Cool vs. warm season vegetables and herbs

In an herb-gardening class this morning, I had a lovely participant that had recently moved to South Carolina from upstate NY. 

It was a great reminder (for me) of what a wonderfully benign climate that we have in the Carolinas for growing herbs and vegetables!

Our average last spring frost date ("historically" April 15) is really more like April 8 (or earlier) now.  And we've moved from Zone 7b to Zone 8, in the Piedmont of South Carolina.

In the mountains of Western North Carolina, where I spend time in the summer and on weekends, in the Asheville basin (where our small house is), we're now Zone 7 b, instead of Zone 6, and I'm sure the 'heat island effect' along with the stone raised beds that I have, bump that up!

Needless to say, even as we're moving into true spring, I'm harvesting the last overwintered arugula (it's starting to bolt) as I'm planting spring cool-season seeds, too, and thinking about transplants of warm-season vegetables to come.

Amending vegetable beds in the satellite garden (a couple of years ago)

A Master Gardener volunteer, who enjoyed the Hawaiian Pineapple tomatoes last year (that I did, too) asked via email today if we would have transplants for them at our spring sale.  Well, no, I replied, as we've rearranged how we grow transplants, but I then ordered seeds, and will share, for sure!

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Mud

I'm grateful for the rain, truly.  It's refilled our upstate SC lakes, hydrated the soil in the mountains, but...

The path past the main vegetable garden (from the kitchen door) is becoming a compacted, muddy mess with all of the rain.

We fell into the habit of using the kitchen garden/mud room door while our sweet rescue Golden, Woody, was recovering from knee surgery last fall (the 'taking the dog out' excursion...) There's just a small step down through the door verge there.

But, now he's fine, and we're continuing to use that path.

Hmm, perhaps he needs to use the steps down from the bedroom door, or out the front door, as alternative "step" exercises!

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Tulips are emerging

Hmm, if I'd been energetic (which I'm not, still recovering from a bad cold), I'd have pictures of the tulips emerging in front of our house in the mountains.

We didn't plant them, the previous owner (and designer of our small house) did.  He wasn't a gardener, at all, but his tulips have been lovely over the last springs.  The colors coordinate with our house -- how nice is that!

This was last year's post about their appearance.

The tulip foliage looks great and robust so far --we'll see what the flowers are like this year.

This is what they looked like a couple of years ago.

Tulips at the base of the house

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Looking forward to spring vegetables!

I'm doing a program this weekend about "creating an attractive and sustainable vegetable garden" and it has me thinking hopefully about spring vegetables.

I'm feeling behind on sowing seeds and getting started due to travel and a bad cold, so am ready for thinking positively about lettuce, spinach, beets, arugula, mustards, peas, etc. -- all the spring possibilities that can be totally successful (and delicious) depending on the vagaries of late winter/early spring weather.

I've STILL got offset baby leeks to transplant, but hopefully they'll catch up quickly when I have time and energy to do that.  I managed to get in onion seedlings and transplants this afternoon, but they suffered a bit from a delay in planting (due to my being under the weather), so it'll be interesting to see how they fare.

In the meantime, this view of June raised beds in the mountains last year cheered me up!

Raised beds in June

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February

The downie woodpeckers have been visiting the suet feeders (note to self, put suet cakes on the grocery list).

Yes, I could make homemade suet for them, but I'm already making (homemade) bread, granola, and yogurt for us --hmm, and keeping Woody from helping himself from cooling bread on the counter!

Hmmrph.  He managed half a loaf this afternoon.

It's been great fun to watch spring coming along (and winter blasting back, too).  I was going to put onion seedlings in the ground this afternoon, in spite of suffering with a bad cold, but quickly realized that the top inch or so was still frozen.  Hmm, I guess I'll wait for both onion seedlings and dormant onions!

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Signs of spring

The first Carolina Jessamine flowers have opened, both outside my study window and along the front step railing.  Well-expanded flower buds of a single bloodroot (Sanguinaria canadensis) plant near the front path are just waiting for a bright sunny day to open, too.

I imagine that the small patch of Hepatica acutiloba at the Garden might be in flower, too.  What with the continuing rainy weather and more traveling, I haven't had time to check.

Daffodils, early cherries, and Chinese redbuds have all popped over the last few days -- noticeable after coming 'down the hill' from the mountains yesterday.

I've got onion plants (both dormant and ones growing actively) to get in the ground, along with leek offsets (from my perennial leeks) to transplant, too.  The prediction for the weekend is much colder weather, which although seasonal, might not be conducive to planting.  We'll see!

I haven't yet planted peas of any sort -- they're due, too, although they'll catch up quickly, whenever they're planted -- the key to their spring success is a long cool spring -- not a variable (or hot) one!

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Love Your Planet!

My table at the Love Your Planet Day at Flagler College
in St. Augustine on Feb. 11th.

While my book tour doesn't officially get underway until April, I took the opportunity to participate in the "Love Your Planet Day" at Flagler College in St. Augustine. I brought my books and a sample harvest from my garden. I talked to a lot of people and even sold a few books.

First Coast Slow Food table

There were 12 or 14 tables with various "green" displays and someone playing wooden flutes for atmosphere. First Coast* Slow Food had a table there. I found out that they are having a big event, which I will now be a participating vendor: First Coast Slow Down on May 3rd, which will take place at Intuition Ale 720 King Street Jacksonville, FL 32204.

"The Slow Down is a unique opportunity for local Snail of Approval recipients - chefs, farmers, producers and artisans - to come together in the spirit of collaboration and share their talents, products and expertise with those who are interested in a food system that is good, clean and fair. Each participating restaurant, farm, producer or artisan will have a table where they can display food, produce or food products."A limited number of tickets will be sold for this event.

See the events page on the "Organic Methods for Vegetable Gardening in Florida" website for my other events so far.

Flagler College has a beautiful campus.

It was a beautiful 80-degree day, if a little too breezy for good table management. Flagler is a small college with a lovely campus right in the center of St. Augustine.

*First Coast: Florida has divided itself into various coastal regions. The northeast region is call the First Coast because St. Augustine is the oldest city and Ponce deLeon landed here 500 years ago. Some of the other coasts are Space Coast, Treasure Coast, Palm Coast, Emerald Coast, and Nature Coast.

~ ~ ~

FNPS board members working through the exercise.

I went to the Florida Native Plant Society retreat in Haines City last weekend. We worked through some interesting exercises with the help of two facilitators to help the Society reorganize itself so that it (we) can grow.

Each of the five groups were drawing diagrams, thinking of contingencies, assumptions, and solutions for one topic. It was exhausting work because we were on our feet throughout most of the day. 

FNPS board members are always ready for a hike.  Even after a full day of work on Saturday from 8:30am to 4:30pm, a dozen members still had energy to spend the hour and a half before dinner out hiking in the scrub.

Even after all that work, I love that about half of the group (myself included, of course) went for a hike on a scrub habitat trail near the conference center for an hour and a half before dinner.  Most are quite knowledgeable about Florida's flora and habitats. Fun. We had a campfire that evening and then worked our butts off until almost 1pm on Sunday.

Now back to writing as much of my third book as possible before the book tour starts in April. Please come out to one of my events. I'd love to talk to you!

Green Gardening Matters,
Ginny Stibolt

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Embracing plants

I've loved learning about plants for decades -- native plants, vegetables, plant combinations, garden design, etc.  Visiting far-flung places as well as places closer to home has brought a wonderful sense of place to my view.

And it's all about the learning.

One of my favorite quotes is Thomas Jefferson's: "No occupation is so delightful to me as the culture of the earth, and no culture comparable to that of the garden...But though an old man, I am but a young gardener."

We're all young gardeners, whatever our age.  I love that. I just had the delightful experience of encouraging some younger gardeners/landscaper/plant people to grow more vegetables in the landscapes that they create and/or tend.

Piet Oudolf's garden, Sept. 2012

Let's do more to encourage young gardeners - whether it's growing vegetables or creating inspirational plantings.  It's a totally good thing.

P.S. This post is a milestone: number 1300.

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Colorful winter vegetables

I'm adapting a program about creative and attractive vegetable gardening to focus on urban vegetable gardening (for a talk next week) and came across a photo I took of a mid-winter vegetable planting last December.  Impressive, partially because there hadn't a long hard period of freezing temperatures.

Winter vegetables

I love the textures and color combinations and everything I've harvested so far (from the kale to the leeks) has been tasty!

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