I am writing this blog entry from my home in the Richmond Hills where I spend the year watching the sunset move up and down the slopes of Mt. Tamalpais from my front windows.  I am an avid foodie and gardener which means that I am more than a little obsessed with growing edibles.  As part of my never-ending quest to know as much as I possibly can about gardening, I became a Master Gardener.  And as a result of that, I thought it would be fun to share my personal West County perspective on gardening with the world.  So, here we are!

My garden is currently in full-blown flower mode.  After some lovely late season rains we have had a couple of weeks of warm temperatures, the combination of which makes gardeners rub their hands together in joyful anticipation.  Clarkias, poppies, flax, lupine, nigella, marigolds, and sweet peas paint a picture of oranges, pinks, blues, and purples.  This is the season where it takes a serious emergency to get me out of my yard.  I want to sleep on my chaise lounge surrounded by luscious blooms.  I want to eat breakfast, lunch, and dinner on my deck so that I can watch the bees, hummingbirds, and finches zip around.  Reading, email correspondence, surfing the Internet--that’s what they made wireless networks for, right?  So I could sit under my jasmine arbor and watch clouds float by as I wait for files to upload?  Too bad I haven’t figured out a way to rig up a bathtub in my yard yet…

As you can see, I spend a lot of time in my little personal Eden.  This gives me plenty of opportunity to notice the small dramas that play out in the micro-ecosystems of my yard.  It has been fascinating to watch the regime changes that happen practically overnight on my fava beans and lupine plants--it is like watching a remake of Dynasty where all of the overblown actors have been cast as insects.  It always begins with a happy, thriving plant with rich, green leaves and emerging flowers.  Then, the very next day, the plant is covered in a thick, suffocating cloak of aphids.  Just as I begin to hatch plans involving spray bottles and clippers, I notice that the aphids have company.  Voracious lady bug larvae and soldier beetles are literally swarming all over my aphid plants (although for the lady bug larvae it is a very slow “swarming”).  I also notice that there are many aphids that have been sucked dry by some sort of parasitic insect.  Do I feel remorse or sadness upon viewing such a massacre?  Do I compose eulogies and play “Taps” for all of the aphids who met their end in my garden?  Goodness, no.  I do a little jig of joy and thank Mother Nature for predatory insects.  And then I pull up a seat to see who will be next on the green stage of my garden.

By Liz Rottger, Contra Costa Master Gardener.

After listening to an informative and inspiring presentation on French bio-intensive gardening, which transformed not only the speaker’s garden but also her life, I was reminded of Barbara Kingsolver’s book, Animal, Vegetable, Miracle—A Year of Food Life, which recorded a similar transformative year in her family’s life. 

Kingsolver’s describes her family’s year-long effort to grow their own food, to make everything they eat from scratch and to buy only food that is locally produced. It turned out to be a challenge that perhaps only someone with Kingsolver’s determination and experience could undertake because, as she points out, most people don’t even know what fruits and vegetables grow in their neighborhoods. “This knowledge has vanished from our culture.” Worse, we are now raising a whole generation of children who think that strawberries somehow ‘grow’ in plastic boxes!

Kingsolver’s book is both educational and delightful. Perhaps the most fun reading is the wonderful descriptions of her family’s experiences throughout this year of ‘going natural.’ Trying to decide when to start this adventure was troublesome. Would her family end up eating peanut butter sandwiches? She decides that when she can finally harvest the first asparagus will be their moment of truth.

But you can’t survive on asparagus alone, even as bounteous as this first spring perennial vegetable is. So on a windy, fiercely cold Saturday in April, she visits the local farmers market and finds to her great surprise green onions, baby lettuce, fresh eggs, black walnuts, locally grown turkey sausages and lamb, assorted jams and honey and—lo and behold—rhubarb! They will indeed survive until their own vegetable garden starts to produce. The canning orgy that takes place in her kitchen in August and her desperate efforts to prompt the procreation of her flock of heirloom turkeys are adventures described in her inimitable style.

But there is so much more! For example, her daughter, Camille, contributes many delicious sounding recipes and entire seasonal meal plans. Her husband, Steven Hopp, a professor of environmental studies, inserts informative sidebars on a variety of food issues, such as the growth in community-supported agriculture (CSA) operations, fair trade, the cost of food transport, the challenge of feeding the world and the urban agricultural movement. The book contains a detailed bibliography, along with numerous organizational references and resources for those of us who want to learn more.

More importantly, in the process of describing what she planted, harvested, canned, dehydrated, or froze, Kingsolver also tells us about our own food industry, the commoditization of agriculture, the increased consumption of processed foods and the marketing of the desire to have everything, always. She challenges us to not necessarily emulate her family’s lifestyle, but to think differently about what we eat and what choices we make daily when we walk into a modern supermarket. How we define “locally grown” is important.

“Eaters must understand, how we eat determines how the world is used.” A powerful statement! I looked in my own pantry and found, for example, Turkish dried apricots, Moroccan olives, Nicaraguan bananas, Hawaiian honey, and Mexican red peppers among other foods grown thousands of miles from my Bay Area home.

“A genuine food culture is an affinity between the people and the land that feeds them,” she says. This is a concept that certainly every Master Gardener understands and espouses. But there is much to re-think in how each of us develops a more sustainable lifestyle. Many of us will find Barbara Kingsolver’s book an inspirational guide to thinking about and making those complex choices.

by Liz Rottger, Contra Costa Master Gardener.

Since I’ve always prided myself on raising my own homegrown tomatoes (even in Richmond), I was a little embarrassed a couple of weeks ago to have to buy several pounds from Monterey Market, the renowned vegetable market in Berkeley, because for the very first time, I don’t have a single ripe tomato in my garden. Not one! How could that be?
 
It would be easy to join everyone else in blaming the gloomy, overcast weather we’ve been having this entire summer in West County, with temperatures hovering in the low sixties as a cold wind blows in off the Bay, day after day. While it’s true that tomato plants are tropical vines that particularly need warm nights (above fifty-five degrees) to set blossoms, it would be less than honest of me to offer this as the reason why I don’t have any ripe tomatoes. The cool weather has certainly been a contributing factor to my ‘crop’ failure, but I’m forced to admit that the real cause was my infatuation with a package of seeds.

Last January I was rummaging through the vegetable seed racks at a local nursery when I came across a package of “authentic Italian seed” for the famous San Marzano ‘pomodoros’—golden apples. I was smitten. These are the wonderful plum tomatoes that grow in a valley near Naples at the foot of Mt. Vesuvius. Legend says that the seeds were given to the King of Naples in the eighteenth century by the Kingdom of Peru. But that’s probably a marketing myth.

What is fact is that some chefs consider San Marzano to be the best sauce tomato in the world. They are indeed legendary! Canned San Marzano tomatoes imported from Italy can cost as much as $6 for a 28 ounce can at gourmet grocery stores! Even the cost of its seeds was jaw-dropping, but that didn’t stop me from buying a packet.
 
To think that I could have these lovely tomatoes in my own back yard! I immediately dumped my old lovers -- the faithful Green Zebras, stalwart Stupice, exotic Black Odessa and even loyal Oregon Spring -- and started hanging out with San Marzano. Like most love affairs, the beginning was blissful, as San Marzano did lead me on. Great germination rates, transplanting to small pots went equally well, and hardening off and setting out in the garden all progressed beautifully. I was ecstatic. This was going to be a perfect match.
 
Then, nothing! They didn’t seem to grow much. I thought that maybe they just needed time to think over their new location -- to get used to things. I waited patiently. But in my heart, I already knew the score - there was a problem in paradise. Two months later, I have to admit bitterly, they didn’t love me or my garden. They kept waiting for the kisses of that warm Neapolitan sunshine that never arrived and just got more and more homesick. They’re not much bigger now than when I first put them in the ground.
 
Like all jilted lovers, I first reproached myself. How could I have been such a fool? I should have known better. Then came insight: they simply weren’t my climate type. Chastened with the knowledge that just because it’s a seed doesn’t mean that it will grow and flourish in my garden, I’ll return to my old faithfuls next year. I know they’ll take me back.

by Harriett Burt, Contra Costa Master Gardener.  

A few days ago, the two warmest mornings of the Summer of 2010 saw me moving 4” starts into one gallon cans for sale at the CCMG Autumn Garden event.  I'd put it off, being too busy during the many mild days of early August.  As I stood amidst three dozen one-gallon containers, a garbage can of potting soil, a watering can and a plastic container of granular fertilizer, I reflected on the champion propagators of our local world – the people who LOVE doing this and do it so well -- sometimes even introducing new plants into our wider world with their skill.

Obviously, I was thinking of Kathy Echols of DVC and how much we and all local gardeners will miss her when she retires in December.  And of course, former Master Gardener Norma Riccobuono at Markham Arboretum.  Among our own Master Gardeners, there's Lee Bressette (2009) and Helen Erickson (2008), not to mention Muriel Hilliard (2008) and George Hatch (2001), and just about every MG member of Pleasant Hill Garden Study Club.  All those folks and many others among us could stick a coat hanger in the ground and grow clothes.

I do suspect George is in it for the cookies, as he uses those clear plastic tubs you get at Costco, Trader Joes and Safeway that are full of fattening baked goodies.  Muriel also swears by those tubs, but to look at her, one assumes the grandchildren get most of the cookies.

But for me, while it is an interesting and often rewarding activity, it is sort of like bocce ball – I will be inconsistently productive, as always. The theme in my potting shed is “If you can make it here, you can make it anywhere”, not as Liza Minnelli belts it, but as Charles Darwin growls it. 

As I moved about three dozen plants up, I noticed that some, particularly my Salvia mexicana “Limelight” and Salvia gesneriiflora “Tequila”, looked like 18” palm trees.  Lee says that only plants in good shape will be accepted on October 1 for the sale.  I told mine they better darn well send up some side shoots pretty fast or they weren't even going to be competitive for Miss Congeniality at Lee's beauty pageant.

Speaking of the Fall Event, our first time ever Autumn Garden Sale, many treasures have been donated for sale by MGs and their friends and relatives.  Master Gardener “teamsters” recently brought a large number of great items for the sale to our staging area.  Chair Mary Lu Burchard said "Yesterday was a good time with lots of great stuff dropped off".

The event will be held at the Contra Costa Times parking lot near the Our Garden site on Saturday, October 2, from 9 a.m. to 2 p.m., and will feature lots of garden-related tools, books, decorative items, and plants for sale.  We'll also have demonstrations and talks, such as Class of 2003 Roxy Wolosenko's Wise Water Use in the Garden and Class of 1997 Bethallyn Black's Mulch Ado About Nothing.  And, absolutely free, we'll hold guided tours of Our Garden!