I'm an allotmenteer!

Tuesday, May 29, 2012

Noun

allotmenteer (plural allotmenteers)
  1. (UK, informal) a person who grows crops in an allotment.
 

In the US we call them community gardens but there is no fun descriptor that comes out of that so I will hereby request that from today onwards you refer to me as allotmenteer. Or at lease until the end of Summer, should I forfeit and decide to ditch the whole thing. The first 3 people I told about my idea to apply for a community garden plot (my mom, my dad, my husband) all told me I was crazy. The fourth person I told, one of my oldest friends who hungers for her own patch of dirt to grow in, said let's do it! 

See, I already have two veggie patches at home which keep me really busy, but they are somewhat sun-challenged. I manage to grow tomatoes, but not the amount I would like. I dream of more space to grow other sun-lovers too like beans and peppers and to free up some room to grow flowers at home. 

My other fantasy for my new community garden plot is that I will have buckets full of beautiful produce, more than my family and friends can possibly eat, and that I will be able to donate the extras to local food banks.

I'm also hoping to meet some interesting garden folks and learn some new things about vegetable gardening.

The Portland Community Garden program is nearly 30 years old and some gardens have up to a four year waiting list. I was very lucky to get a plot at all, let alone one that's in walking distance of my house. In our excitement, my friend and I made a visit to one of the established community gardens in SE Portland, the Colonel Summers Community Garden. I love how ragged and full of personality it is. People are really focused on utility. I plan on visiting more community gardens to cull ideas on how to get the most out of my little 10'x10' plot. I think it's time to explore some vertical gardening ideas!


I blame Alys Fowler for making me long for my own community garden plot. In the TV series Gardener's World Alys visits her allotment in the dead of Winter to talk about growing garlic, dealing with weeds, and drinking a hard-earned cuppa with her cute dog. 







Doesn't that look fun? You can see the full episode and others here.  I highly recommend Alys's beautiful books Garden Anywhere, The Edible Garden: How to Have Your Garden and Eat It, and The Thrifty Forager: Living Off Your Local Landscape as well as her terrific blog for The Guardian.

Stay tuned for more news from my new garden plot! 
Yours,
The Allotmenteer

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Growing Peas. Eating Peas.

Friday, May 25, 2012



This year I'm trying to get smarter about my vegetable garden and have made some cuts to things that just weren't working out for me.

I've given up:

  • Growing a gazillion heads of lettuce. I'm trying to limit myself to just 6 plants at a time and to plant more frequently.
  • Growing everything from seed. I suck. I water too much and then too little. I leave tender little plants outside when it's cold. And for those troopers that do manage to survive, I can't resist planting them ALL, no matter the number, after I've nursed them to seedlinghood, which makes things crowded and leads to waste. It just seems more economical for me to buy starts for most things at this point. I will still do lettuce, cukes, squash, beans, and peas from seed. Sometimes. 
  • Cruciferous veggies. Except kale. I still love you kale. I've had trouble with everything else. Aphid trouble. Timing trouble. Eating trouble. 
  • Trying to grow beets from starts. If you're just growing them for the greens, a perfectly worthy pursuit, it's fine, but if you want roots to form, fuggedabout it. You need seeds. I tried growing beets from starts for 4 years in a row before learning this.
  • Growing things nobody here really likes to eat. Duh.
  • Growing too many of  the things we do eat. Tomatoes and squash and cucumbers I'm looking at you. Edit, edit, edit.
One veg that easily made the cut are peas. They are just so easy and rewarding. They go in early and make the place look full of promise, like things are really happening. And they are delicious straight off the plant, in salads, is cooking. Plus, the party is over pretty early on so you can move on to something else. Until late Summer, when you can start a Fall crop all over again. I've never tried this before but it's a cool season plant and I hear it can be done. Stay tuned...

Here's my method for growing peas. I'm no expert but this has worked well for me.


Peas will need some sort of support (or maybe not--read on). You can use string and stakes to make your own trellis. I used this wire structure. I presoaked my seeds overnight in an inoculant such as Fix -N- Grow Granular Legume Inoculant.


After my seeds had soaked overnight I dug a single trough for all of them and then planted them all together. I had three different varieties all mixed together. Planting peas this way allows them to grow up and through each other--they create their own support that way and I've heard of people relying on that alone and forgoing any additional support.


You can see they are pretty crowded together and I usually have even more in my trough. Once the seeds were planted I even added some starts.


Finally, I covered with soil and gave everything a good water. In Portland this first watering is enough until the pods have formed at which point I keep on eye on things and water if we have any dry spells or if the soil starts to look dry.

In no time at all, I had this...


It doesn't take long for the pea plants to begin to flower and set pods. The pods always creep up on me--one day I don't see any and the next day I see a ton. It seems like the time between flower and pod on this plant happens in a flash.

Here's what I like to make with the tender pea shoots while I'm waiting for the harvest of peas (the recipe calls for watercress which would be nice too, but I love using pea shoots). I won't lie to you, it takes eons, but it's a knockout. AND you get to use your radishes if you're growing those too, so you really get to feeling like a kitchen garden rock star.


 Photo via the dreamy food blog, Le Tartine Gourmande

 

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The Lilac Lady

Wednesday, May 23, 2012



For years I've noticed a sign on I-5 near Woodland, Washington for the Hulda Klager Lilac Garden and always made a mental note to come visit when the lilacs are in bloom. Of course I always forget, but this Spring I was lucky enough to have a friend invite me along for a little drive up from Portland to check it out.


The Lilac Days run from mid April through Mother's Day and are the only time the house on the estate is open to the public, though the grounds can be accessed any time. You can also buy plants during the Lilac Days. 


It was an immensely beautiful day. The skies really were that blue! It's a perfect place for a picnic. The grounds surrounding the old white house are a mix of brick pathways and green lawns. Of course the lilac trees are the star attraction but there are also lovely mixed beds near the house and a lot of impressive rhododendrons.


I haven't seen it stated as such, but my guess would be that Hulda Klager was the world's foremost lilac breeder. She developed over 250 lilac varieties in her lifetime. She held her first open house in 1920, a tradition carried on today by the Hulda Klager Lilac Society. 



A couple varieties that really caught my attention were this double, dark purple variety called Adelaide Dunbar--the unopened blossoms actually looked red. 


Alexander's Pink Lilac had vivid pink blossoms with a unique, more upright habit, reminding me of a butterfly bush. So pretty.

It was fun to see the inside of the house which is full of memorabilia and family photos of the farm. The house was built in 1889 and seems to be mostly in it's original state, though I spotted some modern light fixtures (circa 1920's!). 


It really is a bucolic setting. I love that the paint isn't in perfect condition. Things are ever so slightly rough around the edges. There was an assortment of wonderful old floral wallpaper throughout the house. You really get a sense of what life was like for Hulda living there most of her 97 years.


Somebody was painting en plein air in the front of the house. 



Out front there was a magnificent Monkey Puzzle Tree with cones in full, fuzzy, chartreuse glory. 



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Rediscovering Foxfire Magazine

Tuesday, May 22, 2012




"Shown here (top left) is the very first issue of Foxfire, completed and published in Spring 1967, followed by each fifth anniversary issue since, up through 2006's 40th anniversary issue. This spring's release of issue 173/174 of The Foxfire Magazine will mark the 45th anniversary of the Foxfire organization."


If you were a hippie, or your parents were hippies, or your aunt was a hippie, or your ex-Rajneeshee neighbor that you house-sat for was a hippie, then you probably remember seeing Foxfire Magazine. It was on the bookshelf next to the Whole Earth Catalog and Our Bodies, Ourselves.

The magazine was first published in 1967 in Northern Georgia as an experimental school project and included folklore, oral history, and how-to articles based on interviews conducted with elder Appalachian residents. The magazines were collected in 1972 as the first Foxfire book (several more were subsequently published) and became a national best seller and bible of sorts for the back-to-the-land movement.

I am very happy to see that not only is Foxfire still in existence, but that they celebrated their 45th anniversary last year and continue to publish their magazine and create other interesting publications such as Foxfire's Book of Wood Stove Cookery:






Yum, that sounds good. I have a feeling everything tastes better cooked in a wood-burning cook stove.

I also found it interesting to find an article about ramps on their site, which have become the vegetable du jour of Portland foodies recently. Seems they've been hip to their merits (and demerits!) in Appalachia all along:

To prepare fried ramps: parboil three minutes, drain, throw water away, add more water, cook until tender, drain. Season in frying pan with melted butter. Serve covered with bread crumbs. Or fry in grease along with tuna fish and/or eggs, or add potatoes, salt, pepper for flavor. Clifford Connor says, "Most important, go into solitary in the woods somewheres, stay for two or three weeks, because nobody can stand your breath after you've eat 'em."
                                                --From Spring Wild Plant Foods, Foxfire 2

"Several Foxfire contacts had information to offer on ramps, and a few
of them even took students out into the woods to show them where
ramps naturally grow, and what they look like in the wild."

There's a lot of terrific info on the Foxfire site. You can learn about the Foxfire Museum & Heritage Center, the Foxfire approach to teaching, and visit their online store where you can subscribe to upcoming issue and purchase their commemorative collection published last year in celebration of their 45th Anniversary:



Echoes Companion CD featuring gospel and bluegrass musicians from the book
Commemorative Leather Bookmark Set featuring illustrations from the book
'
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Pollen, Seeds, Fruit: The Work of Rob Kesseler

Sunday, May 20, 2012



I first discovered the amazing photos by Rob Kesseler on Brain Pickings. They are from a series of books exploring the plant life at The Millennium Seed Bank Partnership at Kew Gardens which endeavors to collect seeds (over a billion seeds and counting!) to be used in case of disaster and threatened extinction. Isn't it amazing the mind-boggling beautiful things nature is doing even at the microscopic level? Did you know that the seed stage is the only time a plant can move and you will often see such ingenious designs such as wings, piercing spikes, and parachutes to help them on their way?

Check out this great video which gives you an inside look at the seed bank...




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