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Elisabeth C. Miller Library

Keyword: Vegetable gardening

Garden Tip #156

After your first summer water bill arrives, you might want to reconsider what plants you reward with this precious commodity. Give newly planted trees and shrubs first priority because your investment in water now will pay off for years to come. Next in line should be the vegetables, but some are thirstier than others. Don’t withhold water from cucumbers, celery or squash, or you may be disappointed with yield and flavor.
Here is watering guidance for growing vegetables and a vegetable by vegetable guide.

Tilth Alliance

Seattle Tilth, Tilth Producers and Cascade Harvest Coalition merged to form Tilth Alliance, “a nationally recognized non-profit organization dedicated to cultivating a sustainable community, one garden at a time.” Their mission is to build an ecologically sound, economically viable and socially equitable food system.

Garden Tip #166

Kitchen Garden from Great Britain is the only magazine devoted to growing fruits and vegetables. The glossy monthly magazine includes growing tips from readers, articles on growing techniques and new cultivars, plus a monthly feature on small-scale chicken rearing. Subscribe for a mere $55.00 dollars a year at their website, or read it for free at the Miller Library.

Seed Money

“SeedMoney is a Maine-based 501c nonprofit helping US and global food garden projects to thrive through grants, crowdfunding assistance and free garden planning software.”

American Grown

American grown book cover Michelle Obama needs no introduction and even her book “American Grown,” describing the White House Kitchen Garden she started, is already well known. For some, this may be an easy book to dismiss as a public service announcement, or worse, as a political statement. This is unfortunate, because it is a good gardening book, both for techniques and as a model of how gardening improves people’s lives in many ways.

This book has many authors. The White House gardening staff share their experiences and appreciation of the garden along with basic cultural advice, geared to both the new gardener and to those unfamiliar with the wide range of delicious foods they can easily grow. White House chefs share tips on harvesting and preserving, and provide recipes that make it simple to add more fruits and vegetable to your diet.

Equity and diversity are quiet, background themes in “American Grown”, but it clear that in this garden “equality is a key part of the message of planting day. We are all down in the dirt. Anyone present can help dig. There is no hierarchy, no boss, and no winner.”

Obama also reaches out to those involved with community gardens, school gardens, and food resources across the country (including Will Allen), and with other programs that encourage exercise for youth and healthy school lunch choices.

One such garden is the New Roots Community Farm in San Diego, where gardeners from Uganda, Kenya, Vietnam, Mexico, and Guatemala began working together. “At first, they weren’t sure how people from so many different countries would get along—especially since the garden had only two hoses to share and the farmers often didn’t speak the same language. But their enthusiasm and determination drew them together.”

Excerpted from the Winter 2018 Arboretum Bulletin.

Rhapsody in Green: A Novelist, An Obsession, A Laughably Small Excuse for a Vegetable Garden

Rhapsody in Green cover

If you have ever sighed wistfully while leafing through garden design books lush with illustrations of meadowy expanses, sweeping perennial borders against a backdrop of graceful tall trees, gently trickling water features, charming gazebos, and kitchen gardens large enough to feed a ravenous extended family, then British novelist Charlotte Mendelson’s Rhapsody in Green will provide a welcome relief.

She is wickedly self-deprecating (referring to herself at one point as Incapability Mendelson), and many urban gardeners will identify with her grand ambitions for a very limited space. Her writing is full of sharp wit, and brims over with fierce enthusiasm (for unusual varieties of edible plants in particular). Is it foolhardy to keep trying—and failing–to grow heirloom apple trees, or is it laudable indomitability? You may laugh in recognition when Mendelson describes her “seed worship,” a frenetic compulsion to acquire heaps of seed packets for plants she may never have space to grow, or time to sow. Gardening projects fall by the wayside (germinating seeds abandoned, fruit leather made from foraged quinces growing a fur of mold) but Mendelson’s devotion to the garden finds her wandering away from her dinner guests to go putter among the leaves in the dark.

Despite the vicarious exhaustion of accompanying Mendelson on her journey of gardening trial and error, what makes this a compelling book to read is the quality of the writing, and the incisive attention to detail. She may struggle to eke a single zucchini or patch of mint out of her small plot, but Mendelson is keenly attuned to the natural world and to the unalloyed happiness that we find in growing things—even if we sometimes kill them. The book is arranged by season (subheadings include: “Wasting Money Wisely,” “Tristesse of Germination,” “The Fallacy of Mint,” “Tree Envy,” “On Being a Bad Gardener”). You may find yourself chortling one moment and stunned silent by her closely observed and beautiful description of the natural world the next.

Some books have bibliographies, but this one has “The Blacklist:” books which will “lead you astray; approach with caution.” Mendelson singles out Joy Larkcom as the author who started her on this path to ruin. She recommends The Organic Salad Garden as the most important title for the aspiring edible gardener.

Garden Tip #107

While vegetable gardeners are inundated with zucchinis and other summer produce it can be hard to imagine the winter garden. But July is the time to plant seeds for fall and winter crops of cabbage, Asian greens, collard greens, spinach and lettuce. Transplants should go in the ground in mid August. Perennial and biennial flowers can also be started from seed right now. For an excellent list of what plants to sow throughout the year check out The Maritime Northwest Garden Guide produced by Seattle Tilth. It is available for $22.00, including tax and shipping. Call 633-0451 or order a copy online.

Garden Tip #23

Here is a short list of good books for both the arm-chair kitchen gardener and for those who like to get their hands dirty:

  • The New Kitchen Garden by Anna Pavord (Dorling Kindersley, $29.95) has lots of photos and diagrams with well organized, concise text.
  • Vegetables from Amaranth to Zucchini: The Essential Reference by Elizabeth Schneider (William Morrow, $60.00) has “500 recipes and 275 photographs” focusing on the history of vegetables and how to use them in the kitchen. It has no growing information, however.
  • The Complete Book of Edible Landscaping by Rosalind Creasy (Sierra Club Books, $25.00) introduces the idea of planting fruits and vegetables all around the garden.
  • Designing and Maintaining Your Edible Landscape Naturally by Robert Kourik (Metamorphic Press, available used online and at the Miller Library) is a classic resource thick with practical details on everything from energy-conserving landscaping and soil preparation to drip irrigation for fruit trees.
  • How to Grow More Vegetables: And Fruits, Nuts, Berries, Grains and Other Crops Than You Ever Thought Possible on Less Land Than You Can Imagine by John Jeavons (Ten Speed Press, $17.95) is an old classic which has just been revised and reissued.
  • The Cook and the Gardener: a Year of Recipes and Writings from the French Country-side by Amanda Hesser (W.W. Norton, $32.50) is a delightful book divided into seasons with diary-like entries about living, gardening and cooking on a French farm.