Golden Gate Gardener

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.

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.)

More blooms, and more on class

I am back from Southern CA once again and will have some photos to share of subtropical and tropical fruit, but wanted to be sure to include a couple more Bay Area spring bloom shots and mention David Goldberg's photography class one more time. 

This tree is an ornamental plum. The double blossoms are so voluptuous against the otherwise bare limbs of the tree.

And this one is a tree peony. I wrote about these in my SF Chronicle column (at SFGate.com) a couple of weeks ago, but didn't have a photo then. This one is blooming in the Asian plant section of the SF Botanical Garden in Golden Gate Park. These plants, which are really shrubs that grow to about 4 feet tall, have the same lovely flowers as the herbaceous peony of colder climates, but can thrive in S.F. and other places that have very mild winters. This one is a single blossom, but there are also double-flowered varieties. There are even yellow and orange tree peonies.

I notice that a number of viewers of this blog have been linking from my blog to the blog about the Garden Photography Class that starts next Saturday. One last plug before it begins. It isn't taught often, so if you think you will want to know how to take better plant or garden photos, this is the moment to jump.

Maybe you still love to shoot film, or maybe you have purchased a good digital camera, or are thinking about going digital. Maybe you have been shooting a bit and wondering how to get better at it. This class will get you into the nitty-gritty of using your camera better and with more confidence, and will get you into gardens that will inspire you to want to shoot more photos. Check it out at www.gardenphotographyclass.typepad,com. There are links there to see photographs by the instructor or to enroll through UC Extension. 

Spring Blooming Trees in San Francisco

  I've been looking at many blooming trees this past week, following my own advice of a couple of weeks ago. They bloom so briefly and are so lovely. Here are a few. This is, I believe, Magnolia x soulangiana.

At the San Francisco Botanical Garden, formerly Strybing Arboretum, I wandered among many beautiful trees. There was a cherry Prunus x yoedenensis, the one that blooms in Washington, D.C. (below, left)

Then, a little farther on, there is a magnificent Michelia doltsopa I know, "Say what?" I don't know that it has a common name, but it is lovely. It's a relative of magnolia that is native to China and the Himalayas. The huge white blossoms of Michelia doltsopa are fragrant.

Finally, I couldn't resist including a dawn redwood just leafing out. One of my favorite trees and this is the very best time to see it. It's a relative of our California redwoods and sequoias that was discovered growing in China in the 20th century, long after it was thought to be extinct. The man who found it growing visited San Francisco a few years ago and saw our trees. Unlike our redwoods and sequoias, it is deciduous. So in spring you get the tiny, delicate leaves budding out, so tender and pale. And of course the trunk is wonderful, looking like it was macramed. There is a grove of these trees, they seem to create their own color of light at this time of year. If you live nearby, visit the garden in the next week and you will see what I mean.

Chayote Sprouting! Banana Blooming!

For the demonstration garden at City College, I have set 4 chayote squashes in cutting mix, in hopes of getting 2 sprouted plants for the arbor we have built. By the first week of February, 3 of the squashes have sprouted! Two of them looked like this one, just small sprouts, slightly curled as they emerge from the fruit. An innocent beginning for a huge plant. By this time, there will be quite a bit of root formed already, to find water and prepare to grow a shoot.

And one of the fruits has unfurled its first leaves. You can see the tendrils starting to form, searching already for something to hang onto. You don't see any seed leaves (cotyledons), since they remain inside the chayote fruit, held together like the palms of two hands. We eat them when we eat the fruits. Being tropical, these fruits never form a hard shell for their seeds, and never go completely dormant. Well, I shall keep you posted. If this plant gets too long and rangy, I will have to trim it back before I plant it, but once it gets going, not much will stop it.

Meanwhile, in the City College garden, the January King cabbage formed its mature head right on schedule. It was ready at the end of January, all pink and blue-green, with the flat shiny top that indicates it is ready to eat. And the chard is still doing well too. It is in its last months now, since I have decided to take it out this spring and have no chard in the garden until fall in an attempt to escape the predations of the leafminers by giving them nothing to eat one summer.

Down at my dad's garden, in San Diego County, though he has passed away, his banana is looking really good this year. The recent rains gave everything a fresh, bright look. I love the vivid colors of the bracts that surround the young banana flowers.

Chayote Progress Report

The countdown to chayote planting is underway. The City College construction class kindly lowered the arbor that last month's class built. It was going to be a bit tall for harvesting the chayotes. Robert, the course instructor, said lowering it was good experience for the class. A client might request that. (See photo of the arbor before lowering in my January 19th post.)

Next step is to mount some hardware cloth on two sides of the arbor for the plants to climb. They attach by tendrils, so can use both the vertical and the horizontal wires. Then we need to take out another section of fence. The one on the west is only about 6 feet from the arbor. Too close for comfort, since the chayote will reach out in all directions. We are going to try to keep it on the trellis. A brave effort, considering what the plant wants to do is be 30 feet tall and wide.

Finally, the 4 planted chayotes are still in the greenhouse. One has sprouted nice green leaves. I am hoping for another to sprout, since the plants need 2 in order to enhance pollination. As my Guatemalan friend Maria-Marta said, it needs a "novia."

My cousin in Indiana asks me if she could grow chayote if she started it very early. I'm afraid not. It is a tropical perennial plant. It only flowers when the days get short in late fall. This is because it is adapted to short tropical days. In a place with a cold winter, it would freeze shortly after it began to bloom, thereby never making any fruit. And, although the young stem tips and leaves are edible, and would be produced in summer, I'm not sure the plant is worth growing just for them.

Well, here in San Francisco, where eggplants and melons are rarely satisfactory, and tomatoes are borderline, we like to fee lucky to be able to grow something that doesn't do well elsewhere.

I'll send photos of the chayote soon.

Source for Yellow Cosmos bipinnatus

Aha, I finally located the source of my yellow cosmos (see photo and more information about this plant in the previous post). I can't find the seed packet, but I thought I remembered it being Seeds of Change (www.seedsofchange.com), and sure enough, they are listed in the catalog. The charm of these flowers is that they are the species Cosmos bipinnatus, not Cosmos sulphureus, the one that is usually yellow or orange. This pale yellow is of the species that is usually white, pink, or magenta. I usually have better luck with this species, for some reason, so I was delighted to find a yellow one.

Another surprise. The catalog also lists a variety they call 'Sunrise' with orange/golden and red/orange flowers. They don't give a species, but they say that unless otherwise specified, they are C. bipinnatus. And they sell C. sulphureus separately, so I guess I will have to try this one and see what it looks like!

All of these are suitable for starting in spring through mid summer. The catalog says they can live through a few light frosts, which mine certainly have. An Achilles heel is that the side stems can snap at the point of attachment to the central stem in heavy winds (or when a delivery person tosses a newspaper at them--grrr!).

San Francisco Winter Garden in Bloom

So here is the garden I missed after a few days in the snow. This image was taken near the end of November, 2007, but some of my garden flowers are in bloom still, at the end of December. This didn't used to happen. This garden was often bloomless by Thanksgiving. I could keep flowers going till then from sometime in February, but by Thanksgiving, the garden would inspire my mother-in-law, who had arrived for the holiday to say "You should plant some flowers in this garden." So is it climate change? Hard to say. We still have frosty nights in December or January, but maybe the fall cools more slowly, allowing more plants to adjust and stay in bloom later.

In this photo are several plants from my book Wildly Successful Plants: Northern California. There is the annual paludosum daisy (Mauranthemum paludosum) (white flowers in lower left). These are still in bloom now. To the right of it is golden feverfew (Tanaceturm parthenium), which I keep for its chartreuse foliage, picking off any blooms that form. Around and in these plants is nasturtium, with orange blooms. You can also see the lacy foliage of California poppy, which still have a couple of orange blooms and will have more of them very early in the year and all spring.

The taller red flowers are Schizostylus coccinia, a nice South African bulb that blooms in the fall. It has about finished blooming now. It will spread in gardens kept very moist, but mine is on the dry side in summer, so it stays mostly in place. I think there is also a flash of red from the last of the California fuchsia (Epilobium californicum), which was huge and bright in late summer. The low red flowers are some dwarf snapdragons, which I pinched three times to keep them reblooming from mid summer until late November. They are quiet now, but who knows, maybe they will rebloom later.

The blue flower, spreading out to the right, is annual echium, a little brother of the big, showy Pride of Madeira. It's Echium vulgare 'Blue Bedder.' I hear that this one is a pest in Washington state, Canada, and Australia, so avoid it in those areas please, but here, in dry summer California, I have found only light reseeding, and reports from other gardeners are that it isn't very hard to get rid of if you tire of it. It blooms a long time and provides pollen for bees.

Here are the other flowers I wanted to see on my return. These are cosmos, of an unusual pale yellow hue, that I grew from seed, though I'm afraid I have forgotten the seed company that sold the seed (I have that packet somewhere!). I asked our housesitter deadhead them, to keep them blooming, and they are still going! I like them because I know that pale-colored or white cosmos are the best ones for attracting beneficial insects. (This is the species of cosmos that is usually white, pink or magenta, not the one that is bright yellow or rusty orange.)

What blooms will the rest of the winter spare? We shall see.

Dad has passed away; his banana tree lives on

I don't very often blog about personal news, but this news is important to me and to those who know that I gained an early education about plants and gardening from my father. His childhood on an 80 acre farm in Indiana gave him a deep interest in plants and nature, which he imparted to me, teaching me about starting seedlings, making compost, how plants grow, and the scientific names of many plants. He often drove me to high school on the way to work, and frequently we would stop by a tree that we were passing so he could teach me its name and features. I took this picture of him last August. He was a popular guy in town--cheerful and kind. At his 100th birthday party last January, the town proclaimed his birthday "Sheldon Peirce Day."

Dad, Sheldon James Peirce, died on November 9th, at the age of 100 years and 9 months. He died peacefully, of no specific cause, falling asleep the day before and never reawakening.

  Recently I have been blogging about his banana tree. He transplanted it from a part of the yard where it was suffering too much wind damage 4 years ago, when he was nearly 97. It has set two crops since then. Bananas, being a tropical plant, don't have a yearly cycle. They require 18 months to ripen fruit. Last winter, San Diego County suffered a heavy frost, killing the stem bearing the next crop of bananas. We were afraid that the stem would die and the ripening bananas would be lost, but apparently the frost-killed stem was able to get food through the roots it shared with other stems of the plant, because the fruit did ripen. We ate several raw bananas late last spring, and a bit later, my sister-in-law made banana bread from the rest. He enjoyed it all. At left is a photo of the banana crop of last summer. I don't know the variety, but the fruit is small and firm and doesn't get that "banana oil" flavor, as Dad would put it, that he didn't much like in ripe commercial bananas.

So here is the banana tree, still standing tall, a week after Dad had passed away. The garden lives on. The dwarf avocado has a heavy crop. The guava he planted is 4 feet tall and blooming for the first time. The navel oranges are starting to ripen. And the green nubs of paperwhite daffodil leaves are beginning to push up through soil that finally got some rain last week. Life goes on, and spring is not so far away.

More on Brazilian Peas

I am delighted to hear from Erica, who hails from Brazil, about the Brazilian pea mentioned in two recent posts. (The posts are from October 14 and October 26. Erica's comment follows the entry of October 14th.) So it is the "crooked pea with purple flowers," eh? That seems pretty accurate, since the pods do curl quite a bit. I have saved about 100 seeds, of which a few may not be viable. (Some of the pods decayed in those early rains we had this fall, and the peas were not quite ripe when I took them out of the pods.)

The seeds are interesting to look at, sort of mottled. Under a handlens, you can see that they are greenish with brown speckles. I will try to photograph them, but haven't done so yet. I will plant them this spring and see how they fare in the college garden.