It may seem like another bunk year for gardening, but the weather is better than last year. It has been warmer and less wet – but we got measurable rain once it did ‘dry out’. It seemed like the rain stayed through June, but in fact we only received 0.75 inches of rain in last month (it was unusually cloudy and misted some days so it seemed like a lot  more) and have gotten 1.23 inches so far this month. So we are still needing to water frequently to keep veggies happy – some need an inch a week or more. If your lettuce and greens bolted a while ago, that is why.

It seems that the weather each year creates conditions for different types of pests. Last year, with the long, wet spring, was an epic year for slugs. This year the grey aphids on brassicas seem to be thriving.

I’ve seen a lot of leaf miners this year on beets, spinach and chard. The most serious infestations have been in new gardens (unstable systems) or small-space raised bed gardens where opportunities for crop rotation are limited. Here are some strategies to deal with this and other pests with a system approach:

• Break the life cycle by excluding the adult. In this case, a small grey fly comes out when the veggies are seedlings, and lays eggs on the tender first leaves. Using row cover (a thin sheet that lets in rain and sunlight) will prevent this. Unless the flies are hatching from the soil right under your seedlings – this is why crop rotation is key. Plant these three plants in even a slightly different location to give them an edge.
• Be vigilant. Whether you use row cover or not, keep an eye on young plants and remove eggs or infected leaves as soon as possible.
• Follow-up. Continue to pick off eggs and infected leaves as the plants grow. It may seem like you are taking off a lot of leafs but the plant will compensate. And every patchy leaf you cut off means removing a maggot (or 5) that won’t be laying more eggs after hatching into an adult. With a bad infestation, you might considering cutting your losses and tossing the whole crop in the compost heap (chop off roots or let it dry out a bit in the sun first.) With beets, think of it as a gourmet harvest of baby beets and celebrate with a blue cheese and walnut salad.
• Stress is the underlying factor in all insect and disease scenarios. Adequate water (preferably rain water) and soil enriched with organic matter (compost) will give best results.

Cilantro flowers attract beneficial insects. And turn into coriander seed!

• Plant to attract beneficial insects. In permaculture jargon, this is an example of intervening in the right place in the system to get the most effect for the least effort: let the insects do the work for you. To go even further, set it up so you don’t even have to plant them each year. Just let parsley-family plants flower and reseed themselves and edit them if they are in the way. Parsley, angelica, cilantro and all of the small flowered herbs attract lots of tiny wasps and friendly critters that will gobble up pests (or poke a hole in them, lay an egg and let their young eat out their insides – again, stand back and let the beneficials do the work for you, their way.)
  

  Parsley from last year flowers and sets seed among fava and onions.

• Provide habitat. While sparrows nesting in my eaves is not optimal, I have never had a cleaner garden. This year we have at least three nests within 20 feet of the garden, and the concerned parents spend every hour of the day collecting food for their young. In fact, they are gathering it right off the kale and tomato plants. I have watched the female lovingly (my anthropomorphic interpretation) pick each cabbage butterfly larvae off of a kale plant and fly up to the nest. I’ve hardly had to use the badminton racket on the adult butterflies after an initial population control measure where I killed about 20 of them in two days this spring. I felt bad about it, but it was them or all of my brassicas. Last year I couldn’t bear to do it and liked having the butterflies flitting about, but I spent hours picking hundreds of eggs and caterpillars off every cabbage, brussels sprout, kale, broccoli and bok choy plant. Again: intervene at the best leverage point in the system. Let me be clear too, that the cabbage butterfly is not a native animal, and I wouldn’t use chemical controls or kill them all. The sparrows love their juicy thorax and how super easy they are to catch when they get trapped in the greenhouse. As for how to specifically create habitat (aside from punching holes in your eaves), plant layers of shrubs and trees and let them grow bushy. Then create a lot of perches in your garden so small birds can get to the pests easily. A bunch of sticks or stakes placed around does the trick. I discovered this inadvertently when I made a cat deterrent system this spring by arming any bare soil with stakes spaced 8 inches apart. It worked, and the birds took advantage of it.
• Have tolerance. Just as a weed is a plant growing in the ‘wrong’ place, a pest is just an animal that has a different objective than we do as they go about trying to make a living. A few chew marks or lost veggies is just part of the scheme of things.

It’s been an insane year for poppies. Red and purple opium poppies came with our house as a weed and I’ve let them reseed themselves and selected for the brighter colors. This winter I planted another variety of opium poppy in the back garden ‘Antique Shades’. I didn’t know what they looked like but the description sounded beautiful. They are much wilder than I expected. First, they are 5 feet tall. Then, they are crazy shapes. Now they are turning into fat, fancy pods.

I also planted ‘Mother of Pearl’ under the eucalyptus tree which turned out to be a very subtle and pretty combination. The mix has a lot of white in it so I will edit for grey, pink and mauve which I prefer and let them reseed. I first saw this magical flower at Special Plants Nursery near Bath, England and I love it.

Poppies are a little tricky as cut flowers but I pick them anyway. Holding a match to the cut stem or dipping them in boiling water helps them keep longer, but they last a few days tops in a vase and then they explode petals and stamens all over the dining room table. Enough chatting, let’s see these poppies.

I realized today how many kinds of ripe berries there are in the garden and decided to top the tart I was making with some of each: blueberries, strawberries, alpine strawberries, red currants, honeyberries, goumi, red raspberries and black raspberries.

A lot can be grown in a small space by working with microclimates. For instance, the goumi and currant are tucked under a walnut tree, because they are both shade tolerant and okay with the walnut’s chemistry. The blueberries and strawberries are grouped together because they both like acid soil and regular water, plus the strawberries shade the shallow roots of the blueberries.

Some of our berry bushes aren’t mature, so in the future there will also be huckleberries, sour cherries (there is one little cherry this year, I’m hoping a bird doesn’t take it), sweet cherries (there were 4 this year), cranberries and more.

The search for the perfect summer tart is on. I’ve called on Keiko from Ghost House Kitchen blog for help and am looking forward to her ideas.  I have a good tart shell recipe from Deborah Madison’s Vegetarian Cooking for Everyone. So far I’ve been filling in with a no-bake cream from Sunset’s Strawberry Brown Sugar Tart recipe, and topping it with whatever fruit or berries I have on hand. But I would like a more sophisticated filling like a custard. One custard I tried before had quite a bit of corn starch in it which could be tasted in the finished dessert, so a recipe with a small amount or no corn starch would be best.

Keiko suggested I try Clafouti as a easy custard plus fruit dessert. I found recipes in Gourmet, Sunset and my favorite dessert cookbook, Moosewood Restaurant Book of Desserts. So I will try it on the weekend, maybe one with mixed berries and one with stewed, sweetened rhubarb and lemon.

Epipactis gigantea ‘Serpentine Night’
ORCHIDACEAE, The Orchid family

This unusual beauty has been blooming for a few weeks. The foliage is so gorgeous I didn’t have many expectations beyond that, so I was pleasantly surprised by the trusses of rust and gold blooms it put out. It’s a North West native orchid that grows in the Columbia River Gorge. Like many orchids in North America it is terrestrial, happy to live in soil, as opposed to many tropical orchids. The kinds bought as decorations are epiphytic and get their nutrients and moisture from rainfall and nutrients leaching through the canopy.

This orchid is hardy to USDA zone 6 or so and likes moist soil in partial shade. It may go dormant during the dry season. I planted it between a hardy impatiens and a purple veined fern, with a codonopsis vine off to the side and a hardy gardenia which will be a nice back drop if it every grows.

A beautiful hike at Grassy Knoll today with clear views, eventually, of Mt. Adams. There were lots of flowers in bloom and the promise of a very bountiful berry season ahead. We saw serviceberry, thimbleberry, huckleberry and strawberry among others.

Wednesdays are my harvesting days, in addition to grabbing herbs and things for dinners. We’ve found it’s easier to make use what we have in the garden when it’s time to make a meal if it’s picked, washed and ready to use.

Here’s a list of what’s ready this week, with estimated quantities:

Greens:
Lettuce – mixed leaf red, green, speckled ~2 lbs or more
Escarole, Endive, Raddichio – full heads, gorgeous! ~ 2 lbs or more. Could be grilled!
Red orach – small amount, maybe to add color to salad mix ~1/4 lb.
Kale – Tuscan and/or Dwarf blue, still young could be used fresh or cooked ~1-2 lbs.
Wild arugula – smaller than the regular with a nutty flavor ~1/4 – 1/2 lb.

Herbs:
Cilantro – super fresh and nice ~ 1/2 lb.
Parsley – small amount
Oregano – mild or spicy ~ 1/2 lb.

Other:
Sugar pod peas – maybe 1 lb.
Spring onion, ‘Apache Purple’ (thin like a scallion) ~ 1/2 lb.
Rhubarb – 2 lbs.
Alpine strawberries ~ 1/8 lb. For dessert garnish

Hey folks, it’s time. I accidentally grew 100 more tomato plants than I have room for in my garden, and they are looking for good homes! See the list of varieties here.

The weather is supposed to be beautiful this weekend and it is actually now time here in Portland to start planting heat-loving crops like tomatoes, peppers and eggplants. The nights will still be cool (which they hate), and we’ll still have some excessively wet days, but it will be okay. The tomato starts are nice and big and ready to get in the ground. They have been so cozy in the greenhouse and got a lot of loving attention while I’ve been traveling.

I  will also have some other veggie and flower starts, herbs and extra garden things for sale.

MY GARDEN

SUNDAY, JUNE 5th

10 am – 5 pm

If you need directions leave a comment here (it won’t be published) with your name and email address.

Papaver nudicaule
PAPAVERACEAE, The Poppy family

These bright crepe-paper blossoms, on impossibly slender stems, are the perfect sign of spring. The popsicle-colored petals hover over mounds of wavy pale green foliage. This tempestuous time of year the weather makes flowers seem so fragile. Some of the most intrepid and earliest flowers barrenwort, columbine, bleeding heart, anemones and corydalis are also the most delicate in form.

Signs of spring in the Northwest start well before the Equinox. Right after the holidays a few flowering trees start blooming and bulbs slowly start to show. By now there are camellias, the early rhoddies like ‘PJM’, forsythia, flowering plums and lots of bulbs in color. While that is interesting and heartening, the subtle gradations of seasonal cycle make it feel less complete somehow. Growing up in the Midwest I expect more austerity from winter, a deeper, darker, whiter downtime. And the rush that accompanies the first flock of robins, who arrive puzzled every year at the snow that remains, is intense. And important – the first kid in our family to see a robin would get a treat, or kudos? I don’t remember. The first crocus snout pushing up, the blades of green grass in the lawn, the swelling of buds that the thaw brings feels like a miracle.

Spring here is less transcendent but more exuberant. The party colors of the shrubs and flower trees, and these poppies, give a carnevale feel. At this point in the long rainy season saturating one’s retinal cones with hues of surreal intensity feels wonderful.

Iceland poppies like cool weather. They will come back a few years in a row in mild climates with good drainage, but they reseed too if you let them. This variety is compact – just 10″ tall.