Gardening and creativity

I've been re-reading a lovely book that I've had for awhile -- Fran Sorin's Digging Deep: Unearthing Your Creative Roots Through Gardening.  She's a tremendously wise gardener, and her book, published in 2004, has obvious 'legs' as it's still in print.

I'm planning on leading a workshop this spring where we'll explore some of the  exercises she describes in her book. And, I'm proposing another workshop and a talk based on this approach in the future, as well.

I think we're missing the creativity in gardening in our popular horticultural press in this country (probably in NA as a whole).  We're all about landscaping language (and tasks), even in fairly sophisticated pieces about gardening in our various magazines, websites, etc.

I've greatly enjoyed Gardens Illustrated (published through the BBC in the UK) for its plant and design-based approach -- they seem to be more about celebrating the creativity of the garden designer and the gardener, instead of thinking about gardens as the equivalent of a room that gets "decorated" every so often, so the articles seem like they have a fresh approach.

Plants grow and change, so are a challenging artistic medium, but they provide an exceptional creative palette, too, for expressing and creating a surrounding space (a garden, if you will) that suits YOU, not anyone else.

Piet and Anja Oudolf's garden, late September 2012

That's what I'm thinking about when I'm considering why I garden and for what purpose, and how I encourage folks in my classes, too, for that matter.

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A anthocyanin-rich fall

It's been a great year for red leaf color here in the Eastern U.S.  Very minimal cool nights followed by a LOT of warm sunny days seem to have resulted in much more intense late reds than usual.

It's been remarkable warm now for weeks, so anthocyanin production must be unusually high. (The red and purple pigments, in fall, are produced using sugars from photosynthesis - in real time - and sequestered in the vacuoles of leaf cells).

Our oakleaf hydrangeas are brilliant right now, as are all the feral Bradford pears around campus and the neighborhood.

And the last blueberry leaves are crimson, along with Clethra alnifolia (Coastal Sweet Pepperbush) -  I've never see it so vivid.

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Recipe for Failure: Long-day Onions in Florida.

I love winter gardening in north Florida. We can grow cool-weather vegetables including, lettuce, onions, garlic, cabbage and the other cole crops right through the winter despite the fact that we get 10 or more killing frosts. The soil never gets particularly cold, though because between those frosts we are likely to get some warm days--even up to the high 70s. I've started many of my cool-weather crops this year, but I hadn't started any onions yet. So it was time to start some.

On December 1, most of the onions for sale in a Home Depot here in North Florida were long-day onions! Any grade-school kid can tell you that the days are getting shorter until Winter Solstice, when they will slowly get longer. So if you plant onions now, you will not have long days any time soon and while those onions may grow, they will not form bulbs before our weather gets too hot for them. Long-day onions are for northern gardeners in places like Maine, who plant onions in the spring and leave them in the ground until the days grow long. So what is Bonnie Plants thinking?

I ranted about Bonnie Plants and their blatant disregard for providing the appropriate plants for their customers over on Garden Rant in March 2011: Unseasonable Offerings from Bonnie Plants

Here are more details on onions in my article: The Skinny on Onions

I harvested my sweet onion crop in May last year when the soil was bone dry.

I tied their leaves together with soft cloth strips and hung them to dry for three weeks in the garage. Then I stored them in a paper bag in a dark cool closet. We ate a lot of onions for more than three months.

So heed my warning: Bonnie Plants has a flawed distribution system. As a sustainable gardener, you need to know what to look for BEFORE you purchase plants. I was able to find some short day onion sets inside near the seed racks, so I will be planting a bunch of onions this week. Yay!

Green Gardening Matters,
Ginny Stibolt

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An almost full moon

It would have been a great time for a full moon hike this month. The moon has been glorious - luminous and glowing over the last few evenings.

Tomorrow night, it's full. Temperatures are moderate now, but they could have just as easily been overly cool and chilly. And the nocturnal symphony is largely quiet now, too, making evening hikes not quite as rich.

 

Posted with Blogsy

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Final evening sounds

Coming home from the grocery store this evening, I heard some of the final evening songs of fall -- whether they're crickets or tree frogs, I'm not sure. 

We had a good freeze on Saturday night, so I was surprised to hear them, although the warm temperatures before (and after) have buffered the dip in temperature.

The moon is already luminous in the evening, even though not full until Thursday.  It was low in the sky, so visible -- it would have been a great time to schedule a full moon hike, but who knew it would be so mild?

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late November vegetables

November greens have been a high point of an otherwise quiet gardening period, distracted by dog-sitting and coursework.

The Hakurei turnips continue to amaze me. Even unthinned, they've been remarkably productive (and tasty!)

Without a hard frost, the arugula has continued to flourish -- it's remarkably tasty as a cooked green, which tones down the heat-induced bite of the raw leaves, especially the larger ones.

I've been waiting to harvest much of the kale, since it's one of the cold-hardiest greens, and supposedly tastes better, too, after being subjected to cold weather. 

But probably equally important, it's also really attractive next to the parsley, leeks, and chard!

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Thanksgiving harvest



"Nantes half " and "cosmic purple" carrots



Happy Thanksgiving!

We're headed down to south Florida to celebrate the holiday with my daughter and her husband. My contributions to dinner come from the garden.

I planted most of these veggies on Labor Day and wrote about in this post: Fall Edibles. I'd planted two types of carrots, "nantes half" and cosmic purple." The purple carrots have matured faster than the orange ones. They both taste great because they are so fresh, but the purple ones flavor is more complex--my husband called the flavor "darker."

The whole harvest

The Total Harvest

The two types of carrots; "lollo rosso" red leaf lettuce; sugar snap peas; several sprigs of blooming basil; three sprigs of Greek oregano; and not shown, several birdhouse gourds. (See below.)

I removed the tops of the carrots and pre-washed them with rain barrel water. In the kitchen I washed the carrots again. I rinsed the lettuce to get rid of any sand and drained it thoroughly and then patted it dry.

Except for the gourds, everything is in sealed plastic bags in the fridge and will be transported in a cold box so the veggies all stay cool.

Garlic

I planted garlic bulbs the first week in October, as I discussed in Fall weather and planting garlic in wide rows. Now (seven weeks later), all but one of the bulbs have sprouted and a couple have double sprouts, which means that I did not separate all the individual bulbs. These will grow through the winter and will require no particular attention except for irrigation if the weather is really dry for more than a few weeks.

Fall tomatoes

Fall tomatoes

I have yet to harvest a good fall tomato crop.  I'm trying again this year; I bought three "solar heat" plants from Home Depot in August. One plant died, but the other two have grown okay. As of now we've only had a couple of tomatoes. The days are short and the weather has been cool, so I'm not holding my breath for oodles of tomatoes. But our first killing frost comes sometime in mid to late December, the plants are still blooming, and green tomatoes are hanging from the vines, so maybe it will warm up enough so we can have a bunch of vine-ripened tomatoes for Christmas.

Gardeners are always optimistic, but my husband laughingly calls these the $64 tomatoes--a slight exaggeration.

Two low hanging gourds are suspended from a pokeweed stalk.

The continuation of the birdhouse gourd adventure

Back in July I first wrote about my birdhouse gourds (Lagenaria siceraria) in this post: The birdhouse gourd adventure and then provided an update here: An early morning garden tour.

Now as promised, here's an update at the end of the season. My gourds have done very well as you can see in the harvest photo below. Plus there are still at least six gourds hanging too high in the trees to pull down easily. I guess they'll fall as their vines rot away or if I get ambitious enough to haul a ladder out there to pull them down.

So now I have all these gourds. I guess I'll see if I can create a birdhouse or three.  Maybe I'll even try to cook a couple to see if they are worth the effort. I would bet that at least the seeds would be worthwhile.

Got gourds?

How has your fall garden grown?

I wish you and yours a bountiful Thanksgiving!

Green Gardening Matters,

Ginny Stibolt

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