Visit 11 Edible Gardens on the Edible Landscaping Tour

A lush front yard with squashes and watermelons among the flowers

The rampant abundance of delicious summer crops may have you daydreaming about how to add more vegetables and fruits to your home garden. Going on a local self-guided tour of unique and notable suburban edible landscapes is a fantastic way to get inspired with great ideas and a perfect opportunity to meet enthusiastic gardeners who love sharing their gardens. 

Here on the San Francisco Peninsula we are fortunate indeed to have Common Ground’s annual Edible Landscaping Tour coming up on July 20th, now in its 7th year. 

An apple espaliered on a fence is attractive and a good use of space

I've been on the organizing committee for several years now and I'm always delighted by the innovative ways that gardeners incorporate food plants, raising chickens, ducks, rabbits and bees on their suburban lots. Some take a decidedly urban farm approach, while others integrate fruit trees and vegetable gardens into their otherwise ornamental landscapes.

Keeping chickens and beehives is no longer rare in suburbia

Either way, each garden is beautiful, interesting and a reflection of the family's lifestyle and their quest to create a higher quality of life right at home.

Beans displayed on a teepee of bamboo poles

And it's a natural step to spread goodwill and delight by sharing extra fruit, eggs and beans with neighbors and friends. 
 

A young girl cuddling her chicken

From my perspective, gardening is not just a pleasant leisure-time activity, it’s critical for a healthy future. 

It's about:

•  building a supportive community around growing food organically and sustainably in our suburban neighborhoods.  
• understanding where our foods comes from and connecting with the Earth's processes that support this almost magical ability.

Grape vines on this pergola create an outdoor dining room

When I visit these gardens I see simple everyday acts that have deep meaning and far reaching consequences.

Vegetable beds decorated with children's tiles

When I reflect on all of the trouble in our world, these simple positive acts seem like a profound way to add much needed joy at a very basic level. 

That's why the Edible Landscape Tour is at the top of my "must do" list every summer!

Photos: Patricia Larenas, Urban Artichoke

Jerusalem Artichokes: An American Native

Jerusalem Artichokes, (Helianthus tuberosus) a.k.a. Sunchokes, are actually in the sunflower family and native to North America. They aren't related to artichokes and didn't originate in Jerusalem, but their edible tubers do have a wonderful artichoke-like flavor.

Sunchoke tubers with globe artichokes: they aren't related!

They are very easy to grow and are crispy when raw in salads, and tasty cooked and pureed into a soup, mashed, or sauteed. If you like the taste, they are a great addition to your edible landscape. And as a bonus, Jerusalem Artichokes have pretty clusters of sunflowers and make lots of tubers to harvest in the fall.

 Sauteed Sunchokes: Simple and Delicious
We  recently dug up a couple of the tubers and tried them sauteed in olive oil with chopped garlic and loved the creamy texture and earthy flavor:

Scrub the soil off of the tubers, if you have trouble cleaning between the bumpy parts just break them up. You can peel some of the thin skin off but don't worry about getting it all. Slice the tubers about 1/4 inch thick. Warm up some olive oil in a skillet. Add the Sunchoke slices and cook on medium heat so that they don't burn- stir occasionally; it will take 5-10 minutes. Some chopped garlic is nice; add it at the same time as the Sunchokes and cook together. If the garlic begins to get too brown, remove it and add it back when the Sunchokes are done, or discard (the garlic will still add flavor to the oil).

Serve warm with some chopped parsley and a sprinkle of kosher salt, if you have some. This makes a great accompaniment to other cooked vegetables, and I can imagine adding it to pasta with sauteed mushrooms. Now we're exited about trying out more recipes this fall and winter.

Plant the tubers in full sun in the Spring for August flowers and fall harvest

Growing Sunchokes
We planted a couple of the tubers last Spring on the side of our house where we had sheet composted to build up the soil over the winter. Sunchokes are a fall season vegetable so we had bought some at a local Whole Foods Market (check your farmer's market too) and kept them in a pot with potting soil over the winter. When Spring came I began watering the pot until the plants emerged, then planted them into the ground about an inch deep in a sunny spot.

A few tubers will divide into lots of edible tubers in one season

Ours grew a surprising 12 feet high and flowered in August.  They are very prolific so be careful where you plant them, although they're easy to dig up, and you'll enjoy having a good supply to eat!

Heirloom Bean Project: August Update

Clockwise from left: Hidatsa Shield Figure, Good Mother Stallard, Hutterite Soup, Tiger's Eye

 It's early August and the heirloom beans I planted in May and June have been flowering and forming pods. A few of the pods are starting to mature and dry so that I can have a peek at the bean seeds. Some of the beans are really beautiful colors, and it's been exciting to see how the seeds transform from tender green beans that look very much the same, into spectacularly colorful seeds.  But more on seeds next month when it's harvest time.

Sheet, or "sandwich composting" was a great way to prepare the soil for my bean trial

 The side of our house was a perfect place to plant several types as a test to see how they do in our region (see sandwich composting post, "Soil Magic..."). I plan to choose a few to do a larger planting next summer, perhaps with the more rare bean types (such as Tiger's Eye and the Hidatsa Shield Figure).

Italian Butter Beans have abundant white flowers

The Italian Butter Bean is a runner bean, as I discovered, and has large, showy white flowers. They were beautiful on a trellis in my front yard garden, and attracted a lot of admiration on our Edible Landscaping Tour. As you can see, the carpenter bees love them too!

Italian Butter Beans pods are large and fibrous

I bought the dry Italian Butter Beans at our farmer's market from Iacopi Farms. They produce typical runner bean pods: large and fibrous.  I can't wait to see the dry seeds- they should be a soft white, similar to the Cannelini Runner that I bought from Rancho Gordo.

Good Mother Stallard grew well and have plentiful pods that will be beginning to dry soon. I hope to have enough to save seeds and have some for cooking! The dry beans are very pretty: maroon with white swirls (see photo at top).