In the Garden with Pat Rubin

Bee garden writer Pat Rubin writes about everything that grows, from flowers and trees to vegetables and lawns. Pat volunteered for several years as a Placer County Master Gardener and has written about gardening for many national and regional publications. In addition to gardening, she spends time raising and showing miniature horses and miniature donkeys.

In the Garden will include news, events, advice and other gardening tidbits. Pat will also answer reader questions.

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« July 2007 | In the Garden front page | September 2007 »

August 31, 2007

Organic farm autumn equinox celebration

Soil Born Farm presents its 5th annual Autumn Equinox Celebration Sept. 22, 4:40-8:30 p.m. Tickets are $60 and must be purchased in advance. Tickets will not be available at the door.

According to a press release, the celebration lets visitors “wander among the organic gardens (and) sample seasonal and organic foods prepared by prominent local chefs from Sacramento’s finest restaurants.” Wine tasting, live music by Mind X Quartet and Spillit Quikkers, and a silent auction round out the festivities.

Participating restaurants include Slocum House, Spataro, The Waterboy, Paragary’s Bar & Oven, Piatti Locali and Quarry Ponds Market Hall. Participating wineries include Boeger, Bogle, Davis Wine, Hey Mambo, Jewel Wines, Lolonis, Plungerhead and White Knight.

Soil Born Farm, an organic farm, is located at 3000 Hurley Way (intersection of Fulton Ave. and Hurley Way). Tickets are available at the Sacramento Natural Foods Co-op, 1900 Alhambra Blvd. (Alhambra & S streets) or by calling Soil Born Farm at (916) 486-9686.

Posted by Pat Rubin at 01:17 PM | Comments

August 30, 2007

Deer ravage garden

The young starts of fall vegetables I planted last week have been nibbled by the deer. I knew as soon as I saw the garden something was wrong. I walked down to the vegetable bed and looked closely. Plants were bitten off, chewed, tromped and pulled out. It had to be deer. My heart sank. I wouldn’t mind so much if they’d be polite enough to share the garden with me rather than ravage it. The only plant I didn’t mind them eating was the Brussels sprouts!

A chat with my neighbor across the street verified my suspicions. “I was out in the front and I saw bushes moving in your yard,” he said. “So I went over to check. There were four deer down by the pumpkins.” And, like the good neighbor he is, he chased them away.

Ironically, the day they ate the garden I was writing about two spray-on products touted to keep deer away. I’d given samples of the products to people who live deep in deer country to try. The consensus was the products worked. They have to be sprayed about once a month, however.

Even though I live in a rural part of Auburn, I rarely get deer in the garden. They normally visit my neighbor Laura’s vegetable garden. Laura deer fenced her vegetable patch last year, so maybe they think I’m fair game.

Well, they’ve bitten off plants in the wrong person’s garden! We’re going to put deer netting around the bed this weekend and buy some anti-deer spray ourselves.

There won’t be another free lunch for the neighborhood deer in my garden, I hope.

Posted by Pat Rubin at 11:34 AM | Comments

August 29, 2007

Symposium by Sacramento area gardeners for Sacramento area gardeners

The Sacramento County Master Gardeners have put together a dynamite fall symposium called “Taking Root…Devoted to Gardening in the Sacramento Valley” set for Saturday, October 13, 8:30 a.m.-3:30 p.m. at the Education Center, Fair Oaks Presbyterian Church, 11427 Fair Oaks Blvd., Fair Oaks.

Master Gardener Elizabeth Wise said the symposium has been called “a Strybing quality symposium without the drive (to San Francisco) and half the cost.”

Indeed, the list of speakers reads like a Who’s Who of the gardening world: Sacramento area radio personality and dedicated gardener Fred “Farmer Fred” Hoffman will discuss fall gardening tips. Award winning author and edible landscaping expert Rosalind Creasy will talk about beautiful edible landscape plants for valley gardens. Landscape designer Robert Kourik, who specializes in sustainable, organic landscapes, will demystify the world of plant roots. Author and horticulturist Lance Walheim will talk about growing roses.

The cost is $65 per person and includes lunch and break refreshments. Seating is limited. Registration forms are available at the Sacramento County Master Gardener website. For more information, or to request a brochure, call (916) 875-6913.

Posted by Pat Rubin at 12:48 PM | Comments

August 28, 2007

Next year I’ll do things differently

If I could rewind the year and start again, knowing then what I know now, I’d do a few things differently. So I've made a few resolutions.

Next year, I’ll build more raised bed planter boxes.

I’ll use soaker hoses and misters instead of overhead watering. As the garden grew and foliage covered more of it, the water didn’t trickle down as well and some parts didn’t get watered as well as others.

I’ll plant more heirloom tomatoes. They’re so much more interesting than the standard round, red tomatoes. It’s fun to tell visitors the tomatoes they’re eating are called Zapotec Pleated, Aunt Ruby’s German Green, Hillbilly Potato Leaf or Red Fig.

I’ll choose one favorite heirloom bean or tomato variety, save seed at the end of the season, and then grow it from seed each year.

I’ll grow more vegetables from seed. It’s amazing to think that so much life can be contained in a gnarled, withered, hard little seed. And I’ve always been especially proud of the garden when I’ve planted it from seed instead of starts.

I’ll plant the pole beans on a flat trellis rather than around a tomato cage. It was hard to reach in and find beans when the foliage was so dense. Consequently, lots of beans got overlooked until they were giants unfit to eat.

I’ll find room for zucchini.

I’ll plant Romaine lettuce several times throughout the spring and fall to have a bigger crop.

And in the compost, I’ll plant giant pumpkins early enough, say, mid May, so there’ll be plenty of time to grow a giant pumpkin.

Posted by Pat Rubin at 12:01 PM | Comments

August 27, 2007

Heirloom beans, saving seeds

Recently, I tore out the towering tangle of Rattlesnake pole beans. The vines had grown to the top of the seven-foot tall tomato cage, and then started twining around themselves, and finally reaching out and grabbing onto the tomato cages several feet away.

The plants were mostly foliage, having exhausted themselves producing beans for three months until finally all that was left were gnarly, twisted, overripe beans hiding deep inside. In fact, when I tore it down, I found a dozen or more dry purple and tan pods full of dry beans. I can save them for next year’s garden since Rattlesnake pole beans aren’t a hybrid (a cross between two different varieties). Instead, it’s an old fashioned bean that’s been around for many years. They’re related to pinto beans. Some sources say the name comes from the way the dry pods curl when ripe, like a rattlesnake waiting to strike. Others say the name comes from the mottled purple markings on the pods and beans. Bottom line: it’s a tasty bean picked and cooked either when its a slim, pencil-thin green pod, or when you let the pods ripen and pick out the beans inside.

I love growing and picking green beans of all kinds, but have to admit I’m especially fond of the heirloom types with their evocative names and interesting histories. Once you discover the amazing world, color and taste of heirloom beans, you’ll never want to settle for just green beans again.
For a great selection of heirloom bean seeds, try Amish Land Seeds, Native Seed Search, or Heirloom Seeds.

Posted by Pat Rubin at 01:43 PM | Comments

August 22, 2007

Ugliest tomato can win a prize

Santa Sweets, growers and distributors of the UGLYRIPE Tomato, wants to see pictures of homegrown tomatoes with “lumps, bumps and more.” They’re sponsoring a contest to find the ugliest and strangest looking tomatoes. Not all tomatoes come out “picture-perfect,” they note, even though those misshapen tomatoes may be delicious.

All you have to do is senda photo, and a story if you have one, to santa.sweets@gmail.com by September 21, 2007. The winner, according to a press release issued by Santa Sweets, gets “not only bragging rights, but a delicious box of UGLYRIPES, too.”

Posted by Pat Rubin at 03:47 PM | Comments

August 21, 2007

Imagine a pinky-red, somewhat triangular shaped tomato with rounded pleats.

That’s the Zapotec Pleated, which traces its ancestry back to the Zapotec people of Oaxaca, Mexico. It's supposed to be a good stuffing tomato, but I think it's amazing sliced and served on a plate with lunch or dinner.

A friend recently gave me one from his garden. It’s a mild tasting tomato, neither sweet, nor acidic. I’m definitely growing this one next year. Seeds are readily available. Check your favorite seed catalog, or Google “Zapotec Pleated” and “seeds.”

Posted by Pat Rubin at 10:37 AM | Comments

August 20, 2007

Mesclun in the salad bowl

Two pony-paks of mesclun found their way into my flat of winter vegetables at the nursery this past weekend.

What a great idea, I thought, as I selected the nicest looking plants. I already have a spot in the garden for them, and look forward to fresh salad greens all fall and into winter.

The word “mesclun” means “mixed,” and the plants are a mixture of fancy, common and tasty salad greens. Buy a seed packet of mesclun, and it will likely contain lettuce, spinach, arugula, endive, mustard greens, radicchio and chard. Not being a savvy gardener when it comes to growing salad greens (only in eating them) I always found it hard to tell the desirable greens from potential weeds, so never trusted my judgment to thin the good guys from the bad guys.

I don’t know exactly what the various greens are that I’m planting, though I suspect the toothy-edged ones are radicchio or endive, but I know I’ll enjoy their presence in fall and winter salads.

Posted by Pat Rubin at 02:06 PM | Comments

August 17, 2007

On the radio

On Sunday, I’ll be a guest on Fred “Farmer Fred” Hoffman’s two Sacramento gardening radio shows.

The KFBK Garden Show (KFBK 1530) is on from 8:30 to 10 a.m., while Get Growing (KSTE 650) follows from 10 a.m. to noon. Topics can include everything that grows under the sun - sometimes we never know where our conversations will take us - but we definitely plan on talking about color coordinating the garden, tomato cages, heirloom tomatoes and labyrinths. Listeners are invited to call in with questions.

I hope to talk to you then.

Posted by Pat Rubin at 12:16 PM | Comments

August 16, 2007

New cutting garden at local nursery

Just past the circular cement "folly" and through the tall cement pillars in what used to be Bushnell’s Garden Nursery’s daylily area is a fabulous cutting garden.

Full of zinnias, rudbeckia, coneflower, lavender, dahlias, sunflowers and more, it’s a flower arranger's dream. The flowers are there for the cutting. Or you can wander among the beds for inspiration for your own cutting garden.

It’s comprised of a series of long beds with a gravel path around them. The soil is mostly compost, and mounded up slightly. A row of conifers planted along the back gives the area definition. The flowers are a mix of annuals and perennials, and there’s also a selection of foliage plants. It’s an ever-changing mix of colors and flowers. Already the masses of dahlias have given way to a riot of zinnias, rudbeckias and sunflowers. The garden is glorious right now, but in another month or two many of the annuals will be pulled out for the winter.

Prices vary, and range from $3 for a small bunch of assorted flowers to $12.50 for a larger bunch. Stems of foliage are $1 apiece. Bring your own container, and one of Bushnell’s employees will help you select and cut the flowers. Bushnell’s Garden Nursery is located at 5255 Douglas Blvd., (between Sierra College Boulevard and Auburn Folsom Road) in Granite Bay.

The garden has certainly inspired me to plan a cutting garden of my own for next year.

Posted by Pat Rubin at 12:25 PM | Comments

August 14, 2007

Colorful potatoes for Thanksgiving

Plant potatoes now and you’ll have a crop for Thanksgiving.

I’ve already harvested one crop this year: a mixed bed of All-Blue with its deep purple/blue skin and flesh; Red Cloud, a white-fleshed potato best baked or boiled; Cranberry Red, with red skin and pinky-red flesh that is out of this world sautéed; and Carola, a yellow potato from Germany. They came from Wood Prairie Farm in Maine.

Digging them was like searching for buried treasure. We carefully pushed the pitchfork into the ground a foot or two away from the plant, and lifted the soil. Imagine our joy, with each pitchfork, to see the soil crumble away to reveal pounds and pounds and pounds of potatoes. First I started collecting them in my hand, then by holding the bottom of my T-shirt like a tray, and then finally having to get a large basket for gathering them.

Fresh potatoes cook more quickly and are far tastier than any grocery store potato. They’re easy to grow, and pretty bulletproof. They do demand friable, rich soil (a raised bed works great) and protection from critters like gophers that like to snack on homegrown potatoes as much as you do. We have two raised beds with hardware cloth on the bottom to keep out the gophers and moles.

Plant certified seed potatoes from a reputable company. While the potatoes from the grocery store will eventually sprout and grow, introducing them to the garden is a bit risky: you could be introducing disease pathogens along with the potatoes.

Each chunk you plant should have a couple of eyes. Plant potatoes about two inches deep and 12 inches apart. As they grow, mound up the soil around the base of the plant. The potatoes are ready to pick after the plants bloom and die back. Some gardeners will dig carefully around the growing potato plants and harvest potatoes while the plant is growing, while others wait until the end of the season.

Bottom line: plant potatoes this month. If you've never had a homegrown potato, you're really in for a treat.

Posted by Pat Rubin at 01:49 PM | Comments

August 13, 2007

Melons at their peak of perfection

I recently visited Home & Garden reader Paul Williams’ garden, and was inspired.

Williams, who lives in Sacramento, emailed me about the melons and pumpkins he’s growing. He has the most scrumptious melon patch I’ve ever seen. His Ambrosia melons smell heavenly. His Moon and Stars watermelons are growing plump and large. He also grows Georgia Rattlesnake and Carolina Cross watermelons. Williams shares his garden bounty with his neighbors. In fact, he hangs a blue bucket chock full of produce over the low, metal back fence for his neighbor.

Even though we get plenty of hot weather in the Sacramento Valley, melons, particularly cantaloupes, are tricky. The problem is we don’t get enough long, hot nights at the beginning and end of the growing season. But some years, everything comes together, and the melons are wonderful.

The million-dollar question, though, is how do you know when they’re ripe and sweet? You can pick a melon that is not quite ripe, and it will ripen and soften, but it won’t be sweet. That’s because the last thing the plant does is add the sugar.

The iVillage Garden Web offers detailed tips on how to determine if your cantaloupe, muskmelon or watermelon is ripe. Briefly, it says to cut, not break, the melon from the vine to prevent pathogens from entering the stem. Don’t overwater the weeks before the melons should be ripe since that diminishes the flavor. The cantaloupes should smell like cantaloupes when they are ripe. For watermelons, do the thump test. People experience at this say the watermelon should sound hollow, but not dull.

We used to sacrifice one for the sake of education: we’d take one we thought was ripe, and open it up. Sometimes we were right, but if nothing else, we could then figure out when the rest would be ripe.

Williams sent me home with an Ambrosia melon he said was at its peak. It scented the entire car. That night we opened it up, and I have to admit, it was perfect.

Posted by Pat Rubin at 02:05 PM | Comments

August 09, 2007

Missing pruning shears---again

Sacramento Bee file photograph/Owen Brewer

I’ve lost my pruning shears again. That makes three pair this year. My husband can’t believe it.

I’ve looked on all the benches in the garden. I’ve looked in the garage. I’ve looked in the house. I’ve looked in the hay shed. I’ve looked in the vegetable garden. I’ve looked in the car. I’ve looked in the truck. I’ve looked on the rocks that border the beds. I’ve searched along the paths and looked among the flowers. And then I went back and looked all of those places again. No luck. Wherever those pruning shears are, they are out of sight.

The trouble is I tend to put the clippers down on the nearest bench or rock when I’m finished. That’s why I buy orange pruning shears. If I leave them where they shouldn’t be, I can spot them easily. At least that’s the idea. In practice it hasn’t really worked. I’ve also lost a green pair. I did find my least favorite pair - a useless gray and black pair - on top of the woodpile in front of the house. They don’t cut well, and don’t fit my hand. That’s probably why they're still around. My all-time record for losing pruners is about 15 minutes. I bought a new, fairly inexpensive pair to use in a friend’s garden I care for each month. I misplaced them almost immediately. She later found them on the edge of the birdbath. Of course, I then remembered where I’d put them.

This year I designated a small table as the place for all gardening hand tools: clippers, trowels, cultivators, plant labels, and nozzles. And for a while I knew if I needed the clippers or a trowel, it would be there. Lately the table looks bare.

To make matters worse, I get sidetracked when I’m gardening. I’ll be clipping and clipping, then have to stop and haul the debris away so I put the clippers down. Or I’ll spot weeds that need pulling, or a plant tag that needs replacing, or have to move some pots, and before I know it I’m in another part of the garden sans pruning shears. I have to backtrack to find them.

I see all the really serious gardeners with leather holsters to hold the shears when not in use. I don’t wear a belt, so I guess that option is out for me. A friend keeps weeders poked in the grounds throughout the garden so one is always handy. Whenever she finishes weeding, she buries the point of the weeder in the ground near the path. She hasn’t lost any. Maybe I should have places throughout the garden to hand pruning shears. I could have lots of hooks and lots of shears. That might work.

Anyway, I’m off to buy another inexpensive, orange pair of pruning shears. I hesitate to buy a really good pair since I’ll just lose them. Maybe I’ll buy two, and something for hanging them.

Mainly, though, I’ll try to be more careful this time. Really.

Posted by Pat Rubin at 01:22 PM | Comments

August 08, 2007

New colors for coneflowers

Gardeners may need to devise a new common name for a popular perennial, the purple coneflower (Echinacea). Famous for a spiky orange cone surrounded by narrow, pink, drooping petals, coneflowers can be seen in flower borders all over Sacramento. But now they aren’t only in shades of pink/purple/mauve anymore.

Hybridizers have tinkered with this native American stalwart of the perennial border, and now it comes in rosy-orange, golden, pure white, mango, raspberry pink and ruby red. Its new names reflect thenew colors: Sunrise, Sunset, Sundown, Harvest Moon, Ruby Star.

It’s the same tough, sun-loving plant, but in new colors. The new cultivars are a cross between two old species of coneflower, E. purpurea and E. paradoxa. They’ve been around for a few years, now, but had been quite expensive, often commanding prices as high as $15 for a small start. They’re still a bit pricey, but as more varieties have come on the market, prices have begun to tumble. Most nurseries now carry a selection of coneflower, including both new and old varieties. Park Seed Co. offers eight new varieties, including one with double pink petals.

Echinacea cultivars bloom from July on, sometimes even into early fall if you keep spent flowers cut away. They give the border a lift, a flash of brightness, a splash of color at the height of summer when most perennials are looking bedraggled. They stand up to all the sun Mother Nature can muster on a hot, California summer day.

My only disappointment with the new version of purple coneflower is that the petals of many of the new varieties aren’t as long and graceful as the old coneflower. Part of the allure of the coneflower, at least for me, was the way the petals hung inches below the spiny orange cone in the center of the flower. I find the petals on many of the new, colorful varieties are shorter, stubbier. They look like they aren’t quite finished, and I keep expecting them to grow longer as the plant matures. Still, I’ve planted several varieties in the garden, and, short petals or not, I’m drawn to them.

I guess simply calling them all coneflowers will do.

Posted by Pat Rubin at 02:50 PM | Comments

August 06, 2007

Big dollars for tomatoes

Those tomatoes growing in your backyard could be worth a whole lot more than the per pound price at the local grocery store or farmer’s market.

Raley’s and NatureSweet Tomatoes are willing to divvy up $2,500 for the sweetest local, homegrown tomatoes in both the large and small categories. Two runners up in each category will receive $250 in prizes.

All tomatoes will be given a Brix test for sweetness. (Wine grape growers do the same thing to determine when to pick the grapes.) A panel of judges will taste the finalists, as determined by the Brix test. Scores will be tallied and the winner announced. In fact, The Bee's food writer, Gwen Schoen, and I will be on the judging panel.

Growing the sweetest tomatoes for the dinner table is easy--just keep picking and cutting and tasting them until you hit upon the ones that are the best. But a contest, well, that’s a bit harder. You don't get to say, "Wait a minute, I have better tomatoes than those."

Here are a few tips to help you select the sweetest tomatoes for the contest. Fred “Farmer Fred” Hoffman has heard just about every trick, rumor, and old wives’ tale imaginable to make tomatoes sweeter. Mainly, Hoffman said, we don’t pick tomatoes at their peak of ripeness. We pick them when they are too hard. “A tomato that is slightly softer to the touch is probably sweeter than one that is firm. I think people are used to store-bought "red rocks", and thus feel the need to pick tomatoes from the garden that are as equally as hard,” he said. “Withhold the urge and wait until they are slightly soft." Further, pick tomatoes the morning of the contest, not the night before. Store it in a cool dark place, but not in the refrigerator.

“If I were to enter a tomato contest,” he said, “I think I might withhold water for the week before the contest to stress the plant slightly."

Still want to enter? It’s simple. On Aug. 25, bring three regular tomatoes or 10 cherry type tomatoes of the same variety to Raley’s, 25025 Blue Ravine Road, Folsom. For times and rules, visit NatureSweet's Tomato Challenge website or call (800) 315-8209.

See you there.

Posted by Pat Rubin at 03:12 PM | Comments

August 01, 2007

Beans gone wild

Green beans are the Jekyll and Hyde of the garden. The start out as slim, tender young pods that taste as sweet as they look. But give them an extra day or two or three on the vine, and they’ll morph into distorted, tough pods unfit for the dinner table. Of course, you can split them open and rescue the beans inside for a tasty dish.

I speak from experience. I missed a few days picking the beans since I was away on vacation, and when I returned, I searched through the thick tangle of bean vines and picked all the oversized beans I could find, and then thought I’d give the plant a few days to recover.

Wrong decision.

I checked this morning, and was amazed to find a whole new crop of huge bean pods. Yikes!

I’ve said it before--beans need to be picked every day--and failed to follow my own advice. The reason is actually twofold: The thin, young, tender green beans are best for cooking. They have a sweet, nutty taste, and are delicious steamed with nothing on them. Secondly, if you keep picking the beans the plant will continue to produce them. The bean plant wants nothing more than to produce ripe (i.e. overgrown, tough, full of fat beans) pods with mature seeds in order to ensure there will be a crop for next year. We want the young beans, so interrupt the process by picking the beans.

Each time I let the vines to too long and let the beans get bigger and closer to ripe, the plants have a harder time starting over with new flowers and beans. The only reason to let the beans grow big as they please, to let the pods remain on the vines until they turn dry and brittle, is for seed for next year, or for dry beans. My goal is the opposite. I want tender, pencil-thin beans to cook.

So tonight when I get home, I’m checking those vines again.

Posted by Pat Rubin at 02:38 PM | Comments

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