Potager preference

I wrote about potager gardening (pronounced more like protégé than pot o’ germs) in the home improvement section that came out in March of this year. The word "potager" is a French term for an English kitchen garden or an American annual/perennial flower/herb/vegetable garden with pathways. No wonder the French say potager.

To help customers understand this type of gardening, Bookcliff Gardens created a demonstration potager garden this season. Ann from Bookcliff invited me out recently to see their garden, which is absolutely gorgeous and worth visiting, if you haven’t been out there recently.

Here’s a few shots of Bookcliff’s potager:

I have also been busy this year trying to turn my old garden into a potager garden and started a brand new potager garden in another area of my lawn.

My pathways aren’t as pristine (and in some areas, aren’t even visible!), my tomatillos are adding to the overall jungle-like atmosphere, and while some of my planting beds are overcrowded, some are sparse, since either the bugs decimated plants as soon as they poked their leaves above ground or the shade is stunting their growth. Overall, though, I’m tickled with my potager experiment and will do it again next year.

Bookcliff had a garden visitor while I was there; I was happy to take the pic, but equally happy that he’s visiting the Bookcliff potager and not mine.

And, it was with a small degree of consolation that I took this photo: this is a shady area in the Bookcliff demo garden. I somehow felt better that even the pros can’t seem to grow much in the shade.

Eat this

Weekends are a good time to experiment in the kitchen with local produce. This weekend, my kitchen-loving husband (I'm serious) and I, are making tomato-based sauce from scratch to experiment with what herbs and tomatos we like best.

I think we can afford to make mistakes.

With so many vegetables and fruits running a bit behind schedule this year, we are now into the start of the prime weeks of harvesting season. Harvesting, for me, means going to the Downtown Farmers' Market on Thursdays to pick up my standard share box at the Cameron Place CSA stand. I've been a member at the Palisade CSA for several years now.

Harvesting, for others, means picking from their own gardens, or shopping at area produce stands and farmers' markets. Honestly, the flavor of produce picked on the day you eat it can't be beat. Even grocery stores have better produce right now. Seriously, just go eat peaches and corn on the cob.

Anyway, a couple of coworkers asked me what I'm getting from my CSA right now, so I thought I'd throw up a quick blog entry to fill everyone in. Keep in mind, I'm only halfway through the season.

For those at home, that's, from left, lettuce, potatoes, zucchini, carrots, garlic, peaches and tomatoes. I let my coworker take the beets, turnip and watermelon this week. I just realized I forgot to put the cucumbers in the picutre. Sorry.

That's a haerty meal. It's all organic. It's low in calories and high in nutrients. And it will be tasty. Want to know why?

Tomato heartburn

That first tomato of the year! Always hard to leave it until it fully ripens. The day finally comes and you grab that beauty and pull the perfect fat tomato from the vine. Turn it over and ugh! Blossom End Rot!

Top of tomato:

And now the bottom:

This is the first time I have experienced this disheartening problem. Researching, I discovered either my dirt does not have enough calcium or the plant is stressed and cannot process the calcium. I thought calcium was for bones! Apparently boneless tomatoes need it too.

You can help prevent this from happening by watering evenly. Periods of drought followed by a lot of water definitely stresses out the plant. Mulch your plants when it is hot and it will help keep moisture in and make sure not to overwater.

Other things you can do to prevent the rot — put eggshells in your compost, powdered milk in your bed (garden bed, not your sleeping bed) or, my favorite, TUMS. You have heard of TUMS for your tummy. Well, now the makers of TUMS can have a new advertising campaign, "TUMS for Tomatoes." You just crush the tablet and work it into the dirt. It didn't say whether to use sugar-free or fast-acting, so I chose fast-acting.

Since this ailment appears less frequently as the summer wears on, anything you do will make you look like a gardening genius.
 

Finding a needle in a haystack wouldn’t be this hard

A garden is always an opportunity to learn, isn’t it?

I wanted to try growing pole beans this year and I read that they were a good companion plant for corn. As the corn grows taller, it gives the beans somewhere to go.

Not content with your basic beans, I decided to go for more color and planted morning glories and scarlet runner beans. I thought they would be pretty all growing together.

And it would have been, if they all bloomed together. But the runner beans bloomed first, giving me red flowers in the corn stalks. Then the pole beans started, with little white flowers. Finally the morning glories began showing off in the early hours.

The only problem is that the corn continues to get monstrous, blocking out the sun for the beans, which limits their ability to continue flowering. Plus, the beans have begun producing beans, and finding them in the corn/bean/morning glory jungle is like playing Where’s Waldo in the garden, except instead of trying to find a funny-looking guy in glasses and a striped shirt, I’m trying to find green beans.

Oh well, at least I’ve learned what not to do next year.

If you plant it, it will grow

It’s time to throw a little controversy into the gardening blog.

This garden isn’t mine. Heck, this garden isn’t even local. It’s the joint effort of my parents and grandparents in Iowa where farmers take their squash plants seriously.

Even in the winter, they are prepping to plant. So it should come as no surprise, being a farmer’s daughter, that I would use a recent trip back to Iowa to highlight gardening in the Midwest.

Every region of the country, for the most part, has strengths or obstacles when it comes to growing fruits and vegetables. In Iowa, the biggest strength is its soil.

I don’t know anyone who adds anything to soil in Iowa other than the ocassional pesticide or insecticide. It is as black as night. Honestly, I’ve thought about paying my parents to haul buckets of the stuff out here where the soil is dry and a little low on nutrients.

Is that illegal?

Consequently, plants — and weeds — flourish in Iowa’s humid summer months where plenty of rain typically falls, giving the state this lush green color that does not exist here.  Even an outsider — my Mesa County-native husband — marveled at the plants.

That’s a kohlrabi, which he had never heard about. In the Mawdsley family, kohlrabi is dessert. Peel that sucker and eat it raw.

However, he did note, as did my parents, that fruit doesn’t grow in Iowa like it does in Mesa County. True. I have to ship Palisade peaches home later this summer.