Tuesday, April 7, 2009

Purple Potatoes


Life is moving fast in the urban potager this week. During a routine morning weeding of the organic vegetable beds, I discovered that I must have left some purple potatoes in the ground when harvesting last year. I have discovered 4 new plants adding to my roster of volunteers for spring training. Now I need to research how to care for them. I've transplanted all four plants to one end of the bed in a deep hole that I will fill in as the plants continue to grow ever upwards. One of these days I want to try the barrel method of planting, where I start them in a deep container, fill in as needed with more growing medium, whether it be dirt or potting mix or both, and merely tip over the container when the potatoes are ready to harvest.

Chew Chew Cherry


Remember the old Kool Aid flavors? Choo Choo Cherry replaced the politically incorrect Chinese Cherry. I'm thinking about renaming my 3in1 cherry tree Chew Chew Cherry, because something is chewing off all the pollinated blossoms and their tiny, green cherries. It's chewing them halfway up the stems, leaving me with evidence that I will not be harvesting a bumper crop this year. That is politically incorrect too, leaving no fruit for the gardener who brought the tree into your habitat. I love the birds and am happy to share the bounty with them, but share is the operative word here! Still, I am providing them with a service and if eating my cherries will get them through another day, I should not complain.

When the blossoms started blooming, I noticed that the branches were lower on the right side of the tree. It worried me that the heavy fruit from last year had permanently lowered the branches, pushing them even closer to the potential for breaking one day, from the weight of the fruit. As the branches are more horizontal, the blossoms open earlier on the right side. The rest of the tree is now blooming 3 weeks later.

Monday, April 6, 2009

Alpine Strawberries


It was a delight to go into the garden and discover that the Alpine strawberries were in good shape after their first winter. The pots need a good weeding and a bit of fertilizer and then they'll be good to go. I'm already looking forward to tasting a few berries this summer. Their taste is headier and more perfume filled than that of a traditional sized strawberry and much more concentrated. I'm also looking forward to the photo of them after their much needed grooming. I wonder if they need to be divided?

Illusions Destroyed


Gardeners by their very natures are risk takers. Not to the level that a farmer is, as no livelihood is at stake, but gardeners risk failure at every planting and this is mine. I planted tulip bulbs too late in the season, December if I remember it correctly. Taking a photo to document the planting, I kept hoping that enough fertilizer (bone meal) and water would make up for the lack of time these bulbs would have to form strong roots. It didn't. I kept telling myself that since these were late season bulbs, they'd have some time to develop, but not enough time evidently as you can see by the spindly flowers that resulted. Our early February heat may have confused their timing.

Blushing Lady is the peach and yellow tulip with pointed petals. It was deformed in an other worldly way and I only hope it can survive until next year. The yellow tulip lasted such a short period of time, I barely remember it, and have completely forgotten its name. No matter, I only planted it because it was packed with the Blushing Lady. They both bloomed in early March ahead of schedule and were met with southerly winds that battered them about. My only saving grace for this bed was the fact that the daffodils were late to bloom and are now making an appearance to help me through this otherwise disappointing experience.

Sunday, April 5, 2009

Volunteering, Alive and Well


The Swiss as a nation have had little need of an army in recent history, but Swiss (chard) volunteers have been lining up in the potager for duty all winter long. Especially, now in spring, their ranks have swollen to enormous proportions. I'm going to need more chard recipes this year to keep up with the volume. So far there have been many that needed transplanting to better locations, but others have been left on the borders of the raised beds to hopefully shade the roots of the tomatoes I've been planting. Tomatoes love cool roots so I usually mulch them. Oh, if only a soldier could polish his boots to the shine level of the yellow stemmed Swiss chard in the first photo!

Curiously, there is not a single lettuce volunteer this year...maybe their seeds need more heat to germinate. This is, so far, the only year I have not had hundreds of lettuce starts in the garden and I purposely allow them to go to seed, so I can have more the following year. I do have some radicchio.

I've recently been reading about Ligurian cooking and "bietole" is the term they use for a very thin stemmed Swiss chard. This Verde da Taglio or Erbette (the original seed I purchased was called Erbette) just may be that plant. I hope so as I have decided to make a bietole torta and am looking forward to a recipe for this specific plant. I may also plant a very wide stemmed cultivar called Monstruoso to use in a fried chard stem recipe that also sounds appealing to try.

Pink Daffodils


Nothing says springtime better than a daffodil and since they look far more like coral than pink, I'm jubilant at being able to include them in my little corner of the world. The flower pictured above is Salome, one of the first pink daffodils to hit the market. I have not gotten reliable blooms from them in the ground, so from time to time they get planted in large earthenware pots and I hope for a rebloom the following year. To make sure that has a better chance of happening next year, I'll add bone meal into their containers as soon as the flowers are spent. These little beauties may end up on the table as my Easter centerpiece.

This Coral Bark Japanese Maple is the only non fruit baring tree in the yard. Why? Because it provides another element important for good garden design. Now that I think about it, it provides 2 elements. The first is winter color. When the leaves turn color (yellow) and ultimately fall, the coral bark is quite vivid in color and makes a bright yet subtle contrast against the burgundy colored fence. The leaves are also a good texture with their jagged edged palmate shape, but most importantly, their chartreuse color contrasts nicely with the the blue green foliage of the iris plants and fescue that are planted near the base of the tree.

Saturday, April 4, 2009

Color, Texture, and Fragrance


When trying to limit plants for a small garden, one can come up with a far ranging list of specific criteria. My personal choices came down to whether or not I could eat them, then to color, fragrance, and texture. Like a good floral arrangement, a garden benefits from a variety of texture. Sword shaped leaves, round leaves, heart shaped leaves all add to the texture of a garden and are important to juxtapose for contrast; just as important as planting trees, shrubs and flowers for different height. Can you imagine a garden with plants of only one height?

Since my primary reason for the garden was to create an urban potager, all my trees, with the exception of a Japanese maple, are fruit trees. Then came the color selections of coral, apricot or peach, and purple or lavenders. I love these colors together in a bouquet and they work well in the yard. Some of the fruit blossoms are pink, but they are my only concession to that color. They actually keep me from pulling tulips that have reverted to pink, since they both have a short season and manage to blossom together.

Fragrance is the last criteria I use to help limit plant selections for my small garden. If I can't eat a plant, and it is strictly ornamental or does not serve the purpose of enticing bees into the yard, I would always select a fragrant species. All my roses are very fragrant, as is the Wisteria, and lilac. Since San Francisco does not have enough of a cold snap to produce lilacs reliably, I was lucky to find a cultivar developed at Descanso Gardens in Southern California that flowers well in Northern California too. I look forward to its brief flowering each year.

Wednesday, April 1, 2009

Tulip Season...Going, Going, Gone


It seems to me I can always count on the garden for my Easter flowers, so Easter must be late this year as most of the tulips are gone and the few that are coming up were planted too late (January) to be really healthy, in fact they have mutated to other worldly looking blossoms. Because I replant pots each year I'm not even certain of what kind is in the photo above. I was almost certain I planted Apricot Beauty, but this is not typical of that cultivar.
Perhaps the bulbs were mislabeled and the smaller of the 2 in this photo is an Apricot Beauty. I'd be content with a few pots of those, but potted tulips do not rebloom reliably each year. Still the coral color is lovely and I'm happy to have one at least.
This photo is quite beautiful for the color and if I'm not mistaken, looks very much like Apricot Beauty after all. It makes me wonder why these bulbs varied in color this year. Perhaps there is a virus in the pots, since I don't change the potting mix each year. As it happens the beautiful frilly, striped tulips known by the names of Rembrandt Tulips, Parrot Tulips and several other names are actually mutations caused by viruses that are soil borne. If you happen to notice tulips blooming or reblooming with broken colors or jagged edges, then you have a virus. It is advised to pull these tulips or they, in time, can infect other plants.
There are very specific color guidelines in the garden, a way for me to limit what I was buying (anything and everything) and pink is not a color I would readily choose. The tulips in the above photo are a prime example of bulbs that have been affected by a virus. They are called Carmella, and although I love them for reblooming for the past 5 years, it would be oh so nice if they could revert to their apricot pink color of origin. These are hard to find, so I may never get to replant them.

Cressida


Every time I post a photo of a David Austin rose I say it is a favorite, and that goes for Cressida, a very pale peach colored rose that fades to almost white. The buds are plump and hint at the big blooms to come. The fragrance is one that seems so familiar to me. It reminds me of my grandmother's cold cream, that I never thought of as a rose scent, nor even associated with roses. This is not an easy rose to find, so I am grateful that it has survived in my garden. Ellen, another obscure David Austin rose, is a very deep peach rose that has not done well and this year, it has reverted to rootstock. I'm afraid it will be impossible to replace.

Nepatella...Wild Mint


Last year I was lucky enough to find Nepatella at a local nursery. I had been trying to grow it from seed with little luck. The year before that I had found and planted another one, but the flavor didn't seem minty enough, so I only keep that plant for its foliage. This cultivar is minty enough with a very different flavor that is prized in Italy for culinary use. It is most often paired with artichokes and I plan on combining them this year for the first time. This plant was cut back hard this winter and its progress so far is very satisfactory.