It’s HOT.  It’s too hot to go out and water anything but it’s hot enough that everything needs watering.  Except for the peas and favas which I’m almost done harvesting.  I grew two kinds of peas and as soon as I can find the packages and finish weighing them up I’ll write a post about the total yields I got from them. 

I only plant peas for shelling.  Without intending to, one of the varieties I planted this year is a “pod pea” which is the kind you can eat pod and all- even after the peas have started growing large.  I don’t like to eat them that way.  I do like snow peas when they’re young and tender but I hardly ever grow them because the shelled peas are so darn good and so hard to come by in farmer’s markets or grocery stores that I devote all my pea space to growing my own.

Is it worth it?  Oh yes!!

This is the first time I’ve ever grown iceburg lettuce.  This is “Red Iceburg” which was really crispy and delicious.  I only got two heads of it because I wasn’t careful in my sowing of the seeds and had some cat interference as well.  I will definitely be growing more crisphead lettuces!

The favas didn’t get very large this year.  I attribute this to how late I planted them.  As always, they are very tasty and were effortless to grow.  No pests (now there are black aphids on them but there were none all season up until harvest time). 

The poppies continue to amaze me.  I find them mesmerizing and I look at them all day from my window while I work.  I love the scarlet ones, of course, but these pale ones may be my favorites. 

This whole yield is from second year plants that I planted at the base of my three peach trees (which are in 3′ x 3′ raised beds).  I wish I had recorded exactly how many plants I put in each raised bed but since I didn’t I’ll have to estimate that there were about 7 plants per bed. 

There are so many good things happening in my garden right now.  My Red Rome apple has set a ton of fruit even though it’s still sitting in a dirt pile in the driveway.  We dug it up from the other house and haven’t decided where to put it yet.

I love fava flowers with their bold black marks and stripes.  I planted them late this year so I’m not sure how they’ll do but it seems they’re doing fine so far.  It just might be later than usual when I get to harvest them. 

All of our blueberries were transplanted from our last house and are doing pretty well.  This particular one is in the same dirt pile as the Red Rome.  In spite of not having a deep place to send its roots down in, it looks pretty happy. 

The peas are very tall and covered in blossoms though I have yet to find any pods.  Peas really love our cool climate here. 

The moss rose Gloire de Mousseux is in full bloom.  I didn’t prune any of the roses this winter so they’re a riot of tangles.  This one gets very tall.  I’m pleased it didn’t ball up in the spring rain.

The arnica has just started blooming and I have promised myself not to miss out on harvesting it this year.  I got lots of blooms last year and never managed to get them.  They trickle in for a while then bust out in full flower mode and then are suddenly done.  I’m determined to make an arnica salve from my own plants this year.

The favas are beginning to set flowers.  I wish they’d had a chance to get taller first but I planted them late in the season.  Still, I can’t complain about getting such a great germination rate for this bed I planted.  Almost all of the seeds came up.

The peas are very busy vining up.  I have a perennial problem of not providing support before it’s too late.  This variety is semi-self supporting.  We’ll see what happens.  No blossoms yet.

The comfrey plants my friends John and Jin brought me from their own garden were looking dreary for a while but they are definitely digging in and I have a feeling they’ll fill out their raised bed well given the chance.  I’ve been wanting to establish a comfrey bed for ages.  Comfrey is brilliant in a healing salve, chickens love to eat it, and it’s also a great additive to the compost bin. 

*Note: as someone has pointed out, this is NOT comfrey.  Comfrey has bell shaped flowers.  I had not yet bothered to verify it’s identity and simply took it for what my friends believed it to be.  If anyone can tell me what it is, I would love some help identifying it.  It isn’t borage but may very well be in the Boraginaceae family- those flowers look a lot like forget-me-nots  but the foliage on the plant is a lot more like borage or comfrey.  At the base the leaves are quite large and form a big clump.  Anyone know? 

Of the three peach trees this is by far the healthiest.  It’s “Frost” and seems to be much less inclined to succumb to peach leaf curl.  It has a few peaches that might not drop.  Fingers crossed!

I took the picture before I weeded.  I let this bed go nuts with weeds but when I was out there yesterday I started pulling them out and saw that most of my shallots had successfully come up.  Only a couple of rotters.  Now that I’ve cleared the weeds they should do even better.  They’re planted in a bed with strawberries.

The quince tree has really taken off this year and there are quite a few fruits swelling on it.  I’ll have to keep an eye out because the branches are still thin and might not support too much fruit.  Often a young tree will drop most of its fruit so I’ll just have to keep my eye on it.

This is my Apothecary’s Rose that my good friend Nicole gave me from her own garden.  She gave me several own root pots of them and most of them have survived.  This is one of the earliest cultivated roses and was used (as the name suggests) for medicinal purposes.  It’s a once bloomer that is supposed to set hips really well.  I’m pleased to see so many blossoms in this first year in the ground of my garden.

An elderberry tree is not difficult to identify, especially when they are in full fruit.  The umbels of small berries are not easily confused with any other kind.

 

Elderberry bushes can be pruned to be kept smaller in a garden but given free rein they can grow up to 30′ tall.

 
The

Different cultivars of elderberry may produce different sized berries, but even the larger ones are pretty small.

You can see the structure of the umbel better when stripped of berries.  Its branching is intricate and rather pretty.

Most cultivars of elderberry are edible and used in both food and medicine.  Although the elderberry has somewhat fallen out of popularity outside the grandmother crowd, it has been highly valued by people for hundreds (possibly even a couple thousand) of years.  The berries have been used to make jellies, syrups, liqueurs, and pies while the delicate cream-colored flowers have been used to make teas, wine, and “champagne”.  The wood of the elderberry was used by craftsmen and in pipe making and the flowers have been used in cosmetics since the Roman times at least and are still used in cosmetics to this day.

Medicinal uses: the number one medicinal use for elderberry is as a cold and influenza remedy.  It is used in various forms to alleviate feverish conditions, and as an immune system stimulant.  It is prescribed for allergies, congestion, ear and throat infections, burns, inflamed skin and mucous membranes, and for arthritis and rheumatism.

Nutritional value: elderberries are high in vitamin C, vitamin A, vitamins B6, and iron.  They are a powerful antioxidant and are high in fiber.

Elderberry is native to Europe and North America.  The European elderberry (Sambucus Nigra) has dark bluish purple berries while there are two  North American elderberries, Sambucus Canadensis is native to the area east of the Rockies, and Sambucus Caerulea (a sub species of Sambucus Nigra) is native to the area West of the Rockies and extending all the way down to Mexico.

All the elderberries I have mentioned above are edible though it is important to note that it is best not to eat the flowers or berries raw unless you are very sure of the plant’s specific variety because some varieties have poisonous parts without being cooked*.  Unless you know exactly which species of elderberry you have you should always cook the berries and flowers before eating them.  If you are growing your own you can pick the specific variety you would like to grow; if you are foraging for elderberry you may find any of the types mentioned above growing in the wild.  Any elderberry with blue or purple berries is safe to consume when cooked, what you need to avoid is any elderberry with red berries.

Sambucus Racemosa (Red Elder) and Sambucus Canadensus “Aurea” are two types of elderberry with red berries that are poisonous.  While some red berry varieties may be safe to use under certain circumstances, it is best to avoid them unless you are an herbal expert.

Red berries = poison.

Black, blue, or purple berries = edible and safe when cooked.

That ‘s the most important thing you need to know.

Why would you want to grow this yourself?  Elderberry is the most popular cold and flu remedy used in Europe even to this day and the scientific evidence supporting the medicinal claims of this plant are growing all the time.  In the National Geographic Desk Reference to Nature’s Medicine they cite that many modern studies have been done to test the folksy claims of the power of the elderberry to heal and that the tests have shown that elderberry has consistently reduced the severity of flu and cold symptoms as well as reducing the length of illness.  This plant continues to be of interest to scientists as well of herbalists.

You can still forage elderberry but with public wild lands continually shrinking, most people’s access to wild elderberry is decreasing all the time.  This is a powerful enough herbal with enough uses to earn it a place in your garden.

Cultivation facts:

• Elderberry is a large deciduous bush growing up to 30′.

• It grows quickly and suckers freely.

• All elderberries prefer a sunny location.

• All elderberries require cross pollination with other varieties.  Either plant two different varieties in their own spots in your garden or if you have limited space, plant two varieties in one hole.

• European elders do particularly well in alkaline soils though all elders are adaptable to most soil types.  Most elders enjoy a wet soil which is why it is common to find elders growing along the banks of rivers, however, once established an elder has few watering requirements.

• propagation can be accomplished with seeds or cuttings.  The seeds need stratification.  Cuttings should be taken from semihardwood in the summer from new growth.

• Because elderberries sucker freely they can take over your yard unless you control them.  However, the bush is not long-lived.

• Elderberry is rarely bothered by pests as its bark has a natural insecticide in it.

*One of my herbal books says that all parts of the elderberry Sambucus Canadensis are poisonous (at least mildly) unless cooked.  Although I foraged and correctly identified the elderberries I’m using for elderberry syrup, and theoretically I should be able to eat these raw, they don’t taste very good raw anyway.  I tried one.  The flavor is greatly enhanced by being cooked.  Furthermore, throughout my elderberry reading I have read that all the bark and twigs of all the elderberry varieties are at the very least mildly poisonous which is why it is suggested in a number of sources to take care to remove all of the stems of the berries before using in recipes.  I would certainly follow this advice.

**The only problem you will run into with the two in one hole planting is that eventually as you prune old growth away or it dies off you may end up with one of the two varieties completely dying out.  If this happens you can always take a cutting of a cross pollinator and replant it with the more mature plant: dig up any existing suckers and plant your cutting there, near the base of the mature planting.
Make your own elderberry syrup:
Elderberry Syrup: DIY Apothecary
Information for this article comes from:
“The Complete Herb Book” by Jekka McVicar
“Desk Reference to Nature’s Medicine” by National Geographic
“The Essential Natural Health Bible” by Nerys Purchon
Nutrition Data- an online resource for nutritional data (nutritional information from the USDA)

Be sure to also check out our post on making elderberry syrup:
Elderberry Syrup: DIY Apothecary

I spend a lot of time thinking about what I want to plant in my garden each year.  I make my decisions based on an ever-evolving criteria which often include these points:

Is it cheaper to grow it than to buy it?

Will it do well in my soil?

If I grow it, will I actually eat it?

If it does so well I can’t keep up with it- can I preserve it?

Is it worth the water it will take to keep it alive?

But there are other considerations as well.  I like to plant a big variety of things but there’s a part of me that is always working towards finding all the “perfect” cultivars of everything I love to eat so that one day I’ll grow only one kind of carrot every single year (from seeds I save myself, I like to think) and I’ll stick with only a couple kinds of lettuce (only my favorites), and I’ll become the gardener famous for that variety of squash she grows every year.  I think it pleases me to imagine having a garden full of vegetables that have been acclimated to my peculiar little lot and become special and I like thinking of lovingly saving the seeds each season to use again and to share with friends.

The reality, of course, is that I love trying new vegetable varieties and I know that I’ll always have something new to try every year.

I love this time of year when the garden is finishing up with all the produce, ripening one last bunch of tomatoes before the cold, offering another handful of beans before the vines all dry up.  This is when I start evaluating what worked for me and what didn’t.  Today I was thinking about Swiss Chard versus kale.  I do enjoy eating kale but I don’t ever crave it like I do chard.  Yesterday I cut a huge pot of greens (pictured above) from my garden.  I realized that I hadn’t been harvesting them and most of my kale is about to bolt.  While I was cutting the kale I discovered that most of them were covered in that variety of aphid that matches the silvery green of the leaves and are attracted to all members of the Brassica family.  My chard was untouched by aphids.  As I was picking the two different kinds of greens I was thinking that perhaps I should only grow Swiss chard from now on because I prefer it.  I like how it gets more tender than kale when steamed or sauted.  I like that my chard hardly ever has pest problems (something likes to lay tiny white eggs on the backs of the leaves but these are easily rubbed off).

If you don’t love eating something you shouldn’t be growing it in your yard.   This is what I usually think.

Then I started thinking that I should find out which one is healthiest to eat.  So I pulled out my trusty “Laurel’s Kitchen” with the nutritional tables in the back and had a look.  Both are very high in vitamin A.  Kale has twice the calcium of Swiss chard but half the potassium.  What I got from doing that comparison is that both are very healthy and have different essential things to offer.

Is it better to plant a garden that gives you the broadest spectrum of nutrients your body might need, or better to plant only what you love best?  What do you think?  How do you decide what you will plant again and what you will not bring back to the spring garden?  What were the biggest winners of your garden this year?

Here are a few of my old and new favorites that I will plant again and again:

Forellenschluss Lettuce:  this romaine lettuce does so well for me and is never bitter.  Plus I love the red speckles it’s covered in.

Lazy Housewife Bean: I grew it for the first time this year and it did much better than “Kentucky Wonder” or “Bluelake” have done for me.  They were so flavorful and tender even when large.  It’s a Romano type bean.

Helda Bean:  this one grew right next to the Lazy Housewife and to be honest, I couldn’t tell the difference.  They both grew so well for me and produced such great beans I will plant both again next year.

Sungold Cherry Tomato:  my very favorite cherry tomato.  I always plant this variety every year and couldn’t possibly get tired of them.

Rainbow Chard:  this will always be the variety of chard I grow.  I cannot imagine giving up the brightly colored stems for an all white stemmed variety.  It never fails to taste great and do well for me.

Willamette Tomato:  I generally prefer heirloom tomatoes even though they don’t tend to fruit as prolifically as the more modern hybrids do.  However, I always plant one or two of the hybrids so as insurance if my heirlooms don’t do well.  This one turned out to be not only prolific but had great flavor.  I will grow this one again next year.

Nantes Carrot:  I used up the seeds I had from a previous year.  I can’t remember specifically which Nantes it is but I let one go to seed and will continue planting these because they have done so well for me.  I’m not sure how to get the seeds out of their tiny spiky pods so if anyone knows, please tell me!
Your turn!

I have begun to take better garden notes so that I can share my data here for those who might find it helpful.  Normally I let my potatoes remain in their bed and harvest them as I need them but this year I needed to free up my potato bed for some blueberry bushes.  This gave me the opportunity to weigh them all at once.  The potato plants were already dying and so I stopped watering them anyway.

Here are my notes on this year’s potato planting:

Potato variety: Warba (early season)

Number planted: 24 seed potatoes

Bed size: 4′ x 16′ raised bed

Space between seedlings: 10″ between them in their rows, rows were 24″ apart

Planting date: April 17

Harvest Date: First picking July 3, complete harvest July 12

Growing conditions: typical cold wet spring and cold wet early summer with some brief intermittent heat waves.  Barely watered the bed at all.  Though I planted them in trenches 6″ deep, I failed to continue to cover them as the plants grew which generally gives a higher yield.  Didn’t mulch at all which also tends to produce higher yields.  I would call the growing conditions less than ideal, though the soil they were planted in was very good; loose and full of well composted material.

Total yield: 30 lbs 15 oz

Or you can think of it as 1.29 lbs of potatoes per seed potato planted.  Or you can think of it as a fraction over 1 pound per square foot of garden space.

This is a respectable yield but would have been much better if I had followed good potato growing practices.  I also think it’s important to note that some varieties of potatoes can get much larger and grow a lot longer before harvest which translates to a much greater pound per square foot ratio.  I nearly always harvest my potatoes as “new potatoes” because I like young potatoes best.  So that affects the yield as well.

What this information should do, though, is reassure you that even under less than ideal growing conditions, potatoes do produce well and are rewarding to grow.