GLORIOUS GARLIC

Glorious Garlic One of the smallest and nicest farm stands in Eugene can be found in the courtyard of the Excelsior Inn on 13th Ave. It is operated each Friday, July through October, by Angela Andre, manager of Excelsior Farm. When Andre’s garlic caught my eye, it was the first I’d heard of Excelsior Farm. In the fall of 2009, the owner of the Excelsior Inn and Restorante, Maurizio Paparo, turned a five acre pasture on his property into a farm to supply the restaurant with fresh organic eggs and produce. He hired Andre, a veteran organic farmer, to set up and manage the farm. By summer 2011 they were producing enough to supply the farm stand and to offer CSA shares. Since the farm got started in fall, one of the first things Andre planted was garlic. How appropriate for an Italian-inflected restaurant, and what glorious, succulent garlic Andre grows! Since I am just beginning to grow garlic, I asked her to tell me something about her methods. It seems that garlic is pretty easy to grow and not much bothered by disease, but it isn’t foolproof. A prolonged, hard freeze can kill garlic. The commonest problem, though, is mold, caused by too much moisture retention around the bulb. The cold, wet spring of 2011 destroyed a lot of garlic in the Willamette Valley. The best insurance against rot is to grow garlic in loose soil in raised beds. Andre’s soil is a good sandy loam, which she forms into raised rows with a small, custom built hiller. She plants garlic from mid- to late- September through the middle of October. “You want to get it in before it rains,” she says. The most important amendment for garlic, Andre told me, is phosphate-rich bonemeal, which is worked into the soil before planting. (Andre uses a custom mix of blood meal, bone meal and kelp) Individual cloves of garlic are planted 8-12 inches apart. Once the garlic sprouts, and before any freezing weather, she mulches with used horse bedding (coarse sawdust with roughly 1 percent manure) and she’ll give the garlic a foliar feed when it shoots up in spring. I grew a little garlic myself last year, mainly for a spring supply of young ‘green’ garlic, which is garlic harvested in an immature state, before the bulbs are fully formed. I’ve developed a real fancy for the stuff. I particularly like it for the subtle flavor and unctuous quality it imparts to green herby sauces that are good with fish. If you enjoy green garlic, it is well worth planting some just for that purpose: it’s expensive at the market, and you can harvest it in time to use the space for summer crops. And you don’t have to worry about curing it Maturity and proper curing are crucial factors in determining how well and how long the garlic will store. Garlic heads are usually ready for harvest sometime in July or early August, when the lower leaves begin to yellow and wither. Hardneck varieties, like the big, succulent Chesnok heads I admired at Andre’s farm stand, produce a flowering stalk (the ‘whistle’) that emerges from the center of the bulb and eventually becomes woody. These varieties are relatively early to mature and have a shorter shelf life than softneck garlic, which produces no whistles and is the type used for braiding. Andre harvests hardnecks in July, cures them for three weeks and expects the bulbs to keep until December. Properly cured softneck garlic will keep up to 9 or 12 months, depending on variety. Here’s a useful quote from John Scheepers Kitchen Garden Seeds: “When harvesting Garlic, take extra care not to bruise the bulbs. Gently shake or brush off most of the soil and then transfer the plants - with stems still attached - to a cool, dry area out of direct sunlight. Spread the plants out in a single layer; good air circulation during the curing process is very important. Garlic bulbs should cure for about a month. The process is complete once the stem is completely dry all the way down to the head. Cut the stems off about an inch above the top of the head and put the heads into a mesh bag or basket. Any bulbs that haven’t dried properly or show signs of decay should be used up first. Store Garlic in a dark place with relatively low humidity. Ideal storage temperature is a chilly 35 to 40 degrees F. Maintaining a consistently cool temperature will prevent sprouting.”

Baby Steps

I’ve put in many years of gardening, but when it comes to growing vegetables in the Willamette Valley I am pretty much a novice. Last year I took some baby steps, following our move, in the fall of 2009, to a sunny house and garden already equipped with several board-sided, 8’ by 4’ raised beds. Broccoli, string beans and carrots were flourishing there when we moved in, which was encouraging.

2010 was a very busy year, and my vegetable gardening was sporadic and unplanned. But thanks to those raised beds I made a start, and learned a good deal in the process. For one thing, I learned that it is well worth seizing any short, dry, mild patch of weather in February, even if the weather that follows is wet, cold and miserable. I also learned that however poorly you grow potatoes, you may get something out of it. And I learned that adequate soil fertility is absolutely vital to edible, productive crops. I won’t pretend I’ve mastered how to achieve it.

I learned that I won’t be able to grow spinach at all unless I take serious action against slugs and snails; that taking the trouble to plant seed at an appropriate density may be less tedious that thinning the seedlings; and that you should stake your peas before they fall over. I also discovered that growing from purchased starts instead of seed is convenient but expensive, and should be reserved for things like broccoli and kale that produce useful amounts of food from a handful of plants over a long period.

There were some marked successes. Most, not surprisingly, were with things that routinely appear on ‘easy to grow’ lists, such as peas, kale, lettuce grown from transplants. The peas I sowed in mid February were Super Sugar Snap (Territorial Seed Company) which has very thick, fleshy pods. I didn’t particularly like the large pod to pea ratio when they were cooked. Luckily, we and all our friends greatly enjoyed eating the pods raw. The red, oval radishes (incorrectly labeled French Breakfast) germinated readily and grew to a delicious third of an inch long, then stopped growing and turned woody. Nothing would get them going again. A friend mentioned that radishes must never dry out, but these seemed to need more than unfailing moisture. I suspect the problem was lack of available nutrients in still-cold soil.

Early summer transplants of Red Russian kale are still producing to this day, and the worst challenge they ever faced was from aphids. September transplants of black Italian kale yielded periodic crops all winter (for yummy pasta with greens, oil and garlic) and are clearly poised to make a forest of tender sprouts as the weather warms. I had less luck with chard, which suffered a nasty attack of leaf-mining borers in late summer and fall. I thought the leaves might outgrow the borers with ample liquid food and water, but that didn’t work. The only fix appeared to be a floating row cover.

Broccoli planted in late summer just didn’t grow much. I think that brassicas (excepting kale) need more soil fertility than my old raised beds provided, even with a generous allowance of balanced fertilizer at planting time. This year I’ll try manure before planting in addition to fertilizer, and maybe some Azomite. I suspect my long experience growing perennials in fertile clay-loam spoiled me, and I simply cannot conceive of the amount of fertilizer a veggie may require. Fertility early In the year while soils are cold is a common problem for organic gardeners. Some kind of liquid fertilizer is the best remedy for that.

Totally fresh salad greens, year-round if possible, are a high priority for me. One of my happiest discoveries last year was Sylvetta Wild Arugula (also from Territorial) which is somewhat like the kind you get in European restaurants. It was slow to germinate and slow to grow. But it was also slow to bolt, and although quite peppery it never became inedibly hot in summer as common rocket can. (That common rocket, self sown in fall, seems to be the one to grow through the winter, though.)

I’ve been eating corn salad (also known as mache) all winter. I sowed some seed last spring, and the plants promptly bolted. But the prolific seeds they yielded germinated wildly as the weather cooled in fall, and the plants continued to grow steadily without protection. I like to mix the little mache plants with the lushest rosettes I can find of that annoying weed, little bittercress, which equals mache for cold hardiness and is just beginning to bloom. Some people find it too strong, but I like it in moderation. But as my husband could tell you, we like our salads rugged.

Survive and Thrive

The Good Earth Home and Garden Show is coming up in Eugene this month. One of the scheduled speakers is Carol Deppe, Corvallis plant breeder, expert gardener and an authority on duck keeping. Deppe will also be signing her latest book, The Resilient Gardener: Food Production and Self-reliance in Uncertain Times, published by Chelsea Green. This exciting book could hardly be more timely. The uncertain times of the title extend from personal adversity to the shared uncertainties that now confront all of us.
Widespread financial insecurity. An industrial food supply that denies us proper nourishment. Global climate change that promises shortages of food and water and an increase in ‘natural’ disasters.

Not surprisingly, people are increasingly interested in growing some of their own food - it’s a way of exercising some level of control in our lives. Maybe it just means having something in the garden to fall back on if we forget to shop for greens, or a bed or two of something special that is prohibitively expensive to buy. A small but growing band of gardeners are producing a substantial portion of their food supply. Whatever our level of gardening, Deppe points out, most of us still garden for the good times. She wants us to prepare for the challenges that must come sooner or later, including wild weather, special dietary needs, failing strength, and unavailability of inputs (water, fertilizer, fuel, even seed). So diet, health, labor and exercise, tools, soil and fertility, watering and seed saving are all addressed with this very smart author’s characteristic depth and thoughtfulness.

Deppe’s book lays out in great detail how to grow, store and use “the five crops you need to survive and thrive – potatoes, corn, beans, squash and eggs.” Many people could get by without the eggs, but Deppe believes (based on her own experience) a purely vegan diet is not for everyone. Each of these staples gets a chapter to itself. Other crops are discussed in earlier chapters, often with valuable insights you won’t find anywhere else. Chapter notes include references to books that provide more basic gardening know-how.

There’s not much point in growing something if you don’t know how to store it successfully, or get it to the table in a palatable form. Deppe grows several varieties of her staple plant foods, both for flavor variety and because some are good for one thing, some another. Some corn varieties, for instance, are good for polenta, some for baked goods. Why corn, not wheat? Deppe is gluten intolerant and highly allergic to wheat, and she has lots of experience with alternatives, especially corn: “delicious, traditional corn varieties,” that is, not the modern hybrid corn of agribusiness. But she also explains that corn is much easier to grow and harvest than other grains, and gives a higher yield than all crops except potatoes.

Potatoes reign supreme among staple foods for their ease of production, versatility and nutritional value. They are a good source of high quality protein as well as calories, and can be grown in areas too cold and wet to grow grain, and on poorer soils. Remarkably, Deppe grows potatoes without irrigation, and her storage method is about as simple as you could imagine. The chapter on potatoes is one of the most densely useful pieces of gardening literature I’ve ever read, not least for its treatment of potato diseases, how to avoid them how to spot them and what to do about it.

I asked Deppe, by e-mail, why she didn’t include rabbits in her brief discussion of meat animals. She replied giving several reasons in great detail, adding, “I didn't have the room or the personal experience....And The Resilient Gardener was designed to cover certain topics in much greater detail than they are normally covered, not to be yet one more superficial treatment giving just a little bit about everything.” That is the strength of The Resilient Gardener: its wealth of detail of the kind that reflects a lifetime of experience, carefully observed. If sometimes, just sometimes, the level of detail seems a bit over the top, that’s easily forgiven. I’m confident that everyone, beginner or expert, will learn from this book and feel better prepared to carry their gardening to a new level.

A CALL TO ACTION

Once in a while, something you’ve known for a long time suddenly hits home with a force you never felt before. I was loading up some plants at Doak Creek Native Plant Nursery when the nursery’s proprietor, Cynthia Lafferty, handed me something she wanted me to read. It was the cover story in a trade publication from Fourth Corner Nurseries in Bellingham, WA, entitled Gardening for Life. The article was written by Dr. Douglas Tallamy, a professor of Entomology and Wildlife Ecology at the University of Delaware.

Lafferty had been shocked by some statistics cited in Tallamy’s article, and so was I. Fifty four percent of the land area of lower 48 states is now in towns and suburbs. We’ve connected them with 4 million miles of roads, the paved surface of which, Tallamy says, is “nearly five times the size of New Jersey.” Forty one percent of the remaining land is under some form of agriculture. (That number that is actually shrinking, as suburban sprawl continues at the rate of over 2 million acres a year.) Add up those numbers. That means we have taken over 95% of nature and made it unnatural. Ninety five percent.

Much of the land that’s left is in small fragments and is impacted by humans to some degree, including some of the paltry 2.6% of the lower 48 that’s in designated wilderness. Fragmented land is especially prone to degradation and loss of species, as creatures become more vulnerable to unfamiliar predators and alien plants move in. Alien plants have invaded 100 million acres of land across the United States, an area that is expected to double in the next five years. Alien plants too often out-compete natives, forming monocultures that don’t provide what local wildlife needs to survive.

If you believe that biodiversity matters, these are shocking numbers. Species have been shown to disappear, over time, in direct proportion to habitat loss. No wonder a third or more of birds native to the US are in rapid decline. At this point, a major loss of biodiversity is already under way, especially in the densely developed eastern states. Tallamy says 40% of Delaware’s plant species are rare or extinct, and 41% of its forest birds no longer nest in the state. What Tallamy wants us to understand, though, is that gardeners are in a position to make a real difference. There is ample evidence that wildlife can coexist with humans, if humans are willing to manage their environment to accommodate wildlife.

The entire food chain rests on the photosynthetic ability of plants. Animals either eat plants, or they eat other animals that do. The largest group of animals that convert plant food into animal food is insects. And insects sustain much of the rest of the food chain, including 96% of terrestrial birds. So many animals depend on insects for food that “removing insects from an ecosystem spells its doom,” Tallamy says. Human-dominated landscapes could support far more insects, and more biodiversity, than they do at present. Look at our 40 million acres of mown grass. All the lawns that represents, and most of the plants around them, contribute very little in the way of habitat for insects.

What we need is native plants, and lots of them. Tallamy’s research shows that native trees and other plants support 29 times more biodiversity than non-native ornamentals do. That’s not because those ornamentals are inherently less useful to animals: where those plants are native, they support animal life as well as our own native plants do here. The point is that, with a few exceptions called generalists, the insects within a given ecosystem depend for food on the species with which they evolved. Even the generalists can utilize a greater variety of native plants than non-native. This story is laid out persuasively in Bringing Nature Home, a book authored by Tallamy and published by Timber Press.

Loss of biodiversity through habitat destruction may be as great a threat to humanity as global climate change, and we are not doing a great job of minimizing either. Unlike with climate change, however, the results of individual human efforts to help preserve biodiversity in gardens are readily observable. Native plant gardeners report more insect visitors, more birds, more salamanders, lizards and frogs. Yes, some of their plants get eaten, but that’s the point.

The article by Douglas Tallamy, Gardening for Life, is available on line. Go to http://bringingnaturehome.net and click on About Native Gardening.

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.