Dirt

When the first delivery of potting soil comes to our greenhouses, I usually take a moment to stop what I am doing and just dig my hands in the dirt. This year, I have been a bit busier than normal, so I had to wait a few days to do it, but the feeling is the same. It means winter is winding down; that the seeds that are waiting patiently in the storage bins will have a springboard for their magical emergence; and that flowers, greenery, and fresh food will soon be in our lives again.

Winter used to be a difficult time for me, but I have learned to accept its slowness and constricting nature. I spend time outside as much as possible and try to rest; something about hitting 40 makes me understand the value of Doing Nothing more than I used to I suppose. But during those earlier years, when winter was more difficult for me, I always marked the first soil delivery on my calendar and that became the date towards which I would count all winter long. When that day finally came, Dennis, who delivers for VT Copmost Company would drive his truck into the barn and the big pile would spill out of the dump truck and I would wait politely for him to leave before taking off my boots and socks, pulling up pant legs and sleeves, and just dig into that fluffy warm pile.  A thawing takes place, a deep, deep thawing, and gratitude just settles in.

Enter at Your Own Risk: DIY Wedding Flowers. Part 1

Last summer, I must have helped at least half a dozen customers who were looking for some help in planting a garden specifically for home-grown wedding flowers. I often warn people that growing for a specific date is fairly technical and requires weekly plantings, regular harvesting all summer long to keep the plants blooming until the event, and most of all, a very flexible attitude. People who have a specific color scheme or variety in mind are not always good candidates for home grown wedding flowers since those types of flowers may be very hard to grow and getting the right color on the right day means planting about 10 times more than you think you will need in hopes that one of the plantings will be just perfect on the correct day. For those who are planning an event and are willing to look at the flowers as a fun and flexible component, then growing your own is a great option. I have listed below some varieties that are particularly well suite to a DIY flower program.  Full disclosure: I have talked about as many people out of growing their own wedding flowers as I have talked into doing it. It really is not a good fit for everyone, but for those who are willing and able, here is a little help to get you started....

ANNUALS

Verbena bonariensis - reliable and a lovely purple bloom with long wiry stems that hold up well to handling and mixing into all kinds of arrangements. Zinnias - come in all shapes and colors, are best suited for August or later. Require deadheading all summer long, but will branch out and be very productive once well established. Sunflowers - there are lots of sunflower varieties that are designed specifically for cut flowers. Some of our favorites are Giant Sungold Teddy Bear, Sunbright Supreme and Soraya. The only tricky thing is getting the timing just right. They only are perfect to harvest for about 10 days, after that their single blossoms start to drop their petals. Ageratum - blue,  can be tall if planted correctly - a little closer together. Needs deadheading all summer long if you are planning for a late summer or fall event. Very productive if well established and well taken care of. Agrostemma has a lovely, floating quality that gives a lot of life to mixed bouquets. It's airy and delicate, comes in purple or white and produces lots of good, long stems all summer long. Again, needs constant picking and deadheading to produce all summer long.

Ammi - this is a beautiful filler in mixed bouquets or in all-white arrangements. Easy to grow from transplants and produces, nice, tall stems.

Cosmos - come in a variety of textures and lengths, best suited for mid-August or later. While they are beautiful, they do take up a lot of room for not always a lot of stems.

Snapdragons - another multi-colored option or can also be grown as strains of single colors. We offer many options of snapdragons. The stems can sometimes be a little short, but with good fertility and 6" spacing, they will grow straight and tall.

Celosias - come in many shapes, sizes or colors. These are a hardy, easy to grow and more forgiving than others. And they can be dried for long-term keep sakes.

All of these annuals will give you a good place from which to start. Do-it-yourself flowers can always be supplemented with florist purchases the week of the event  if the budget allows it. We will cover more on home grown flowers in subsequent posts, so if this peaks your interest, please stay tuned. Part two will be about which perennials are easy to grow and use for cut flowers. Part Three will be about different tactics to make your cutting garden as prolific as possible.

The Year to Come

by Julie One of my favorite aspects of running a greenhouse business is the ability to create. Not only is the act of growing plants very creative - we get to choose what we grow, how we grow it, how we market it, and how to make it all look beautiful and inspiring (we hope!); but in addition to that is the fact that this is a business like any other.  Ever since I was a little girl, my favorite toys have been my graph paper and my schedules; so a greenhouse business that gives me about 6 months of planning time is really fun for someone like me. I get to think it all through, improve systems, find ways to do more in the community, and create a nice work environment for all of the amazing people at Red Wagon Plants.

Here are some projects and improvements we are hatching (germinating?) at Red Wagon Plants this winter. Our mission is to increase the bounty in our community and this year, we plan to focus on the community part of that mission. We have built up such a wonderful group of customers, both wholesale and retail, and it feels like the right time to get to know everyone a little better!

Our 2011 Goals

• Promote our community partners. Every year, we donate thousands of plants to schools, non-profits, community gardens, and civic gardening projects. We want to share information about all of these wonderful organizations with our customers.
• Create a "Grower Station" at our retail store where people can learn about some simple growing techniques that are appropriate for the home scale, back yard garden.  Many of the staff at Red Wagon have worked on commercial scale vegetable farms and there are so many time-saving and crop-improving methods applied on those farms that easily cross over to the home garden.  This can really help increase the bounty in our customers' backyards and make gardening affordable from a money and time perspective.
• Have an end of year harvest dinner with the bounty from our gardens. We can sit at the table together, share our love of gardening and enjoy the food and spirit of our efforts.
• Invite people to come relax in the greenhouses in the winter. There is no place like a warm greenhouse in winter when the snow is falling and the wind is howling and inside feels like a tropical wonderland of green. How about sharing this with the community? Sunday morning coffee and bagels? Bring your knitting! Hang out with the plants and breath in the smell of dirt and fresh green growth. It seems like every time I tell someone what I do for a living, they say "oh it must be so nice in there on a snowy day!" Well, it is. It's really nice and it takes about 1 month off of winter's length for all of us who have the honor to work here, so we want to share that opportunity and invite others to join in the pleasure!
• Visit customer gardens. We really do love hearing from our customers and want to make more of an effort to see the gardens they tell us about. It would be so fun to roam around in the van and visit all these lovely places where people grow their own food and make their homes beautiful and colorful. What more inspiration does a person need?

So those are a few thoughts, and as always, we love to hear your suggestions, so please feel free to comment.

Gratitude

I woke up today feeling grateful and recharged with a blue sky blasting through the window and a full night of sleep behind me (the first in a while.) Here are a few pictures I took with the early morning sun casting a bittersweet glow on everything. What to make of that late fall look? Winter is coming, summer has produced all it can, and it is time to settle back and enjoy the dark days ahead. The dormant days ahead work for the seeds that need it in order to crack into life come spring - it can work for us too. It is a just fine time of year for sinking into the couch, making soups, catching up on reading, and over all feeling gratitude for the cycles of the seasons, the sweetness in the people around us. While the basement is full of jars of applesauce, tomatoes, jams, chutneys and pickles, I also try to keep a few things going in the garden as long as possible.

Like these .....

The straw keeps the soil from freezing around the leeks so that I can harvest them even in deep snow. The lettuce, arugula, cilantro and dill behind them will keep going a little while longer. I can cover them up with row cover, but most likely they will be eaten before I even need to do that. I will plant 2 or 3 times more next year so that I can have enough to take us through December.

I love this close up of dill with all of its fine texture.

Dill is one of the hardiest herbs to grow in cold weather and gives such brightness to late fall salads, potatoes, eggs, and fish. I use it quite a bit this time of year after pretty much ignoring it all summer long except for using it in a pickle jar or two or three.

I always bring in a few baskets of herbs. I don't do anything to them except cut them, pile them into a basket and leave them around the house. They smell great and love to go to work by the handful when I am making soups, broths and stocks. I don't think they object to being stuffed into a poultry cavity every now and then either. There is nothing like using herbs in big bunches of branches to feel like I am living a rich and luxurious life.

I want to say thanks to compost too.

Parts of the garden are ready for spring, and parts still have a ways to go, but there is so much satisfaction in seeing the raised beds awaiting next year. Soil building organisms busy making teeming, hot life. The ones who really get some of the credit for this are these lovelies......

Enjoy your next few days of rest if that is your luck and your lot. And thank you, deeply, for being a part of all this beauty and grace, coldness, sunshine, poop, and all.

Bay Laurel in Vermont

If you ask me what my favorite plant is in my garden I would tell you about my bay laurel tree.  Many folks are excited by the plants that add beauty to their surroundings.  Personally I love the plants that I can use in the kitchen and my bay tree adds value year round.  (The fact my favorite plant is a culinary herb would be no surprise if you follow my blog, Hippo Flambe). The difference between a leaf picked off my tree seconds before using it is far removed from the dry, dusty leaves in the spice section of your supermarket.  Plus my bay laurel has the added benefit of being easy to care for. It was a rather  inauspicious start to my bay laurel tree farming. I was given the tree by a friend who had decided to "euthanize" her tree. Her tree had developed a sticky residue on the leaves and she did not want to spend the time cleaning the leaves. In addition it had clearly outgrown its 23 inch pot and she had visions of it taking over her house. I immediately jumped at the chance to own my own bay laurel tree and told her not to kill it, I would adopt it instead.  When I arrived at her house one day in the pouring rain I stared at the giant tree and I began to wonder how well this was going to work out.  The first problem was how to get it in the back of my station wagon, even with the rear seats folded down it was far to big. So we went after the tree with clippers, ruthlessly cutting back every limb. In the end the tree had lost considerably more then 50% of its branches and I remembered the advice to never prune a tree back that far. I shrugged and figured what was the worst that could happen, even if it died the tree was free to me, I had nothing to lose.

That winter we kept the tree in an upstairs South facing window and miraculously it began growing new leaves almost right away. I did not give it any artificial light or fertilizer, we just opened the blind from 7 AM until it was dark.  The room it was in only gets passive heat from the other rooms, so the room temperature is often as low as 59 degrees.  The tree was severely pot bound as even in a 23 inch pot 1 qt of water would come rushing out the bottom almost immediately.  Every week it put out tiny new shoots and leaves and I began to take more leaves to cook with.  After using the leaves a few times I began to care more about my bay tree.

That spring we began to search for a larger pot. I was told at many locations that I could get a larger ceramic pot but not plastic. It had taken 2 of us to slowly inch the tree upstairs in a plastic pot, ceramic and its extra weight was clearly out. Finally one nursery suggested I try bonsai-ing the roots. She explained bonsai tress are removed from their pots and then pie shaped wedges are removed all the way around the root ball so more soil can be packed in and the tree can stay in a smaller pot.  So I bought some high quality soil and we hacked out 4 pie shaped wedges all the way around the root ball.  When I returned the tree to its pot I was amazed at how much water it could now hold.  After a few weeks of new growth it was clear the plant was much happier.

Taking care of my Bay Laurel tree is remarkably simple, especially as I am often a house plant slayer.  In the Fall, sometime in October, we bring the tree indoors. Once indoors we water sparingly about once a week, although I know there are stretches where we just forget.  In the spring we take the tree back outside, where it does not need watering unless there is a really extended dry spell. If you prune it a little in the spring it will produce new growth.  Use well drained, fertile soil.  I just recently applied some of my favorite tomato fertilizer to the soil. The next time it becomes pot bound I will again bonsai the roots. The sticky residue that my friend found on the leaves is caused by scale insects.  If this occurs just wash the leaves with an insecticidal soap and use your nail to scrape away any insect bodies on the leaves and stems. You can also spray with alcohol.  The sticky residue is not usually deadly to your tree but it will inhibit new growth.  Try to keep it in a humid area but do not over water.  Humid in Vermont in the winter is hard, just keep it out of drafts and away from the heating vents, misting them occasionally with water if you want.

The great thing about growing a bay laurel is you only want the leaves, which are the easiest part of a plant to maintain.  If I was starting over with a smaller tree I would not allow it to become as big as mine is, this would make it easier to bring it in and out of the house every year.  When cooking with it remember the fresh leaves are much stronger and more flavorful then dried. When a recipe calls for 2 leaves I only ever use 1. If I just want a slight bay flavor I use a smaller leaf.  One of my favorite uses for the leaves is to flavor a pot of red lentils. I just add one leaf to a pot of simmering red lentils with kosher salt and cook until the lentils are tender.  To serve I simply drain the lentils, drizzle with flavorful extra virgin olive oil and sprinkle with freshly ground pepper.

Meet RWP's Allison

Allison Lea is one of the terrific staffers at RWP.  And not only is she a master of plant production here, but she's also a gardener and home herbalist in her own right. This weekend she'll be offering a workshop at which she'll share techniques for making lip balms, infused oils for health and beauty, and nourishing skin salves.   By way of introducing her, we asked her to send along some photos from her own Addison County garden.

yarrow

Yarrow

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Calendula

IMG_2815

Chamomile

IMG_1465

Hollyhock close-up

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Lemon Thyme

There are still a couple of spaces in her Saturday, June 26 "Gifts from the Garden: Herbal Body Care"  workshop.  The cost is $25 per person, and you'll leave with a selection of the the goods you'll learn to create ... and some hands-on practice making gifts from your own garden.  Give us a call at 802-482-4060 to register.

What's Happening This Week in the Greenhouses

I have been spending more time in the retail greenhouse this week and I am just awed by the beauty of some of the flowers. Here are a few photos to get you in the mood too. Delicate folds and perfect gradations of pigment make for some intricate and dazzling begonias: Here is a dahlia that I am in love with:

These orange miniature roses are incredibly sweet near a stone wall or in patio conatiners:

And we have a full array of hot peppers now including:

And....

These Vanilla Marigolds are pretty special as well - very tall, upright and a creamy delicious....

Raised Beds

by Julie

My home garden is often neglected. There are a few reasons for that - 1.) I am way too busy in the spring and don't have the time, and 2.) I would rather go swimming in the summer than weed. Yes, it's true. Our Vermont summers are so short, that I often make choices that don't benefit the garden come August. So in the early spring, before I get too too busy at Red Wagon, I try to make gardening choices that will entail less work come summer and get the plants off to a really good start so that they are strong enough to handle my abuse and neglect later in the season.

This year, the Red Wagon crew came over and installed some great raised beds in the back yard. My regular garden is quite shady because of some neighboring trees (not mine or I would cut them down!) so I decided to put in some raised beds in the overgrown meadow behind the house and hopefully this will help me tame the wild. It's a sloping, wet mess with a huge forest of Japanese Knotweed trying to take over everything in its path. I have dug a trench around the knotweed and Elise covered a 20 x 20' patch of it with black plastic that my neighbor, Paul,  gave me (I think he is worried it will spread to his yard, I would be too if I were him). Hopefully the combination of black-out and containment will slow it down.

About half way through the installation, the raised beds look like this:

We filled the raised beds with leaves, composted donkey manure and a thick layer of compost from Red Wagon Plants, which is mainly potting soil from years past that was given to us by the plants that did not sell. It's a great fill for raised beds, and not readily available to home gardeners, but I would recommend a mixture of top soil and compost. In the first year of a raised bed, the bottom layer can be some rough organic matter such as leaves, lawn clippings, etc. Just make sure that there is a good amount of the actual planting medium (at least 8").

I used a thick layer of cardboard and burlap coffee bags under everything to smother out the grass.

Here are the finished beds:

Our workshop on April 17th will be all about raised bed gardening with special guests Markey Read and Tim King. Please call us or email us to register. ..... 802 482 4060 or julieATredwagonplants.com.

First Week in the Greenhouse

Last week was the first week back in the greenhouse and all the work went so smoothly it didn't even feel like work. It would take more poetry than what is in me to describe the joy I feel from being back at work and playing with plants. I am also so grateful for our amazing team of kind and hard working people - Allison Lea, Eric Denise, Dana Ozimek and Buddy Koerner. It makes a huge difference to have such an all star team of Red Wagon Plants allumni, and the plants feel the love and experience too. Here are a few shots of the week's progress.

Can you find Sandy peeking at everything in the photo above?

And here are a few of the 2010 geraniums.....

Hens and Chicks waiting for a warm spot in a rock garden or along a stone path.....

Some Sweet Allysum poking through...

Any signs of life stirring in your garden?

Happenings

Eric and Lindsay moving the bit of soil left over from last year into a greenhouse.

Charley's stone walls for the workshops he teaches. Red Wagon Plants and Queen City Soil and Stone own a greenhouse together so that he can use it in the winter for workshops and we use it in the spring and summer for retail sales.

Eric just finished installing a new heater. Our old heaters have been destroyed, one by one, by mud wasps that make their mud homes in the delicate workings of the motors or heat exchangers. We are replacing them with heaters that do not have nooks and crannies in which the wasps can hide.

Our booth at the NOFA conference this past weekend. It was great to meet customers and see friends, old and new.

Field Trip

Every winter, I try to have a field trip to at least one greenhouse business to see how other people do things. This time, I am heading off to Peace Tree Farm, Candy and Lloyd Tavern's very impressive and large operation in Buck's County, PA. I hope to get a chance to see their  very efficient systems at work. They are growing organic herb plants along  as part of their operation, and I can't wait to see it all and ask lots of questions. I first met Lloyd at a conference a couple of years ago and was really impressed with his vast knowledge of all things mechanical when it comes to greenhouse production. Our operation at Red Wagon Plants is not at all mechanized. .... everything we do is by hand, from filling the pots, to watering, to seeding, and carrying trays to the truck. Larger operations use machines for many of these tasks, and I avoid these machines because we are too small to warrant the cost, and I am a first class techno-phobe. Things just break if I come near them. So in an effort to get over some of my fear of machinery, I'll visit Lloyd and Candy and will be grateful for their kind exposure to greenhouse robotics.  Photos to come!

Making Plans for Spring

I have been making a few plans for the season, along with the help of my co-workers. We always come up with a few new ways each year to reach more people, be more informative and helpful and to make our workspace more efficient and comfortable. One of the best aspects of a seasonal business is the available time, each year, to reflect and improve. Every problem that occurs in one season has a chance to be improved upon the following season. This is true of gardening in general, but when that forgiving cyclical approach is applied to running a business, it can help everyone feel saner and ready for the challenge of a quick and furious growing season.

This year's areas of improvement are, drum role please...

Communication - we hope to better reach our customers with the information they seek. We are often asked questions about a growing method, a pest problem, a cooking question, etc and we hope that by making our website more informative we will be able to meet some of those needs.

Infrastructure - after the growing season we will be replacing the plastic on the three of our greenhouses. By replacing the plastic every 5 years, we insure that proper light levels are getting through the glazing. We will also take the time to regrade the gravel base in each greenhouse as a way to control weeds and water flow. We will replace the black landscape fabric over the gravel and that will give us a nice, clean start to the 2011 season. Keeping a greenhouse clean is one of the most important factors in organic production. Weeds, algae, and dirt are all great habitats for pests and disease; since we don't have the chemical means to take care of these problems, we must rely on simple hygiene and cleanliness. Eric Denice, our resident can-fix-anything delivery person and all around wonderful guy, will also be building some new benches to keep the plants out of harms way (ie, the hungry mouths of many, many voles). Last year, the voles destroyed tray after tray of broccoli, lettuce, kale and countless other tidbits. Raspberries in the mouse traps were the only thing that could compete a little with the tender green growth of our much loved plants. Sorry, voles, we had to do it.

Information Management - our database is a constant work in progress. We keep track of thousands of varieties on our database - this includes all the information we can gather about the plant including every time we have ever seeded it, how many weeks we seed it per year, what kind of pest problems it has, how well customers like it, etc. This has been an ongoing project of many years, and now it is finally at a point where all of that information gathering is proving useful and there is enough data in the system to simultaneously make my head spin and make heart leap. I love knowing when things are planted and how to improve the cropping strategies.  I am a secret computer geek who is really grateful her parents sent her to computer camp at the age of 12.

Community Outreach - As always, we will be working with many, many groups this year to donate plants to community garden projects. We hope to teach a few workshops, maybe one or two about canning and freezing the garden harvest, and also some hands on workshops in the garden, so people who haven't done it learn how to sow seeds directly, the best way to transplant our starts, etc. Our teaching and plant donations are the absolute best parts of this business. Few things give me more joy in my work life than driving around with a van full of plants that will be distributed to neighborhoods that need beautifying and to families that need a little help with their food. If you know of a group that could use some free plants for public gardening purposes (schools, churches, food banks, etc) please let us know, and we will add them to our list of Community Partners.

New Varieties for the New Year

We are adding so many new varieties for the new year. We will update the plant selection of the website and include all of the new selections for 2010, but for now here is a sneak peak.

This is a really fun summer squash with lovely shades of green and yellow, split right down the middle. The flavor is similar to any yellow summer squash, but the striped look is really fun in the harvest basket.

This next nasturtium is a new introduction from Johnny's Selected Seeds. It has such brilliant hues of yellows, oranges and reds. I think it will be a real standout amongst the herbs and edible blossoms in the spring garden. Nasturtiums are the work horses of the garden world - they just never stop producing their cheery blooms all season long.

A few customer have asked for this nostalgic, old-fashioned annual. It is a beautiful lime green flower with bracts and petals that dry perfectly along their regal, spiked stem. I just love these in bouquets with zinnias and ornamental grasses.

Round of Hungary Pepper is another customer request. It's a really sweet pepper with a flatened shape that is perfect for stuffing and baking. It is an heirloom and as such carries with it a full spectrum of flavors. Perfect addition to the grilled vegetables you may be looking forward to this summer.

We will continue to update you with all the new varieties, so keep checking in to see what's coming. And as always, we love to hear your suggestions, stories of what works well for you...our plants and your gardens have a lot to share!

Snow and greenhouses

Snow removal is a big part of greenhouse maintenance in the winter. Our greenhouses are really strong, made from tubular steel, engineered by Harnois, up in Quebec, and can handle a big snow load. The problem though, is once the snow slides off, it has to be cleared away from the sides so that more snow can slide off. If it builds up too much on the sides, it can put uneven pressure on the frame, and when another heavy snow falls, the uneven pressure combined with the added weight of the snow load can cause a problem. We have a snow blower to do this, but when it gets to be too much, we call in Roger Parker, a neighbor and all around helpful person who has an excavation business and owns every great piece of large equipment a person could want. His tractor and huge rear-mounted snowblower fits in between the greenhouses just fine and they can clear away the big snow piles in a few passes. It sure beats shoveling!

From the Valentine's Day blizzard of 2007

Seed Inventory

It's a good idea, if you start your own seeds, to do a thorough cleaning out of the seed supply every year. Keeping old seed around will just lead to frustration. Here is a basic guideline for seed shelf-life:

• 1 year: onions, parsnips, parsley, salsify, scorzonera, and spinach;
• 2 years: corn, peas, beans, chives, okra, dandelion;
• 3 years: carrots, leeks, asparagus, turnips, rutabagas;
• 4 years: peppers, chard, pumpkins, squash, watermelons, basil, artichokes and cardoons;
• 5 years: most brassicas, beets, tomatoes, eggplant, cucumbers, muskmelons, celery, celeriac, lettuce, endive, chicory.

I am never too sure about what to do with old seeds. Sometimes I throw them around on bare patches of earth to see what will come up and other times I sadly throw them into the compost or trash. Most importantly, I try to be really careful to order only what I can use within the lifetime of the seed.

Winter Work

Every day, I try to work a little and play a little. And come fall and winter, it is always a little bit of a challenge to find the right balance. I try to learn some new skill every winter and usually find a topic to study with a friend or two. This winter the skill is social media as a business tool - hence this blog and Red Wagon Plants presence on Facebook and Twitter. I am reading many interesting food blogs and a few homesteading and farming blogs, using Google reader to stay updated on these issues. It doesn't really feel like work, but I sense my slow passage up the learning curve and hope it translates into increased relationship with customers. Having a business that is only open to the public 2 months out of the year means that I spend 10 months not hearing from customers. My biggest goal with internet communication is to hear from customers more regularly throughout the year, and to track the progress of our plants.  So please, let me know. - Julie

Black Bean and Butternut Squash Chili

This is one of my favorite things to do with butternut squash, and every time I make it, I am reminded of my friend, Robin Holland.  She made it for a mom's group I was a part of when my daughter was a baby and a toddler.  A dozen or so of us would get together once a week, share an amazing meal and, together, relish in the joys and burdens of motherhood.  I still make this often, and every time, the flavors combine together to transport me back to those days.  There is something inherently grounding and warming about this dish.

Black Bean and Butternut Squash Chili

(enough for a crowd and easily reduced)

2 cups of dried black beans, soaked overnight, rinsed and drained (turns into about 6 cups of soaked beans

1 large butternut squash, peeled, seeded, and roughly chopped into 1" chunks

2 TBS olive oil

2 large onions, chopped

1 or 2 green or red peppers, chopped

5 cloves of garlic, finely chopped

4 bay leaves

6 TBS chili powder

1 tsp dried chili flakes

2 cups of apple cider

8 cups of water

Salt to taste (at the end)

2 to 4 TBS maple syrup

Chopped cilantro, jalapeno and lime wedges for garnish (optional)

In a large, heavy pot, heat the olive oil.  Add the onion, bell pepper, garlic, chili powder, pepper flakes, bay leaves, and stir until soft and starting to brown.  Add 1 cup of the apple cider, and scrape up the brown bits and allow it to cook down by about half the volume.  This helps to concentrate the flavors of the aromatics (onions, bay leaf, etc).

It should look something like this.

Next add the squash, and the soaked beans, the remainder of the liquid, and allow to cook over medium to low heat for about 1 1/2 hours, or until everything is soft. Finish the stew by adding the maple syrup, and about 1 TBS salt (I find the beans and the squash really need lots of salt).  Stir and wait a few minutes before tasting.  Adjust with more syrup or salt if needed.

This is great served with the garnishes, some corn tortillas or corn bread, and a piece of cheddar cheese.  The warmth and sweetness create a harmonious and satisfying balance.

Privacy from the Traffic to the Secret City

I like to plant perennials and woody ornamentals in the fall for two reasons: one, I finally have the time to do it, and two, they benefit from the cooler temperatures and the rainy days.  Today, I am planting a privacy screen between our house and the noisy road we live on.  While it's still a country road, the traffic is such that we cannot simply tune it out. There are cars every few minutes, and they are going way too fast.   We've determined there is a secret city over the ridge and all these cars are in a terrible hurry to get there.

My privacy planting is mirroring one that I already planted on the other side of the walk way.... Nine bark - those are the tall burgundy shrubs (Physocarpus), sedums (Autumn Joy and Madrona), some ornanmental grasses, some fall pink asters, and some heuchera or coral bells (Purple Petticoats).  Underneath, I will stash a bunch of pale Pink Emperor tulips and a few white daffodils.  I love keeping color combinations harmonious season to season and this creates a nice range of pinks, deep reds and maroons.  The grasses fill in to give it a naturalistic look and it only takes about two years for everything to grow up enough to become an 8 foot screen. I will stick in a few kale and chard plants come spring for the mandatory (in my mind) edible component.  In an effort to practice Gardening Without Guilt, I grow very practical plantings that will always accomplish a few of my gardening goals -- easy maintenace (it's okay if there a few weeds in there since it all looks like it belongs), habitat for wildlife (the birds and pollinators love these groupings of plants), beauty (to my eye at least) and harmony with some lovely edible plants (in this case it will be chard, kale and a few herbs).  The closer to the house we plant edibles, the more we will eat them and tend to them.  And by using plants for a privacy screen, we are not seeing the cost of and avoiding the aesthetic impact of a tall fence.

My plan is to add a few wheelbarrow loads of our compost, made from donkey manure (thanks to Pokey and Rosy, above), kitchen scraps, and garden debris.  Then I will work it all into the soil which was tilled up several weeks ago (and,no, I have not kept up with the weeding in the meantime).  The planting holes should be a couple of times bigger than the root ball of the plant, that way the soil can be loosened and worked up to create a welcoming home for newly spreading roots.  I don't add any fertilizer when planting in the fall because it encourages tender new growth that will not fare well in our frigid winters.

I like these types of plantings for the simple pleasure they provide as they grow up and the effect they have of anchoring the house into its place, making it more of a home and sheltering it from all those cars speeding off to their secret city.  I'll post a picture when I am finished.

Julie's Introduction

If you ask me, September is the best month in the garden.

The warm season crops are still doing well (in theory) and the colder season crops are starting to come back, thankful for the cooler nights.

The harvest basket seems to just fill itself up the minute I step into the straw mulched paths, pausing for a moment to ask if I should eat the raspberries before or after I do a little grunt work.

But while all of this pastoral musing seems idyllic enough, there are some other thoughts in the nether layers that I need to reckon with.

First of all, why is my garden so big?

Why is it that every April, the month of good intentions, I decide that this is the year I will finally find time to keep everything weeded and tended?

As we slide from April to September, my good intentions are slowly eclipsed by my desire to spend summertime in places other than the garden. I love to bike, hike, swim, row, travel, read in the hammock, and yes, I love to cook, hence the garden. But gardening feels like work when it is 95 F and the weeds are scratching my neck.

I used to feel guilty about all of this, but now I have learned to cope with the ebb and flow of my gardening enthusiasm-- what I am working on now is gardening without guilt.

While it is true that I am very passionate about gardening, I realize that there is a seasonal drive to every aspect of this hobby. Every gardener must come to terms with his or her own type of engagement in the garden. There is no right or wrong way to garden. There is beauty and purpose in every type of garden and what matters most is that a garden meets the needs of the gardener, not the other way around. Gardens without guilt are places of liberation and revelation....a place to accept both our shortcomings and our successes.

The food coming out of my garden this year is bountiful as always, and I have managed to learn a few things which have made the garden easier to manage in spite of its size. Over the next few months as we go through another autumn and winter cycle, I will reflect on what gardening means to me, what I do with the food from my garden, and how I go about deciding what to grow at Red Wagon Plants.

As I share these thoughts with you, I encourage you to share your notions about The Garden. What works well for you? What are the disasters? How does your garden fit into your life? This garden journal is a collective effort between the people of Red Wagon Plants and the family of customers created by all of those young plants going out into the world of our gardens. We hope you will share the thoughts you glean this season and keep the conversation going until we see you again in the spring.