Golden Gate Gardener

Year-Round Vegetable Gardening--a Talk

On Saturday July 12, I will be giving a talk on Year-Round Vegetable Gardening at the  30th Street Senior Services Garden at 225 30th Street near Church. It is at 10 AM. There will also be Master Gardeners available for a Plant Clinic.

The Garden at the Center is truly wonderful. If you come, you have to take the elevator just to the right of the front door to the third floor, and then walk to the back of the building. It isn't a roof garden, but a large, in-ground garden, filled with vegetables and ornamentals. Come see.

Come learn how to eat from a small urban garden year-round. The talk will be useful for both beginners and experienced food gardeners. I will also have copies of both Golden Gate GArdening and Wildly Successful plants available for sale and signing.

Victory Gardens In San Francisco

I have been on vacation, in the redwoods of Humboldt Redwoods State Park. When you walk through a forest of giants like that for several hours it just puts you in a different state of mind than anywhere else. The light is different, and the trees are so huge you feel tiny and humbled. We saw many wild flowers, including a phacelia, salal, spring beauty, clarkia, iris, and many native grasses. And there is a tiny yellow-flowered pea family flower that blooms at the edge of roads. I have seen it for years, and still don't know its name.

Near our camp was a meadow of tall native bunch grasses. I don't know the name of the grasses, but it was next to a path, so you could sit on the path and the grasses were as high as your eyes. Then you could just sit and watch them wave inthe breezes against the blue sky. Mesmerizing.

We are back now and my summer school class has started, so I have been busy preparing to teach, and haven't entered a new post in a bit.

I wanted to be sure that I mentioned the Victory Garden Project that is underway in S.F. You can read about it more on their website, www.sfvictorygardens.org. A big part of the plans is that they are putting in a food garden in front of City Hall. Groundbreaking will be on July 1 and the final planting will be on July 12th. They are looking for volulnteers to help put the garden in during that time. The garden is to be in for only 3 months, butshould make a pretty dramatic statement. It is to be there during a Slow Food conference that is taking place in early September. More on this later, but check out the Victory Garden site and think about how much fun it will be to plant vegetable in front of City Hall.   

Chayotes Finally Planted!

Sometimes gardening seems like the slowest of sports. Like tennis that you play by hitting a ball and then waiting a few months for it to come back. Last March, I planted four chayote fruits in a greenhouse. Three of them sprouted. Whe I tried to harden them off in a lathe house, they were damaged by cold, or wind, so it was back into the greenhouse for them. Then back to the lathe house in May. On the day I planned to plant them out, it was so windy that I had to put the pots in a protected spot so they wouldn't blow over. Didn't seem like an auspicious day to plant them. Finally, last week, we put them in the ground! They are at the base of the nylon trellis I put on the frame of the beautiful arbor that the City College construction class built. There are two bamboo stakes for the plant to climb as it angles its first branches toward the trellis. But I keep talking about two plants. You may ask, where is the other one? It is on the other side of the arbor. They aren't very impressive right now. In fact, you can barely see the second plant in the following photo. It feels sort of silly having all of that trellis, and that huge arbor, but the last time I grew chayote, it was thirty feet tall and wide, so I have great expectations. I had this arbor built as a defensible space, a structure the chyote squash plants could climbe without being able to find anything else to climb into.

Here is the whole arbor. The above chayote is in the front, next to the rather ugly hose bibb. The other one is way off in the distance, behind the arbor. The plan is for them to meet in the middle at the top. I'm hoping for many chayotes to share wtih students in November and December. (For more photos of the chayotes starting to grow in the greenhouse, and of the arbor, use the search feature at the right side of my blog to search for "chayote" and for "arbor" elsewhere in the blog.)

Insect Helpers

Recently I promised to show a photo of a soldier beetle. Here it is, cleaning up the pahids that were eating my Rosa chinensis. This is the first one I have seen in my San Francisco garden, though I have seen them several times in the East Bay. A colleague at City College tells me that they are often in his Noe Valley garden.

There are over 100 species of soldier beetles in California. The larvae feed under bark or in soil litter on eggs and larvae of butterflies, beetles, moths and other insects. The adults of some species eat pollen and nectar, but the adults of other species eat aphids and insect eggs and larvae. In this case you can see the shed skins of aphids on the stem of the rose bud, but I think the soldier beetle ate up all the aphids and was just wandering around hoping for more. As soon as I saw the soldier beetle, I ran back in the house for my camera, and when I got back it was gone. I was sure it had flown away , but I waited, and soon it wandered back into view.

You can recognize soldier beetles by their narrow shape, and by their soft black, gray, or brown wing covers and often a red, orange, or yellow head and abdomen. All these details are from the Natural Enemies Handbook, by Mary Louise Flint and Steve Dreistadt, Statewide Integrated Pest Management Project, 1998.

Soldier beetles are just one of many naturally-occuring helpful insects that show up when you avoid the pesiticides that kill them along with pests. You don't buy soldier beetles, just give them a chance to help you.

Heat, Wind, Rain...

Here in San Francisco, our weather reporters make much from small changes. Tomorrow, they may say, will be clear after morning fog, with slightly cooler than average temperatures. The next day will be the same but maybe a little breezy. The past few weeks have given them a little more to talk about. First it was hot. This happens a few times each spring and summer, but the first heat spell of spring is the plant killer. The days are almost at their longest, the plants that grow most in in the spring have lots of young, tender growth, or maybe they are covered with flowers. And the soil is drying. This spring the soil was particularly dry, since we have had no rain for some weeks. Then we had those hot days. Was it only two? I witnessed a beautiful rhododendron, in a shady site on the north side of a house, with beautiful balls of pink flowers go from that to a plant covered with sad, withering flowers, in the course of one afternoon. My own cinerarias suffered, with some, in a part of the garden that was driest, wilting so that the purple daisies never recovered. I watered all afternoon.

Then came the wind. It was so windy last week in the College garden that I thought better of transplanting the chayotes (finally) into their spots by the new arbor. OK, I'll do it next week. They are looking good, though, waiting in the wings, in the lathe house, but I think so much wind would have caused them to wilt.

And then, last Saturday, rain! What a surprise, after many dry weeks. We had only a little rain in San Francisco, but maybe there was more in other parts of the Bay Area. The snails stayed out in full view in the morning rain, allowing a very good snail hunt. The lettuce and arugula were nicely crisp. The garden seems to appreciate a rain more than a watering. But the bigger surprise is the snow in the mountains. Ten inches in the Sierra, at the end of May!

Today we are back to seasonally mild weather, followed by a foggy evening. A good day for gardening.

I don't know if it is due to the dry mid spring, or to what, but I am seeing more lady beetles than usual this spring. I rarely garden for more than a few minutes without seeing one or maybe more. And in my camera is a photo of a soldier beetle, another aphid eater. I will try to get it into the next post.

A Weed to Watch Out For

My Golden Gate Gardening column in today's SF Chronicle (www.sfgate.com) was about Nothoscordum gracile, a weed to watch out for in your garden. I thought I would put a few photos in this post, for those who wonder if they have it and to help you understand what is going on underground if you do have it. The plant, shown at left, has white flowers that look a little like a brodiaea. It blooms most actively in summer. The leaves are strap-like, gray green, and do not have a midrib. This plant is not edible and does not have any scent of onion or garlic. The plants can be easily overlooked, but the best way to control them is to remove the first one you see, digging carefully to get all of the root and the bulblets, even discarding a handful of soil to be sure you got rid of all the bulblets.

Here is a mature bulb with its many bulblets, each the size of a grain of rice. The youngest ones are white, so they stand out well against the soil, but the older ones turn brown, and are very difficult to see. The bulbs are usually very deep in the soil--as deep as your shovel can reach. Be sure your shovel blade is straight up and down when it enters the soil, or you may cut the stem of the plant, leaving the bulb unmolested in the soil.

The problem with leaving some of the bulblets in the soil is that they will all germinate into small plants. Incompletely digging a Nothoscordum bulb, and then turning the soil in the bed can spread the bulblets all over, so that soon you will practically have a lawn of the plants. I am combating this weed now in a vegetable garden, digging out mature bulbs and also digging the smaller plants carefully to be sure I have removed the attached bulbs, and am ruing the day I tolerated the first plant of it. Don't make the same mistake.

Yacon or Bolivian Sunroot

Want to grow something that isn't the same thing you always grow? If you live in a location with a relatively mild winter, here is an idea. The plant species is Polymnia sonchifolia, common names yacon or Bolivian sunroot. It is a plant featured in the book Lost Crops of the Incas--and in my book Golden Gate Gardening (see cover in column at right). It is relatively uncommon outside of the Andes, but not lost, by any means. I've been growing this plant since the late 80s. The photo at left shows a crown with the rhizomes at the center top, and the tuberous roots hanging off of them. You plant the rhizomes, then in winter or early spring, dig them up, cut off and eat the tuberous roots that have formed under them, then replant the rhizomes.

In summer the plants grow. They have really big, furry leaves, arranged in pairs. The leaf stems (petioles) are winged--that is the leaf blade continues right down the sides of the leaf stems. And the plants are very tall. What I have read about them says they can reach 6 feet, but mine are usually rather taller than that, maybe 8 feet, maybe more.

These aren't quite full grown. In about late October or in November, they are topped with rather small orange daisies. Seems like a lot of plant for those tiny flowers, but of course the real reproduction is going on underground, where the rhizomes are multiplying.

So what does it taste like? The edible tuberous roots are crisp, juicy, and mildly to very sweet. Sort of like jicama, but juicier. I like to eat them raw myself, though there are those who advocate cooking them. Might try it.

To eat them raw, I just take a potato peeler to them, then wash and slice them. They are good just as is (shown on the plate with some also delicious homegrown sugar snap peas) or in a salad in place of jicama. One I like has red onion rings marinated in orange juice vinaigrette, sliced orange, Bolivian sunroot, avocado, dressed with the vinaigrette, served on a bed of lettuce leaves.

You can get starts of this crop through www.nicholsgardennursery.com and also through www.seedsofchange.com.

Golden Gate Gardening Available Now

Due to a snafu with the distributor, my book Golden Gate Gardening (see cover in right column of this blog) has been unavailable for a little while. But now, my publisher says it is back in stock. Bookstores and other retail outlets can order it from the distributor PGW. Individuals who can't find it readily in a store can order it directly from Sasquatch Books, either online at www.sasquatchbooks.com or by calling them at 1(800) 775-0817. (Or tell your bookstore or nursery where to order it.) If you are gardening to grow vegetables, fruits, herbs, or cutting flowers in the Bay Area, this book will definitely help you get more out of your garden all year. 

More on the Chard Leafminer

After a series of posts on really pretty plants, I thought it was time to show something no less important but not as charming. I have written several times about Swiss chard leafminers and their management. These pests are starting to emerge from pupae and lay eggs on the undersides of my chard leaves now. The little brown pupae have been in the soil all winter, either in your garden or one nearby. The adult insects, which are small flies, have emerged from the pupae, flown away, found flies of the same species, but the opposite sex, and mated.

There are the eggs that the females lay on leaves. They are quite tiny and white, elongated, arranged in parallel rows.

And here are the larvae, which, because the insect is a fly, are correctly called maggots. When I opened the leaf, they tried to crawl back betweeh the opened layers.

Yeah, I know, they're kind of disgusting, but now you know. These are not, by the way, the maggots that live in garbage. This insect only lays eggs on Swiss chard, beets, and spinach. They are active between late March and about mid October here in San Francisco.

If you see their damage on your plants, your first defense is to brush off the eggs, or pick off any leaves on which you see the blotches that show they are feeding inside. If you are vigilant, you can prevent them from maturing to pupae and dropping to the soil. If they get ahead of you, they will repeat their life cycle several times a summer. Summer oil sprays (choose one based on an edible oil, such as canola or soy) or a bacterial extract spray that is sold under the brand names Bull's Eye or Spinosad, used according to the directions on the label, can help. However, in my college garden, the critters got ahead of us over the past few years, so my strategy this year is to remove all susceptible crops from the garden during the summer. I will replant chard only in late August or September, and protect it with a row cover (a white polyester sold for this use in gardens) until cool weather has killed any adult flies. I plan to start the plants inside about six weeks before I plant them out, to give them a little bit of a boost, and hope for a good harvest until the following March, when out they will come.

Curious to see the blotches on chard leaves? Use the legit search feature on the right side panel of this blog to search for "chard" and you can see other posts on this subject.

Chayote Report

Early this year I started 4 chayote squash plants in the greenhouse at City College. Three of them grew, and I photographed them. (The photos appear in my blog on February 25th.) The construction class built us a beautiful trellis, and then, several weeks ago, covered two sides with nylon bean trellis mesh for the chayote to climb on. Then I put the chayotes in larger pots and moved them to the lath house, a structure built only with wooden slats, set several inches apart. Since chayote begins to resprout each year from its perennial roots in March, I thought it was time for the plants to begin to get used to life outside of a greenhouse.

I went off to deal with Dad's house for a week, and when I returned, I saw that cold nights and strong winds had burned some of the chayotes' leaves. The trellis is ready, the soil prepared, but alas, the days and nights are too cold for these tropical babies. So it's back to the greenhouse for the time being.

Here is the trellis, all prepared for the chayotes. Looks kind of lonely, eh? (The fence on the left will come out eventually, so that the chayotes won't climb on it. The goal, in preparing a trellis for chayotes is to have defensible space, so the plants can't climb something you don't want them to climb.)