot” by Stu Campbell. I find reading about compost wonderfully soothing: its litany “1 part browns to 1 parts greens” so comforting and familiar, I suspect this book will lull me right into that other guilty pleasure of January, a long winter’s nap.

Happy, Fruitful Reading!

.”

At times like these, I envy those whose land is open to the sunlight of winter. You get better color in those plants with winter color or berries, such as bergenia, cotoneasters, or snowberries—probably healthier, too—and you get the play of light we shaded ones long for. Above’s a prime example: place plumed or felted plants in the path of the low sun and, at the right time and angle, your frizzy garden will glow in rim-light  (helps to have a dark backdrop in the distance). 

Winter Color in Spring’s Garden

I visited Jaralene Spring’s garden before Christmas and was reminded of the value of good color in bleak weather. Here on drippy afternoon of pure gloom, she toured me down the three paths of her mixed border, where we found plenty of colorful plants almost glowing in the low light.

Jaralene’s house is a nouveau-Victorian built in the early 90s on the slope above Shawnee Beach The site slopes downward to the east, so a sunny day hits it early and hard. She told me that the central tower—home to a hot-tub—gets so hot and humid that she thinks it’s better used as a greenhouse. “I start all my seedlings up there now.”

Looking uphill from the Mixed Border

Looking downhill from the house at the mixed border and the renovated "Coop" that houses Jaralene's art & garden projects

The land below the house had to be carefully terraced and drained, as there is an active spring up behind the house that soaks the ground all the way downslope. On riprap terraces, Jaralene grows some vegetables and about 16′ worth of strawberries in raised-bed cages to hold off the raccoons. The water-lines direct moisture to the lawn below, which is edged with blueberry bushes, their bare branches now cherry-red against the green lawn.

You enter the garden under a homemade willow gate that Jaralene created. The low bank along this flagstone path is planted with carex buchananii and calluna “firefly”, its raspberry foliage studding the path at eight-foot intervals. 

Calluna "firefly" against creeping sedum

Other color elements include (in the photos):

• bugle mixing it up with creeping sedum

• what I believe is a snowberry in its smaller, pink-berried form

• A heather, probably “Springwood White”

• Iris foetidissima, an evergreen iris that doesn’t have much of a flower, but instead sports these bright-orange, multi-berry dangles most of the winter.

One thing Jaralene does well is play one color or texture off another. In one spot, an old chair is placed where its faded paint matches the yellow of black-eyed susans.

In the right photo, that’s a ‘Rose Glow’ barberry wearing nothing but its red berries.

One of my favorite moments of color resonance was this native snowberry, its white berries staccato against that emphatic bleached grass (calamagrostis again?) Note how these plants pick up many of the colors of the renovated “Coop.” 

Jaralene works her artistry in the garden and FROM the garden. Here she is with a Christmas wreath she made of rose hips from a rosa glauca that’s taking over the south fence. Jaralene paints with a brush loaded with plants!

All so cozy … comfy … rational … and I’ll get to it once I drag myself out of the cold.

I spent the better part of this afternoon’s meagre daylight trying to weave wire in and out of bird-netting. My fingers were frozen—de-gloved because bird-netting tends to bind on thick fingers—and my deeply-squatted position was letting plenty of body-heat escape, shall we say, out the backdoor?

But winter’s the time to work on hardscapes, and this particularly project—four raised beds in a big square, criss-crossed by two paths to make four triangular beds—has been hanging around unfinished since fall.

The four beds are planted experiments in soil prep: one’s had its sod flipped and tilled; one is double-dug, amended, and tilled; the one on the right is a lasagna bed over newspaper-covered sod; and the last (near you, with newspaper peeking out from under newspaper) will be filled with “Mel’s Mix”—that combo of compost, coir, and vermiculite advocated by Mel Bartholomew of “Square Foot Gardening” fame. All were sown in a cover crop last September, which is now about 4-6″ high.

As soon as I planted this rich mixture of seeds, the Midnight Raider came a-sampling, and the morning after, my lasagna bed looked rather more like tossed salad. I know we’ve got raccoons: they sometimes stare at my husband from the office windowsill where Bob’s trying (in vain) to keep his bird-feeder full. So back in October, I resolved to cover the beds to keep out the furry, feathered thieves. 

Over my rectangular beds,  I had devised a quonset-style cover using bamboo, steel hoops, and netting (you can see it over my cabbage bed, foreground upper photograph). This system allows the gardener to lift the long sides up for access. I wanted the same kind of lift-up access with the triangle beds. 

In the garage, I found some old shelf-bracket columns that would stand in for hoops. Once I stuck the hoops in the ground and draped it with bird-netting, instance cover—or so I thought at first.

However, it’s not easy to cover a triangle and leave air-space underneath for plants to grow. My green manure—its most ambitious member a legume—took to the netting as its own trellis and grew up into a green snarl—an early warning system of how cramped my spring vegetables will be unless I devised a better system.

Bob (an 18-century man) suggested I make a test-model. So rational. I carved an old pizza box across its middle for the raised bed, brought together wire and netting, screw-eyes and wine corks. Came up with an idea that looked like two cornucopias meeting at the mouth, with outside corners lifting from hinges at the center, wine corks as T- joints to hold the meeting of many wires.

It looked a bit ramshackle and flimsy, but I couldn’t come up with any better ideas. Scaled up yesterday on site, the cover system looked even worse. It would have been 18-century rational to drill pilot-holes in the corks, to measure lengths, to pre-cut the wire. But I’m 20-century, trained to act on impulse and on the spot. So I tried to drive the wire through the corks with white-knuckled force.

The wire, naturally, did not run as through butter through the cold corks—instead, it writhed and bent under pressure, developed kinks, whipped about, got tangled in the netting. I clipped the wire-ends to a point so it would go through the cork easier. That worked: a quick through-and-through, right into the meat of my hand (Awwwh!!!).

Finally finished, I unbent my cramped knees and looked over my net-cover. It looked made of mangled coat-hangers. My own Homer Simpson spice-rack.

Still, the nets did cover the soil a good 16-24 inches high. My cover was no beauty-prize, but would it work?

I lifted the far corner and balanced the cover against the central spine. It leaned: it was definitely leaning. Then slowly, with kind of a roll, it listed to one side and fell to earth, the point protruding over the path like a buck tooth.

Hummm… where’s that couch-blanket when you need to hide?  Time to throw it over my head, consider the mess I’m going to make of the recycled-glass greenhouse I next have in mind.

  Mike McKelvey and Bea Johnson know this in spades.

If you went on last year’s VAA Garden Tour, you too probably visited this hillside garden on a southeast slope of Maury Island. It starts off conventionally enough: you enter the west front lawn through an elegant metal fence and walk along a paver path next to a mixed planting. Ahead is the rose garden, inside its own fence since it was created earlier. There’s a charming guest-house that beckons past the rose garden to the southeast corner.

And then, for a moment, the garden disappears. You have to step forward and crane out your neck out to see “Oh, it’s down THERE!”, then decide whether your tour-addled limbs are up to the return climb.

McKelvey & Johnson’s back garden is on a 40% slope. And, the property is near a “critical area” known for slides—Mike told me, “In the 90s, I remember driving out and the road on 47th below us was completely washed out.”

So in 2004 before they could build on their property, McKelvey had to fulfill some King County mandates: build a cistern to collect ALL run-off from roof and driveway. And build a second water- collection system across the entire bottom of the property. You’d think that would take much of the water-burden off their 40% slope.

Apparently not.

DIG put in the initial rockeries to create a flat place for the rose garden. Mike said, “We were going to stop there, let the rest be natural: rocks, grass, scotch broom. Then one day I came home and Bea had started weeding the hillside below the east deck. So I got the idea of buying those big pre-fab aggregate blocks to build stone walls, and I started building the stairs.” Bea then decided this stairs needed the rose arbor touch.

“There had been a lot of rain that autumn. And as I built from bottom to top, that’s when I noticed the big bulge in the slope, just to the south. And I thought, ‘This is not good!’ because the septic system was right above where the land was moving. So we decided to put in more rockeries to stabilize the slope.”

Mike did all the hauling and placement of the blocks himself. He worked out from the Archway stairs to left and right, finishing one then deciding “that’s not enough!” There are at least four terraces, from 7′ to 3′ high, traversing and containing the entire slope.

Bea came behind, creating the paths and adding plants. It’s in these paths that the McKelvey/Johnson garden reaches past its High Function and goes for Magic. Cobbles were sorted for size and color, then laid in complex mosaics, in patterns very reminiscent of the patios in the Chinese Garden in Portland, Oregon. The blue cobbles come from a place in the University District called “Mexican Pebbles”; the earth-toned stones are “good ol’ Maury Island natives.”

Mike said his wife tamped the stones into the soil: “she has the patience to do that with her wooden hammer.” Laying them into the soil allows mosses and creepers to grow amidst these stones—but how does Bea keep out the weeds? I hope Bea has a Dragon Torch weeder—or is getting one for Christmas!

Besides the artful mosaics on the paths, the garden also sports several birdhouses, planted pots, and pieces of artwork. The Guesthouse, a gift from Bea’s mom, they use as a reading room because a couch they couldn’t fit into the house found its home there. “A guy here on the Island had a model sitting near Vashon Electric: they come in a kit form from Russia and it’s all metric. The guy built the house for us. 2×6′ tongue-and-groove white pine with a metal roof and completely insulated.”

One of the most delightful sections is in an unlikely space that most gardeners have trouble with: under the deck. Here, Bea created a tiny garden room for shade plants. The yellow spike flower is Eucomis autumnalis, commonly called  pineapple lily. Coleus mingles with begonia and small ferns. A metal-work screen makes the sharp slope, only inches away, disappear.

This garden just has to demand a ton of attention. “Put a lot of time into gardening?” I ask. He laughs, “That’s what we do. 

“We’ve changed so many things even since the garden tour. We like nothing better than spending all day at Molbak’s.”

photo credit: Rebecca Teagarden

There’s a theme of appropriateness running through the garden of Nancy & Len Wolff on the north end.

By the street, a lush perennial border is studded with arbors, pots, tall plants to block out distractions from the road. Near the house, plantings in the cottage style match the old/new style of the house. And out front with the view, a design meant not to interfere: low natives and trimmed-up trees elegantly frame a panoramic view of the Southworth Ferry Terminal.

photo: Len Wolff

Even the grandest of perennial borders would be dwarfed in front of this Big View. So Nancy’s garden border is out front—or as Wolffs say, out “back.”

The perennial border begins at what the Wolffs think of as their back door, which faces east toward Palisades Road. The plantings start at the foot of the steps, wrapping both tightly around the house and in a wide loop out the walkway, along the road, and back along the southern border of the lawn. 

photo: Len Wolff

“In starting, I really didn’t have any grand plan,” other than wanting a garden style in keeping with the house’s architecture, she told me.  ”I love cottage gardens, and I thought a cottage garden would look good with the house’s casual style.”

“I’m a novice at gardening, and it was an intimidating lot because it’s very big. So I talked to a LOT of friends, looked at other gardens, and the most valuable advice I got was ‘just start.’”

She began with a very narrow bed along the side, “then a wonderful woman came by and said ‘I want to tell you about composting’. So I ordered ten yards of compost from Vashon Bark & Soil, gathered every box I could find, and expanded the narrow beds by layering out with cardboard and compost layers up to 10″ thick.”

It’s interesting that both Nancy Wolff and Colleen James, the garden winner covered in my last blog entry, used the lasagna-layering technique over the course of a winter to create a good soil base for spring plantings. “I didn’t dig up the soil: the native grasses under the cardboard died over the winter.” 

The garden, now four years old, is at its height from April through mid-June and has an incredible variety of perennials: dayliles, delphiniums, lupine, crocosmia, mallows, poppies, lilies, agastache, to name only a few—and so many poppies, her neighbor joked he’d seen a DEA agent eyeing the garden. Sub-shrubs include box, lavender, the bush form of St. John’s Wort, phormium, hydrangeas, and an airy blue aster she got from a friend.

In the SE corner, cool colors dominate: hostas, “Tasmanian Tiger” spurge, and a white “Limelight” hydrangea grows next to a shrubby aster with tiny blue flowers, backed by an 8′-tall himalyan honeysuckle (Leycesteria formosa) with blood-red pendant flowers.

photos Len Wolff

Later in summer, coneflowers, cannas, lilies, white echinacea, dahlias, and rudbeckias complement tall ornamental grasses—inspired, she said, by the planting at Courthouse Square.

Son Christopher Koering helped Len build a stout cedar pergola as an entrance off the street; a cedar gateway with a metal crow perched on top leads visitors from the steps into the garden area. A lovely stone wall built by Per-Lars Blomgren terraces the slight slope and helps mark the separate zones of sunny east/shady west.

Nancy is an occupational therapist by day, so she doesn’t have a lot of time. She does have plenty of ideas, though: she wants to create a low box hedge along the walkway, a vegetable garden somewhere, “more and deeper” beds. “The idea was I wanted people to walk around, see what’s on the next side,” she told me.

One suspects there will be plenty of “next sides” for Nancy’s visitors to explore in the future.

Julia Lakey, who’s involved with the Sustainability Committee’s work and who I know through yoga, organized a ringing of Island church bells at noon on Saturday, Dec. 12. Such markings of 350 are apparently happening all over the globe, in parallel with the Climate Change Conference in Copenhagen.

How far back do we have to wind the CO2 clock to reach 350? Well, according to www.CO2.org, our atmosphere was at 350 ppm back in 1987. It was at 315 in 1959—things have changed quickly, haven’t they? 

It didn’t take long for we five bell-ringers to reach 350 strikes of the church bell—all of about 15 minutes. The Presby and Methodist Churches chimed in as well.

Nor did it take long for our atmosphere to reach and overreach 350ppm: only 22 years. That’s a gnat on a nano-second in the timeline of human evolution. And there’s nearly 6 billion of us homo saps adding CO2 all the time.

If you want more info, visit www.350.org or www.CO2.org.

from left: Julia Lakey, Weslie Rodgers, Rosellen Albers, Karen Dale, and Wally Fletcher under the bell at the Episcopal Church.

2009 Garden Club Award Winners

Len & Nancy Wolff , Mike McKelvey & Bea Johnson, and  John & Colleen James, whose garden is featured below. I’ll interview the other gardeners in the weeks ahead.    

The James Garden

This garden is on the Burton Loop; the property slopes down to the front of the yellow Victorian house, which faces south.  John & Colleen James moved here from Gig Harbor in September, 2005. “It was a blank canvas, kinda nice because it was just grass, mostly dead by then.”

They stripped away all of the grass on the slope leading down to the house and smothered what remained over the following winter with layers of cardboard and compost mulch. Later, they brought in several truckloads of compost plus more loads of 3-way Mix (compost, sand, and manure) to add to their sandy soil. 

What’s really impressive here is the depth of the beds—but that’s what you’ll get when you replace a lawn with perennials. Here’s a view across the house front, looking from east to west.

 Standing tall above the perennials is a grafted salix integra (dappled willow), which she said “isn’t too happy: it wants more moisture.” Calendula have scattered themselves throughout the garden; she makes a medicinal salve from it and sells it at the Farmer’s Market.

Here’s the view from the opposite side, looking back east: note that dappled willow and flax in the upper-left corner, and the plentitude of plantings: calendula, hardy geranium, lilies, poppies, dahlias, mexican hair grass, lavender, echinacea—even, I believe, a eucalyptus in the background.

 Surprisingly, despite the slope’s 10-15 foot drop from the road, the only terracing is at the bottom, where a 2′ cobblestone wall holds the toe of hill up off a front patio.

Because this slope leans toward the north, larger plants overshadow smaller ones. So, Colleen has come to specialize in shade plants for her market offerings. One of her favorite plantings is this shade-happy arrangement of erigeron, pulmonaria, spurge, and royal fern in the dappled sunlight. Beautiful!

She also knows a lot about deerproof plants, recommending “ligularias, hostas, japanese forest grass, some really wonderful ferns like Royal Fern and Japanese painted fern, also sweet box (sarcococca). Below is such a pairing in a pot, demonstrating her penchant for high-contrast plantings: a towering, deep-burgundy ligularia underplanted with japanese forest grass. They’re happy together because both like moisture and shade.

And here’s more color play, this time with black-eyed susans against blues and silvers, the purple of smoke tree and the silver architecture of a cardoon.

Colleen uses pots frequently; here a massive, robin’s egg blue pot studs the flowery haze with something sold, substantial.

The foreground alliums are actually garlics: “I bought them at the grocery, plugged them in during fall, and they are wonderful. They last longer than allium globemasters: it’s December and they’re still standing.” Butter-yellow Cape Fuchsia glows on the right.

She accesses her deep beds with meanders of stepping-stone paths surrounded by ajuga (bugle) seen here in the foreground below the calendula. She cuts the bugle back in high summer to keep the stones in view. 

Colleen James spends a lot of time in her garden. And she’s become a Master Gardener, a plant vendor on Saturdays, and does some garden design consultant “to help people create something wonderful.” 

Here’s her front entrance pergola, which directs visitors toward the “real” front door (there was some confusion!) and provide some privacy when she wants it. John James laid the flagstone walkway and stairs.

And finally, a last look across the front yard of this talented plantswoman, Colleen James.

Marj Watkins and Suzanna Leigh invite the public to “A Christmas Feast Fit for a King,” an event to benefit Vashon Food Bank. They will present food samples from a menu appropriate to the court of King Charlesmagne, below, plus give out a free booklet of approximately twenty Medieval recipes, updated for a modern kitchen and our smaller households. Attendees are asked to chip in $10 for the Food Bank.

Copies of all their books still in print—Suzanna’s “Atom’s Monster” and Marj’s two historical novels set in Charlemagne’s 8th-century Francia, plus an amusing small curry cookbook, “Shereluck Ohmes and the Case of the Curried Cookbook”—will be available for purchase. These make great gifts for girls, women, and the cooks on your Christmas list. Profits on book sales also go to the Food Bank. 

An 8^th Century Menu, Updated for the 21st Century Kitchen

Starter Course

Main Course

Dessert Course

Fruit & Cheese Course

* Recipe Included, in free booklet in the order listed here

With a promise of clear, dry days this week, I am back to gathering and processing leaves. But it’s getting a little OLD, frankly: my leaf-bins keep settling lower and lower, no matter how often I top them up. Curious, I went back in my calendar and counted up the bags: OMG, is it REALLY 39? Are my leaf-bins EATING these shreddings? And have I just gone completely loony-bins?

I dug a bit in the middle of the most shredded one and found decomposition already in process: the leaves dark as chocolate and smelling of mould. Results already: how gratifying. Or self-rationalizing, anyway.

As I was raking the winter hazel leaves out from under, I got to thinking about how garden writers talk about winter revealing the “bones” of a garden. In this garden, today, it was my rake revealing things: the brick edgers, skeletonized blossom of a “globemaster” allium, the creeping charlie I once thought was so cute before realizing what an invader it was.

It’s good to clear the garden down to the ground, to remind myself of what I’ve planted, of what needs to be moved, yanked, pruned, protected. It’s a way of seeing what I originally intended, before the garden itself laid its own exuberant growth and fallen detritus over all.

The look back in my calendar revealed that, exactly this time last year, I was yanking the quack-grass and creeping charlie from under this very winter hazel. The weather was clear, cold, and fair, and I was rushing to clear and to cover, knowing that a killer freeze was on its way from the north. And we all know what happened then… (3 weeks of snow-cover, in case you don’t).

So I’ll clear now, have a look at my garden’s bones, then re-cover with a mulch of these shredded leaves. I put the reemay cloth over the cole and salad beds, after mulching around the remaining beets, cabbage, and next February’s broccoli raab. Maybe on Thursday, I’ll drain the hose and coil it into its box for the winter. I sure hope this clear, cold weather doesn’t set us up for a repeat of last winter’s snow, but if it does… I’ve got my 39 bags of mulch all ready to go!

Here’s Jasper Forrester of GreenMan Farm, one of our most talented Island farmers, sporting the Squash that Won the Pumpkin Pie Prize of 2008. What a gorgeous color! She’s still got a few minutes here to wear the Pie-Winner’s Apron from last year’s Pumpkin Pie Taste-off, where her “ricotta pumpkin pie with a ginger-snap/pecan crust” won top honors.

This winter squash is a Musque de Provence, a “cheese-wheel” type (according to Sunrise Seeds squash page) that’s unmatched for eating and long keeping. Jasper is selling it “cheese-wheel-style” in sections large enough for her pumpkin pie recipe (link to the story and recipe above: scroll down that story to find the recipe.)

Jasper promised me a couple more “homegrown” recipes, using produce she’s raised at her GreenMan Farm. Their farmstand will remain open through winter; they’re on the Dilworth Loop. And here’s another link to a map of all the Island’s still-open farmstands, in a format you can print out. Enjoy your Thanksgiving!

Winter Squash Bisque

Poke several holes in squash with a fork and bake at 325 degrees until it pierces easily with a fork, about 45 minutes.  Cut in half, remove and discard seeds, scoop out pulp and reserve.  Melt butter in saucepan, add leeks and saute them over low heat 20 minutes.  Please in blender or food processor with squash pulp, stock, thyme, salt and pepper; whirl until smooth.  Return to saucepan; simmer over low heat 20 minutes.  Stir in cream and heat through just before serving. Adjust salt and pepper to taste.  Serves 4.

Brussels Sprouts with Walnuts

Cut the sprouts in half and steam until tender.  Meanwhile, saute the walnuts in the butter until golden.  Pour over the sprouts in a serving dish.  Sprinkle on nutmeg.  Season to taste with salt and pepper.

VIGA held its Pumpkin Pie Taste-off this morning at the market, and a cold but salivating crowd gathered around before noon to snap up $1 half-slices of the many entrants.

I’m guessing there were 15± pies entered in either the “Trad” category or the “Pumpkin Dessert/non-traditional” category. All the recipes asked cooks to highlight the local ingredients used in the baking, and I was impressed to see not only pumpkin had been used.

For instance: I talked to Zilla Copper, who made that scumptious “Trad” entry (photo above) with the chrysanthemum cluster in the center. She got eggs from a neighbor, dairy and pumpkin from GreenMan Farm, and actually made creme fraiche and BUTTER from Hazel the Jersey Cow’s cream.

“It wasn’t too hard, actually,” she told me. “I made the butter in a blender. You whip the cream until it gets thick, then you add ice water and keep blending, oh, about 10 minutes, until the butter rises in lumps to the top. Then you have to press the butter to get the water out and to form it. I found the recipe in my old ‘Joy of Cooking.’”

By quarter to noon, there was quite a crowd of cold-looking folk standing around, waiting for the winners to be announced so they could pounce on the dollar half-slices. Proceeds will go to the PTSA’s “Local Food” program for Chautaugua Elementary’s cafeteria.

Lindsay Hart eyes the "Pumpkin Dessert" line-up; Nancy Foster-Moss wins for her "Pumpkin Bourbon Cheesecake"

The Winners?  Nancy Foster-Moss won the “Pumpkin Dessert/non-Traditional” category for her “Pumpkin Bourbon Cheesecake,” which I can tell you MYSELF was gooey-piggy-creamy-lush-scrumptious.

Shannon Seath Meyer holds her winning "trad" pumpkin pie and sports the Winner's Apron.

And the winner for a “Traditional Pumpkin Pie’ was Shannon Seath Meyer, who used her own homegrown “Sugar Pie” pumpkin in her recipe (given below the photos). Jasper Forrester, last year’s winner for her “Ricotta Pumpkin Pie,” presented the honorary Pie Winners’ Apron, autographed by each winner of years before. (For Jasper’s winning recipe, click here: )

Congrats to all, and good work, Lindsay Hart and Merrilee Runyan.

Recipe for Shannon’s Traditional Pumpkin Pie

To get Puree:  Cut a 6″ “Sugar Pie” pumpkin in half, scoop out seeds, put in a brownie pan with 1″ of water and roast in 400° oven for 40 minutes until pumpkin flesh is soft. Let cool, scoop out, blenderize to puree.

Combine all ingredients and cook on medium, stirring often to cook off some of the water and to concentrate flavors. Takes about 10 minutes. Then let cool while you—

Then add to the pumpkin mixture:

Pour into pre-baked shell and bake at 300° for 45 minutes+, until sides are set and you still have a wiggly puddle in the middle.

I started with the inspiration to find islanders that plan to make their Thanksgiving Day feast purely from Island-grown ingredients—a “Locavore’s Thanksgiving.”  

I thought the hard part would be finding somebody who was growing their own turkey for the table. And the email grapevine (thank you K. Gilligan) DID tip me off to somebody: Gary Headley of VI Horse Supply.

I called him right away. Gary has a little family of wild turkeys that he has raised and yes, he’s going to have one for Turkey Day—the one that’s “cranky”, he said.

And yes, he’s going to have an all-Island Thanksgiving: he’s got people who barter for things with him, so he’s got greens coming, a lady who trades with Yellow Finn potatoes, another lady who’s bringing him a pumpkin pie.

     “What about cranberries?” I asked.

    ”I don’t LIKE cranberries,” he said. And then he invited me to come meet Ichiro, his pet tom turkey who can play “catch.”

________________

Final Farmer’s Market is this Saturday morning, 11/18

I’m looking forward to meeting Ichiro, someday… and I’m looking forward to hearing from some VIGA folk who might share with us their Thanksgiving recipes. This weekend, after all, IS the final Farmer’s Market, on Saturday morning, Nov 21. 

After Saturday, if you want to get Island-grown produce, see today’s article (11/18) by Kathryn True in the Beachcomber that tells which Farm Stands are committing to remaining open this winter, as long as they can. The link under “today’s article” will get you to the article: there’s another link within it (“showing the art of the land”) that takes you to a map of farmstand locations.

______________________

Meanwhile, while I await others’ recipes for the Turkey Day Feast, I’ll share with you a couple dishes I’m considering serving, full of things I grew or gathered myself.

So: let’s start with what’s still out in my vegie patch: plenty of cabbage.

A Scandinavian red cabbage dish

This side dish is sweet, delicious, and screaming magenta (Turkey dinner needs as much color as it can get!). And it uses up a LOT of red cabbage—yet another reason to be THANKFUL.

You’ll need a big skillet or iron pot that can go in the oven, including its lid, and a box grater or mandoline. And start 2.5 hours earlier than you want to eat it! (but it’ll hold very well)

My Maple Waldorf Salad

It’s gold! Lying along the roadways! Littering our yards and gardens! Right on the ground, free for the taking!

I am, of course, talking about leaves.

The more I learn about using leaves in the garden, the more I want. When added to garden beds, leaf mould can double soil’s ability to hold water while cutting in half its need for fertilizer. You can grow seeds in it: you can feed your compost with it. If you mow leaves on your lawn, you will feed the soil, encourage microbial activity, build up a water reserve in the soil and thus help your lawn stay greener next summer.

More reasons for collecting and processing leaves:

• Shredded leaves make a good-looking mulch to protect your plantings over the winter.

• You’ll get the windfall of leaves OFF your plantings so they won’t be smothered.

• When you’re weeding in spring and have bucketfuls of compostable “greens”, you’ll already have a stockpile of “browns” at hand to make up a new compost pile.

So grab your rakes, your mower, and the biggest bags you can find. Let’s go harvest.

How considerate! Somebody at PSE had already windrowed these oak leaves: a few minutes of hand-scooping yielded 1 garbage bag and 3 grocery bags full, and that hardly made a dent in this row.

Processing leaves on a flat lawn or patio

First, find a motherlode. My neighbor was surprised but delighted when I knocked on her door and announced “I want to mow your lawn!” I told her what I really wanted were the leaves under her big maple tree standing solo in the grass.

“Go right ahead,” she said: “We can’t seem to get anybody to do it for pay anyway.” (Moral: they’ll never say No to somebody who wants to be paid in leaves…)

Leaves convey their benefits much faster if you shred them. Mostly made of carbon—as much carbon as cornstalks—they won’t decay quickly on their own. They need contact with soil and a little pre-chewing to work on your lawn, in your beds, and in your compost pile. And of all the tools that chew, a mower works great and I’m guessing you’ve got one.

When there’s nothing but leaves under a tree, the job is sooooo easy: I just rev’d up the mower and ran it over the carpet of leaves. You can pre-rake into windrows to concentrate the leaves before your mower, but don’t make them too high: I found that piles higher than 6″ made my engine sputter. 

The leaves reduce so low you’ll worry there’s nothing left, but a plastic rake with wide tines will coax most of this out of the grass and into those bags or boxes you brought along. I got seven garbage bags full of shredded leaves within 90 minutes: enough to cover a new 100′ perennial bed AND fill a 4′ square wire bin.

Should you decide to bag and bring those leaves home, another good site to run your mower over leaves is a smooth driveway or patio. The shreddings do blow sideways, but it’s easy to broom them up with a dust-pan—quite tidy!

Processing along the road: Be cautious

For mowing through leaves on rough grass—such as the roadside verge I worked this afternoon during a sunbreak in our week’s rain—it’s helpful to have a metal rake with thin tines that can “comb” the shreddings out of the grass. And I did pre-rake leaves off the slope down into windrows my mower could access.

Left: I've started to windrow the roadside maple leaves; Right, after mowing and raking for 90 minutes, eight bags full and one dead truck!

When working along the road, be cautious. First, alert oncoming drivers to your presence. If you can find an orange safety cone, put it on the road’s shoulder between oncoming traffic and you. Make eye-contact with drivers, or pause and stand as they come close. They might not see you anyway: with the sun so low these November afternoons, they might be squinting into the sun and not see you at all.

And use your EARS—that means, leave your noisy leaf-blower at home. Some poor Parks employee working a leaf-blower was hit by a car in Bellevue this week: probably couldn’t hear the approaching car for all the racket his tool was making.

Also, before mowing, sift through the leaves with your feet or your rake’s handle to find any bottles or breakables hiding under the leaves. 

And finally, one would THINK that turning on the emergency flashers would make a good alert system, but with the lights on for 90 minutes, my battery ran dead!  I was only saved from a LOONNNG walk home to hubbie and car #2 by a passing neighbor with jumper cables and the ability to read my “Please stop! Please stop!” mind.

Now you’ve got it, let’s make leaf compost

Rich in carbon, leaves are one of the classic “browns” of composting. Shredding will make them decay faster. Last year when I made my first leaf bin, my intention was to let the leaves sit and moulder for a year or two. But as it sat right next to my always-in-development compost piles, it was toooo easy to dip into the leaves for any “browns” my compost needed. This year, I’m making a second leaf bin just for the hungry compost.

Because they are so dry and carbon-rugged on their own, a pile of leaves needs a year or two to fully decompose. I saw this in my own bin: after the first year, the center had mouldered to a sweet brown duff with no distinquishable leaves, while the outside still showed layers of recognizable leaves. 

Apparently, wintered-over leaves are excellent for tomatoes if you till one-inch-worth into their soil next spring before planting out. A study by Dr. Abigail Maynard at the Connecticut Ag Research Station found that yields increased 25% using either winter-stockpiled leaves that were spring-tilled into the bed, or 2-year-old leaf compost. (Dr. Maynard did numerous studies on growing vegetables with leaf composts: the link is below and it’s fascinating reading if you’re into composting.*)

You can speed up decay by wetting the pile and by sprinkling on nitrogen-rich sources like urea or ammonium nitrate—or okara, that smelly tofu by-product if you dare! Enclose that mixture in a garbage bag and leave it for six months—a few holes poked in for air and drainage—and reports say you’ll have sweet, friable leaf mould by spring.

Why Bother? the Many Benefits of Leaf Mould

Here’s the hearsay: At my mother’s house last fall, I amended her tomato beds by jamming vine maple leaves and old compost into the stiff clay with a shovel. By summer, the soil was open and “wonderful to work.”

Now here’s the science: the university studies I found on the web that tell me how useful leaf compost can be. If you want to read these (they vary from 2-14 pages in pdf form), follow the links. The results of these studies found that: 

• additions of leaf mould can increase your soil’s ability to retain water by 50-250%. (depends on soil type, and also who you read…)*

• Yearly additions of leaf mould can, over specific times for specific crops, provide all the fertilizer your vegetables and flowers need. Increased yields up to 25% can be had by adding a 5-5-5 fertilizer. (Greens will probably need a little nitrogen boost from legume cover crops or blood meal).*

• Additions of leaf mould can double the organic content of your soil over the years.*

• A study at Purdue reassured Grounds-keeper Online readers that mowing even a thick 6″ carpet of leaves over grass would enhance, not deplete, the fertility of their lawns—even increasing soil microbial activity and helping retain water, all while costing 80% less than bagging and hauling away.**

*(Connecticut Ag Research Station, “Compost” study by Abigail Maynard)

** Mulching Tree Leaves: An Alternative to Disposal” from GroundsMaintenance online

So for a little time and exercise (and you want exercise, right?), you’ll provide tons of benefits to your plants, soil, and lawn. Free Gold. There for the taking. Islanders, to your Rakes!

Quoting from the PI blog:”  We all need Good Food! Mark Dworkin and Melissa Young, award-winning filmmakers from South Whidbey, have produced another environmental documentary that is spreadin’ the word. It airs on PBS this Thursday, Nov. 12 at 10 PM on KCTS/9 Seattle and KYVE/47 Yakima.

It’s fascinating to see how new life is being breathed into the fields, orchards and pastures of the Pacific Northwest — along with the business community that sustains them.”

Here’s the link to the film web site: www.goodfoodthemovie.org/

I dropped by the Food Bank 11/11 and happened upon the Food Bank gardeners harvesting in time for the Wednesday morning distribution.

Jen Coe harvests rainbow chard at the Food Bank garden 11/11.

.

Last spring, the Food Bank decided they wanted to supply their clients with more fresh produce in the off-season. Island gardeners regularly drop off homegrown vegies during the summer, but those contributions decline as quickly as summer gardens do. 

So the Food Bank tapped Jenn Coe to jump-start a vegie patch in the field next to their facility. Rotary Club kicked in the money and muscle for fencing and water-lines. David ( ) collected manures, composted it, and did all the tilling. 

Now the Food Bank gardeners have quite a harvest going. I’ve seen potatoes, beans, tomatoes, leeks, onions, bok choi, chard, and mixed lettuces growing lustily in the many wide beds, plus cover crops to prepare the beds.

Jenn told me “It’s been extremely successful. It’s 100% volunteer run, including a lot of participation from Food Bank clients. They come early  to help weed and harvest for the Wednesday distribution.” All produce goes to the Food Bank.

“Yesterday we harvested chard, kale, lettuce, broccoli, cauliflower, radishes, bok choi, and cilantro.  Leaving the leeks for later.”

Thanks to many donations of transplants, they did put in a summer garden. But next year, Jenn would like to focus on a pure fall/winter garden because that’s what the need is. “For instance, right now we have one bed of kale and I’d like to have four, so that we could harvest from one of those beds each week. I’d like that garden to be filled to the brim with cauliflowers, leeks, broccoli, and kale.” 

They’ll have produce to harvest through the winter. Work parties are from 9-11am on Wednesdays, and she invites anybody who wants to come help. “If it’s raining, we just harvest and go home; if not, we stay on and weed until 11.”

You can phone her for information at 384-0973.

Left: Leslie Patheal picks mixed lettuce for the Wednesday morning distribution at the Food Bank, while Jen Coe (right) harvests chard.

Wondering how it went, I googled “White House Kitchen Garden” and, after a bit of searching within the White House web site, I found this video. You can WATCH THE GARDEN GROW in a time-lapse sequence about 5/8ths through this 8-minute video. 

What a hoot to hear the First Lady of the land yelling “hey, there’s a carrot!”

(This video is part of the White House pitch to schools to host tours for schoolkids, if you’re confused by the link.)

Damon, Rebecca and baby Sophia among their Pinot Noir vines

Organic, sustainable practices in a new local vineyard

In this week of thunder and rain, it’s pleasant to think back to a golden haze of a day on November 1, when I drove to the heights of the Dilworth Loop to visit the Alli Lanphear Farm and Vineyard.

Here, on fives acres that were farmed for decades by the Hoshi family, you can see a new beginning. Slopes that had gone over to scotch broom has been cleared, then planted in cover crop or left to grass. A new house now crowns the hill, fronted by flowers, warmed by sun, overlooking row after golden row of Chardonnay, Pinot Noir, and other trellised wine grapes. 

It’s easy to see this as another of Ron Irvine’s “sunny slopes” endowed with the perfect exposure for growing wine.

Damon Lanphear and Rebecca Alli Lanphear come out of the house to greet me. Little Sophia rides on Mom’s hip. Young couple, new kid, new house, big dreams. But as soon as we walk over to the new half-acre where new vines will go next year, I gather from the talk that farming, to them, is NOT new.

Learning by Doing

Damon is pointing out the cover crop. “We always start with cover crop: This is a, a—”

“Leg/oat,” Rebecca throws in.

“Yes, a legume/oat annual mix.” Damon picks up. “You lose a growing season, but you gain reduced weed pressure from perennial weeds, you break up the sod, you add structure to the soil.”

“We like to learn by doing,” Rebecca told me, “I began as an intern at Hogsback Farm ten years ago and worked there for a year and a half. Damon and I had a personal plot on a portion of their farm, and as we have always been interested in experimenting, we planted spelt, quinoa, amaranth, and a “three sisters” garden.” [That's the Navajo practice of growing beans, corn, and squash together for mutual support: the corn supports the climbing beans, the beans provide nitrogen, the squash shades the ground.]

This is not their only claim to experience: they’ve already made wine, beer, and mead, they’ve joined the Puget Sound Wine Growers Association, and they have gone to workshops through the Washington State Ag Extension office in Mt. Vernon, which serves as a research and education station for Puget Sound viticulture. 

They also toured France’s Burgundy wine country by bike in May 2008, seeing, learning, sitting down with wine growers, tasting their wine and being inspired. And they’ve tasted their way through wines recommended for our region—in some ways, deciding to buck the recommendations and plant for the wines they prefer, such as Chardonnay.

Developing the vines

We walk over to the Chardonnay vines—perhaps the only on Vashon and at eleven rows, definitely the largest planting. As we walk up and down the rows, we talk about spacing, watering, and vine development. 

The vines, “in their third leaf” are on three-foot centers, trellised along twin parallel rows six feet apart. New cover crop bristles in 4-6″ growth underfoot. I’m surprised to see drip-lines tied up to the 2-foot height trellis wire, but Damon explains “that’s both to give more trellis support and to get underneath to weed.”

He talks about “devigoirating the vines. Stressed vines make better wines. When the plant is stressed, it doesn’t grow such a full leaf canopy. When the canopy is open, more sun reaches the fruit, and that sunlight and airflow also protects against powdery mildew and fruit rot.”

I mention sulfur-dusting as a protection against mildew, which prompts Damon to expand upon the difference between organic wines “which among other practices, means no sulfites are used to produce the wine, and organic growing, where you can use sulfur to guard against diseases like powdery mildew.”

Rebecca cut in. “That IS part of our goal: we want to do organic, sustainable practices in the vineyard. 

Developing the soil

Deep in the rows of Pinor Noir, I reach down and scoop up a handful of soil the color of milk chocolate, ask about it. Damon says, “It’s an ‘alderwood-gravelly’ soil, basically a gravelly, sandy loam.” 

“We had a trench for our water-lines cut across the property, running in front of the house, so we could see down six feet, all that way,” says Rebecca. “It was amazing how much it changes, but basically, six feet down, it’s beach sand.”

“You feel how spongy and soft the soil is—like applesauce?” she continues. “That’s the tilling: it leaves the soil without any structure. You have to ‘clean cultivate’ the vineyard its first couple years to prevent any root competition from other plants.”

They started with a cover crop that covered the ground for a full year. In the second year, after turning under that first cover crop, they cleared the ground of all growth and planted the vines. For two growing seasons after that, they kept the soil “clean cultivated” so the roots of the young vines had no competition for nutrients.

At the end of the vine’s third year, the Lanphears planted two kinds of cover crops in alternating rows. In the odd rows is a perennial cover crop, New Zealand White Clover, which doesn’t run like other clovers and can be mown for tractor access to the rows.

In the even rows, the Lanphears have planted an annual cover crop of peas and vetch. These annual rows will be plowed under before the vines break into bud, hopefully with a chisel plow whose parallel tines will pull green matter under without pulverizing the soil’s structure. 

Both cover crops help reestablish a living soil structure that promotes drainage, holds nutrients, and brings oxygen to microbial soil life. 

For the rest of each summer, Damon plans to follow a European practice he saw in Burgundy: after plowing, these rows will be replanted in annual flowers like sunflower, lupine, and poppies to encourage beneficial insects. This is known as Integrated Pest Management, an organic practice standard. “In Europe, the red poppy is now a symbol of organic practices,” he says. “The vineyard should be alive.”

Developing the Farm & Winery

Their ultimate dream, I learn as we sit down around the kitchen table, is to produce 100-200 cases of Pinot Noir, Chardonnay, and other wines at affordable prices. They also want to develop other value-added products like pickles, vinegar’ed products,  miso and to collaborate with other Vashon food producers to create an alternative, integrated experience  in the same spirit as Sea Breeze Boucherie.”

Right now, they’re in the process of facility design, with plans for a barn, barrel storage, a full winery, a place for people to come try their wines and other local products.

I ask about the presence of Chardonnay, along with the much-adopted Pinot Noir. “We asked ourselves first, do we like it, can we be excited about it. Chardonnay has this troubled history: it’s associated with Napa practices of pushing toward fat, buttery, cloying tastes. This wine has more acids, minerality, a broadness on the palette that has been lost in the ‘message of chardonnay’. We want to become part of that movement to resurrect Chardonnay, of making an interesting white.”

Rebecca says, “We intend to follow organic and sustainable growing practices, but we may not opt to get organically certified. We probably won’t make certified-organic wine due to our use of sulfites and commercial yeast; however, as we progress, we intend to try winemaking without those additions.”

Many projects are ahead of the Lanphears. They’ve learned a lot already, but there’s much still to do, to experiment with and test, to see how well they can produce wine and how the public takes to it. But they seem like good caretakers of a land that once yielded much. Good luck to them.

Sprouting Broccoli on left was planted in soil enriched with biochar

Turn brush and scraps into a useful soil amendment with Biochar.

Biochar is a charcoal fired in a low-oxygen stove at temperatures twice as hot as fuel charcoal, which makes a cleaner product (I rubbed it in my fingers, see photos below). The burn method sequesters carbon instead of releasing it into the atmosphere as does brush-fires, burning the Amazon, or letting brush decay over time.

Creating biochar can make use of scrap wood, bones, woody brush such as blackberry vines and scotch broom. Making bio-char could solve a common disposal problem for Islanders and create a useful amendment for acid soils in the garden.

Biochar makes a long-lasting soil amendment that can raise pH in soils, store water, and create in-soil habitat for soil microbes. It can substitute for liming in acidic soils and has an immediate and long-lasting effect.

At the Sustainable Practices meeting, Art Donnelly of SeaChar.org will talk about bio-char: what it is, what it’s good for, how to use it in the garden and for carbon sequestration. He’ll bring examples plus a couple models of biochar stoves. 

In the “with/without” photo above, Islander Ken Miller shows the difference between sprouting broccoli planted in a bed that contains biochar, and a bed without. He told me the major difference between these beds is the biochar in the bed with the bigger broccoli—even though the other broccoli was planted earlier and in more sunlight. 

I saw Ken demonstrate his biochar stove at the Compost Fest (photos below). His five-gallon metal bucket can, within approx. an hour, render scrap wood like alder or blackberry vines into biochar at temperatures reaching 800°. Similar stoves will be at the Thursday demonstration.

Ken plans on holding a stove-making workshop in January: for a nominal fee of $35-40 (estimated at this time), you will walk away with a biochar stove (see photos of the demonstration below). He says “People should see a demonstration before doing biochar production at home; I’d hate to see somebody go home and light up their garbage can with a bunch of wood in it.”

Here’s a link to a 10-minute video on biochar, showing the burning process and results: www.youtube.com/watch?v=RXMUmby8PpU

For more information, contact Sustainable Practices chair Kyle Cruver at kyle@cruverdesign.com or phone him at 567-4068. Or contact Ken Miller (my source), who demonstrated his biochar stove at the Compost Fest:  islandcanyons@yahoo.com.

Ken Miller shows off his biochar stove at Compost Fest. From upper left: loaded stove with oxygen exposure; the burn begins; stack in position (no burning happening); a clean piece of biochar AFTER I've rubbed it around in my hand.

Plant Spring Now, with bulbs!

I’ve been wanting to suggest this idea to Islanders for a long time: let’s plant more daffodils along our roadways.

Several years ago while driving to the Oregon Coast, I noticed many a roadside verge was blooming with naturalized daffodils. I tell you, on a drizzly day it gladdens the heart to see them.

Since many a Vashon garden is down the driveway, much of our spring bloom is a private, out of sight affair. What a gift it would be to all of us, to see those bright splashes of springtime along our rain-gray roadways!

Siting Daffodils

Plenty of our Island roadsides are of a similar grass-n-ditch variety. On such banked-up verges, daffodils can enjoy good drainage and protection from early spring mowings.

If you plant at least eight feet from the road, your daffs will probably be out of reach of King County mowers. Or you can shelter them at the foot of your mailbox or newspaper tube, where neither the County or you are likely to mow. Daffodil foliage needs to “ripen”—that is, take in sunlight to feed the bulb, after the flower has faded. So you don’t want to cut the foliage until mid-summer, if at all.

Choose a spot with at least half-day sun. Under deciduous trees and shrubs works well: they would be lovely near Indian Plum, that apple-green native shrub with the tiny white blossoms perked up like rabbit ears. Under evergreens, they tend not to last as many years.

Consider that they are heliotropic and will turn toward that part of the sky with the strongest light exposure. You don’t want to place them so they’ve got their backs turned when you’re viewing them!

Here’s a wonderful mass planting of daffodils on 87th, that road that links Tramp Harbor and Cemetary Road (see photo, above) Most are planted in clumps of 10-12, with runs of different colors. That clump has been in place for at least ten years. 

And on Wax Orchard at the Daffodil Barn (photo, top), some flowers still poke their heads above the north meadow from a planting at least 20 years old. The website of the American Daffodil Society claims that older varieties, properly planted, can last 30-50 years.

Getting Daffodils

Country Store has bulbs on the front porch—varieties “Dutch Master” and “Giant Daffodil Mix”— for 70¢ a bulb. The grocery stores have bags in stock, as does True Value. (Kathy’s Corner isn’t carrying bulbs, and DIG is only open on the weekends these days.)

Back in the 80s, I bought my first few hundred (!!) daffodil bulbs from Roozengaarde Bulbs in Mt. Vernon. They’re now the Washington Bulb Company, website: www.tulips.com. At the time, their bulbs were HUGE, multi-nosed creatures that gave a LOT of bloom for the money.

So if your property borders one of our main roads and you’ve got a grassy bank along the road shoulder, consider crowning it with some spring sunshine—daffodils!

After the “wine grapes” story appeared in the Beachcomber on, I’ve since heard from two other vineyard owners: Joe Curiel of Monument Farm and Rebecca Alli of Alli Lanphear Farm and Vineyard. [I posted a blog entry November 7th on the Alli-Lanphear vineyard, with an update today (11/9) of photos from the Monument Farm grape pressing at Vashon Winery. 

2009 Harvest report from Monument Farm

The story of Monument Farm's Pinot Noir, first harvested in 2006 and made into wine by Ron Irvine of Vashon Wintery, was covered by the Beachcomber on May 28, 2008 ("viticultural holy grail").

Since then, the 470 pinot noir vines planted by Joe and his partner Tony Raugust (that's Joe on the left, with Tony) have been on the mend. In 2007 the vines were attacked by powdery mildew and the entire crop was lost. In 2008, the vines yielded a small harvest of 600 lbs—far short of their goal of one ton. (Those are the grapes in the photo above right.)

This year, with an excellent growing season, healthy vines, and an eye out for a weather opening, Joe and Tony reached their goal. On Tuesday, October 20th, they harvested around 2000 lbs of Pinot Noir—that ton of grapes. It took four hours for they and friends to harvest it all—four times as long as the year before—with Ron departing early for the winery with a partial load to crush.

Joe Curiel and Donna Gagner unload grapes into the truck that will take the grapes to be crushed at Vashon Winery.

Joe reports the brix/sugar level was 20.2—less than he wanted, but adequate—and acids were in a good range. He said, “It might have been nice to wait another 4 days to a week or so, but we did not want to risk another round of rain, after the 2 inches that fell the previous weekend. Last year, we harvested on October 26th.”

“We expect and hope to get that much each year, even with some selective fruit dropping to enhance the quality of the harvest.  We dropped about 300 pounds of fruit this year and next year might drop or thin what could amount to about 700 pounds or so.  This allows the grapes that we harvest to be at a higher BRIX and better acid level.  It does not speed up the ripening of the remaining clusters (A good video that Bill Riley has shows this point clearly). 

The photos below are also from Joe, taken of the pressing at Vashon Winery later the evening of the 20th. Their ton of grapes yielded enough to fill three barrels. 

Joe and Tony with their "cake" of pressed grapes.

I just got the link to all the signage from Cathy Fulton, who designed and ran the Compost Fest on 10/18. These quick-info pages are a quick How-To on hot composting, slow/cool composting, animal bedding/offal composting, chicken cultivators, bio char in trenches, hugelkulture heaps, sheet mulching (aka lasagna beds), and whipping up a batch of stinging nettle tea (not for YOU to drink—for your soil!).  All these pdfs/signs were created by Cathy Fulton. Here’s the link.

mariposagardens.org/Handouts/Composting/Compost_Festival_Displays.pdf

 I was walking down 192nd from the Athletic Club yesterday, when I discovered FREE PLANTS.

Farm Candy Nursery is trying to find new homes for a surplus of scented geraniums and pelargoniums (you know: those Martha Washington style geraniums?). So a big sign, “FREE!”, applies to all the plants on her little farm stand’s shelves. Sizes range from in 3″, 4″ and 5.5″ pots, with above-ground sizes from 5″ high to over a foot.

Now I realize that it’s not planting-out time: these geraniums are going to need over-wintering. Since not I, my husband, or my mother have ever successfully over-wintered geraniums, I decided to phone Farm Candy’s Rachel Lydecker to find out how she keeps these popular plants alive.

“The Number One thing is, don’t let their roots freeze,” she told me. “The perfect situation would be sitting at your brightest window in the house, with a little bit of watering every 2-3 weeks and a light feeding mid-winter.”

I didn’t need to press for details: she’s besotted by this plant and even likes them grown large and sculptural, more twisting stems than leaves.

So go get your summer 2010 geraniums and pelargoniums now, for free. And when you long for summer, just go rub a leaf of “True Rose” geranium and enjoy the scent of June.

For more info on Farm Candy Nursery, visit www.farmcandy.strangegarden.com

How to Overwinter Geraniums and Pelargoniums

LIGHT:  put them next to a sunny window indoors. “You can’t give them too much light in the winter.”

HEAT: “not super-warm,” Rachel says. An unheated room in your house would be okay, but not in a shed or garage that’s vulnerable to freezing.

WATER: Not bone-dry, not parched, but not real wet, either. Check the soil. Water maybe every 2-3 weeks. “I suspect that if you put the potted plants on top of a shallow pan of pebbles and water—not IN, but on TOP of—they would like the extra humidity and need less water.”

FEEDING:  After the New Year, give them a light feeding of house-plant food. They would also like a little Epson salts, about a tablespoon per gallon of water. 

PRUNING: They tend to get leggy—you can pinch off the new growth.

IN SPRING: When the temps reach the low 40s, you can start acclimatizing the plants to the outdoors during daylight hours. If they get left out on a cold night, “frost will make them pretty ugly, all the leaves will fall off, but the roots may still be alive.”

MAKING MORE:  You can take cuttings of any new growth and pot them up in sterile potting soil to increase your stock of plants. Cut below a leaf node (where the leaf emerges from the stalk) for a cutting about 2″ long. Stick in damp potting soil. (Don’t try to root in water: these roots are of a different type that aren’t adapted to taking up nutrients from soil, which is where you want your geranium eventually.) The plants will put out new growth when there’s enough light next spring.

[FarmCandy’s Care Instructions: “To keep your pelargonium happy, give it plenty of light, a light feeding every two weeks in summer and every month in winter. If they are in a greenhouse, you may need to protect them from strong light with a light shadecloth. They don’t want to dry out completely, but be careful not to overwater or let water sit in the saucer. Bring them in for the winter.

   To make sachets, cut new growth and dry in an oven set to “warm” or in the microwave at two minutes at a time, letting steam escape in between. When the leaves and stems are crisp, crush them up and put in decorative bags. They make great gifts! 

For more information on pelargoniums and for links and suggested readings, visit us at http://farmcandy.strangegarden.com/ and be sure to email any questions with the words “plant question” in the subject line. Thanks for choosing Farm Candy as your gernium enabler!

(Update 10/24: I just got the link to all the signage from the Compost Fest. These quick-info pages describe a process in words and photos, then list pros and cons, perhaps other resources. Included: hot composting, slow/cool composting, animal bedding/offal composting, chicken cultivators, bio char in trenches, hugelkulture heaps, sheet mulching (aka lasagna beds), and stinging nettle tea.

mariposagardens.org/Handouts/Composting/Compost_Festival_Displays.pdf

Bio-char

I got there just before the opening at 11am, but things were already well under way. Ken Miller, already surrounded, was busy explaining his 5-gallon bucket stoves for making bio-char. This ancient process takes bio-mass (chunks of wood, bones, or brush) and reduces them to charcoal chunks you can fold into your soil to hold water, add minerals, provide soil habitat, and sequester carbon.

I’ve invited Ken to either write or be interviewed about bio-char for this blog, so more later on that topic. My biggest hope for bio-char: it provides a garden way to dispose of chicken bones.

(note on 10/20: Ken provided a mini-stove—two 16oz fruit cans that slip together to make one combustion chamber—that you can fill with sticks and throw into your woodstove. I did that, and after one firing in my Russian Stove, I had a little pile of, basically, artist sticks of charcoal. COOL!

Why is Her Compost Hot and Mine Not?

Per the name of the event, Cathy had several types of compost piles going: hot piles, cold/passive piles, a pile to handle animal wastes, compost cones, and sheet composting (also known as lasagna beds or composting in place). I talked to her most about the hot method, which can, with a bit of work, give you compost in a month.

Her hot pile was four feet high, contained by pallets on edge, and layered with once-fresh grass clippings, horse manure, apple pomace left over from cider-pressing, and spent hay. And it was steaming warm, the thermometer showing a weed- and pathogen-killing 110°. 

Now my pile, made September 21 and turned on October 7, has almost the same ingredients, yet barely reached 90°. So we talked: Cathy thought my pile needed the firing power of fresh grass, plus another turning, to fire my compost to the desired temperature. (Later I realized she also shreds her ingredients to make them easier for the compost-critters to digest).

When I got home, of COURSE I went in search of fresh grass, and I found it on my downward slope. It was long, true, but the recent rains had fed lush new growth, so I hand-scythed the new greenery and hauled half a barrel’s worth to the compost. Turning that compost once again, periodically I grabbed a handful of that long grass, snipped it into strands and let it fall in a shallow layer on the rising pile. Hopefully this green food will fire up the compost, instead of matting within it. I’ll track temps through the week: if this works, it should climb 50° by week’s end.

(Update 10/24:  by week’s end, the heat had topped out at 80°. Rereading her pdf hand-out (see link above to “hot composting”), I see that A) she shredded her compost, and B) she used more grass clippings than manure. Since the mowing season is over, I think I’ll have to wait until spring to try this again).

The Broadfork: A Big Bite into Your Earth

This broadfork for double-digging has been teasing the edges of my gardening radar for some time, so I was happy to get a chance to try one out. Meadow Creature, which is Bob Powell and his partner Margot Boyer, have made “several dozen this year and sold half to Islanders, half in web sales to gardeners around the USA.” The steel is cut at Vashon College, using its OMAX water jet cutting machine, and painted in gaily neon colors by Bob. They go for $200 plus tax.

That’s quite a bit of dough for my small garden, so I was glad to try one out. In the photos below, you can see the basic motion: you lift this 25-lb fork and let the tines fall into your soil. Stand up on the cross-bar and wiggle the fork around to sink the tines deeper. Then, as you lean back, the leverage you’re applying on the handles make the tines in the ground pry soil upward, loosen it as deep as 16″ underground.

The idea, I think, is the tool uses the power of leverage to do the “heavy lifting” work of double-digging, which is usually done with a garden fork or shovel. Anyone who’s read “Bio-Intensive Gardening” will recognize this tool.

For my small garden, this tool is more than I need. For a large garden planted in rows or wide beds, that isn’t tilled mechanically, and HAS a person with some heft to persuade those tines down into the earth, this might be a useful, if occasional, tool.

For more: info, email Margot or Bob at sales@meadowcreature.com or visit www.meadowcreature.com.

Golden October light rakes over the grape vines. 

A breeze flutters the yellow and blue tablecloth, as our hostess sets down a tray of artisan cheeses. 

Friends yammer in French, raise glasses of ruby-red wine, toast the host.

Provence? Côtes du Rhône? No, it’s Maury Island, and we’re here to harvest Bill Riley’s Pinot Gris grapes.

Bill Riley retired from the EPA a couple years ago, determined to “finally get serious about this grape-growing/winemaking thing.” Back in the 70s, he’d come to the West Coast from New Jersey with his friend Rudy Marchesi to work in the wine business. Rudy’s efforts didn’t take immediately—he returned to Jersey for awhile—but today he owns and runs Montinore Vineyards in Forest Grove, the fifth largest vineyard in Oregon. 

Meanwhile, Bill met his wife, moved to Seattle, bought property on Maury Island—and by 1980, had planted a quarter-acre in 13 different varieties of wine grape.

In 2000, tired of “really lousy wine”, he ripped out all the vines, took a viticultural course, and replanted his acreage in Pinot Noir and Pinot Gris. Both are grapes that prefer cool weather, which is what the Island usually gets. The results have been good, and now he has plans to grow the vineyard by a half-acre a year. Maury Island Winery got its official winery license from Washington State in July, 2008.

But on this Indian Summer afternoon, October 4th, it really felt more like an afternoon in the French countryside: a day to enjoy with friends, good wine, and slow dining en plein air. 

We arrived to “bon joir!” from a tall, slim man who turned out to be Beaudoin from Belgium, an old friend of the Rileys. Soon Bill Freese the baker and his partner Bea Mann arrived, laden with a big round of cassoulet and a pan of bread molded into a grape cluster. Add Cory and Jason, Larry and Larry to fill out the crew.

Riley had his equipment set up on the sunny deck: a red steel crusher with a funnel top, a wooden-slatted press that could handle about four gallons of grapes at a time, three five-gallon glass carboys standing by to receive the juice, and a tractor loaded with shallow yellow plastic crates for we pickers. 

Around 3pm, the “crew”—some reluctant to be parted from their wine glasses—walked uphill to the top of the original vineyard, where six rows of Pinot Gris vines were planted. We stood around Bill as he handled out red felco hand pruners. “You’ll looking for grapes that have taken on red and blue tints—leave the clusters that are mostly yellow.” 

Two or three to a row, we pickers spread out, crouching next to the fan-espaliered vines to snip the crowded clusters of grapes. Unlike the trellising in a “T” that I’d seen at Monument Farm, Riley had chosen to keep his grapes closer to the ground—a technique taking advantage of ground-reflected heat. The grapes were small, tender of skin, with seeds that, if the grape was ripe, had turned brown. We were done before half an hour was up. 

Beaudoin drove the loaded-up John Deere back to the house, where the rest of us resettled around the “groaning board” of food and drink. Freese had brought a duck confit he’d made as part of the quest for a authentic cassolet: it was salty, a little chewy, edged with fat and made me thirsty. Luckily, there were several bottles and plenty of volunteers to open them. “Ooo, we’re into the Vacqueyras already,” said Cory, leaning in for a glass. 

Before the crush, somebody weighed each yellow tray of grapes on a scale and noted the weight on a clipboard. The total yield was close to 300 pounds of grapes. Then he or Beaudoin hoisted the crate over the crusher’s feed and let the grapes fall, all a bangety-clang, into the crusher’s maw.

To my surprise, the grapes came out the bottom barely cracked open, not “crushed” to a pulp like I’d imagined. The stems went through the crush as well: Bill said this was to hold the mashed grapes open within the press so that there would be channels for the juice to run out and through the press’s oaken staves. 

Beaudoin scooped the slightly-mashed grapes and coaxed them into the tiny press. When Bill knuckled down on the first grapes, the juice ran free and thick into one of the kitchen’s stew pots. As the juice ran into one kitchen kettle after another, Bill filled a small glass and held it into the sun. This is the precious “must” that will ferment: it was a milky amber, glowing apricot. 

It tasted like an unusual apple juice, and I asked him about its sugars. “The brix had reached around 20,” he said, “which is a little less than the traditional Pinot Gris. But since I want to turn much of this in to crémant—that’s a champagne-style wine—I want less sugar and more acid, more tannin, so it won’t be as explosive as a regular champagne.”

Once the first run had dribbled to a drip, round blocks were set upon the press’s wooden plate. A pipe, fed into a ratchet and turned, applied enough extra pressure to squeeze every drop of juice from the grapes.

We left in the late afternoon, after the pressing had slowed and three carboys had been filled. The juice will spend a week or two fermenting in the carboys; once the fermentation has thrown off most of the carbon dioxide gas, Bill will transfer the juice to oak barrels to age for a year. 

By next spring, he’ll sample the developing wine and decided whether to bottle it as is or re-ferment it into a sparkling crémant, which will require another year to mature.

Once he builds up an inventory of bottles, Riley hopes to open the winery occasionally (and by appointment) starting in spring 2010. A web site should be up by then. And he’ll have another half-acre of Pinot Noir ready to harvest next year, with new half-acre plantings planned.

Watch for my article on new Vashon vineyards either here or in the Beachcomber soon.

To read about an earlier bottling of Pinot Noir grapes from Monument Farm, see the May 28, 2008 article  ”In Search of the Holy Grail…” and here’s the link:  http://www.pnwlocalnews.com/vashon/vib/lifestyle/19295354.html

If however, like me, you’ve stared at your carefully-layered and wetted heap, wondering why it doesn’t heat up to weed-killing temps like the books say, this Sunday’s event might be for you. Mariposa Gardens (www.mariposagardens.org) is holding a—

Compost Fest “Let It Rot” from 11am–3pm, Sunday, October 18.

Here’s the outline of the program:

• Quick/hot composting
• Sheet composting
• Slow/Cool composting
• Animal bedding/Offal composting
• Worm bins
• Hugelkultur experiments
• Two ways to make bio char  (that starts at 11:30)
• Fall garden prep demo
• Breaking new beds demo
• Vashon Broadfork demonstrations
• Chicken-Garden partnership
• Carbon sequestration

        …and more!

I don’t see that there’s a cost, but you can feed the donation jar if you like. The event is considered a “come and go” event: you don’t have to stay the whole four hours, but instead wander around, take in whatever you want and ask questions of the demonstrators who will be doing their “thing” throughout the day.

Cathy Fulton says “it’s great to get a chance to try the broadfork. It’s an expensive tool and pretty heavy, but it’s great to open up soil for the first time. So I appreciate the chance to try it out first.”

Mariposa Gardens is off Monument road. Here’s directions: note she wants folks to park on Monument and walk in. 

Address: 9228 SW 209th Street

From the intersection of Vashon Highway and

204th Street (the Sound Food intersection), go east

(toward the high school and pool) about 1/3 mile.

Turn right (south) on Monument Road. Go about

1/3 mile to 209th Street, which is a gravel road to

your right.

209th Street is a one lane road. To avoid a traffic

jam, please park on Monument Road and walk

about 500 feet to the site. There is accessible

parking at the site for those who need it.

I was drifting through Thriftway’s produce section Monday morning when the words “Betty MacDonald’s Farm” caught my eye. At the end of one fruit display were baskets full of beautiful Asian Pears, grown, raised, and plucked from trees at that famous former farm, now a bed & breakfast run by Judith Laurence.

Produce Manager Henry Porter told me he bought her first delivery of asian pears last week and was expecting one last load Tuesday. 

“People like the local angle,” he said. “And I like to sell local produce if they bring me stuff I can use—that is, a good job of presentation.” He mentioned Langley Fine Gardens’ tableload of mixed winter squash, which also looked fabulous (look in the organic section).

Back the next day for a food bank pick-up, I happened to see Henry and Judith unloading another several crates’ worth. Again, these beautiful tawny fruit are large and of several varieties that Judith rattled off, but I couldn’t retain.

“I have about 40 asian pear trees that I got from Pete Svinth, years ago,” she said. (Pete Svinth once owned what’s now Pacific Crest Farm on Maury Island; he was famous for breeding and raising asian pears, along with standard pears, apples, and other fruits.)

“They make wonderful pies and tarts and they juice beautifully,” she said. “And I love to slice them very thin and slide them under the skin of a chicken, along with garlic, then roast the bird in the oven.”

Sounds scrumptious to me. They’re selling for  $1.99 a lb.

Speaking of local deals: Check out Langley Fine Garden’s squash in the organic section: as of Wednesday 13th, they were $1 for 2 lbs.

Hold the Basil: a little protection DID work

In my last blog, I recounted bringing several pots of basil into my greenhouse for protection against the (so-called) arctic cold front we were supposed to suffer from this last weekend. Well, my temps never dipped into the 30s, but I can report that the cold DID register with the basil.

At least, the cold did makes its mark on the few basil plants I still had in the ground, down in the eastern vegie patch. We made a pesto Sunday night, and I noticed that over all the outdoor basil leaves, there were brown blemishes over 20-25% of the leaf surface. The pesto had a strange taste to it, as well.

But on the plants I brought into the greenhouse, none were marked with brown spots. I used a chiffonade of those leaves in a chicken soup today, and that flavor was wonderfully anise, as expected.

I’m working on:

— an article or blog entry (or both: it’s a HUGE topic) about Vashon Vineyards

— results of a soil test on my vegie patch

— Quiche with New Zealand Spinach

Bring your basil in from the cold

My four plants spent the summer in 12″ terracotta pots down in our first vegie patch, down the east slope. This spot captures morning sun from dawn through 3pm, making it the only developed spot so far in our garden to grow heat-loving crops like tomatoes or basil. 

Basil will turn black with a touch of frost. Since frost is in the forecast, Bob and I got out the hand-truck and wheeled all four pots, one at a time, off the slope and into our baby greenhouse, nestled into a protected corner between our brick garage and a cement block wall.

The greenhouse is tiny (5′ x 5′ x 6′ high) and covered with sheet plastic, but it does give 3° more warmth than outside—perhaps just the margin my basil will need to survive another day.

An Online Weather Resource

Let me pass on a recommendation on an online weather resource that Michelle Crawford of Pacific Potager enjoys: Rufus’ WeatherCafe  (http://www.ovs.com/weather_cafe.htm)

A meteorologist with an audience of fruit growers and winemakers, he tells the coming weather in ways that growers want to know: where’s the weather coming from and when will it arrive, how bad will it be and when might it change. He’s got a casual, elbow-on-the-counter, coffee-mug-in-hand style. Check it out.

Tarragon Vinegar

Tarragon isn’t as sensitive as basil is to cold, but it doesn’t appreciate it much, either. So while I was down in the vegie patch, I snipped four long stems of tarragon to make a tarragon vinegar and thus preserve one of my favorite flavors.

This takes all of five minutes—mostly to track down a glass bottle and a cork that fits—then cut 2-4 tarragon stems almost the total length of the bottle and ease them in. Pour plain ol’ white vinegar to the top, cork, and place on a sunny windowsill. The sun, warming the vinegar during daylight hours, will extract the tarragon flavor over the next two weeks. 

A small bottle of tarragon vinegar kept me in elegant vinaigrettes all last winter. 

This might be your last chance to catch oregano and marjoram to dry. Bob snips a grocery-bag full of leafy stems, then hangs them for months in the closet shared by our water-heater. Warm and dark, this little closet is our “still” room: it doubles (excuse the pun) as the yeast-proofing closet when Bob’s baking french bread.

Though oregano and marjoram taste best before flowering, I don’t find the flavor that different now. But I do know I hate to run out in the rain to scavenge the few leaves left mid-winter, and it’s SO much easier to crumble dried leaves than to chop leaves that are sodden and clingy on my knife blade.

So take a moment and go get your summer’s herbs. You’ll be glad you did, mid-winter.

If you happen to be in Seattle this Saturday and need an inspiring coffee break, get yourself to Elliot Bay Books in Pioneer Square by 4:30 to hear a garden talk on a fabulous Seattle garden: the Streissguth Garden on Capitol Hill. (Thank you, Michael Upchurch of the Seattle Times for today’s article in the “B” section.)

The family has put a book out on the creation, problems, features, and philosophy of creating this hillside acre, started in 1972. It’s now a greenbelt on the slope northwest of St. Mark’s Cathedral, accessible via the East Blaine Stairway between 10th Ave. East (the above entrance) and Lakeview Blvd East (the lower entrance, where the Streissguths live. They have recently deeded this land to the Seattle Parks & Rec, but the family still maintains the garden.

I visited this large hillside garden in February 2006, after it was written up in the Times’ Sunday supplement, Pacific Northwest. We had to go to Group Health Central anyway, and the weather looked fine, so we searched it out and WAS IT WORTH IT!

Any Islander who gardens on the steep ravines and high banks of Vashon will recognize the Streissguth’s problems and find some good solutions. They conquered steep inclines with ground covers, flowering shrubs, and bulbs; accessed the slopes with traversing trails; created plantings equal to the large-scale trees and slope by planting in vast drifts. 

When we arrived, the February sun was out, warming the west-facing slope. Crocuses were wide as goblets, drinking in the sun. I’d never seen winter aconites but their bright yellow faces were hard to miss, even as far up the trails as I found them. The earliest of rhodies and azaleas were in pink and violet bloom, and white snowdrops hung their heads above rivers of dark green foliage.

Though in a couple of places, the Steissguths resorted to terracing with rubble or block, for the most part they stabilized the slopes with plantings and leveled-off pathways. Their motto must have been “Clear, Divide, and That’s How We’ll Conquer.” The result manages to be natural AND spectacular.

This Elliot Bay event is a promotional for sale of their book, “In Love with a Hillside Garden.” They’ll also give talks at University Bookstore at 7pm, October 20, and at 5:30 on October 22 at the Visitors Center in the Washington Park Arboretum. All the events are free—unless you spring for the book, of course.

For more information, you can:

— check out www.streissguthgardens.com

— see Michael Upchurch’s article in today’s (10/8) Seattle Times: there’s a photo of the gardens and a link to the article.

— visit the garden itself: north of St. Marks Cathedral, look for the public staircase descending from the West off of 10th, around Blaine. If stairs are an issue, do a little further north on 10th until you can drive downhill: find Lakeview Blvd East and backtrack: their little paved vegie patch fronts the street on the left. And let me know what you think!

Three-plus recipes for dealing with zucchini overload.

SEPT. 29—You have big zucchini?  Bill Green’s are cannonballs.

That’s literally true. A few days ago, I visited the alpaca farm of Bill and Lee Green last Saturday, and they loaded me up with more produce than I could carry. You run that hazard when you visit a gardener at harvest time.

I brought home various peppers—surprising my husband, who wanted to make chile verde but didn’t have peppers at hand—yellow paste tomatoes and a red kuri squash. But the biggest motherlode were these dark green, round zucchinis, nearly big enough to wear their own baseball caps. 

Lee called them “cannonball” zucchini. However, when I’ve google that name on the Internet, all the photos show smaller, paler, summer squashes than what weighs down my kitchen counter. 

These websites say that the round zucchini varieties, like “eight ball”, “one ball” and “ronde de nice”, want to be harvested when from 1-3″ in diameter. Up to 4″, you stuff them. Over 5″, you give them to naive friends who’ll be happy to stagger away loaded with mystery produce, not realizing what’s about to hit them in the kitchen.

Three-plus Recipes for Zucchini Surprise

My first recourse was of course ZUCCHINI BREAD, a triple batch that I fobbed off on visitors who wandered in MY front gate. The recipe I used came my old pal Victoria Kaplan of Seattle, who contributed her recipe to a fund-raising cookbook for the Seattle Institute of Psychoanalysis titled “Fresh, Fast and Fabulous.” Zucchini bread recipes are dead-common, so I won’t include that recipe here.

The second recipe was a ZUCCHINI PANCAKE, SUNNYSIDE UP, which Bill likes to make for breakfast. Taking a younger, (no bigger than 4″) cannonball zuke and cut across it in slices no thicker than 1/3″. In a large skillet, heat about 1-2 tablespoons of olive oil in the skillet, dropping in some diced onion, scallion, sun-dried tomatoes, or diced meat. When the oil’s hot, ease in the zucchini slices so the bottom’s covered. Turn heat down to medium, and cook slowly until the zucchini flesh is starting to become fork-tender. Flip, and pile your savories on top. Add sprinklings of chopped herb like cilantro, basil, or tarragon. Then ease an egg into the pan, either to the side or right on top of the zucchini. Cover and let the egg set. (if your broiler’s on and you’re cooking in an oven-safe skillet, you can finish off the egg under the broiler). Season with salt, pepper and more diced herb. Serve hot.

The third recipe was quite good: ZUCCHINI FRITTERS.  This one’s fast: from grating to eating in half an hour. First, put about 1″ of oil into a frying pan and heat to high. Meanwhile, dice one small onion, grate one carrot, and grate about 2 cups of zucchini (a diced green onion would also be tasty in the mix).  Combine all in a large bowl with one egg and about 1/2 cup of flour, and plenty of salt and pepper, plus a pinch of spice like nutmeg, cumin, maybe cinnamon or garam marsala. Your mixture will be gooey, like a wet muffin batter. The oil should be hot by now, so with a big spoon lift out golf-balls of batter and ease into the hot oil. (I thought I should coat these batter-wads with flour before frying, but actually that deadens the taste). When one side’s golden, turn and fry the other. After a few minutes when the fritters are golden, remove and drain on paper towels. Serve hot. 

And finally, the combo recipe: a ZUCCHINI STACK featuring (from the bottom, up) the zucchini pancake, oven-dried tomatoes, diced onion, and cilantro, a leftover fritter sliced into a thin round and fried with the zuke pancake, all this topped with a farm-fresh egg from Island Meadow Farm, fried on the side then gently lifted onto the stack of zucchini treats. Now THIS is a gourmet way to get rid of zucchini!

And I’ve still got one and a half monsters to go…

Though I’ve been gardening off and on for 25 years, it was the long snows of last winter that drove me absolutely MAD to garden (and maybe you, too?)

During weeks of white and cold, I kept my world green by rereading many of my gardening books. Then, for Christmas, I was given Michael Pollan’s “The Omnivore’s Dilemma,” which has shown countless people how much energy goes needlessly into industrial food production, how much better it is for us and for the world if we could produce our food close to home.  As I nodded “yes YES YES!” all the way through the book, I was also saying to myself:

Maybe something like this happened to you, too. Certainly my growing interest seems in sync with a national trend. Maybe it’s the economy, maybe it’s fuel/food price inflation, maybe it’s just that we want to be healhier, homey, happier. But news on farmers, slow food, the locavore movement seems everywhere, They’re even growing their own vegies at the White House!

It’s growing locally, too: when a class on starting a vegetable garden was announced last spring in the Beachcomber, 60 people showed up. The Food Bank got local funding to start its own vegetable garden. We’ve seen stories on small farms and giant-corn growers, classes on kitchen potagers and food preservation. Just last week, the Beachcomber ran a story about high school kids growing fresh produce for school lunches. Kids, eating their own vegetables!

So that’s why this blog: to learn what the Island has to teach us about planting, growing, harvesting, cooking, and caring for our pieces of the garden that is Vashon. 

We Islanders have wonderful resources for gardening. We have greater access to land than most. We can gather all kinds of natural amendments: leaves, seaweeds, barnyard poo. We can get gravel, stones and concrete cheaply, close by. We have great nurseries, wonderful garden tours, farmers and a farmers’ market, and more than our fair share of Cranks and Originals, those obsessive gardeners who show us what wonders can be produced from our land.

The articles and the blog are a natural offshoot of me tracking down Vashon experts to find out what makes Vashon gardens work. Some of that, you may already have seen in the Beachcomber: my articles on starting seeds, growing tomatoes, sowing a fall/winter garden.

I want to write about Vashon’s particular soils, its weather conditions and patterns, what plants do best in Maury gravel or in north-end blue clay. I want to walk the fields, snoop the gardens, ask the Cranks all the questions I can think of, just so I can learn to grow better vegetables and have a more wonderful garden. And if I’m writing for you as well as me, my information will become more organized, hopefully more amusing, and definitely more complete than some scattered notes scribbled for my personal use.

So watch for interviews from other gardeners, growers and experts. I’ll tell of my own goof-ups, dreams, and small victories, and I hope you will share yours via the Comments section. I’ll trial vegetable varieties in the garden and in the kitchen, and I’ll share photos of tours here and “abroad” off-island.

I hope these articles inspire you AND me to become better gardeners and to know our Island a little better.

Let’s Garden On, Vashon!

My tomatoes have never finished so early. Usually I’ve had to pull all the vines—mostly the early slicer “Siletz”—in mid-October, even though they’re still full of orange and green fruit; I hang the vines upside-down in the guest bedroom with a tarp on the floor to catch the “rotters.” This year, I had all of two green tomatoes left in the tomato patch. What a great growing season… 

The last of the big red fellas are in a bowl on the kitchen counter, overripe and attracting fruit flies. Periodically I throw a big towel over the bowl to trap the flies, take the bowl outside, and snap the towel at the little buggers to shoo them away. The bowl goes back inside, and minutes later, they’re baaccckkk. They and the spiders are a sure sign the season’s winding down toward fall.

 I’ve sauced so many pots of toms this summer, I almost don’t care about the fate of these last toms. But since this IS my first blog and I’ve been writing about tomatoes in the Beachcomber from May on, I’ll use this first entry to try another personal first: sun-dried tomatoes.

 That’s OVEN, not SUN-dried

Okay, OVEN-dried—a more reliable method for cool Puget Sound Septembers. Michelle Crawford of Pacific Potager, well-known local tomato specialist, told me she has a friend in Texas who sun-dries tomatoes on the dashboard of her CAR. Hey, whatever works…

 Jasper Forrester of GreenMan Farm (www.greenmanfarm.com) got me thinking about trying these when she oo’d and coo’ed over how gooooood they are. Her recipe is below.

 The idea, I gather, is to make tomato raisins that you can freeze, reconstitute later in oil, then sprinkle onto pasta, risotto or pizza for a piquant reminder of summer past. Being cheap, I’ve never bought any, so it’ll be a new taste as well as an alternative way to preserve the garden bounty.

Testing the method and the tomatoes

The “Siletz” are seedless and without the juice of those locular cavities, so I should think they’ll provide a meaty chew. I also had some “Stupice” and “Sweet Chelsea” cherry toms on hand. To expand the experiment, I ran down to Pacific Potager and bought some heirloom “Black Paste” and hybrid “Juliet” ($3/lb): both are small paste tomatoes barely larger than a walnut.

Before breakfast, I halved all the toms, dug out the tiny cores with two short slashes of my paring knife, and with its point dug out the seeds I could reach. Half would marinate in Jasper’s balsamic vinaigrette for an hour; the others, I just salted and laid on the trays. Each group was laid in alpha-order, so that I could taste-test later and see which varieties worked best. I had one cooling rack that fit a small cookie sheet; I used a roasting pan with its slitted rack for a second batch. 

"Black Paste" on the left, "Sweet Chelsea" cherry tomatoes on the right, 1pm & 4pm

 While the marinating batch soaked over breakfast, my oven was heating to 200° (cooling, actually: I’d made scones for breakfast.) Ultimately I turned down the heat to around 175°: 200° just felt too hot.

 Both pans were in the oven by 9am.  I checked them at 1pm (top photo) and they were still a little wet, but wrinkled. Same at 2pm. By 4pm (bottom photo) they had the texture of chewed gum—wet and chewy— and were VERY tasty, bright with flavor. 

The next day I gave them two more hours in the oven, and honestly, I should have left well-enough alone. With two extra hours, they’d reached fruit leather stage: still good, but chewy enough to stick to the teeth. 

Flavor-wise, “Juliet” came out on top, followed closely by “Black paste.” “Juliet” had a sweet, berry note, while “Black paste” had a deeper sweetness more like raisins. “Sweet Chelsea” had a good flavor, but was still moist and could have used a couple extra hours drying time. “Stupice” hadn’t much flavor (a surprise as they’re so wonderful fresh), while the “Siletz” had turned into tiny rags of tomato jerky that clung to the rack’s thin rods and were a pain to pry off. 

All the samples came out sweet, but what really shot the flavor from a B to an A± was Jasper’s balsamic vinaigrette marinade. If you were making a pizza or pasta that was a little spartan—that needed a little flavor-zap—these marinated confettis would do the trick.

I pried all off their racks, laid them all flat on another cooky sheet to freeze individually, then stowed them in a zip-lock bag as per Michelle Crawford’s recommendation. Jasper’s recipe says, as do others, that you can also store the tomatoes in oil. They thaw quickly in a bit of oil, either in your cooking pan or in enough olive oil to cover in a small bowl.

Though I haven’t found the Ultimate Recipe for using these oven-dried tomatoes, I CAN say that they work best tossed into a dish toward the end. Too much cooking just breaks them up—you’ll get a subtle tomato infusion throughout, rather than individual tomato zaps. So far, I’ve found them very flavorful between a fried egg, sunny-side up, and a toast or vegetable base. (see update on the Zucchini Pancake, September 29)

If you’ve got a favorite way to use sun-dried or oven-dried tomatoes in your cooking, share it with us via the comments section.

Again, thanks to Jasper Forrester of GreenMan Farm for the following recipe.

 GreenMan Farm Oven-Dried Tomatoes

This recipe calls for 16-20 hours in a regular kitchen oven.  It also works great with an electric dehydrator (use according to manufacturer’s directions).  And if we have a nice sunny hot spell, it would work fantastic in a solar dehydrator.

Trim the stem ends off the tomatoes, quarter lengthwise and remove seeds.  Place in a large, nonmetallic bowl and add the olive oil, vinegar, & parsley, mixing well.  Season to taste with salt and pepper.  Cover bowl and allow to marinate in refrigerator for 2 to 3 hours. (Karen’s note: I marinated for 1 hour.)

Preheat oven to 200F.  Place tomatoes in a single layer on a baking sheet.

Bake for 16 to 20 hours (see my notes below).  Ideally, the best time to place them in the oven is around 7 PM and bake them through the night. 

(Karen’s note: mine took considerably less time, and the marinated tomatoes were only a tiny bit moister— 7-9 hours. I DID soak up excess marinade, halfway through the drying process, by touching a paper towel to those areas still overly wet. A good judge of doneness would be, are they the texture of berry leather, chewy but not brittle, and deep red in color?)

Cool completely before storing.  Tomatoes can be stored in the refrigerator in sterilized glass jars, with enough olive oil to cover them.  Or, you can store them in ziplock-type bags and freeze them.