Backyard Asparagus

Europeans have a preference for fat, white asparagus spears, usually canned. I prefer mine green, thin and fresh. White asparagus is not a special kind. It has been blanched by piling soil over the emerging shoots. Light turns the spears green. Diameter, in turn, has less to do with variety than with the age of the patch and when the spears are harvested. Early in the season, spears are fatter. I’ve heard that the fattest spears are produced only for a plant’s first few years of productivity, from primary buds. A well prepared bed can be productive for 15 years.

I like to eat asparagus, but until I visited Tom and Victoria Schneider’s garden a few years ago I had not thought very much about how to grow it. It was the end of March, and the Schneiders’ five year old asparagus bed was putting up big, fat spears. Tom Schneider picks all the shoots until they diminish to the thickness of a pencil. That’s almost two months of a delectable gourmet treat, which no doubt makes the initial work and wait worthwhile.

Asparagus is usually planted in the form of dormant crowns, available at garden centers in early spring. But the best time to prepare a new asparagus bed is now, when soils are at their most workable. Our climate is not the best for growing asparagus, since wet winter soil can cause the roots to rot. The plants prefer deep, rich soils that drain well in winter. The surest way to achieve that is to build a raised bed. Steve Solomon, creator of Territorial Seed Co. and author of Growing Vegetables West of the Cascades, suggests it should be four feet high and wide, but many gardeners grow asparagus successfully in beds lower and narrower than that.

Books recommend that you plant asparagus on the west or north side of the garden so that it will not shade other crops. Tom Schneider‘s bed is up against a south facing fence. “One of the things I like about that location,” he says, “is that it catches the early spring sun and warmth. Also, after harvesting is over and the ferns are growing, I can rope them up against the fence to keep them out of the path, and out of the more productive areas of the garden.”

Start by building a raised bed, with or without boards, of purchased sandy loam or your own good, weed-free soil. Work in as deeply as you can an inch or two of compost, a pound of dolomite lime and a pound of rock phosphate or bonemeal per 10 feet of row. Cover the new bed with more compost or leaves, and perhaps with a tarpaulin to keep it dry over the winter. Since an asparagus bed is a long term proposition, it should start out free of all perennial weeds and be weeded religiously thereafter.

Recommended planting times vary from February to April, taking into account the condition of the soil. There is no advantage to planting the crowns early in cold, wet soil, because they won’t grow until the soil warms, and they are more susceptible to rot if exposed to cold, wet soil too long. In spring, work in a cup and a half of complete organic fertilizer per ten feet of row. Dig a wide trench no deeper than 5 or 6 inches. (Deeper planting was suggested at one time, but research has shown that the deeper planting reduces the yield.) Space the crowns about a foot apart in the row and spread out the roots. Backfill the trench part way; add more soil as the shoots extend.

The crowns you buy will be a couple of years old, and it will be a couple more before you should harvest anything. Let all the shoots develop into tall, feathery ‘ferns’. By the third year after planting the shoots should be thicker and more numerous, and you can harvest them for about 3 weeks, snapping off the shoots at soil level.
In a wet climate like ours, Shneider and others suggest that the top growth should not be allowed to winter over. Cut down the ferns in November or December and mulch the row heavily with manure or compost. Asparagus will not do well if the pH is less than 6.0, so every few years you will need to add another pound of lime per 10 feet of row, in fall. After the spring harvest, fertilize with 1-2 cups of organic fertilizer per ten row feet. Asparagus is a heavy feeder!

ABUNDANCE

I looked at the Shiro plum tree in our garden, its branches literally encrusted with fruit like some kind of parasitic infection, and thought of Tom Schneider. Tom and his wife Victoria are experienced gardeners with an interesting history. Among other things, they spent 15 years living off the grid in Haida Gwaii (formerly known as Queen Charlotte Islands, BC) where they learned about foraging from the Haida people. I met Schneider one April a few years ago for the purpose of foraging for wild nettles. On the way back we stopped in at the Grassroots Garden on Coburg Road, and shared in a delicious lunch prepared in the outdoor kitchen from Grassroots produce by a young chef named Laura.

More recently, Schneider shared with me some thoughts about serious food gardening; that is, growing food as a substantial contribution to one’s own sustenance. He told me he has come to believe that gardening is “a 1/3-1/3-1/3 effort. Soil preparation and planting is one third of the effort. Watering, weeding, and growing is one third of the effort. But I find many folks when they plant don’t adequately plan for the final third of the effort, which is getting the food they grow from the harvest basket to the plate and fork.”

Schneider asserts that the sheer magnitude of the harvest in the summer and early fall can take the joy out of gardening for new gardeners. ”Before you put a seed in the ground, you need to develop progressive strategies, whether it be for eating fresh, freezing or canning. Or simply finding somewhere to put produce you can’t use today, like a second refrigerator or a root cellar or some other cool space. You need baskets to harvest into, flat surfaces to sort the harvest, maybe space and equipment for canning and drying. And budgeting time for these tasks that will get the food to your plate is essential.” Schneider’s rule of thirds is not just about planting, it’s a way of life.

People vary in their approach to feeding themselves year round. Some put more effort into preserving the summer harvest of fruit and vegetables, while others put more emphasis on always having something growing in their garden beds. Back in August, Schneider pointed out that the period between Aug 15 and the end of September is the most important of the planting season. “What a person does during those six weeks will determine what the garden will produce for the next six months, when fresh stuff is more expensive. Having fresh cilantro at Thanksgiving, and crops to protect with those simple hoops we use (see Head Start, Eugene Weekly, February 11, 2010) depends on not being overwhelmed with the final third of getting the summer's abundance to the table or freezer. Zucchini is cheap now in the Farmers Market or at your local farm stand.”

So perhaps, rather than trying to keep up with zucchini in August, you should have been making space in the garden to sow cilantro or winter chard. And I should have been clearing out a bed for winter salad greens and another bed of kale, instead of fretting about what to do with an overabundance of Shiro plums, which are not my personal favorites. And another thought: should I even keep that plum tree, and spend time picking plums just to give them away? Or would it be better to use the space for a freestone Italian plum I would really enjoy? Surely part of that final third of the effort should assure that you don’t waste precious space and water on things that your family won’t eat.

So plant things you, your family and friends enjoy. Plant only as much as you think you can use and have time to harvest and process. Spread the harvest out by making smaller plantings progressively, or by planting fruit and vegetable crops that mature at different times. Plan an early start by making at least a couple of raised beds that will warm up fast. You can sow peas, radishes and salad greens as early as February, and that space will come available again in time for warm weather crops.
And while most of us will never have an outdoor kitchen like the one at Grassroots Garden, it sure would make harvesting easier and cleaner to have a table and outdoor sink, however primitive, for sorting, trimming and preliminary cleaning. Next to the compost area, perhaps.

All-Americans

Flip through Native Plants for North American Gardens by Allan Armitage and two things quickly become obvious. One, Northwest natives are not very well represented in this book. Two, a surprising number of the border plants we traditionally grow in gardens are native to some part of North America. Aster, coreopsis, phlox, penstemon, echinacea, rudbeckia, tall lobelia, liatris all originate in North America, most of them in the prairies and meadows of eastern NA, where rain can occur at any time of year.

Although many of these plants are moderately drought tolerant, they have not evolved with regularly dry summers. They do not need to complete their yearly growth cycle before mid-summer, as many Willamette Valley natives do. So many of them bloom in summer, even in late summer. No wonder gardeners value them. Many have been subjected to breeding programs in the US and, especially, Europe, with a goal of selecting new colors and plant forms, or bigger or more elaborate flowers and so on. These cultivars have their uses, but gardeners who appreciate the unique qualities and special grace of plants selected by nature herself will tend to prefer the original version.

This natural look is the best argument I can think of for seeking these plants out.
It isn’t easy to come up with a convincing argument for making a garden exclusively of American natives. If you plant things that do not naturally occur in your region, why stop at the boundaries of one continent? But some of the lesser known North American natives, in particular, make charming additions to any perennial garden, and if they originate in places where it routinely rains in the summertime, they’ll adapt well to a conventional watering regime that supports a variety of garden perennials. Here are a few of my personal favorites. All of them should look at home mixed in with Northwest natives that tolerate the same conditions.

Amsonia tabernaemontana (Eastern blue star flower)
Willow leafed amsonia (A. t. var. salicifolia) has narrow leaves, giving the plant a particularly graceful look. It grows to about 2 feet. Amsonias bloom in late spring or early summer, with flowers in a cool, pure blue. The foliage turns gold in autumn. Another species, A. hubrichtii, has even narrower leaves. According to Armitage, this has the best fall color, but it is taller and may need staking.

Gillenia trifoliata (bowman’s root)
This is one of my favorite plants. Reddish, wiry stems and pretty foliage look especially handsome as the plant emerges in the spring. A haze of airy, pinky-white flowers soon follows, hovering about the plant like so many skimpy moths. This graceful plant is a good companion to showier flowers such as lilies, but is not very drought tolerant.

Helenium autumnale (dogtooth daisy)
The wild type, like taller cultivars, can grow to 4 or 5 feet in gardens. In lush conditions, and without a mass of prairie grass to hold it up, it often falls over, and not in a pretty way. It is worth holding out for shorter selections of this plant (such as Wyndley Copper, 30 inches, blooming now). Varieties are available with flowers in yellow, bronze or rusty red and seem to require less water than black eyed Susans (rudbeckia).

Thermopsis villosa (or T. caroliniana) (Carolina false lupine)
This was, for some reason, one of the first plants I put in my Midwestern garden years ago, and I’ve grown it ever since. Think of it as an early blooming, light yellow lupine. It grows to about three feet.

Veronicastrum virginicum (culver’s root)
As the name implies, this is related to veronica, but it is more architectural: whorls of leaves march up tall, stately stems, the tips of which bear white, lavender or pale pink spires of little flowers in summer. Entirely self supporting in sun, and an excellent, carefree addition for the back of a border.

I have grown all these plants in Eugene for several years. They are not particular about soil and all tend to grow productively for years without division. Some may be difficult to find locally, though I purchased all of them, at various times, from retail nurseries in Eugene.

Common Ground

I must thank this year’s BRING Home and Garden Tour for getting me over to the Common Ground Garden. Billed as the first neighborhood garden in Eugene growing on a city street, it all started when Anne and Chris Donahue began growing food on a city right of way next to their yard on the west side of Van Buren Street in SW Eugene. Anne Donahue had been mowing that strip of grass for years when, five or six years ago, an idea came to her. Why not use it to provide food for area residents? Pretty soon there were 11 tomato plants and a 50 foot row of beans growing there. “It seemed a wonderful way to give back to the neighborhood,” she says.

A couple of years back, Carlos Barrera, a member Friendly Neighborhood Famers (FNF), said to Donahue “What about the plot across the street?” “Well, it’s a beautiful spot for a vegetable garden,” she responded, “but I can’t do it.” No time, no energy to spare. Doug Black, also a member of FNF, says there was talk about doing something there for years, but things came to a head after he and Katie Lewis brought a 2009 Green Neighbors Bike tour through the area. “We were standing at Annie’s looking at that big, gaping unpaved right of way across the street,” Black says. Donahue remembers him telling the crowd “One day we’ll have a community garden on that site.”

By September, Donahue was resigned to the fact that the garden had to happen. But she worried about where the energy would come from, and whether there would be enough people to take it on. Enter Robin Scott. In 2008, she had set up an online social netwoking site to organize urban farmers in the Friendly Neighborhood (http://www.eugenefriendlyfarmers.ning.com/). Now she used that site to ask, “Who wants to share this vision for a Friendly Neighborhood garden?” In response, at least a dozen people showed up for a first meeting, took a look at the site and said “Lets do it.”

“I was thrilled,” Donahue says. “We envisioned the garden and talked about a name.” It was Black who suggested ‘Common Ground’. The group hired a tractor service to haul out concrete debris and till up the grassy area with amendments, and in October there was a work party to measure out some beds . By June of this year, those beds were producing beets, chard, cauliflower, garlic, broccoli, kale, spinach, lettuce, bushels of snap peas and more.

Progress was helped by a city neighborhood matching grant that went to buy tools and the ICOSA hut (a pentagonal-shape dome shelter made from salvaged materials) built recently by Resurrected Refuse Action Team (http://www.rractionteam.com/). Carlos Barrera installed the recycled kiosk, used for posting upcoming tasks and long range plans, and a bench he built from snow boards he found in a dumpster. A bike rack is coming soon, along with raised beds close to the street for alter-abled access

Donahue, who volunteers her time to help create the Common Ground Garden, told me: “After that first meeting I presented our idea to the city, asking may we do this? Can we put in for a grant?” The City was enthusiastic. In fact it was an initiative the City of Eugene would like to encourage more of. Because of the success of Common Ground Garden, Donahue says, we can expect to see more neighborhood gardens growing throughout Eugene: on a professional level, Donahue, the City of Eugene Compost Specialist, looks to replicate the model and provide assistance for projects of this type.

Friendly Neighborhood Farmers (FNF) has about 375 members; the special interest group for the Common Ground Garden numbers 40. Scott and Black now co-administer the website, thanks to which, Scott says, “we are able to tap into a larger audience, including younger people and others who wouldn’t necessarily come to a neighborhood meeting.”

Black, who serves on the Neighborhood Leaders Council Committee on Sustainability, is really excited about the venture. “This is a win win win win win. It’s building empowerment and community cohesion. It mitigates climate change, since anything you grow at home doesn’t have to be shipped here, consuming energy. It makes people more self sufficient. Fifty percent of the kids in nearby schools use the school lunch program (a measure of economic insecurity), and some of them help out here. This is priceless social capital, for a fairly minimal investment”.

Work parties at the Common Ground Garden are 10-12 AM on the first two Saturdays of each month, and 2-4PM on the second two Sundays. Come and work, leave with produce.

POWER PLANT

Red hot pokers are not what they used to be.

I’ve been growing perennials for years, and I’ve learned a thing or two about what I like. Leaves matter. Texture and form are as important as flower color. I can live without plants that require feats of engineering to keep them upright, and I appreciate plants that flourish for several years without division, while keeping more or less to their allotted space. Attracting hummingbirds is a nice bonus. Kniphofias, or, as they are inelegantly called, red hot pokers, fill all or most of these requirements, and their distinctive flower spikes packed tight with tubular flowers contribute a special energy to perennial groupings. Foliage varies from stiff, arching sword shapes to narrow and grass like. The tidiest growers also look splendid growing among low shrubs and conifers.

Flowers go in and out of fashion. Kniphofias, like canna lilies, are enjoying a revival, and many varieties are available if you hunt for them. The blazing red and yellow bi-colors of classic red hot pokers - or torch lilies, if you prefer - are still around, but you can also find pure light yellow, cream, chartreuse and coral red ‘pokers’ ranging in height from 15 inches to 4 feet. Taller knifophia varieties combine well with dahlia, phygelius, rudbeckia and yarrow. Those that bloom in late summer are great with asters and ornamental grasses. I like to plant the smallest varieties near the edge of the border, among lower growing plants like heuchera and hardy geranium, where the whole plant can be admired.

Among my favorite kniphofias are: ‘Primrose Beauty’ (three-foot spikes in cool, light yellow, blooms mid to late summer); ‘Sunningdale Yellow’ (a little taller, blooms in early summer, in a color that leans slightly towards gold); and ‘Shining Scepter’(also early, a stunning, luminous light orange). All these look fabulous with blue or purple flowers. Try early bloomers with salvia ‘May Night’ or emerging from a froth of catmint.

‘Coral’ was the name attached to my earliest-blooming poker, but I have never been able to confirm a cultivar by this name, so perhaps it was merely a descriptive. This one grows about two feet tall, with narrow leaves and a prolific crop of spikes. It is typical of hybrids from Kniphofia triangularis, including many with flowers in soft shades of coral, apricot and cream. ‘Nancy's Red’ is a small, graceful poker with narrow foliage and flowers of deep coral red, blooming in late July. I like to see it in front of Aster x frikartii or the small shrub caryopteris (bluebeard).

A nameless favorite that blooms quite early in light coral was one of three pastel shades that that I selected from seed grown plants of the strain ‘Flamenco’. Advertisements for Flamenco always seem to stress their brilliant reds and yellows, but they seem to cover the entire range of kniphofia shades, including many pastels. If you have room to raise a number of them from seed you’ll find some lovely things.

All kniphofias bloom best in full sun, with four or five hours of sun being a reasonable minimum. Beyond that, I’ve seen a lot of contradictory information about what kniphofias need. Perhaps that means they are not very fussy. I’ve grown them for years in water-retentive soil that is often wet in winter, though never water-logged. Only ‘Little Maid’, an adorable ivory miniature named by the great British plantswoman Beth Chatto, flatly refused to grow for me. In retentive soil, established kniphofia plants are reasonably drought tolerant. In lighter soil, they’ll need ample water to bloom well. Feed plants each spring and protect them from snails, which can spoil developing flower spikes.

Winter makes a mess of kniphofia leaves. I once asked the O’Byrnes, whose wonderful borders at Northwest Garden Nursery are beautifully kept, when they cut back their kniphofias, Ernie said “We cut them down after a frost knocks them back, or anytime in a mild winter. It doesn’t seem to matter much when we do it.” With that in mind I usually leave mine until the first spring clean-up. Some people shorten the leaves by half in fall and bundle them together over the crown. Be sure to cut off the old leaves before new growth begins in spring.

If you are visiting gardens this summer, watch out for these fabulous South African natives. If you would like to see pictures of many kniphofia species and hybrids, visit http://www.theafricangarden.com/

WOODLAND, ENRICHED

Mother’s Day, 2009 saw Eugene’s first formal tour of local gardens that feature native plants. The tour was organized by the Native Gardening Awareness Program (NGAP), a committee of the Emerald Chapter of the Native Plant Society of Oregon. It was very well attended. NGAP member and tour organizer Mieko Aoki estimated that many of the gardens received well over 500 visitors. On May 9 we will be treated to a second Mother’s Day Native Garden Tour covering nine gardens and featuring a variety of Willamette Valley habitat types. Two gardens, one public, one private, are making a return appearance. The other seven are new.

One of those new gardens sits on a steep, wooded hillside of native oaks and Douglas fir on Shasta View, in Eugene’s south hills. It belongs to Clay Gautier and Gail Baker, who have lived there since 1995. At first glance, the place looks like native woodland, until you realize that no natural woodland could be so rich in species in such a small area. Aside from a raised bed bordering the driveway, it is largely native. The owners have incorporated a number of non-native rhododendrons (which are on a drip irrigation system) and there are places where vigorous native geum is fighting it out with patches of non-native geranium. But as Clay like to say, “on the genus level we are very native!”

Although Gautier and Baker describe the yard as pretty much a weed patch when they acquired it, there were some natives present besides the trees, particularly herbaceous ones: camas, Oregon iris, fawn lily and spring beauty. There was little in the way of native shrubs, except for some baldhip rose, snowberry, madrone and honeysuckle (Lonicera hispida), which is trimmed close to the ground to prevent it climbing the trees. There was also poison oak, which the owners suppressed by repeated manual clipping. They’ve added quantities of evergreen huckleberry, salal, Oregon grape, and vine maple, as well as ocean spray, red flowering currant and two Pacific dogwoods.

There are also several shrubs you encounter less often, among them Viburnum edule; white flowered Ceonothus cuneatus, a species you can see growing on Mt Pisgah; and manzanita (Arctostaphylos columbiana), a little leggy from the shade. The owners have introduced many herbaceous plants, as well. Besides such stars as trillium (both species that are locally native) and houndstongue, there are less conspicuous things like star flower, miners lettuce and pathfinder, and two good groundcovers: strawberry (probably Fragaria vesca) and false lily of the valley (Maianthemum dilatatum).

Camas was blooming when I visited. Since the deer fence was built, it blooms well and has spread. Baker said Gautier (who does most of the gardening) helps it along by shaking the seed pods around. Gautier is no longer adding much, he says, and describes the gardening routine as “mostly a removal process.” Maintenance consists of trimming back plants that get out of scale, and lots of weeding, which he does mostly in early spring. A big component of that is keeping out woody invasives such as English laurel, English hawthorn and blackberry. When I asked if they did any leaf removal, Gautier said that on the contrary, he brings in more leaves! Nothing is fertilized except the rhododendrons.

Not surprisingly, the garden attracts wildlife: newts and frogs, garter snakes and alligator lizards, foxes, moles and squirrels. Gautier has even seen a bobcat. Bird visitors include: woodpeckers (downy and pileated,) juncos, nuthatches, grossbeaks, hummingbirds and the occasional tanager.

Not far from the garden on Shasta View, just off Spring Boulevard, is a novel addition for a garden tour: Crescent Ridge is a compact planned development of ten houses clustered near the top of a 2.27 acre site, 50 percent of which is left undisturbed in native vegetation and existing trees. Runoffs from storm drains are designed to flow through the common area in a way to prevent erosion and minimize impact on the city storm water system. Individual home sites are landscaped with native plants.

Dogwood Time

So many dogwoods, so little space. There are about 45 species of cornus, the botanical name for dogwoods. Almost all of them shrubs or trees, ranging in height from a few inches to 75 feet. Many are native to North America; both the smallest and the tallest are native to Pacific Northwest forests. Bunchberry (Cornus canadensis) keeps its woody parts below ground, while Pacific dogwood (Cornus nuttallii) grows into a soaring tree. Both of them have large white bracts that look like petals. The true flowers are small, and bunched together in a central disc between the bracts. A number of other dogwood species share this feature. Many other dogwoods are well worth growing, but deciduous species with showy bracts are the subject of this column.

Eastern, or flowering, dogwood (Cornus florida) is a slow-growing tree that usually grows 20-25 feet, forming a rounded, low-branching crown. Gardeners love this tree for its modest size, long spring display and a beguiling twiggy, layered. Bracts are normally white, but cultivars with pink or reddish bracts are very popular. This should be the perfect tree for small gardens, and sometimes it is. Unfortunately it is prone to anthracnose, a serious fungal disease that demands regular applications of chemicals for effective control. Adequate water, feeding and good air circulation may help protect it against anthracnose.

The same disease afflicts our Pacific dogwood unless it grows in perfect conditions. It is a taller, narrower tree than Eastern dogwood and less densely twiggy and floriferous. But the bracts are larger, and the tree is very beautiful in bloom. The vigorous selection ‘Colrigo Giant’ has 6 - 8 inch flower heads. Pacific dogwood frequently reblooms in late summer and has red fall color. For some reason, it is more common in and near Portland than in the southern Willamette Valley. We see it at its best at higher elevations, as along the Mckenzie highway.

Unlike the Eastern dogwood, Pacific dogwood dislikes conventional garden conditions with summer irrigation, fertilizer and pruning, and the bark is easily damaged. It prefers very good drainage and minimal summer watering, and should certainly be tried in native gardens. Since it can be difficult to transplant successfully, many professionals suggest establishing very young plants. If at all possible, choose a location for either dogwood that is not too hot but has excellent air circulation. Both are understory trees in nature, but being crowded in by larger trees exacerbates disease.

Cornus ‘Eddie’s White Wonder’, a hybrid between Eastern and Pacific dogwoods, is intermediate in overall shape, has large bracts and blooms more or less with C. nuttallii. It is better adapted to garden conditions than Pacific dogwood, and is said to be somewhat resistant to anthracnose. For dependable disease resistance, though, gardeners turn to Chinese dogwood (Cornus kousa). This one blooms in early summer after the leaves have expanded, and therefore lacks the particular beauty of trees that flower on leafless branches; but Chinese dogwood is lovely in its own way, and has attractive, clean looking foliage. It naturally makes a big, multistemmed shrub, but can be trained to a single trunk.

Although not entirely immune to anthracnose, Chinese dogwood is much more resistant than American ‘flowering’ dogwoods. This resistance apparently carries through in hybrids between Cornus kousa and C. florida. ‘Stella Aurora’ (white ‘flowers’) and ‘Stellar Pink’ are the result of a breeding program at Rutgers University. They grow with a single trunk to 20 feet tall and wide. Bloom is heavy and intermediate in time between the parents. Fall color is said to be brilliant, as is C. kousa.
Cornus ‘Starlight’ is a new Rutgers cross between C. kousa and C. nuttallii. I look forward to seeing this one.

If you don’t have room for any of these trees, there is always tiny, creeping bunchberry (Cornus canadensis). Give it a cool, spongy soil in light shade, and it makes the world’s most elegant ground cover.