Giant Winter Spinach

It's early May, but it feels like March.  The temperatures have remained cool enough to keep my Giant Winter Spinach first in the running for most successful overwintering leafy green in my planter boxes.  Yes, we have Rhubarb, Strawberries, Blueberries, Raspberries, Orange Mint, Yerba Buena, Oregon Grape, Sorrel, Romaine, Radicchio, Violets, Pineapple Guava, Apples, Poppies and more mixed in the ornamental beds, but our 2 little planter boxes are reserved for Peas, Spinach, Chard, Basil and Tomatoes.  All could be easily mixed in the remaining landscape, but the planter boxes came first, before we had time to devote to ornamental cultivation and conscious expansion.  (Are you familiar with the saying "The cobbler's son wears no shoes"?)  And we enjoy the quasi-structured feel of keeping the short-season crops in a devoted space (even though the boxes are small, we still practice rotation).

We like tomatoes as much as you, but are exercising patience this year and holding off on planting.  Last year the late-season rains drowned so many of our seedlings (if only we'd had a little cold-frame set-up then - a gardener's umbrella to weather the wet), the size of our plant graveyard nearly doubled.  Boo hoo, right?  You sort of get used to it.  Still, we like to honor our little friends...

Photo Courtesy of Watchful Creatures

Well, in looking back to see where I got this Giant Winter Spinach seed from, I found the excellent website http://www.kitchengardenseeds.com/index.html, full of easy explanations for edible gardening.  In their words, "Spinach prefers the cool, sunny weather of late spring and early fall. If you simply must have summer spinach, provide partial shade, plant the seed deeper and water copiously. Spinach adores rich soil: amend the spinach bed well with compost and/or manure, dolomite lime and complete organic fertilizer. Keep the bed evenly moist and weeded. Early thinnings are wonderful for spring salads. For the kitchen gardener, it is practical to harvest by using the outer leaves from each plant or by cutting the whole plant, leaving 1” for possible regrowth. Or, broadcast seed and grow as a ‘cut and come again’ crop of tender leaves."  Here's what ours looks like today!

P.S.  It tastes great too.  Happy Mother's Day!

Stalking Wild Greens

When talking about weeds, I find the least accusitory definition is "any plant not wanted in the location it grows".  Often in gardening, and definitely in the Pacific Northwest, our most common garden-variety weeds are wild-grown native plants, edible or otherwise useful.  One has only to decide to put them to their use.  If, in your own garden, you're not content with the natural invasions of inconspicuous foliage bearing unpretentious blooms, consider tasting them...if only once.  It's possible you'll enjoy the sweet flavor and juiciness of Miner's Lettuce, and be tempted to further harvest them for salads, smoothies, and fresh eating.

Miner's Lettuce (Montia perfoliata), is a Pacific Northwest wild native that got its name from history's gold miners who sought its freshness in late winter through early spring.  Take a look around your own yard and you may find some.  Gastronomes are rediscovering the consumable value of this and other garden-variety weeds.  These days, it is increasingly found at farmers' markets.  For some, it's always held value.  During the winter and spring that I worked the landscape crew in Laurelhurst Park, I saw the same petite grandmother harvest a large patch on the park's grounds several times.

So how do you go about harvesting this diminutive lilypad-looking green?  This simple instructional video shows how to make the most of one of our early spring "weeds".

Winter Blooming Witch Hazel

It's snowing outside.  If 2010 brings familiar seasons, we won't see spring for a couple more months, and most of the garden sleeps.  Yet, tucked back into the understory there now occurs an elegant bloom.  Jelena (Hamamelis x intermedia 'Jelena'), a Witch Hazel with coppery-red twisted, papery flowers, is awake.  You can smell the crisp, spicy scent before you see the lady herself.  Witch Hazels rely heavily on scent to attract the few pollinators that are about this time of year.  They're small of stature (10-15' tall x wide) and grow with an open habit.  The crinkled, papery leaves turn a brilliant orange-scarlet in Fall.  Organic gardeners will appreciate their relative lack of pests and diseases.  The ladies are tolerant of full sun, but if you can provide a half day (of dappled or direct), you'll find they make an excellent addition to the small urban garden, and to organic gardens of all sizes.     

Pear Tree in the Night Snow

After pruning and in the dark the trunk is barely visible, giving the impression that what exists is not in fact a rooted tree, but an autonomous configuration of floating branches...

The Christmas Wow

Garden-wise, was really that Portland had 3 days of clear, bright skies.  But I'll admit it wasn't until today that we got out into the yard to take advantage of one.  In winter, as we're bringing the gardening indoors with seasonal decorations of evergreen boughs, ferns, berries, forced bulbs, and our marginal specimens, it's easy to put the outdoors maintenance out of mind.  Our small pond clean-up and winter tree pruning chores were on hold.  So today we went out and pruned our Bartlett Pear.  The tree had been pruned twice prior to our ownership of the property, each time in a way that resulted in irreparable structural disadvantages.  The first pruning was a topping that resulted in 8-10' tall water sprouts.  The second one was a uniform "haircut" that caused the tree to send out even more of them.  The weak branching returned in density, to the delight of neighborhood Finches and BlueJays alike.  When leafed out, this tree structure provides lots of cover for the birds.  We love the birds so we don't mind the aesthetics much, but with our Northwest winter winds, we anticipate some limbs will fall.  There's no recovering the tree from this growth habit now, so we just went in for some damage control, removing several feet from the tops of the thickest of the water sprouts; thinning out smaller sprouts, crossed & dead branches and relieving the weaker branches from some top weight.  The final cut looks a little rough, but come spring it'll fill in nicely.  The cut branches are stacked in the yard, waiting for me to go out and cut them up for next summer's kindling.  Here's hoping that the sun holds for one more day...