The past couple days in the garden 2 June 2009

Yesterday I worked on the “big pots” project.  I got two of the three remaining big pots done.  I’m growing lettuce in one and other greens (I know, how generic, right?) in the other.  I also readied pots for mesclun (3 pots) and for baby leaf mustards (1 pot), and then sowed them.  I sowed Baker Creek’s stir-fry baby leaf mix and their European salad mix, and Renee’s Garden Seeds’ Asian baby greens salad mix.  The mustard mix I made myself from four baby leaf mustards from Kitazawa Seed Co.,’Garnet Giant,’ ‘Ruby Streak,’ ‘Mizuna Red Streak,’ and ‘Golden Streak.’  They’re really cool looking if you want to check out their baby leaf mustard page for photos.  I love how frilly they are!

Today I went to the nursery to get bigger hanging baskets for the fuchsias that I bought recently at a drug store here; they were super cheap ($8 each, when hanging baskets often cost $20-30 at nurseries) but their baskets are already way too small for their large size, and when it is warm and/or windy, they dry out within a day of a rainstorm and faster without rain.  I ended up also getting Jerusalem sage, which is not actually a sage and is also probably not really from Jerusalem.  It’s starting to bloom now and should look nice in the front garden, as it is allegedly tolerant of heat and drought (though we shall see; some things that allegedly are actually turn out not to be up to the task my front garden demands of them).  I also got a second blooming basil, smaller than the first (which I bought and planted last weekend), as well as a little pot of leek seedlings.

The leek seedlings have not been selling well at the nursery, perhaps because they are placed with the herbs instead of with the vegetables, perhaps because they take so long to get very big and thus look like chives in their little pot instead of like leeks, or perhaps just because Americans seem to not be as fond of growing leeks as Europeans are.  The little pot contains several small but decent-sized-for-leeks seedlings, so will turn into several leeks, assuming they make it through my experiment.  What is my experiment?, you ask.  Glad you asked.  I’ve been reading two associated books by Frank Tozer, The Organic Gardeners Handbook and The Vegetable Growers Handbook.  Though they could have used a better copyeditor than the one they apparently got, they are interesting regardless of that.  One interesting thing they mention (out of many many many) is that leeks are one of the crops that can take the very closest spacing of any fairly typical home-garden crop.   So I am going to experiment with growing them closely spaced in a large pot and seeing how they do.  This is the first year my nursery has offered leek seedlings.  One year in my old garden I grew them from seed myself, but I haven’t done that since.  The tag does not appear to indicate what kind of leek they are (not even whether they are one of the two categories Tozer sets out in his book, a ‘summer leek’ or a ‘winter leek’), so I will just have to grow them and find out myself!

Another thing that has particularly intrigued me so far about Tozer’s books is his mention of buckwheat being one of the fastest-maturing grains that home gardeners might reasonably be able to grow in their home gardens.  If I am recalling correctly (which I may not be, though the photos/drawings do appear to match my memory), buckwheat is one of the things I used to sow in my old garden’s main crop bed to nourish the soil, reduce weeds, and provide nectar for beneficial insects and seed for birds.  In that garden, it was quite successful, but that garden had much easier growing conditions than my current one.  Having recently procured a copy of the new edition of the 1970s (originally) growing standard book, Small-Scale Grain Raising by Gene Logsdon, I’ve been reading the section on buckwheat in the evenings before bed.  It sounds like old-time buckwheat is kind of a pain for even non-home growers to grow, as it apparently matures at varying times on a single stalk and does not have a very high yield, but it appears from the book that breeders have been working recently on coming up with buckwheats that mature more at once and have higher yields.  I am curious enough that I am considering experimenting with buckwheat later this growing season (it sounds like it is best sowed to time with cooler temperatures, so it is too late to do it in this part of the growing season).  It is supposed to be highly nutritious – Logsdon talks about how much Americans loved buckwheat breakfasts back in the days before commercial cereals – so it would be a nice crop to add to my passion for legumes (by which I mean that legumes are also highly nutritious).

Speaking of legumes, the rest of the runner bean cultivars and the edamames (soybeans) are finally coming up today.  It’s so heartening to see their little sprouts poking up through the compost mulch.

My main plans for the next few days in the garden are to finish the “big pots” project (the last big pot is to be planted with root vegetables), move the fuchsias into the new bigger hanging baskets, plant a few of the tender geraniums in the fuchsias’ old hanging baskets, prepare pots for the leeks and the rest of the flowers that are to go in pots and then pot them, and plant the things that keep drying out very fast (with top priority going to the last three tall verbenas and a few other plants that have been waiting to be planted).  All my time spent  in the garden (even though I’m still so far behind!) has meant that I’ve gotten behind on non-garden stuff, so we’ll see how much of that I actually accomplish.

An acquaintance from the garden club saw my garden for the first time this weekend, and watching someone else look at it got me thinking about my unusual style (for here) of garden design and the divergent things that I most like.  Looking at it makes it pretty easy to see that cottage gardens are my favorite style of design for me, personally, but the plants are, as I said, divergent; I really like the kinds of plants that one would see in British cottage gardens – plants like columbines, peonies, stock, pansies, poppies, and larkspur – but I also really like tough native plants; for the shady back garden, that mostly means ones that are native to dry woods in New England, but for the unusual-for-New-England conditions of the front garden, that  means that it’s mostly ones that are native to the Great Plains and the Southwest, because they are plants that are more used to drought, heat, and strong winds than most of New England’s native plants (though, as I’ve said here many times, the New England native sundial lupine [Lupinus perennis] has done remarkably well in it, including self-seeding vigorously [by this garden’s standards; maybe 6 seedlings]).  So my fronnt garden has agastaches, salvias, and cup plant mixed in with bellflowers, daisies, and gladiolas (well, soon for the gladiolas; they’re still waiting to be planted, sitting with the dahlias in bags in a box, as it’s been cold most nights here [for this time of year]).  While many non-gardeners just say, “Oooh, pretty!,” I imagine that for fellow serious gardeners it could be a bit discombobulating.  My biggest philosophy is that I mostly like to plant plants that I don’t have to coddle much or, ideally, at all.  Growing crops takes enough coddling that I’d rather save my coddling for that and let the flowers and (few) shrubs tend primarily to themselves.

The locust, the street tree in front of my garden, has fully leafed out and phase four of its annual master plan to inundate the garden has begun.  It had been so thickly leafed out that I had actually found myself looking forward to the point where, I knew, it would soon begin to drop entire twigs/small branches, because its canopy was blocking more rain than it does later in the year.  Phase one was dropping small young clusters of leaves; phase two was dropping lone leaf clusters; and phase three (still not complete) was/is dropping pollen.  Phase five, to look forward to come late summer, will be dropping its huge heavy ripe pods.  But for now, it has moved on from dropping single leaf clusters to dropping entire twigs.  Now that it’s begun, I find myself wondering why I was looking forward to it, because as always, many of the twigs are landing smack on my plants.  The worst so far was the large twig that tried to take out my entire patch of sweet peas.  I never appreciated just what messy trees locusts are until I moved in here.  Now they’ve been added to my short list of trees to never, ever plant close to gardens (maples being the other major one).

I mentioned recently that the seeded-in baby blue eyes had begun to bloom, but didn’t give more details.  It is a Western US native that I sow each year here and it does well in early summer.  This is its best year yet; there are already several little plants blooming.  Here is a photo elsewhere on the web.   Its botanical name is Nemophila menziesii syn. Nemophila insignis.

It was such a dry May and June is starting out the same.  I miss the steady rains we used to get here in summer rather than the mists and cloudbursts we more often get now; there is so little any more in the wide range bewtween the two extremes.  In my sloped garden, cloudbursts are even more likely to be mostly runoff than in most gardens.  Now there are huge clouds gathering on the Western horizon, but they’ve been doing that on and off all day and it never actually rains.  Here’s hoping…

Work in the garden / Seeds sown / Mustards / Season extenders 28 March 2009

I’ve done a lot of work in the garden in the past couple of days.  Yesterday I did some more clean-up (I will never, ever intentionally plant a maple or locust near garden plots:  the detrit0us is mind-bogglingly huge and very difficult to clean up because of how small it all is compared to most plant refuse) and then planted 60 pansies and violas – 3 six-packs of violas and 7 six-packs of pansies.  I planted two yellow-and-purple violas with a straight-up yellow one, and pansies in clusters of two color themes; three clusters of the white, yellow, mauve, and blue ones and two clusters of the maroon, royal purple, and yellow-with-blushes-of-red-and-orange ones.  Violas bloom so much more readily in six-packs that they were blooming a lot more than the others right upon planting, and they really cheer up the currently low-bloom front garden, and distract the eye from the lavenders behind them, which are currently putting out fresh leaves and looking a bit mangy.   I went out today to take photos of this and my other work, but my rechargable batteries once again abruptly failed.  Unfortunately, while they were recharging it got thickly cloudy, and in my experience macro pictures don’t turn out so well in those conditions with my camera.  (I really need new rechargeable batteries.  My old ones finally lost the ability to recharge a few months ago and I went to the camera store where I’d bought them to get new ones, but they were carrying a different brand.  They turn out to be the worst rechargeable batteries I’ve ever encountered in my life.  Really, they are so staggeringly bad I have no idea how someone could even make such an inferior product, much less a store sell them!)

When I was at the nursery I asked if they were going to get viola ‘Tiger’s Eye’ (AKA ‘Tiger Eye’) in again.  Not only is it my favorite annual viola of any I’ve ever grown, but it got me in-person compliments and has brought a surprisingly large number of hits to the blog entry about it via search engines.  The nursery owner didn’t remember it, but the pansy/viola supplier was making a delivery at the time and said he had it this year, so the owner said he’d bring some in next week.  I’m psyched!  It was the star of the shadiest portion of my spring to mid-summer front garden last year, and even the heat of summer (and believe me, the front garden has heat!) didn’t completely fell it.

Anyhow, today I did yet more clean-up – primarily picking up more detritus and cutting down seed heads (earlier I’d left the seed heads that still seemed to have some seeds because they looked cool and I thought the birds might want them) – and planted the six herbs I bought yesterday at the nursery.  I got sage, purple sage, cilantro ‘Salsa,’ and three thymes – lemon thyme, garden thyme ‘Compactus,’ and a creeping thyme with white flowers.  Thyme (especially garden thyme) and sage don’t do as well in my garden as the other Mediterranean herbs, and I’ve tried some previous theories as to why.  Now I am trying a new theory out:  Planting them early might help them settle in before other plants really grow much.   I’m hoping that the sages will get big and strong enough to not succumb to mildew this year (though I know from other gardeners in the area that for some gardens, sage is just prone to mildew, period) which makes them look gross, makes the leaves presumably inedible, and sometimes eventually kills the plant.  As to the garden thyme, it’s just good to plant thyme early so it has some time to adjust before hot weather sets in.  It doesn’t mind hot weather, but it’s generally not too fond of being put out in it.  I think in the past garden thyme has simply gotten too shaded in my garden as the growing season goes on.  Here’s hoping I placed it in an OK spot this time.  Ironically, without the other plants having grown much yet, it’s hard to say for sure!

The first flowers I sowed earlier this week are up now, all the same kind, painted daisy.  Four were up last evening and then the last time I checked it was up to seven.  I haven’t seen any other flower sprouts yet.   Yesterday I sowed greens outside and lettuce inside.  The outside lettuce hasn’t come up yet (not particularly surprising with the wildly swinging temperatures of late) and I thought I’d try my luck inside, plus I read recently that transplanted lettuce is slower to bolt than in-situ-sown lettuce, and it seems the opposite might be true too – that in-situ lettuce might be more cold-tolerant than transplants – so I thought I would do an experiment and see what actually happens.

When I sowed flowers, I ran out of seed trays, so I bought another one this week to sow the lettuce in.  It’s a different shape than the others (and made of much flimsier material), and it lends itself to six holes per variety, with twelve varieties total, so I just followed that inclination.  I picked ‘Eva’s Burgundy,’ ‘Merlot,’ ‘Tom Thumb,’ ‘Craciovensis,’ ‘Red Tinged Winter,’ ‘De Mourges Braun,’ ‘Gotte Jaune D’Or,’ ‘Oak Leaf,’ ‘Deer Tongue AKA Matchless,’ ‘Blushed Butter Oaks,’ ‘Brown Dutch,’ and ‘Spotted Aleppo.’  (For descriptions of all the lettuces I soewd outside, including these, see my recent entry “Lettuce and Spinach.”)   I sowed two seeds in each hole except for ‘Eva’s,’ which had fewer seeds in the packet, and got one per hole.  No action yet, but it’s only been 24 hours.

Outside, I sowed the hardiest Asian greens I got in my Kitazawa Seed box (which actually covered most of the greens; there are many fewer frost-intolerant ones) plus the Chinese celery.  I’ve never successfully grown celery, but this one is supposed to be super easy to grow, so we’ll see.  I smartly sowed each in a little patch and labelled it, which I also should have done with the lettuce and spinach.  I sometimes just don’t think through how this little crop patch is nothing like my old garden’s and does not lend itself well to scattershot things like flicking lettuce seed onto bare ground.  Space is by necessity so much more economical here.

Anyhow, here are Kitazawa’s descriptions of the greens and celery:

Chinese Celery ‘White Queen’ This very special Chinese celery has a flavor and aroma that is stronger than Western celery. The long white stems are considerably smaller than those of Western celery, and the jagged green leaves, more delicate. This easy to grow variety prefers cool temperatures. A must for many Chinese dishes, this celery makes a delicious addition to stews, soups or stir-fries. Include both the stalks and leaves. Maturity: Approx. 60 days / Planting season: Spring or late summer

Mibuna ‘Early Mibuna’ This traditional Japanese green is cultivated in Mibu, in the Kyoto prefecture. An early open pollinated mibuna variety, this vigorous grower is tolerant to both heat and cold. The leaves add a mild mustard flavor to a fresh green salad. They are delicious lightly steamed with a soy dressing, and are also commonly used for pickling. Maturity: Approx. 30 days / Planting season: Early spring or late summer to early fall

Japanese Chard ‘Umaina’ Umaina is a tender Japanese Chard. The leaves are deep green slightly waved and smooth. The mid-rib is pale green with short stalks. This variety is can withstand warm and cold temperatures and slow bolting. It is prepared like pak choi and very similar to spinach. Maturity: Approx. 55 days / Planting season: Spring to fall

Molokeyhia / Egyptian Spinach ‘Molokia’ This Middle Eastern super green, known as Egyptian spinach, has a high vitamin and mineral content. Prepare raw or cooked. Harvest young shoots and leaves. Use in stir-fries, soup or salad. Maturity: Approx. 60 days / Planting season: Spring

Mustards

‘Garnet Giant’ The solid, rounded leaves of this baby leaf are deep purplish red color. Leaves produce their color early in the growing season and retain it through summer. With its mild but distinct flavor, Garnet Giant complements any collection of greens.

‘Golden Streak’ This fast-growing baby green mustard has a bright spring-green color and a delicate, lacey habit that contrasts strikingly with dark green or red salad greens. Its mild spicy taste adds interest, as well. Use the Golden Streak to perk up a salad or sandwich or as a perfect little side garnish.

‘Mizuna Red Streak’ This pot-herb mustard strongly resembles Ruby Streak. Its ornately fringed purple and green leaves deliver a peppery flavor that is milder than arugula and packed with nutrients. The thin green stalks are tasty, as well, making Mizuna Red Streak a perfect baby leaf salad green. Mature leavescomplement stir-fries and soups. Sow seeds in spring to fall and suitable for growing throughout growing season.

‘Ruby Streak’ Arguably the prettiest baby leaf mustard, the Ruby Streak adds a delicate spice and colorful elegance to a salad plate. Stems are green, with airy, thread-shaped maroon leaves. If left to mature to full size, the leaves take on the jagged shape of a dandelion leaf or Mizuna mustard. Still tender enough for salads, full-grown they are also great in a stir-fry.

‘Osaka Purple’ This broad-leafed mustard has reddish leaves. It will tolerate cold weather. Grows fast in warm weather. Both leaves and stems can be pickled, stir-fry, steamed or added to salad. The younger the leaves are picked, the milder their flavor will be. Individual leaves or the whole plant may be harvested.

‘Red Giant’ This deep purplish, large, broad-leafed mustard has a mustard-like pungency. Use in soup, salad, stir-fry or pickled. Harvest the leaves when young for salads or layer into sandwiches instead of using prepared mustard. The leaves can be cut from the plant, which will rapidly grow new ones. Make your own prepared mustard by letting the plant go to seed. When the pods turn yellow, harvest and place the seeds in a blender with vinegar, spices and water.

‘Serifon’ This winter-hardy mustard has green leaves with jagged margins and a slightly pungent flavor. The spicy flavor increases with age. Sow seeds in early spring for summer harvest or late summer to fall for winter harvest. Used in stir-fries, salt pickling or salad. This mainland China native is popular preserved in salt and fried with pork.

‘Gai-Choi’ This is a popular Chinese mustard green that is easy and quick growing and tasty raw or cooked. The mild flavor is appreciated in soups, stir-fried or pickled. A specialty of Northern China, the root is boiled, peeled, sliced and served with soy sauce and sesame oil.

‘Hatakena’ A popular Japan mustard leaf that is bright green in color. Its leaves are hairy with slender stems or petioles. Mustard pungency increases as plant size increases. Harvest at your desired flavor. The mild pungent leaves can be used in soup, salad or stir-fry and commonly pickled in Asia. As with other mustard greens, Hatakena is a wonderful source of vitamins, fiber, calcium, iron, and other minerals.

‘Oka Hijiki’ Also known as “seaweed on land,” this variety is considered to be one of the healthiest greens eaten in Japan. Loaded with vitamins, it is usually sold in Japanese markets in very small packets. The green stick leaves are 2″ long. Oka hijiki is used in many Japanese dishes and is excellent simply steamed for a few minutes and eaten with mustard or vinegar.

As you may be able to tell from the list, I love mustard!  However, locally mostly mizuna is available, and I don’t know if it’s mizuna generally or the specific cultivars grown, but I tend to find it a bit tough and often somewhat bitter.  So I wanted to devote a portion of my plot to growing out some other mustards, focusing especially on ‘baby leaf’ types (the first 4) and others you can pick as young leaves for salads.  I’m also fascinated by the idea of “seaweed mustard” (the catalog’s category for the last one) which I have, as far as I know, never had, and am excited to see what it is like (knocking on wood that it germinates OK).

I wanted to provide an update on my quest for a good season extender.  I discovered this week (through a gardening catalog’s e-newsletter) that there is a little pre-built hoop house available on some American websites (a Google search turned up more sites carrying it).  It is under $20 (how much under varies from site to site), and a search for reviews turned up some positive comments/reviews and only one rather ridiculous negative one (someone was bitchy that they needed to remove it during the day so their plants didn’t get overly hot – um, are you aware of the concept behind “season extenders”? Even greenhouses are opened sometimes!) so I decided to give it a try.  Building my own hoop house here seems impractical and like it would cost at least that much anyhow since I’d need a fair amount of materials for a small amount of space.  I also feel like having a hoop house that I can easily completely remove is helpful since I will be putting it in the front garden, in easy view of the multitude of pedestrians and vehicles that go by on the busy street.  I’m continuing to gather information on them for when I move on to a larger garden where I will once again have enough space for sowing lettuce at random to be practical instead of rather silly.  Working in the front garden, I have realized just how cold the soil is there since the sun still isn’t up very high or very long (it makes more of a difference in that garden than any other I’ve ever been in), so hopefully starting to put the hoop house out on cool nights will help things germinate faster and get a better start.  I just hope nobody steals it on a cold night.  Such is life in a city garden on a busy street.

By the way, the comments I read used the little hoop house for things that make more sense than the people who gave the lecture – many people used it to start out and transplant everything in spring (starting from the very earliest things, though I would imagine probably earlier in the season than the lecture-givers), but tomatoes were mentioned frequently, though perhaps just because what extender to use to transplant tomatoes early is such a common question on garden sites.

When I got home today, one of the regular/semi-regular pedestrians who follows my garden was walking by and stopped to talk with me about what’s coming up so far.  I’ve often thought it would be fun to have fan type pages for gardens like there are for blogs and other websites –  e.g., “People Following This Garden–”  with a little box like on some blogs.  I know from working out in the garden that there are at a minimum several people who live in the area and track it.  There are some who track it because they know me, and others (like today’s visitor) who only know me because they started tracking it and stopped to tell me when they saw me out working in it.

One of the apartments in my building has just rented to someone who wants to garden too.  I only met the other person who will be living there, who made it sound like this one is a novice gardener, but I am not positive on that.  It will be interesting to have two gardeners in one building, though the back yard certainly seems big enough (for a city) to accommodate two gardeners.  I have no real interest in doing much more in the back yard besides continuing to plant the beds I dug up two years ago (which still have a good amount of room for new plants, unlike the front garden), taking my tender plants back outside, and putting pots of vegetables in it.  Hopefully that will leave enough room for the other person to do whatever they want.  Hopefully they are strong enough that they will not mind the back-breaking work involved in attempting to dig anything in the back yard – you cannot believe how big and thick and strong and close to the surface tree roots can be – and/or are flexible about growing things in pots.  Well, we’ll see either way.  And whatever happens, at least it means that if I move out and they are still here, hopefully there will be someone interested in continuing to care for the garden instead of it becoming abandoned like several other yards in the neighborhood that were gardens various numbers of years ago (I judge how many only by how far gone they seem to be, which may be inaccurate) but are now a mix of the hardiest garden survivors, weeds, and saplings of trees or shrubs.