In the last post I mentioned that Gail and I just picked more vegetables for the East Bay Food Pantry. It’s no accident that we still have veg to pick. Back in the middle of September we took a little gamble and seeded down a big quilt of lettuce, rows of super-sweet and tiny early Napoli carrots, spinach, and Scarlet Queen Red Stems salad turnips (meant to be eaten raw!) It was late to be seeding but we also put row covers over the lettuce and spinach just in case, and the gamble (more of time than money since seeds are cheap) paid off big time. Given that the weather has been so mild with no real killing frost yet, we wouldn’t have even needed the row covers – uncovered lettuce in the raised beds is fine. When we cleaned out the vegetable garden in October we also left other tough-as-nails cool crops standing, like kale and Swiss chard. What’s truly surprising to me is how surprised the folks were to receive more fresh veg now, this close to winter. Granted, this is the first time we’ve made an effort to grow vegetables past summer but is it truly unusual to take advantage of fall?

I’m no vegetable gardener but that might have to change. Spending that hour or two harvesting at the end of November was like a little revelation. This is doable. And especially this time of year, when fresh veg tastes like a luxury (if you could see the crowds of people at Bristol’s new winter farmer’s market grinning over the gorgeous clubs of Brussels’s sprouts, bales of lettuce, carrots and enormous sweet potatoes you’d think none of us had ever had eaten well past August) a little extra effort at the end of summer – even if it’s a gamble – seems more than worthwhile.

This harvest has inspired Gail and me to make a resolution (a little early for New Year’s but what the hey) to get back out in the vegetable bed in March to at least seed down peas and greens in the raised beds under row covers. And who knows, maybe next year we’ll shoot for a four season vegetable garden à la Elliot Coleman.

Are you still eating from your garden?

After Tropical Storm Irene stripped the color from so many trees around here back in August I was pretty pessimistically convinced that fall color would be lousy this year. And maybe that’s why it has seemed especially spectacular. There’s less of it to be sure, and it was more sudden and fast passing than usual (maybe because there’s less of it) but the reds seem deeper and the yellows and oranges more intensely glow-y.

New England fall is a gift. The leaves from our deciduous forests and gardens, colorful or not, are a huge bonus. I still can’t believe anyone would bag them up as garbage. I love the look of freshly fallen leaves carpeting the ground, and the renewable resource dust-to-dust cycle of nature really appeals to my inner lazy gardener. But of course there’s nothing lazy about leaving the leaves. Almost all of us who keep them from the landfill, at least pick them up and put them back down someplace else. It’s how we participate in the cycle.

At home I rake what few leaves fall in my yard straight into my garden beds. This gives critters like spiders, bumblebees and butterflies a place to overwinter. The plants don’t mind and aren’t smothered. (No oaks leaves fall in my yard – they have more of a tendency than any other to form an impenetrable mat.) Come spring, all I need to do is make sure the crowns of plants peek out. Other gardeners also rake extra leaves into piles. Gail says that by spring her pile of whole leaves is as soft and half decomposed as if it had been shredded – perfect for mulching her beds with. Still others mow the leaves. Leaves left in a thin enough layer that the grass still shows will provide nutrients for a healthier lawn. If the clippings are bagged, they may be used as nitrogen-rich mulch in the garden.

Here we do a bit of all three. Fred and Dan make a first pass over the property with mowers and graciously dump the clippings in the vegetable bed. They also blow the leaves off of the lawns and vacuum them up truckload by truckload. This year we realized that the vacuum did a good enough job of shredding the leaves that we saved several days and gallons of gas not passing them through the leaf shredder. The pile has already settled quite a bit and Gail and I have mulched all of the Display Garden beds to save weeding them later.

I know I ask this every year, but please refresh my memory – what do you do with your leaves?

(click on pictures for larger view)

Last week I had the great pleasure of speaking with the author/photographer of some of my all-time favorite garden books. Ken Druse, who wrote Planthropology and Making More Plants among about a bazillion others, called – while a raging river ran through his garden – to quiz me about Blithwold’s Rose Garden and he recorded our conversation for his podcast, Real Dirt. Those who know me, know that I am a reluctant (read terrified) public speaker: when I have something to say, I’d rather write it down. But Ken, who is effortlessly articulate in print and voice, put me at ease and our few minutes were up before I even knew it. I only wish I had said…

Most of you are already familiar with our Rose Garden, so feel free to pass by the rest of this post. But for anyone who might be visiting for the first time via Real Dirt, allow me to fill in some of my gaffs gaps.

Ken intended to ask about how we prepare the Rose Garden for winter and in case he calls back to get the scoop, I’ll hold off on those details for now. We got instantly sidetracked (my doing) by compost instead. The Rose Garden was compacted from years of tromping through it to deadhead and rake leaves so we turned about 3″ of compost in to the soil, which improved the drainage immensely. I also want to say that while I’m perversely pleased that I never mentioned the word “sustainable” I feel I should do so here. Roses, unless you plant your neighborhood’s natives, are inherently difficult. They are heavy feeders, need tons of water, and a lot of gardeners have gotten hooked on spraying regimes to keep them fungus and pest-free. By filling in the garden’s gaps with bulbs, annuals, perennials and shrubs, and refusing to spray, we not only encourage beneficial wildlife but the garden stays colorful even when the roses start to look terrible. Which incidentally, to bring it back around, they haven’t – ever since we amended the soil and installed irrigation. I like to say that our Rose Garden is as-sustainable-as-possible-under-the-circumstances.

I also didn’t mention “Knock-Out” roses among my list of favorites because they’re not on it (though we do have a few in and out of that garden.) To give them their due, Knock-Outs are tough-as-nails and need very little in the way of babying but they lack the grace and charm of the roses that are on my list. I mentioned Rosa ‘Champlain’ but forgot to say that I really love how its deep-green foliage turns burgundy/bronze towards winter. I tried again to take a picture of Rosa ‘Hot Cocoa’ and the color simply defies my lens. It is redder here (and maybe because of the cooler nights lately) than the coppery-brown it can be. And I know it’s not everyone’s cup of tea but little Rosa chinensis ‘Viridiflora’ is blooming its heart out right now. But then, I’ll take weird over knock-out any day.

I want to thank Ken again for his kindness to me and for speaking so generously about Blithewold – especially while his own garden was being savagely ravaged by both Irene and Lee. (I’d have been too distracted for any words at all…) And thank you for listening/reading. Have you filled the gaps between your roses too?

Being surrounded by beautiful flowers, interesting foliage and delicious fragrance is great and all but I think the best reason to grow a garden might be for the privilege of sharing it with a few of nature’s other creatures. This morning in the pollinator garden I came nose to nose with a hummingbird (who obviously, was much quicker than I…) Our little moment together would have been fairly unlikely had I been standing on of an expanse of lawn instead of in the middle of a garden full of his favorite flowers. Plus where else can you, if you train your eyes to see, easily find praying mantis hanging out?

And honestly, is there anything better than a bucketful of frogs? Blithewold’s Camp Sequoia kiddos have been monitoring the frogs’ progress all summer from tadpole to poliwog (froglet?) to today’s wee teensie frogs. They’ve been finding all sorts of other creatures in their nets too like dragonfly larvae and water striders. Any garden that mimics nature the way the water garden does will be full to bursting with activity. Fascinating to watch – and catch.

Of course nature will occasionally send a message that a close encounter can be too close… For all we cultivate and maintain, gardens are still wild places. – Or so the bumblebee told me on Monday. But for anyone who isn’t fatally allergic, a little pain and swelling is a small price to pay for getting such a good view of their way of life.

It seems like the activity in the gardens is ramping up to a frenzy (or maybe the critters all think a hurricane is coming) – have you had close encounters of the natural kind lately too?

Ever since Dick, our vegetable gardener extraordinaire, first joined his wife Mary in the Blithewold gardens, we’ve had more produce than we know what to do with. (Dick orders the vegetable seeds, starts them, plants them and tends the vegetable garden along with his faithful sidekick Cathy and any of the garden volunteers willing to spend time in the hottest spot on the property.) The vegetable garden’s raison d’etre is to give visitors an up close look at a beautiful and productive vegetable garden, and is a great place for the camp kids to learn about growing and harvesting vegetables.

But none of us want to throw good food on the compost heap. We have always offered all of the kale, Swiss chard, cabbage, beans, peas, basil, artichokes, broccoli, cauliflower, endless zucchinis, millions of tomatoes, mountains of lettuce and anything else to Blithewold staff members and volunteers willing and able to come down and help themselves. But because the garden is so large – and so productive – we often ended up with extra and although Gail and I have had every intention of bringing the surplus to the local soup kitchen, we didn’t always share as much as we could have. What we lacked was time and an easy way to get the produce to where the need is.

Enter my neighbor Dyan. She suggested and is facilitating a partnership with the East Bay Food Pantry, which according to their website, currently serves an astounding 900 households (3000 individuals including 850 children.) We have adjusted our work schedule in order to pick first thing Tuesdays and then Dyan comes right over to fill her car, and then her cool cellar and fridge with an abundance of fresh veg. She delivers it to the pantry just before they open their doors every Wednesday.

So far, since we started picking for the EBFP the first week in June, we have donated about 180 pounds of produce. (Dyan not only stores the food and delivers it, she weighs it too!) And we still have plenty left over for our staff and volunteers (not to mention our bunnies, woodchucks, and cabbage worms…) And when I worried that so much kale and Swiss chard might be a tough sell, I was assured that the food pantry volunteers are giving pantry clients cooking advice and recipes, and that all of the produce donated from Blithewold’s garden and other home gardens has been snapped up fast.

Does your garden produce more than you can eat? Have you donated any surplus to a food pantry or soup kitchen?