I’ve talked about this before, but it bears repeating — raised beds give you the Cadillac of vegetable gardens.  Obviously, you can grow vegetables in the ground, or in containers, and they will do just fine.  But raised beds offer so many advantages:  the soil warms up and dries out faster than in the ground, enabling you to plant sooner.  When the autumn rains come, the garden likewise stays a little drier than it would in the ground, enabling your garden to thrive longer in the season.

The soil structure is usually better in a raised bed as well – because you are not walking on it, the soil doesn’t suffer from compaction.  This allows your plants to send roots down more deeply, enabling you to plant a little closer together than you would otherwise.

I am often asked about which material to use to construct a new raised bed.  I advise against using pressure treated wood or railroad ties, as they leach toxic chemicals into the soil and could compromise your crop.  We have built our new vegetable beds here at Farmington Gardens out of concrete building bricks, and they work great for that purpose – they are wide enough to also provide a place to sit while tending the garden.  If you want an economical alternative to cedar boards, you can use fir and treat them yourself with this non-toxic wood preservative.  I found this recipe last year, which is recommended by USDA to safely preserve wood for several years.  I used it myself on my new beds at home – I mixed up the recipe and painted it on fir boards prior to building the beds.  I must say I am a fan – they look great, the water beads up on them, so I have confidence they will last for a long time – the USDA claims they will last 20 years.  I’ll keep you posted on that one!

Nontoxic Preservative for Untreated Wood

•  1 ounce paraffin wax
• 3 cups exterior varnish or 1.5 cups boiled l inseed oil
• Enough solvent (mineral spirits, paint thinner, or turpentine at room temp) to make a total volume of 1 full gallon

In a double boiler, melt paraffin.  (Never heat paraffin over a direct flame!)  Away from the heat, vigorously stir the solvent, then slowly pour in the melted paraffin.  Add the varnish or linseed oil and continue to stir thoroughly.  Apply by dipping the untreated lumber into the mixture for 3 minutes, or by applying a heavy coat.  The wood can be painted when thoroughly dry, if you wish.

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!

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!

WOW!  Due to the high interest in our Kitchen Gardening 101 Class (specifically designed for beginners interested in planting their first garden), we are adding another date for the same class.  This one will be Tuesday, April 21 at 10 AM.  If you’ve ever wanted to grow your own tasty vegetables, but didn’t know where to begin, then this class is for you.  We will cover all the basics of backyard edible gardening, from the benefits of raised beds, to soil preparations, to choosing a great selection of culinary plants.  We’ll wander out to our demonstration vegetable garden so you can see what’s going on there, and how we manage to grow so much in such a small space. 

According to a recent survey by the National Gardening Association, nearly 20% more people are planning to have an edible garden this year than in the past.  The reasons they give might surprise you – it is not just about the weak economy.  More and more people know they will get better tasting food from their own garden; they will save money on their food bills; they will have better quality food (nothing is fresher and more nutrious when it is picked right before eating); and they will have the assurance of their food’s safety.  The salmonella scares with tomatoes and spinach over the past couple of years are making us all a little skittish.  It is reasuring to know where our food comes from and how it is grown and handled.  Besides all those good reasons, growing your own is just a fun thing to do!  I find I am a much more creative cook when I have good seasonal things to pick every day, right in my own backyard. 

Now is the time to get your plans in place for your first garden, and we want to help!   If you are already registered for the other class on Saturday, but would prefer this Tuesday class, just give us a call and we will be happy to move you over.   Class is free, please call to register:  503-649-4568.

I thought it might be fun to start posting a weekly recipe — a seasonal suggestion from the garden to your table.  To kick things off though, we are starting with an issue I have been asked here several times about – what kind of  wood to use for raised beds.  We know not to use railroad ties (because of arsenic), or wood treated with the highly toxic preservative pentachlorophenol.  So what are we to use that is safe and non-toxic for our edible gardens?  The U.S. Department of Agriculture (USDA) suggests you preserve untreated wood for raised beds with this recipe; it has been shown to be as effective as the toxic treatments, and will last for up to 20 years.

Nontoxic Preservative for Untreated Wood

•  1 ounce paraffin wax
• 3 cups exterior varnish or 1.5 cups boiled l inseed oil
• Enough solvent (mineral spirits, paint thinner, or turpentine at room temp) to make a total volume of 1 full gallon

In a double boiler, melt paraffin.  (Never heat paraffin over a direct flame!)  Away from the heat, vigorously stir the solvent, then slowly pour in the melted paraffin.  Add the varnish or linseed oil and continue to stir thoroughly.  Apply by dipping the untreated lumber into the mixture for 3 minutes, or by applying a heavy coat.  The wood can be painted when thoroughly dry, if you wish.

We had a great class here this morning lead by Carl Grimm, Natural Gardening Specialist at Metro – he had terrific advice about gardening in a natural, sustainable way, working WITH nature rather than trying to coerce it to do our bidding.  He had suggestions for ways to minimize the use of chemical fertilizers and pesticides, and had concrete reasons why we should care which course we chose.  We have leftover brochures from Metro if you are interested in these topics – feel free to ask for one the next time you are here.

We had hoped Carl would spend more time discussing how to incorporate edibles into existing landscapes, but since many of the class questions centered on the basics of organic gardening, we didn’t get there in much depth.  Don’t get me wrong – I LOVE that folks want to truly understand and embrace organic gardening!  But I thought I’d try to fill in the gap with a few suggestions for ways you might think about incorporating edibles into your landscape, if that is one of your goals this year.  Here are a few ideas to consider:

• Think about reducing the size of your lawn.  Oftentimes, the lawn is in the sunniest part of the yard, and this is prime real estate for vegetables and fruits!  Carl touched on this topic briefly in his description of how to put a raised bed over existing lawn.   Lay several layers of cardboard down directly on the lawn, and fill your raised bed box with a good planting mix with lots of compost.  This should effectively kill the lawn underneath, while still allowing proper drainage for your raised bed.
• Consider a container garden for some of your edibles.  Small trees such as columnar apple trees or fig trees, can do very well in a large decorative container on your sunny deck.  Others to consider:  herbs, lettuces in a large bowl, and even tomatoes in a large container.  Remember the mature size of the root ball of your plant and choose a container accordingly.  For instance, tomatoes should go into at least a 15 gallon pot.  Another thing to remember with containers:  they are completely dependent on you for water and nutrients, and therefore need more of both than an in-ground garden. 
• Horizontally-pruned espaliered fruit trees can provide a beautiful decorative fencing between areas of the garden, or along a fence or wall.  And as a bonus, you get fruit!  We even have espaliered trees that have a variety of apples on one tree – you don’t get a lot of harvest of any one kind, but you get a very nice assortment over a longer period of time.
• Think outside the box when it comes to how to train grapes.  Conventionally pruned grapes didn’t work in my garden – took too much space – and so we trained our grape vine along a sunny back wall of our garage,  high over our heads.  We used large decorative wrought iron hooks on which the vine rests. It doesn’t block our walkway, gets plenty of sunshine up there, and we get a huge harvest.  Downside: we need a ladder to pick them, but we don’t mind!
• Think about substituting edible shrubs for some of your ornamental shrubs.  Blueberries, for example, are great in a mixed border.  They are beautiful all year long:  beautiful blooms in the spring which attract beneficial insects; gorgeous blue fruit throughout the summer months; and brilliant red foliage in the fall.  I think even the bare branches are attractive in my beds throughout the winter.  Evergreen huckleberry is also a great addition to a mixed border, and it provides much-needed filler during the winter.  Other good options:  Elderberry or Jostaberry currant.
• Think about replacing the typical hanging basket of geraniums or other annuals in that sunny spot, with a pot of strawberries, or cherry tomatoes, or herbs. 
• There are excellent options with small trees too — replace some of your ornamental small trees with great dwarf fruiting trees.  The columnar apple trees are extremely narrow, and would provide a nice vertical element in a border, as well as fruit.  (fyi: we just planted a couple of columnar apples in our demonstration vegetable garden for just that purpose – check it out as the season progresses to see how it looks).
• Think about growing vertically whenever possible – you reduce the plant’s footprint, making it possible to grow more intensively.  Something as simple as a rustic tee-pee of bamboo or grapevine trimmings can provide structure for beans, small squash, or cucumbers to climb upon.  It also creates a great focal point in the garden.
• Many of the vegetable plants are beautiful.  Bright Lights Swiss Chard has brilliant, multi-colored stems of reds, oranges, and yellows – the colors really pop in the garden.  They can be used as you would any tall annual.  You will harvest them repeatedly until frost, and then more sporadically through the winter.  Frilly kales are a beautiful textural addition to the ornamental garden, as well as being tasty and nutritious.   Eggplant, with its dark purple, shiny fruits, are another elegant addition to a flowerbed.  Artichoke (and its similar cousin Cardoon) provide delicious eating as well as beautiful silvery arching fronds in your flowerbed.  Don’t be afraid to incorporate veggies with your flowers – please just give them the room they require.  If they are too crowded, they will be more susceptible to disease and will have reduced harvests.

I hope this gives you some ideas for ways to incorporate edibles into your garden.  Think creatively, and try tucking your favorites into your landscape.  Mixing edibles and ornamentals is really fun and easy and creates such an interesting garden.  Just remember to put the right plant in the right place — those that require lots of sun will not thrive under a shade tree!

This week’s new arrivals include arugula, Shiraz beets, Early Green broccoli, Russian Red kale, mesclun, Lisbon White Bunching onions, Pioneer Shelling peas, raddicchio, Bloomsdale spinach, more lettuces, Premium Crop broccoli, and for you herb lovers, Italain and Triple Curled parslies.  Is your mouth watering yet?

It is still too early to do much in the vegetable garden, but definitely not too early to get ready. If you have been thinking about building some raised beds for your kitchen garden, now would be a terrific time to get that project going.

As you no doubt know, raised beds in Oregon are a very good idea. With the cold, wet winters we experience, raised beds allow us to plant earlier because the soil drains better and warms up faster.   And if you can avoid stepping into the bed, you will avoid soil compaction.  Having soft, loose soil is a definite plus — better drainage, more aeration, easier weeding, straighter and more beautiful carrots!

There are two different strategies for constructing raised beds: a simple mounded row of soil is the easiest and most amenable to changes later. A more expensive but very user friendly option is to construct a hard-sided bed. You can use whatever materials you have — cedar boards work well, as does brick or stone. (Stop by to check out our demonstration vegetable garden here – it is constructed with attractive Willamette Graystone wall stones, with cap stones on top, which makes it easy to sit or kneel upon when working in the bed.)