WOW.  I’ve never seen such a huge increase in inventory in such a short period of time.  We have easily over 100 varieties of tomatoes in stock today – who knows how long they will last, but shipments will continue to come in for several weeks.  Quantities are not high for some varieties – we only have one flat of some types - so come on out and shop while the selection is best.  We have some very unusual varieties that I don’t believe we’ve ever carried here before, and some of them sound worth trying.  Here’s a small sampling of those that caught my eye:

• Tumbling Tom Red – this indeterminate variety would be perfect in a hanging basket, cascading 20″ or more, with loads of 1-2″ fruits.
• Costoluto Fiorentino – this Italian heirloom is high is sugar and also high in acid, which gives it an outstanding flavor.
• Cour di Bue – another Italian variety, this one an ‘oxheart’ type – heart-shaped and meaty; vigorous plant
• Saint Pierre – this old traditional French variety is supposed to do well in cooler growing regions, and until frost
• Bloody Butcher – this is an early-maturing variety with excellent flavor and yields

I would be remiss if I didn’t remind you that our weather is still a bit cool for tomatoes, so please provide them with some protection if you are planting them outside now.  One of our water-filled season extenders would do the trick, and help you get a jump-start on the harvests to come.

Watch this blog for further posts on tomatoes.  I will be sharing our tips for growing the best tomatoes, as well as which varieties have been the crowd favorites at our annual tomato festival.  Stay tuned…..

If your backyard (or front yard!) is clamoring for some love and attention, we’ve got just the class for you!  For you do-it-yourselfers, we are offering another opportunity to learn the basics of landscape design.  We have invited back professional landscape designer Ann Nickerson, who will give a double-length class this time.  The first hour, she will talk about the important design principles you should consider, as well as things like garden styles, functions of the space, making good plant selections, and how to deal with problem areas.  After taking a break, the second hour will be a little more hands-on:  Ann will show how to take graph paper to draw out your plans; how to measure a site; and how to lay out a site plan.  By the end of class and after talking with Ann about your garden space, you should leave here with concrete plans to make your garden dreams a reality!  This class is free, but since space is limited, please call to reserve your spot – 503-649-4568.

The Friends of the Rogerson Clematis Collection are holding their second annual benefit, Inviting Vines II, on Saturday, May 23rd, and you can purchase your $20 tickets here.  See how local gardeners grow these unique and beautiful vines – from a few well-chosen clematis cohabitating in mixed borders and containers to gardens beset by clematis mania.  The tour will include:

• The lush and colorful borders at Phyllis McCanna and Gary Smith’s garden.
• Nancy and Ron Gronowski’s verdant woodland garden, which is framed by two 60-year old dogwoods, firs and hemlocks accented by specimen shrubs and perennials.
• A red barn focal point in the large, country garden of Charlene and Bill Tuttle where large mixed borders consort with vegetables, berries and a small orchard.
• Nancy Dunis’ eclectic garden of themed plantings augmented with colorful object d’art.
• A 50’ totem pole carved from a recently deceased cedar tree in Judy Dauble’s one acre garden filled with beautifully maintained mature trees and shrubs and vintage structures.

The Rogerson Clematis Collection garden is open year round and makes an ideal gardener excursion – it is located at Luscher Farm, 125 Rosemont Road in West Linn.  Check their website to see what is in bloom before you head out.

You may not know this (or maybe you do and don’t know the details), but we put out a monthly Farmington Gardens newsletter for our customers and local gardening community.  The Farmington Gardener is full of gardening tips, ideas, and information, along with details about upcoming events and new products.  The e-mailed version of our newsletter (sent out monthly to Garden Rewards members) also contains hard-to-come-by coupons that are both timely and valuable!  You can also view past editions of our newsletter in our newsletter archives.  Our archived newsletters are exactly the same as those that we e-mail out, but without the attached coupons or lists of specials.

By now you are hopefully intrigued and want to to find out how to sign up for our monthly mailings and the elusive coupons that they contain.  The answer is simple: we need your email address!  Sending out thousands upon thousands of printed newsletters is simply too cost prohibitive, so a few years back we went all digital and now our monthly newsletter is created in a user friendly PDF format, so that we can simply send our customers a link and let them download and read at their leisure without wasting a lot of paper and resources.  By doing this, we can produce our newsletter monthly (instead of quarterly or yearly) and focus more on useful and informative content than the mind-boggling task and expense of printing, addressing, and mailing hardcopies to everyone.

Our newsletters in our online archives are freely available to anyone and everyone that wants to peruse them, but you need to sign up to receive the emailed version which contains the coupons!  You can sign up in the store, or online at this link.  If you are a current customer and not receiving our mailings, please follow the signup link and resend us your information or contact our store at 503-649-4568 to make sure that we have your current address in our system.  We value the confidence you place in us by sharing your information, and we assure you that we will never share or sell your information to others.  We also know that most people (including ourselves) are sick of the constant stream of junk mail and constant advertisements that seems to clog up all of our mailboxes , so we make it a rule to limit our mailings to just our once-monthly newsletter.

A Pack of Butterflies

I was walking through our production greenhouses this morning, and was suprised at what I found in one of them – A few thousand butterflies!

After the initial shock (this would have made a great horror movie, especially the dramatic sound of a few thousand little wings flapping), I looked it up and identified these little guys as Painted Lady Butterflies (I believe the Western Painted Lady).  Apparently they found the greenhouses to be a good warm place, and a good source of moisture.  We’re not sure where they came from, but it was a real sight to see!    They are starting to disperse through the nursery and places beyond now, but we were glad to have them here while we did!

The spinach in our demo garden is looking fantastic this week!  And what is amazing is that it was planted mid-October.  After some fall harvesting, it wintered over in a mini-hoop house.  We didn’t harvest much during the Arctic Blast of  ‘08, but once the days started lengthening just a bit, they started shooting out some great new growth. 

To celebrate all this delicious spring spinach, this week’s recipe is from Rose Marie Nichols McGee, from her book  The Bountiful Container.  Rose Marie will be here at Farmington Gardens in August, giving a talk on cooking seasonally from your garden, and how to start plans for a fall garden.  We’ll have more info for you a bit later on that great class.

Spinach with Lemon Thyme

• 1 pound spinach
• 2 teaspoons olive oil
• 1 garlic clove, peeled and crushed
• 2 teaspoons chopped fresh lemon thyme
• salt to taste
• juice of one lemon

Rinse the spinach thoroughly and remove any tough stems.  Dry the spinach well in a salad spinner or with paper towels.  Heat the oil in a large heavy skillet over low heat.  Add the garlic and saute until it begins to turn golden, then remove; do not let the garlic burn.  Immediately add the spinach and thyme and saute until the spinach turns bright green, about 5 minutes, then drain.  Season the spinach lightly with salt, and place in a hot serving dish.  Sprinkle with the lemon juice and serve at once.

Thank you to all who attended our two sessions on Kitchen Gardening – they were both lively classes, and we enjoyed meeting you all, and hearing about the new gardens you are planning!    It is obvious there will be lots of good eating going on this season!

For those of you not able to be with us for either of these classes, I wanted you to have the highlights.  So here are my top ten tips for having a successful garden that you actual enjoy creating and maintaining ~

1. Location, location, location.  Choose the sunniest spot you’ve got, preferably 8-12 hours a day of direct sun.  We can’t overemphasize this one – it is the single most important factor to the success of most gardens.   If you are interested in growing any of the warm weather crops – tomatoes, peppers, melons, squash, cucumbers, eggplant – you must have lots of sunshine.  If your garden is somewhat shady, you still can garden, but should stick to the crops that will thrive in that environment:  lettuces, spinach, peas, onions.
2. It’s all about the soil.  Focus on feeding your soil and not your plants, and you will be well rewarded.  With luck, you should have lots of earthworms working away in your garden – this is one sign of healthy soil.  Compost is a very important addition to all types of soil: it helps loosen clay, allowing it to drain and have better aeration.  And paradoxically, it also allows soil to retain moisture during the heat of the summer, just when you need it.  Compost also creates the perfect climate in your soil to allow the nutrients present to be taken up by your plants.  All the nutrients in the world aren’t enough if they aren’t accessible.
3. Use raised beds where possible.  There are no downsides except the initial investment, and you will reap the rewards for years.  They offer so many advantages:  the soil warms up and dries out faster in the early spring, allowing you to plant earlier.  By not stepping in the beds, the soil will stay loose and uncompacted, allowing your plants to grow deeper root systems.  This in turn allows for a slightly closer spacing, because roots go down and not out.  Hence, better space utilization and more harvest!
4. Rotate crops.  Avoid planting the same crops in the same space every year, and you will lessen your chances for soil-borne diseases that can occur.  
5. Interplant and successively plant.  Try thinking of your garden as a diverse ecosystem instead of a farm with rows of monocrops.  By interspersing your plants into smaller clusters, you will reduce pest infestations and the spread of disease.   And plan for succession harvests – plant items like lettuces, spinach, beans, and peas every two or three weeks for a continual harvest throughout the season. 
6. Use smart watering techniques: if possible water from below with soaker hoses or drip systems.  This will keep the foliage from getting wet, possibly setting up your garden for fungal diseases.  If you must overhead water, do so in the morning, so that the plants’ foliage can dry out before nightfall.  Also, remember that young seedlings will require hand watering until their root systems get established.  Finally, aim for infrequent but deep watering — giving plants too little water will only encourage them to develop roots near the surface; this will put them in jeopardy of constantly drying out – and making you a slave to your garden. 
7. Harvest frequently and as soon as ripe.  This will ensure a continual harvest, because when ripened fruit stays on the vine, it signals the plant to stop producing.  This is especially important with beans.
8. Go vertical whenever possible.  By training up peas, beans, tomatoes, melons, squashes, and cucumbers, they will make a smaller footprint on the garden space, enabling you to underplant other things around them.    Use trellises, tomato cages, heavy bamboo or cedar staking to create upright structures for these.   Cradle the heavy fruit, like melons or large squashes, with a sling made from nylon stockings or plastic mesh from grocery store produce.
9. Plant what you love, and get your children involved!  Not only will they learn to love what they are growing, but they will begin to sense the beauty of the cycles of nature.  And you will be energized by the wonder they bring to your garden.
10.   Don’t expect perfection.  We all have successes and failures – gardening well is a lifelong pursuit.  Train yourself to be observant to what’s going on in your own space, and you will be better equipped to deal with issues as they arise.  I strongly recommend keeping some kind of garden journal, to record when you planted things, when you fertilize, when the harvesting begins.  Only by looking back on this record will you learn what works for you and what doesn’t, and you can tweak things next year. 

Good luck with your gardens – we look forward to helping you in the journey, and want to hear of your successes and your challenges.  Here’s to a bountiful harvest!

The past few days have been the warmest since last September, and the spring bloom has gone into high gear.   There are so many plants blooming right now that we simply don’t have room to post all of them!   Here are some of the highlights from a trip around the nursery yesterday:

Boy oh boy – vegetables don’t sit around here for very long this time of year – which means you are taking home the freshest possible plants.  We have a great assortment of these in stock today:  tomatoes, peppers, summer squashes, winter squashes, beans, cilantro, eggplant, onion starts, lettuces, spinach, cabbages, broccoli, cauliflower, and more  perennial herbs.  From now through the next couple of months, we will have frequent deliveries of great vegetables, so either check here often, or call us if you are looking for something specific!

If you are a Japanese maple enthusiast, then this is the class for you!  Linda Eshraghi, co-owner of Farmington Gardens with her husband David, will offer this rare opportunity to tour Eshraghi Nursery.  This will be a walking tour of the propagation and growing facilities for our dozens of varieties of Japanese maples.  You will not want to miss this one – this was a very popular tour last year.  Eshraghi Nursery is just three miles down the road from us, right on Farmington Road.  You can download a map and directions here, or stop by the store for a printed copy.

And a special bonus just for this class:  you will be able to special order direct from Eshraghi for this day only! This will allow you to select from stock that might not be available at Farmington Gardens. Class is free, please call to register: 503-649-4568.

These Sales Are Expired and are No Longer Valid

Spring is here, and the plants are leafing out and starting to grow like crazy.  This includes the Japanese Maples, and it turns out that we have a few extras that need to go to make room for new crops.  So, for a limited time, we now have several incredible Japanese Maple deals that will probably never be seen again!  This is your chance for grower direct savings of 25%-80% off of our regular prices on selected varieties, until they sell out!

Our current Japanese Maple Blowout Selections, while supplies last:

• Emperor I Japanese Maple (Acer palmatum ‘Emperor I’) – 7 gallon size, $29.99 each (regularly $79.99)
• Katsura Japanese Maple (Acer palmatum ‘Katsura’) – 20 gallon size, $99.99 each (regularly $199.99)
• Kiyohime Japanese Maple (Acer palmatum ‘Kiyohime’) – 3′-4′ size, $19.99 each (regularly $99.99)
• Coralbark Japanese Maple (Acer palmatum ‘Sango Kaku’) – 7 gallon size, $39.99 each (regularly $79.99)
• Crimson Queen Laceleaf Japanese  Maple (Acer palmatum dissectum ‘Crimson Queen’) – 7 gallon size, $39.99 each (regularly $79.99)
• Green Laceleaf Japanese Maple (Acer palmatum dissectum ‘Viridis’) – 2 gallon size, $9.99 each (regularly $34.99)

These prices are only good while supplies last, so hurry in before they are gone!  Below are some pictures of these varieties for your reference.

We’ve been having some pretty chilly nights still – and to top it off, I’ve heard that our spring will be unseasonably cooler than normal till June.  That is going to make growing any of the warm-season crops especially challenging this year.  Darn.  I’m talking about tomatoes, peppers, melons, cucumbers, squashes, and eggplant.  Fortunately, all of these are good candidates for using our Gardeneer Season Starters.  These early season plant protectors are pyramid-shaped and water-filled — they surround the plant, absorbing heat from the sun during the day, and giving it off during the night.  Think of it as a blanket for your favorite veggies!  You are able to plant up to six weeks earlier with this protection, which also means you HARVEST weeks earlier too.   Take good care of them and they will last several seasons.  We have one on display here – come in and feel how much warmer it is inside!