Grow Up for a Change: Going Vertical with Gardening

A variety of vertical garden styles

Space is tight in urban areas and as a result gardens are growing up…literally. More than the United States, Europe is using vertical space to grow semi-hydroponic gardens that help the urban environment on a number of levels.

The obvious benefit of the vertical garden is the immediate improvement in environmental quality. While traditional building facades serve as massive heat sinks that radiate  heat and increase ambient air temperatures, living walls thermoregulate buildings by trapping heat in the winter and cooling buildings in the summer. But vertical gardens go beyond just outdoor applications. Indoor air quality can be improved as well by installing a vertical garden on interior walls. “Active” indoor vertical walls encase the plants in plexiglass and circulate air by their leaves and roots. Indoor toxins are trapped in the capillary mat and are transformed into usable minerals by microbes.

As far as garden trends go vertical gardens can most likely considered to be a movement or phenomena. Horticulture is experiencing a number of paradigm shifts on a number of fronts as we seek new ways to create gardens that are engaged part of our lives. For example, consider what the organic movement has done for gardening in the last 60 years. Edible landscaping is now more and more common as people considered first the impact of pesticides and then the impact of food on our ecosystem. No we are considering our potential to clean up the environment in a very aesthetic manner.

The current undisputed master designer of the vertical garden is Patrick Blanc. His designs grace the facades of chic architecture around the world. His system of polyamide capillary felt and waterproofing membrane is braced to a metal structure and then planted and irrigated semi-hydroponically. It is a simple and effective design that is lightweight, allowing for massive gardens that can reach seemingly infinite heights. But Blanc’s design prowess only represents one side of the many possibilities now posing themselves in the vertical gardening world. It may not be too long before Blanc’s seminal work is considered a design strategy of the past, but don’t cross your fingers.

While Blanc relies on long sheets of polyamide felt to weave his extensive tapestries other designers like ELT, are working with panels of plants that range from 4 to 12 square feet. The benefit of the modular system is ease of maintenance and possibilities of variety. At any time the panels can be rearranged to create a new design or removed entirely to troubleshoot maintenance issues. This too may be archaic in a not too distant future. I say that because the inventiveness that the work Blanc and the other vertical gardening pioneers have inspired will surely lead this environmental horticulture phenomena to new heights.

New Edible Landscaping and Sustainable Housing Project just North of Seattle

You know, it’s not easy to find land in a city as dense as Seattle that has enough room and exposure to grow a decent amount of food. I mean enough food to comprise the majority of the vegetable for the year. Just recently I fell into an opportunity to develop an acre sized lot just north of Seattle.

I have been looking for a place like this for 10 years or so. This kind of chance doesn’t come along often. I met with the owner and we immediately clicked. After a number of meetings we have come to a couple of goals.

1. That we grow a garden that we can eat our way across.

2. That we reduce the amount of natural resources we consume as much as possible.

Simple? Yeah, kind of, but not really. When I took a deeper look these goals actually ask a lot! Its gonna be tough, but damn its gonna be fun! The goal is to free our creativity rather than confine us to some kind of ecological sacrificial existence. So far, with nothing more than the frames of raised beds made and a used chop saw to show for the development of the garden, I am already having a great time going to the architectural salvage organizations and trying to find pieces that will work in either the garden or the house.

I’m going to be writing about the development of the property here and there both on Edible Gardens North West and my twitter account twitter.com/ediblegardensnw.

So what’s the deal? Here is what we have at our disposal so far. 2 half acre lots with all the exposures from full sun to full shade; about 4 fruit trees (apples, pears, figs) and some berries (blueberries, salal) and a whole lot of lawn.

The garden itself will act as a demonstration for urban garden development. Part of how we are going about the design is by creating a perimeter that is the same square footage as your average Seattle home, about 25′ x 35′. The rest of the lot will consist of small experiments in edible landscaping from greenhouse to fruit tree guilds to grey water and livestock. It is important to us that the development
of the garden  is accessible to most urban dwellers in temperate climates, so that some of the experiments can be transposed into a urban home garden.

Let me know if there is something that you are interested in. In true Permaculture fashion I will be observing the property for the first year with only some vegetables grown for supplementary food. We will be starting small and expanding on our successes as they come.

3 Fruit Fantasies That Make Me Drool on Myself

I drool on myself thinking of the fruit that I want to grow. I go catatonic and slack jaw as my mind wanders from one out of body culinary hallucination to the next leaving a gapping hole for the drool to just dribble out.

I live in a rental in Wallingford a cute and quiet garden neighborhood of Seattle with two lawns, one in the front and one in the back, neither of which I can rip out and replant with childish haste the fruits that I dream about. The thing is, I’m not even sure that the effort and care that I would undoubtedly put into these trees and shrubs and vines would be reciprocated with ripe fruit. My USDA hardiness zone is 8, which would  to easily thrive here, but fruit? That’s a little trickier. The chill hours (the number of hours needed for a fruiting perennial to stay dormant before production) I have, it’s the ripening time and the heat to do so that I’m not so sure about. Regardless I’m in a rental that I won’t be in for long enough to even experiment with these fruits so until I do I will describe them while I drool on my self.

Paw Paw

#1 Paw Paw (Asminia triloba) : The Banana of the North. ~ When I was a kid my grandpa Scotty used to buy me an eclair before we went fishing. The custard would ooze out of the dough and down my chin and I would smile this huge smile. Since I first heard about the Paw Paw and how it tasted like spice custard I’ve wanted to grow it, harvest the ripe fruit one early summer morning and go sit in a boat on a lake and think about all the fish I don’t have time to fish for because I’m eating real live natural custard with a huge smile on my face.

Kaki Persimmon

#2 Persimmon (Diospyros kaki and americana) ~ Diospyros means fruit of the gods according to Lee Reich. He may be lying but he ain’t lying if you catch my drift. When I lived in Olympia, WA I would go to the co-op and get these delectable fruits from Burnt Ridge Nursery right about now. They didn’t last long, but Good GOD! I would pay half my student loans per pound and take it to the front stoop of the store and eat it, suck on it, rub my lips with this small human heart shaped half-rotting fruit just basking in the sweet jelly like glory of the meat. I can’t think of one that made it home. And those were just the Asian varietals. The Americans were so different. Butterscotch in flavor and the size of a large cherry tomato. I don’t remember much about that day that I tried the wild American Persimmon. It was sunny and I was in White Salmon on a friends farm, the rest is a blur, all except the butterscotch.

Yup, that's Shipova

#3 Shipova I have never tried a Shipova, but I once grew several when I worked at Sleeping Lady in Leavenworth, WA, but I never saw them fruit. Somewhere between a European pear, an Asian Pear and heaven lies, according to catalogues, the flavor of the Shipova. They are rare beauties whose graceful habits are ruined  by pruning (so I’ve heard). They don’t store so you must eat them quickly, but it’s been getting around that store them isn’t as much of a problem is taking a break from eating them.

Do you grow any of these? Let me know. I promise I’ll leave some for you…

eat well. live well. be happy.

Free Mulch is Falling!

 

save your back and use a tarp

I found that for an easy low impact mulch for vegetables there are two options. Leaves and grass clippings. During the summer months using grass clipping that you collect from your push mower is a great free mulch that offers nitrogen to your vegetables. It is readily available and easily acquired for free. But now its fall and the grass is about to hibernate for the next 6 months. We’ll need a mulch for the winter to protect our soil and help retain moisture in the ground through the winter so that it’s available early spring. Just in time is the falling of the autumn leaves. You may not need to drive some of Seattle’s Maple and Elm lined avenues to collect all you need for your garden this year, you might be lucky enough to actually have enough in your backyard or sidewalk. Last weekend I visited a friend on 20th Ave E and found two laborers and two home owners collecting leaves all bound for the yard waste bin. They were more than happy to have me take them away. My truck wasn’t quite full so I kept raking. One home owner actually came out and gave me a bottle of wine for raking his sidewalk! I’ll be using the sidewalk leaves in my veggie beds next season. I left the street leaves for obvious reasons. Leaves decompose more readily than wood chips do and don’t steal nitrogen like their woody counter-parts

 

Leaf  Mulch

Wood chips are great for perennial beds. Save your back and have your local arborist drop a load of chips. They have to get rid of them and rather than paying for the dumping fees they are happy to unload their days work on to you. The trick is you may not be able to dictate what kind or how much you are getting. You should also be careful not to get fruit wood if you are mulching fruit trees. The fruit wood that is being chipped rarely is just pruned out stems and branches. When an arborist is called in to do work it often revolves around disease. When using diseased wood chips it is important not to mulch trees in the same family. An easy way to get around this is to use conifer chips on fruit and fruit chips on conifers. Pine needles are also good mulch but have a tendency towards acidifying the soil which works well for some berries like Evergreen Huck and Blueberry which both like acidic soil.

arborist chips

Once you know what you need, this is the time of year to start collecting your mulch from your neighborhood.

More Green Tomatoes – Green Tomato and Cactus Leaf Relish

I’m finishing off the last jar of my take on a pickled green tomatoes recipe that I found on-line. I’m just going to tell you now, if you want to floor your friends with some killer fajitas follow this recipe and then add it at the last minute to the sauteed peppers and onions. This is the kind of stuff that inspired James Brown’s Southern culinary funk master pieces (Pass the Peas and Breakin’ Bread and the soul food breakdown at the 3 minute mark of Make It Funky Pt 1 for example)! I guarantee you’ll be screamin’ GOOD GOD! when you taste this. You wouldn’t dream about givin up this food for funk…

GREEN TOMATO RELISH

1 lbs green tomatoes
2 onions

1 cactus leaf

1/8 cup canning salt (non-iodized)
2 roasted peppers, chopped
1/2 qt. vinegar
1/4 tsp. celery seed
1/4 tsp. mustard seed
1/2 tbsp. whole allspice
1/2 tbsp. whole cloves
1/2 lb. brown sugar

Choose firm, small to medium green tomatoes (entirely green, not partially ripe) and firm, white onions, but yellow will work if white is out of season. Wash well. Remove stem ends.

Slice tomatoes at about a 1/4 inch and onions, sprinkle with salt and let stand overnight. Drain water well; add peppers and cactus leaf, sliced into spears.

To the vinegar, add spices (tied in a cheesecloth bag) and sugar. Mix with vegetables and cook over low heat (or in a Crock-Pot) for about 2 hours. Remove spice bag just before canning.

Put vegetables into clean jars and cover with hot vinegar, leaving 1/4 inch headspace. Adjust and seal lids. Process in boiling water bath for 10 minutes.

Makes five or six 1 quart jars, depending on size of vegetables used.

I only used the cactus leaf because I had one left over from the fajitas the night before. If you haven’t had the privilege of partaking in the prickly pear action, check it out. Both the leaf and the fruit are edible and Prickly pear (Opuntia ficus-indica) is hardy to zone 9 so it can, with the right protection, grow in this climate with out getting insanely out of hand like it does in drier, hotter climes. It is frost tender so depending on your exposure it could make a really cool container feature. The leaf is a really interesting addition to any dish whether raw or lightly sauteed or in this case boiled hard. It’s tangy a little chewy and completely funky lookin’.

And another thing. I may write another post about this, but green tomatoes aren’t the only remaining part of our cherished tomatoes that we have left. Add the leaves to the mix. Tomatoes leaves once considered toxic actually aren’t  toxic even in relatively large amounts. The alkaloid Tomatine that I wrote about in the fried green tomato post is in the leaves as well. It would take a pound to do any harm. In the mean time they are a killer addition to marinaras, putanesca, antipasta, veggies and chicken and anything you want to have a tomato flavor with out the toms themselves.

Okay enough for now…I gotta get back to the garden.

eat well. live well. be happy!

Abundant Shade

I love going to a client’s house for an initial consultation and walking the property. Inevitably there is a north side and sometimes a shady side too. Their response is commonly the same, “Well, this is the shady side. I wish we could grow food here. Is there anything else we can do with it?” What about growing some grub? I’m not just talking about growing mushrooms or fiddlehead ferns, which might be a common solution. I’m talking about berries and fruit as well.

There is a whole host of plants that actually produce better in the shade. Yes mushrooms do grow well in the shade and there is nothing better for the epicur-ious than a mushroom garden with a variety of mushrooms. But here are a couple others to consider. If you have the room put in a hedge of Evergreen Huckleberry (Vacciniuum ovatum). In the shade V.

Huckleberry and Salal share a border in this shade garden.

ovatumcan get 6 – 8 feet tall, while in the sun it only gets to 3′. It even produces better in the shade. By pruning and trimming it into a hedge you encourage it to branch more and thus fruit more. Plus its native.

Also native, but not as tall is  Salal (Gaultheria shallon). Known for its berries, which can be used as a thickener, sweetener and wine as well as eaten fresh, Salal also has tender young leaves that can be eaten as well. I haven’t tried them, I’m more likely to use them in flower arranging if I ever take up that hobby. I use the berries in combination with the evergreen huckleberries for jam and really want to give the combination a go as a wine.

Here’s another berry, technically. Kiwi. Hardy Kiwi specifically. Kiwis are vines and vigorous ones at that growing up to 30m into trees.  Actinidia species arguta(this link says they are flavorful…don’t believe ‘em) and kolomikta fall into the hardy category. They will tolerate temps to -20F. As producing vines kolomikta needs warm spring temps with little to no chance of surprise frost, while thearguta flowers later and has a better chance of not losing their buds to a spring frost. This makes them a good choice for Western Washington and similartemperate climates around the world. Actinidia deliciosa, the fuzzy kiwi that we find in the store, is a different species with a to-the-point latin name, but don’t let the lack of “deliociosa” in the hardy kiwi names deter you, they are amazing and can be found at the farmer’s markets right now. Keep in mind that Kiwis plants are dioecious so you will need a male and a female for fruit.

I hope this inspires you to find some shade and play with it. There are, count them,1 - 2 - 3 edible nurseries between Washington and Oregon that sells these fruits. They have a number of varieties. All three will mail the plants to you in a reasonable time period for a reasonable cost.

eat well. live well. be happy!

Green Tomatoes: Fried and Gluten Free (or If Happiness = Health)

If you read my post at the GoodWorks blog you’ll know that frying up tomatoes is a first for me. I’ll be the first to admit that I was really skeptical. I’ve always been told that green tomatoes are poisonous. So, I figured, frying must breakdown the alkaloids in green tomatoes and make them digestible. As it turns out, green tomatoes are actually poisonous and frying doesn’t break down the alkaloid they harbor.

Tomatoes are members of the nightshade family known for some seriously deadly members…like nightshade. Unripe red tomatoes (you can actually get tomatoes that ripen green on the vine) contain an alkaloid called tomatine. While it is an alkaloid it isn’t the alkaloid known for killing live stock. That would be solanine. Tomatine is a mild alkaloid that is digestible in moderate sized quantities and is even known for helping to remove LDL (low-density lipophans) from our systems. If eating fried green tomatoes isn’t the healthiest side dish it is at least neutral unless you consider it is a quick short cut to short term happiness and people who are happy are more likely to be healthy, then fried green tomatoes are actually good for you.

I had a lot of unripe Cherokee Purple and Brandywine tomatoes left on the vine this weekend. With overnight temps in the 30s and 40s it was a no brainer that tomato season was over. I harvested the un-ripes left on vine and brought them in.

Seriously.

My girlfriend Amy is allergic to gluten and corn so the all purpose and corn flour traditional recipes that she is used to seeing in cafes of her native Memphis were not going to happen. We had to come up with our own recipe. I took a traditional recipe and used amaranth flour instead. Amaranth is gluten-free grain that has a distinctive “soil” flavor that I’m not a huge fan of, but I wasn’t about to leave my kitchen cohort out of the equation. So we did things our way.

As a matter of fact we didn’t even follow the recipe. Distracted by conversation, I mixed the amaranth flour, eggs, milk and spices together into a batter. Usually the tomatoes are dipped in each separately (milk then eggs then flour then the optional bread crumbs) which helps all the individual ingredients stick to the tomatoes. To this we also added 21 Season Salute from Trader Joe’s.

The result was a mouth watering bitter/sour flavor that was really unusual but really good! Combined with the 21 Season Salute we had a really soild foundational flavor to play with. We added a sweet and sour zest with some left over balsamic vinegar reduction, kicked in the spice with some Tapatio sauce, and of course we added grease

Fried Green Tomato Sandwich

Think Fried Green Tomato Sandwich. Fried Green Tomato, Fried Egg, Fried Bacon (Turkey or Pig), Fried Green Tomato…um, yes, it was good.

Edible Gardens NW Fried Green Tomato Recipe:

INGREDIENTS

3 medium, firm green tomatoes
1/2 cup amaranth flour
1/4 cup milk
2 beaten eggs
1/4 cup grape seed oil
1/2 teaspoon salt
1/4 teaspoon pepper

21 Season Salute to taste

METHOD

1 Cut un-peeled tomatoes into 1/2 inch slices. Sprinkle slices with salt and pepper. Pat slices with towel to get relieve of excess moisture then let stand for 15 minutes. Meanwhile, place flour with 21 Season Salute, milk, eggs, and bread crumbs in separate shallow dishes (or if you don’t read instructions, get distracted by coffee fueled conversation or generally work against the grain, just mix it all up and call it good.).

2 Heat grape seed oil in a skillet on medium heat. Pan should be big enough so that the oil comes about half way up the slice. Dip tomato slices in milk, then flour, then eggs, (or the batter thereof) then bread crumbs. In the skillet, fry half of the coated tomato slices at a time, for 4-6 minutes on each side or until brown. Season to taste with salt and pepper.

Enjoy! (For better flavor and experience add grease and fat)