The clock says it’s mid-day, but when I look outside I see otherwise. The rain is getting to me. I knew today was going to be dreary so I took full advantage of the highlight of my week yesterday. The 6th avenue farmer’s market opened. I miss the Downtown market since it is on Thursday mornings and I work while it is open. I am generally done with work at 4:00 on Tuesdays so the 6th Ave market is perfect. My husband, son (and dog) picked me up from work and we went to the market.
It threatened to rain, but the weather held the whole time we were there. The face of the market is ever changing. Now in its third year the 6th Avenue market is coming into its own. They are rearranging things a bit and adding a little bit of diversity in the vendors. There are a few more craft type vendors and a few new non-produce vendors.
We browsed our way down the market and purchased our way back. I’m sad that I didn’t have the opportunity to catch the names of all of the booths I purchased from, but I did get some. We purchased Asparagus and spring onions from the wonderful family that sits at the very back of the market. I have been buying amazing produce from them for 4 years now and I still don’t know their names. This year they have a new addition in the form of a 2 month old baby girl. She is just as sweet as her mama and I can’t wait to watch her grow up.
I picked up smoked salmon from Rolf (always a must on a weekly basis) and was happy to hear that he’s on his way up to Alaska to catch more to sell “fresh” (it is flash frozen for transport). Nothing better than fresh salmon on the grill in the summer.
Next we were pleased to see Vallhalla Coffee. This is great because we love their coffee, but for some reason we forget to stop by their shop on 6th Ave to pick up beans. What’s more is that I was tasked with buying good coffee for the nursery and I was going to get Stumptown at Satellite. However, I did better than that.
We picked up dinner at Gateway to India (per our usual 1st day of the market tradition) and CJ greeted us with a giant smile. The food was delicious as always.
I was happy to see that Tahoma Farms had a booth right in a prominent place. This is good so that we can pick up the items offered in the Terra Organics boxes on the off weeks (or at least what Tahoma grows).
My husband is a huge local honey eater. He has had peanut butter and honey toast nearly every morning for the past 7 years (maybe longer). In the off season we purchase our honey at Tacoma Boys or H&L. During the market season we purchase it from whomever is selling it at the time. The last bottle we purchased was at the Proctor market the day before Mother’s Day. It crystalized quickly and I wasn’t impressed. My husband was running out so he was happy to see Sweet As Can Bee Honey at the 6th Ave market. They had samples of all of their offerings and I love it when honey vendors do that. We walked away with a bottle of vanilla honey and a jar of cinnamon creamed honey. It was the only purchase we used our debit card on (typically we only spend $40 in cash at the market. it is our way of not overspending).
Our last stop was at a small booth selling tomato plants and greens. I am fully stocked on tomato plants and I am no longer allowed to even look at them, but greens… I could eat my weight in greens. I have a crisper drawer full of braising mix and kale so I didn’t need that, but this little vendor had a little green which I’d never heard of. I don’t know how to spell it, but is like a raab of some sort although not quite a raab. It can be eaten raw or cooked and tastes delicious.
I was happy with the selection of the market on opening day. I wish there were more people, but with the weather being so bad I’m not surprised. I will continue to support the 6th Ave market as long as it is open. I’ve missed you market season… it’s been a long winter.
I am going to preface this post by saying that I do not get paid from the nursery I work at to write about the store. I am doing this simply because I enjoy where I work and I feel the quality and service are something that needs to be shared. That being said, I would like to start a weekly (or semi-regular) feature highlighting what looks great at the nursery.
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Rain is in the forecast, but did you know that the majority of Gardensphere’s shopping area is under cover. Stop by to see what is growing at the nursery.
Right now we have a great selection of gallon perennials. Sedum and Astilbe look beautiful as do the Echinops and Johnson’s Blue Hardy Geraniums. Gallon perennials run from $7.95 to $19.95 depending on the plant.
Last week we received 5 gallon Snow Mound Spirea. They are outstanding. I have 3 of these in my back yard and they are a wash in soft white blooms. The arching habit is something that isn’t to be missed. 5 gallons are $35.95 and there are a few 1 gallon plants left at $9.95.
Venus Dogwood is in full bloom right now. There are 4 at the store and they are 6-7 feet tall and $134.95.
Hanging baskets are still a great deal at buy 2 or more and get 15% off.
Stop by and check it out.
We are on track to have one of the coolest Mays on record. We were spoiled by the amazing weather Mother’s Day weekend and ever since I’ve cringed when I’ve woken up in the morning. At the nursery we are selling tomatoes to customers for the second or third times. I am personally on my second round of Thai Basil. I didn’t have time to put out tomatoes the weekend after Mother’s Day (my usual time to put them out) and I am very thankful for that. I lost a cucumber plant over the week and some of the summer squash isn’t looking too good. I lost at least 2 broccoli plants and I am down to 2 cauliflower. The rain and cold is not doing my garden any favors.
We looked at the long term weather forcast and the 10 day outlook is pretty bleak. There is the possibility of warm weather starting on June 9th, but that is still quite a ways off.
In the past week I’ve sold gobs of copper spray for a wide variety of fungus. I fielded more questions about insects and diseases in the past month that I probably ever have in my whole career. The oddest one of the bunch was about a gelatinous substance found at the base of a rhubarb plant. Research showed that it was likely a fungus that attacks the crowns of rhubarb.
I can only hope that the weather will warm up and Summer will eventually come. For now I’ll do a little sun dance and try to protect my limping along garden.
Over the years I have tried every possible method of supporting my vegetables. I am married to a frugal husband (aka cheap Swede) and I have a bit of a budget when it comes to… well, everything. This isn’t always a bad thing because it keeps me from spending willy nilly on things I don’t really need to spend money on.
My peas have always been a bit of a pain for me. I love the pole style snap peas and even my so-called bush peas and beans have needed support. I have tried using a single bamboo pole, a bamboo A frame, and other various support systems for my peas. All have failed and by the end of the pea season they are unruly and broken. I lost tons of peas due to heavy vines snapping in a light wind.
Last year I came up with a plan to use a more rigid structure, copper. I used copper tubing, some copper elbows and bird netting and made a fairly effective pea trellis. It worked mostly ok for the beans and moderately well for the peas. The peas I grow get so tall and heavy they push over most anything I build.
This year I modified my copper pipe system for the bush peas and my husband build me a new and totally improved pole pea system. Today I wanted to showcase copper pipe system.
My pea beds are 5′ wide by 10′ long. I planted my peas across the beds with rows 18″ apart. This was the first improvement. In past years I’ve tried to plant too much into these beds (as they were the only ones I had) and the vines intermingle if they are too close together. This makes harvesting quite difficult.
At the end of each row I drove a 3′ piece of 3/8″ re-bar into the ground so about 2′ was still showing.
From there I slid 5′ copper pipes over the re-bar and secured it with a copper strap. Last year I did not use the re-bar and just used the copper strap. Over time the strap will stretch and the supports will flex.
Once the base of the frame was in place I connected the two uprights with a 5′ cross bar and attached bird netting to the pipes with zip-ties.
So far the peas are grabbing the bird netting and the structure is sound enough that it won’t sway to badly. I am hoping that it will be sufficient for my bush peas. I am not confident that it will work for the pole peas so for that we’ve built a larger more substantial system. I’ll cover that for next weekend’s project.
I hope this gives you some ideas on how to support your garden.
Our goal at Sprouting Off is to not only teach you about gardening, but to bring to light the truth about the food system in America. In a nutshell it is flawed. Very very flawed.
It has been since the end of WWII when the government had an over abundance of things like nerve gas that they needed to dispose of. What a better disposal method than to spray it on food crops. Turning DDT into a pesticide led the US down a dark road.
But that was the 1940s. People like organic stuff now. It has to be better now… doesn’t it?
No. It is becoming worse.
An article published in the NY Times on May 3rd illustrates just how bad things have gotten. Seed companies have been genetically modifying corn, soybean and cotton seeds for years to be Round Up resistant. This means farmers can spray Round Up on their crops to kill the weeds, but not the crop. Trouble is, weeds are smarter than farmers and companies like Monsanto. Weeds have now evolved to be resistant to Round Up. This means more chemicals and more genetic modification.
To get a better idea of what is so wrong with the food system in America you could read books like Omnivore’s Dilemma or In Defense of Food. You could watch movies like Food Inc. or King Corn (which I highly recommend). However, one of the best films out there on this particular subject is a little known documentary, The Future of Food. You can watch it for free on Hulu.
It isn’t a secret as to what our opinion of GMO food is. We don’t like it and are quite angry about it. What can we do about it? We are very conscience about our food choices. We do our best to purchase food from reputable organic farmers. We plant heirloom variety seeds. We educate ourselves about the state of the food system. We vote with our wallets. It makes a difference.
The other nursery we visited last Sunday was Magnolia Garden Center in Seattle. I had never been to this nursery and was quite excited to go. We needed the aid of the GPS unit to find the place since we don’t frequent the Magnolia area.
I was surprised to see the place as we drove up. We had just been at Swanson’s and Magnolia was such a change of pace. Much smaller and as we walked in we were greeted immediately. It was just a “good afternoon,” but still a greeting.
We did a little browsing and they had a nice selection of edibles. The layout of the nursery was rather confusing as there is nursery material on both sides of the nursery with the gift shop in the middle.
The gift shop portion of the store was nice with a friendly lady who greeted us and chatted with our son. We quickly browsed the nursery stock, but weren’t in the market for anything large so we mostly skipped that part. We made our way into the garden center shop and were greeted with the familiar smell of chemical fertilizers. This was a bit of a disappointment for me, but I do understand that it is the norm in nurseries. Once again the staff was friendly and that was rather refreshing.
On our way out I took one last browse around the annuals and perennials area. As I was looking I noticed a small hanging basket. The price on the basket was $49.99. I was shocked. The plant was barely cresting the edge of the pot. It has 1 small bloom on it. I hadn’t really been paying attention to the other prices in the store, but this one was enough to make me not want to return. I’ve never seen a nursery with such grossly over priced hanging baskets before.
Will I go back? Likely no. It may be nice if I lived in the area, but it isn’t something I would make a special trip to.
When we went to Seattle last Sunday we decided to have lunch at our favorite fast food joint (Dick’s). While there my husband mentioned something about there being a Sunday farmer’s market in Ballard. One of the nurseries we were going to visit was in that area and I do love a farmer’s market so why not stop.
As we entered the market I was ready to put my house up for sale and move to Ballard. My Swedish husband was not opposed to that idea. Don’t worry, we aren’t moving, but if I ever moved to Seattle I’d park my butt on Phinney Ridge and frequent the Ballard area.
The Ballard farmer’s market was amazing. There were plant vendors, vegetable vendors, meat, cheese and food vendors. Soaps, art… everything. If we lived in that area there we would need very little at the supermarket.
The best part about the market is that it is opened year round. There are very few markets in the area that are open in the winter.
We didn’t walk out with anything, but my husband tried to purchase a summer sausage from Skagit River Ranch. Sadly they were out. If we had more money I would have completed my weekly shopping there.
Will I go back? Heavens yes. I would go weekly if I could.
It is nursery season and once again I’m out an about. This year I have less time to get out to visit nurseries because I spend half of the weekend in one. You would also think that since I work in a nursery I would 1) have no need to go to other nurseries or 2) would be so sick of them that I wouldn’t want to go. On the contrary.
The nursery I work in is small and although we can order just about everything it is fun to go to other nurseries. I also love to garden. We are talking looove. It is what I do. Hell, I visit the nursery I work in on my days off.
This week you’ll hear about two nurseries we visited over the weekend. Both were in Seattle and very different from each other.
The first is Swanson’s Nursery. This ranks right up there with Molbak’s in size. Not quite that large, but enough to get lost in. I’ve never had the opportunity to spend more than an hour in Swanson’s simply because by the time we get up to Seattle, have lunch and get to the nursery I’m already tired. Today was not different. The fact that it was cold didn’t help either.
Like I mentioned, Swanson’s is huge. They have a lovely little cafe, many indoor shopping areas and it seems that every time I visit there is a new structure that has been built over the winter. Their selection of plant material is vast and this trip we focused on tomato plants, herbs and veggies. They had at least 15 different kinds of oregano alone. It was a little much.
Overall, I love Swanson’s. It is something out of the ordinary since none of the nurseries in the Tacoma area are quite that large. It is closer to us than Molbak’s and in a part of Seattle that I love visiting anyway. The nursery is clean and the quality of the plant material is top notch.
Like every nursery there are a few drawbacks. Their prices are a little high for my taste. They charge $3.99 on average for a 4″ plant and most perennials are more than that. Their 3″ tomatoes were 3 for $12 and gallons were $6 each. Heirloom or not. That is too high, so I stuck with the 4″.
The other think I don’t care for at Swanson’s is their customer service. It seems rather impersonal to me. While the store was rather busy when we were there we were not greeted by a single employee and the cashier was not warm and friendly. This is the trouble with the larger nurseries.
Will I go back? Of course. It is a fun trip up north and worth it. However, next time I go I will go on a warm day and plan to go when I can spend a good amount of time (and have some money).
On a regular basis I have a customer come into the nursery and get excited about the containers of worms we have sitting on the counter. Yes, there are worms on the counter. There is also a cat and often chickens in the bathroom. It’s a little Dr. Doolittle around there and I like it. Anyway, worms… Customers see the worms and say, “Oh! I need to get some for my bin.” Much to their dismay I deter them from purchasing said worms for such purposes. The worms we sell are earthworms. They are for your garden, not your bin. They are nature’s garden aerator and don’t like to be held captive. Many of the customers ask, “well, what’s the difference.” Quite a bit.
Earthworms are are for just that… the Earth. Bin worms are red wrigglers. They are adapted (my anthropologist husband cringes at that word) for digestion of decaying matter (ie. kitchen scraps). They are much different than soil dwelling worms. Sadly, our nursery does not sell red wrigglers and we cannot find a supplier for them. However, there are multiple locations online that you can purchase your worms from. Personally, I purchased mine 2 years ago from Uncle Jim’s Worm Farm. This is where I direct people if they are interested in starting a worm bin.
So where is the weekend project in all of this? Actually, it is more of an afternoon project. So easy you could call it stupid easy. First, visit this website to get the nitty gritty on how to make a cheap and easy bin. You don’t need to purchase special worm bins. The worms don’t care.
Next, you’ll need to get your bin ready for the worms. When I started my bin I did loads of research on how to do this and how to get ready. This was all well and good, but some of what I tried failed miserably. Not so much that I had to start totally over, but I did have to let my bin sit for quite a long time.
Place a thin layer of garden soil in the bottom of your bin. Healthy, fertile soil is best, but I just grabbed a shovel full and threw it in. Next is the covering. I’m not talking about the lid for the bin. This is the biggest mistake I made when I started my bin. If your scraps are not covered you will get gnats. Gnats are gross. When you open your bin and are attacked by thousands of flying little insects it’s icky. Shred 2-3 Sunday newspapers and moisten them. I throw the shreds into a giant tub and hose them down with the garden hose. Once they are sufficiently moist, wring them out so they are only damp. You don’t want your bin drying out, but you also don’t want it sopping wet.
Now you have your bin, worms, bottom layer and top layer. Place the soil in the bottom as mentioned before, place your food scraps in a thin layer on one side of the bin (more on food scraps in a bit), then the worms on top of the food, then cover with a thick layer of the shredded newspaper. The better the covering the fewer gnats. Every few days place your food scraps under the shredded paper on the opposite side that you placed it the week before. If you notice that your worms are not keeping up with the scraps leave the bin alone for a week or two.
The best thing to do is start slow. You won’t be able to throw weeks worth of kitchen scraps in all at once and expect the worms to consume everything. They are small, and need to get to work and reproduce.
As far as the food scraps go… that is where I had to do the most tweaking. I found that if I put in large scraps the worms couldn’t handle it. Or they could, they were just slow. I started collecting my scraps in a bowl on the kitchen counter. I had the tendency to forget about the scraps if they were in a covered bucket. In the bowl they were more noticeable. Every 3 days I put all of the scraps into my food processor and whiz them around until they are finely chopped. I have to do it in batches. I then put that mash in the bin.
As time goes on you will get a nice layer of vermicompost. As that happens keep burying your food scraps under the compost. They deeper it is buried the less likely the bin is to get gnats.
A few other tips and tricks:
1) Don’t put moldy food on the bin
2) Don’t put fat scraps in the bin (no meat)
3) worms don’t like onions, garlic or heavy quantities of citrus.
4) worms won’t break down avocado rinds, but they do like them for reproduction.
5) it is ok to forget about your bin for a few weeks/months at a time. I left my bin outside without feeding the worms the past 2 winters and they are still there.
6) if your bin gets too wet leave the lid slightly ajar and let it dry out a bit. This also works to get rid of gnats.
7) replace your shredded paper bedding as the worms consume it. As you get more castings (vermicompost) you will have to put in less paper.
Good luck on your bins. They are very simple and rewarding. If you have photos of your own worm bins please share them with us. We love to know what creative ideas people are coming up with. You can email your photos to sproutoff@sproutingoff.com.
I’m a little behind in updating what I’ve planted in the week. Mostly because it has been an on going thing this week. I find little bits of time here and there to throw things into the ground or into containers. Here is what has been done this week.
In the Greenhouse:
Basil
Cilantro
Pac Choi
Marigolds
Zinnias
In the Garden:
Kale (I could eat it year round)
Leeks (starting from seed for winter leeks)
Brussels Sprouts (direct seed outside)
Ok, that didn’t seem like that much, but it took me forever to do. Today/ this weekend I need to sow another few rows of lettuce, beets and carrots. I need to finally get my first set of beans in (I’m a week behind on that) and get the last of the beds built since we have another 5 yards of Tagro coming on Monday. Once those are filled I can add corn to one bed. After these last few items are finished I can just do successive plantings until late May. Once May arrives I’ll have tomato and pepper starts to plant, all of the various squashes to plant out and watermelon to start indoors (yes, I’m trying watermelon again).
My great Tagro experiment has mixed reviews on my part. Everyone told me that it wouldn’t work (for review, we are starting this giant garden with straight Tagro Mix, not potting soil). So far most all of the seeds that I’ve planted have germinated. There are a few lettuces that have yet to come up, but I had low germination rates with those last year too. The only issue I’m facing at the moment is slow growth. For now I am blaming it totally on the weather. We have not see more than 12 hours of full sun in weeks. The weather guy keeps promising sun, but it never shows up. I’m not giving up hope.
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