8th Annual Edible Landscaping Tour

Common Ground's 8th ANNUAL EDIBLE LANDSCAPING TOUR 

is coming right up! 

Saturday, July 19th, 2014 10 am -4pm

Palo Alto, CA

Register Now

If you enjoy touring gardens or need clever ideas for your garden, then you don't want to miss this annual event! 

This is a critical fundraiser for my friends at Common Ground, a 501(c)3 nonprofit project of Ecology Action. Enjoy a memorable and educational day and show your support too!

Besides visiting ten beautiful gardens all with an edible landscape theme, you'll also see how these suburban residents practice organic and sustainable methods. 

For descriptions of the gardens on this year's tour go here

Veggies and flowers thrive together in this edible landscape

Tour Highlights

• Water saving and efficiency techniques, including "Laundry to Landscape" (gray water system) 
• Fruit trees, raised beds, and lots of vegetables
• Chickens & coops, bees and beehives
• Herb, flower & California native plantings, 
• Composting 
• Examples of edible front yard gardens
• Tour the Common Ground education garden

Common Ground's Patricia Becker (right) with a garden tour host

This year the Edible Landscaping Tour is featuring lots of front yard edible gardens.  Gone are the days when vegetable gardens were considered inappropriate for the front yard. Come see a variety of gardens demonstrating that growing food is not just practical, but beautiful!

Veggie harvest, complete with fresh artichokes

Photos: Patricia Larenas, Urban Artichoke

Build a Bean Teepee for Kids

My favorite way to grow climbing beans is on a teepee, that is, on four poles stuck in the ground and lashed together at the top. Each summer I have 2 or 3 growing in my front yard. But I've had a fantasy of making a big one someday, big enough for a couple of kids (and me!) to crawl inside. So recently, when I designed my friend Margie's gardens for her new home I included bean teepee for her son, my bean-buddy Alexander .

Building a Kid-Sized Bean Teepee
If you do a web search for bean teepees you can find a lot of versions on how to build one. Here's one I liked on YouTube made by Sustainable Midlands and City Roots. 

It's simple, and a lot like the smaller versions I put up in my garden, but with a few extras. Watch the video then read my steps below for more details and my modifications for building the structure so it's kid-friendly:

• Use 6 very long bamboo poles; I'm estimating about 12 - 15 feet high, such that when you lean them together the space at the base of the teepee will be about  6 feet, or enough room for kids to sit inside.
• Space the poles apart evenly, but leave enough room between two of them for the entry, or "door". Set the poles about 4 inches into the soil so that they are sturdy.
• Lash the poles together with twine at the top. 
• Prepare the base (floor) of the teepee by laying down sheets of cardboard in about 3 layers to suppress weeds and to form a level base. Cover the cardboard with 3- 4 inches of minbark or clean straw (not hay- it has weed seeds) to make a comfy seating area.
• Take the twine and wind a few strands between the poles (see video) so that the beans will climb on them for support and eventually cover the sides of the teepee, but leave the door open and free of twine for easy entry (they forgot this part in the video).
• Plant beans seeds along the outer edge of the teepee's sides, except the entry. Plant the beans about 1/2 inch deep, 4 inches apart in soil that you've prepared with some mature compost mixed with a small amount of organic vegetable fertilizer. Beans don't need a lot of fertilization, but they do appreciate nice loose soil with organic matter in order to grow strong roots.
• Water the planted seeds and keep the soil evenly moist while they germinate (about 7 to 10 days). Note: beans like warm weather, so they won't germinate (sprout) unless the nighttime temperatures are staying in the mid-fifty degrees (F) at least, and the soil has had a chance to warm up.

Now for the really fun part, choosing which beans to grow. Since I have lots of favorite beans, I have to chime in.

Beans with a Bonus
You can't go wrong with runner beans (P. coccineus), such as Scarlet Runner or the lovely Painted Lady bean, both of which have showy flowers. You can eat them at any stage: flowers, pods, fresh shell beans and dry beans. A huge bonus is that in mild winter climates as we have here in the San Francisco Bay Area, runner beans die back with frost but will reemerge in spring, unlike like so called "common beans" (P. vugaris- pintos, black beans, cranberry, etc. see my post for more). 

Scarlet Runner and Painted Lady beans - ornamental and edible!

Colorful and Prolific Snap Beans 
My top pick for kids would be to grow some snap beans (aka: green beans, or string beans), and my hands-down-must-have snap bean is Emerite, an old French variety with pencil-thin tender beans that produce over several weeks. I discovered these through Rene's Garden, an heirloom and gourmet seed supplier, and I grow them every summer. You can also order a tricolor bean seed packet from Rene's that has yellow, green and purple beans for extra fun. Make sure you get pole beans and not the bush type!

Tricolor Snap beans form Rene's Garden seeds

Of Bees and Beans
Beans don't need to be pollinated to produce pods, but bees sure like bean flowers anyway. In my garden it's mostly large but docile carpenter bees that visit my beans. If you have bees in your garden and you're worried about kids getting stung by accident, then a bean teepee may not be a good idea. Or you might try fastening a barrier of cloth on the inside of the teepee up to about 4 feet or so. You'll have to decide if it's risky or not.

Acrobatic Carpenter bees love bean flowers!

Photos: Patricia Larenas, Urban Artichoke

A Swedish Pea in a California Garden- How Heirloom Edibles Survive for the Next Generation

This year's seed trial: 'Sweet Fall' squash and 'Swenson's Swedish' snow pea

In California we are in the midst of a record breaking drought that has put a sizable dent in what I'll grow in my edible garden this spring and summer. I'll focus on keeping my existing garden alive and forgo planting edibles in every available corner, but I decided to go ahead with my yearly seed trials for Seed Savers Exchange Member Grower Evaluation Network (M-GEN), and Rancho Gordo's Bean Buddies Group.

The Mystery and Romance of Seeds
The last two years I tested lettuces through M-GEN that had been grown by families for generations until there was no one left to carry the seeds forward, and a unique variety risked being lost. That's a familiar story. This year when I opened my package from Seed Savers Exchange, I discovered 'Swenson Swedish' snow pea, and 'Sweet Fall' winter squash for my trials.

Grandma Hadley's lettuce was part of the M-GEN trials in 2013

I love the mystery of getting a package in the mail with a special and precious cargo every spring, and I admit I revel in the romance of their stories. Stories carry our collective histories and our favorite foods speak volumes about who we are and where we came from. 

'Swenson Swedish' was brought to the Minnesota by a Swedish immigrant around 1876, then handed down through the family who developed favorite recipes, among them is a creamed Scandinavian dish that I'm anxious to try. (Seed Savers has requested the recipe.)

Preserving Our Stories Through Seeds
Non-profit Seed Savers Exchange has a seed historian, Sara Straate, whose mission is to verify and uncover the stories behind their seed accessions:

In 1987 long time seed saver and SSE member, Will Bonsall, received the seeds "out of the blue" in the mail after the elder Swenson (Alvin) entered a nursing home. Alvin's son Charles Swenson had sent them from Iowa after reading about Bonsall, who began offering it in the Seed Savers Exchange member's yearbook. Charles still grows them, but he thinks he may be the only family member left doing so. 

Through the M-GEN team the peas will be spread throughout the continent and beyond, and no doubt become a favorite of families once more. 

For a map of M-GEN participants click here.

If you are interested in joining the the M-GEN team, contact: mgen@seedsavers.org 

Photos: Patricia Larenas, Urban Artichoke