veggies

Mix colorful garden edibles into your landscape

Want to expand the plant palette in your landscape but having trouble finding just the right plants?  Consider mixing edibles into your ornamental garden beds.  Many families are working on growing Victory gardens during this Covid-19 crisis.  Even if you don’t have a designated veggie garden, you can still start growing them.

For those with smaller gardens who want to grow their own food, working vegetables into the landscape makes the best use of precious space.  No longer relegated to huddle in a hidden corner of the yard, edibles can stake their claim throughout the garden and open up a whole new group of plants to help you spice up your ornamental landscape.

Edibles aren’t just for eating anymore.  They also add color, texture and scent to the garden. Spring is the perfect time to evaluate your needs and incorporate veggies and herbs into the landscape.  Unsightly holes left by annuals or perennials that didn’t survive the winter can be welcoming spaces for edibles if the conditions are right.  Just make sure the light and water needs match those of your existing perennials and evergreen plants.  Most vegetables want six hours of sun and need consistent moisture.  Many herbs are drought-tolerant and will thrive with less water.

One of my favorite plant color combinations is the chartreuse, burgundy and ice blue colors often used in the Pacific Northwest.  With far fewer burgundy choices in our climate, I was stumped trying to incorporate those colors into my Austin landscape.  I had loropetalum, non-invasive nandina, and black scallop ajuga in my garden, but wanted more burgundy options. So, I turned to the vegetable and herb section at my local independent nursery.  Purple ruffles basil, red acre cabbage and red Russian kale proved excellent choices to tuck in between my contrasting perennials.

Many edibles also provide interesting contrast by adding unique texture and form into the mix.  Artichokes, with their large, spiky leaves and brilliant lavender thistle-like blooms make stunning sculptural focal points.  Thick-veined and curly greens stand out when planted next to smaller, softer border plants like zexmenia, purple skullcap or damianita. Feathery dill plants give the garden a wispy element to include next to woody perennials.

Plant herbs among your ornamentals for the scent they bring to the garden.  Instead of hidden away in a vegetable bed, rosemary or lavender along a path will release its fragrance every time someone walks by.  You’ll enjoy spicy aroma of thyme if you plant it around stepping stones.

Adding vegetables and herbs into your ornamental beds will also attract more pollinators.  Scatter a few bronze fennel, parsley, thyme, and chive plants throughout the landscape to provide both food and habitat for pollinators.  Unlike pests that eat other herbs, when swallowtail caterpillars defoliate my parsley, I know I can soon look forward to watching the emerging butterflies flit around the garden.

If you have a deer, rabbit or other animal problem, working edibles into your plan may prove more challenging.  Critters know no boundaries when it comes to foraging.  Deer will stay away from many aromatic herbs and velvety or spiky plants like artichokes.  Animals also generally leave the onions, garlic, leeks and chives to us.  You’ll have to experiment to determine what works in your garden.

Some years I have bunnies inside the fenced back yard, and some years I don’t. Last year I discovered a nest of three fuzzy baby bunnies under the oversized artichoke plant inside my fenced vegetable garden.  Needless to say, I left them there where they grew up enough to enjoy my 15 newly planted strawberry transplants next to the artichoke.  I guess that’s the definition or gardening for wildlife.

Whether you want to eat them or look at them, including edibles in your ornamental landscape can be both filling and fulfilling.

Get kids excited about gardening

 

Over the past few decades, children’s connection with the great outdoors has been slipping away.  Kids no longer spend hours on end playing in the backyard or climbing trees.  Instead, they sit inside, expending their energy on increasing amounts of screen time, sucked in by ubiquitous electronic entertainment.

According to the Henry J. Kaiser Family Foundation, children between the ages of 8 and 18 average 7 ½ hours of entertainment media per day.  Researchers report that so much screen time increases children’s risk factors for obesity, sleep disorders, social skills, educational issues and violent behavior.

In contrast, spending dedicated outdoor time results in healthy, well-rounded kids who are inquisitive about the mysteries of nature and the world around them.

Gardening provides a range of concrete benefits from increasing much-needed vitamin D to better quality sleep, fitness and mood.

As people eschew processed foods and seek local, pesticide-free, and home-grown fruits and vegetable, gardening can also open the gate to the outdoors for our kids.

Gardening:

  • Educates children about the life cycles of plants, insects and animals
  • Inspires creativity
  • Encourages healthy eating
  • Entrusts them to care for growing plants
  • Builds family time that ranges from planning to growing to cooking together
  • Highlights children’s senses – taste, touch, smell, feel, and sight
  • Provides opportunities for younger children to learn colors and colors, counting
  • Encourages imagination play with accessories like fairy gardens
  • Grows adults who appreciate and work to protect the world around them

There are limitless possibilities for planning a children’s garden and creating a fun, kid-friendly outdoor environment.

Start with the basics.  Smaller, child-sized tools are inexpensive and will make them feel grown up.  Little gloves, rakes and trowels make gardening more fun and give them tools to take care of as well.

Starting seeds – Research proper planting times for vegetable or flower seeds and set aside a sunny spot to create a garden, dedicate space in your own garden, or begin with large containers (with drains hole).  Having space of their own and personal responsibility will make it more fun and rewarding.

Go to the nursery – pick out live plants to transplant together.  Read labels and talk about conditions plants need to grow.  Start a math lesson by calculating how far apart to plant and average days to maturity and harvest.  Then, engage them in meal planning and cooking as well.

Create a container herb garden right outside your back door and ask your kids every day to pick what you need for cooking dinner.

Then load up on fun accessories like wind chimes, gazing balls, metal flower stakes, or painted gourd birdhouses to decorate the garden.

Invite wildlife into your yard as well.  Add a birdbath and let your child help or be responsible for keeping it full of fresh water.  Hang bird feeders and houses to teach kids about how the seasons change the types of wildlife in our area or those that pass through.  Teach them different birds have different songs and even eat different seeds or nuts or insects.  Plant giant sunflowers – have fun watching them grow and then harvest the seeds for the birds and squirrels to enjoy.

Teach your child about the importance of pollinators in our life cycle of our planet and your garden.  Grow pollinator friendly plants and watch how bees and butterflies get the nectar that nourishes them and enables them to pollinate vegetables and ornamental plants.  Watch as they flit from flower to flower, collecting pollen dust on their legs and passing it along again and again.

Create a personal space for your child to encourage imagination play and keep them entertained outside.  Find a corner or spot under trees to put a small bistro table and chairs perfect for a tea party or play with action figures.  Set up a train set, make a Hot Wheels car track, or create a doll or mouse house in the mulch.  Or, create a fairy garden with whimsical, miniature accessories to invite magical fairies into your yard.

For young children, a sandbox provides hours of entertainment.  Get a plastic one or buy a few wooden boards and build and paint your own – with your child’s help.

As parents who have or have had children in elementary school will all attest, exposing your child to nature may also provide fun and easy (easy being the operative word) ideas for dreaded annual science projects!

Then, use great books to explain the mysteries of nature.  Go with your child to the book store to read and choose books about things they’ve become curious about.

You can teach your child how to recognize birds in your backyard by listening to their songs in this book.  I love listening to mine over and over, trying to ID feathered friends visiting my feeders.

Backyard Birding: Bird Songs: 250 North American Birds in Song by Job Dunn.

Another favorite of mine is A Seed is Sleepy by Dianna Hutts Aston, that traces the life cycle of plants with beautiful illustrations of beautiful seeds.

Mrs. Spritzer’s Garden by Edith Pattou follows the gardening efforts of a school teacher.

For a host of inspirational ideas for all ages, check out i love dirt: 52 activities to help you and your kids discover the wonders of nature, by Jennifer Ward.

After your kids have enjoyed their outdoor fun, you can then channel their electronic activities with nature-focused websites and television shows.  The National Wildlife Federation and Nat Geo offer a variety of entertaining and educational games, programs and magazines about all aspects of nature.

Opportunities to learn about and enjoy nature span the seasons.  So, head outside and have some good, old-fashioned fun with your kids.

Delicious garden kale — it’s what’s for dinner

While I was out in the garden this morning figuring out what to do about the impending freeze and miserable weather, I decided to bring in some things from the veggie garden for dinner tonight.

I covered a few things – the lettuce and the chard that I just planted. 

I brought in some parsley and sage and lettuce and the whole head of red Russian kale.  (Kind of liked thinking of the punitive theme for the Russian in my garden.)

Isn’t it just gorgeous?  I admit, I plant this one year after year because of its colors.  I looks beautiful in the garden.  The red colors disappear when you cook it, though.

I sauteed a little bit of onion with a smidge of bacon drippings and then just steamed the still-wet leaves after cleaning.  They cooked for about an hour on low heat with the lid closed.  I seasoned them with truffle sea salt, pepper, a little poultry seasoning and a drizzle of aged balsamic vinegar upon serving.  Delish!

Oh – and notice my pretty new ceramic olive oil bottle and spoon rest – birthday gifts from my Mom and Dad.  It was all color coordinated on the stove tonight!

What are you eating out of your veggie garden right now?  Any kale on the menu?

Winter vegetable harvest — grow delicious kale

Vegetable gardening feeds my desire to buy and grow unusual plants. I love watching interesting varieties of common plants put on a show in my garden. 

This year I grew kale for the first time — Red Russian, which boasts beautiful red leaf stalks and tender twisting intricate green leaves, and Red Ursa — which is red all over and has tight, tiny curls like a perm left in too long!

If you’ve been wanting to add edibles to your perennial landscape beds – these varieties are the perfect addition.  If you don’t have to worry about deer or other critters getting them, that is.

They look so pretty in the garden.

And even better picked an in a bowl ready for washing!

I sauteed a leek from the garden with a little bit of bacon drippings, then added the washed and wet kale.  I put a little salt, pepper and chicken base in the pot with a little extra water and covered them and let them steam for a while — maybe 30 minutes. 
They were delicious.  I think we can get another meal or two out of the plants before I pull them to make room for the four tomatillos biding their time in the greenhouse until our danger of frost has passed.
What are you eating out of your garden now?

Broccoli brings back blogging…


After my holiday hiatus from blogging, reading blogs and pretty much anything that didn’t have to do with a kid birthday, Thanksgiving & travel, a holiday party for 160 for which I cook, company for New Year’s, and another kid birthday, I’m baaaaaack!

And this broccoli brought me back. This pretty, fresh and delicious green goddess adorned our dinner plates last night. Only a few of the winter veggies I planted actually survived our fall attack of the critters. Specifically, 2 broccoli plants, 1 green cabbage, 1 red cabbage and 1 cauliflower. The broccoli was the first to ripen.

I know sometimes there isn’t a lot of difference in the flavor of a few of the home grown vegetables and those you buy. But for some veggies, it’s a world of difference — like tomatoes, or last night’s broccoli.

And that was it. All gone. Makes me mad at the critters all over again.

But it sure was tasty.

And it makes me want to plant some more winter veggies this week…and blog about it!

What’s up doc?

The sun came out today and I ventured out to open up the greenhouse.

It’s still a little breezy and requires a sweater, but the sun feels so good.

I decided to peruse the garden and decided it must be time to test a carrot to see if it is done. The foliage is getting quite full and tall.

Spade in hand, I gently loosened the largest one without disturbing its neighbors.

I brought it in and lovingly washed all the dirt off. Then, as all garden bloggers do, I took it out to find a suitable spot to take its portrait!

It looks quite yellow and I vague remembered planting an unusual variety of carrots, but I only included a decorate label that was simply marked ‘carrots.’ A search of my blog posts didn’t find a name either, so I set about trying to find the seed packet from whence it came.

Lo and behold, there it was, on the potting cabinet in the garage, along with all the other fall veggie seed packets. At least I had the sense to save the empty or partial packets.

These seeds require 10-20 days to germinate and I planted them on November 10th. Today marks day #73. But then again, this is Texas, and they’ve enjoyed quite a bit of extra sunshine and wonderful growing weather to boost them along.

Now I know why the carrot was yellow, it was supposed to be yellow — it’s a Sunshine carrot. How appropriate — we all took a little taste of it and pronounced it sweet and delicious.

There are quite a few more as big as this one, so I will be going back outside with a basket to gather up some snacks!

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