The Sugar Hollow Plant List

Echinacea (also known as coneflower) attracts butterflies and in late fall, gold finches.

Taking stock in the garden at season's end! I got 50 more daffodil bulbs planted last weekend and could probably plant 50 bulbs every season for the next 20 years and still not make a dent in the landscape. {I would love our land to be a sea of yellow every late February.}

What is on your wish list? What do you recommend?

HONEYBEE, BIRD AND BUTTERFLY ATTRACTORS

Catnip, white and lavender varieties
Butterfly Bush
Liatris
Glossy Abelia
Sunflowers
Echinacea
Bee Balm
Zinnias
Caryopteris ‘Blue Beard’
Sedum ‘Autumn Fire’
Salvia ‘May Night’
Russian Sage
Black-Eyed Susans
Shasta Daisies
Goldenrod (wild)
Yarrow (wild)
Thistle (wild)
Violets (wild)
Ironweed (wild)

BENEFICIAL INSECT ATTRACTORS

Love-in-a-Mist (self-seeding patch)
Daffodils, common and several other fragrant varieties
Iris, common and a variety that smells like grape Pez

NATIVES

Fringe Tree
Eastern Red Bud
Virginia Sweet Spire
Virginia Bluebells
May Apples
Wild Phlox
Trillium

HERBS

Plantain
Lavender (also good for honeybees)
Lemon Balm (also good for honeybees)
Sage
Rosemary (also good for honeybees)
German Chamomile
Thyme
Oregano (also good for honeybees)
Dill
Garlic
Mint, Common
Mint, Apple

ORNAMENTALS

Lilac, Common
Hydrangea ‘Endless Wonder’
A variety of small, ephemeral bulbs
Hollies, ‘China Boy’ and ‘China Girl’ varieties
Liriope
Dayliles, native, 'Pandora’s Box', 'Wineberry Candy', 'Jolyene' and several other varieities
Grape Hyacinths
Sugar Maple
Willow Oak
Eastern Red Cedars
Japanese Maples (3)
Azalea
Bridal Wreath
Rose, Climbing Antique 'Jeanne LaJoie'
Roses, Knock Outs
Coreopsis, Rose
Plumbago
Hollyhock, Common (deer fodder right now, but I hold out hope)
Veronica Speedwell
Tulips, Rembrandt and basic red variety

PERENNIAL FOOD PRODUCERS

Fig 'Chicago Hardy'
Juneberry (seriously chomped down by deer, but still living)
Black raspberry
Blackberries
Strawberries (in containers, for now)
Wild persimmons
Asparagus 'Mary Washington'
Elderberry
Rhubarb

REMAINING WISH LIST and FINAL THOUGHTS

A weeping mulberry shrub.
'Korean Spice' viburnums for along the front path.
A peony (or two).
More irises.
More Black-Eyed Susans along the ridge above the daylilies.
More compost under the walnut to help plants thrive?
More varieties of daylily for under the walnut.
A better okra crop.
Plant cucumbers for pickling.
Grow squash for the *blossoms,* too.
Find a spot for the elderberry that will let it thrive.
More native phlox.
Plant calendula – for botanical beauty potions.
Don’t plant green beans. (I just don’t love them enough to can and freeze.)

Ruth Stout Was A Bad Ass (And You Can Be One Too!)

I took Ruth Stout's No-Work Garden Book out of the library last month (and then again, this month, renewing it as often as is allowed) and it has me ready to get back out to our vegetable garden. Including a future asparagus bed and possibly, just maybe, revisiting a strawberry patch. Without the elaborate trench digging for the asparagus or the hair-pulling frustration of strawberry patch weeding.

Ruth Stout gardened well into her 80s and was one of the first gardeners to write about organic alternatives. Her no-work method basically involves six to eight inches of mulch - straw, hay, shredded leaves, kitchen scrap, pine needles. The thick mulch cuts back on weeding and watering. That just leaves mulching, planting and growing. The latter two being every gardener's favorite things ever! Whenever she saw a weed, she tossed more mulch on top of it instead of removing the interloper. Hah!

One of my favorite quotes of Ruth's - after writing on old gardening methods: "I think I'll go lie down now. I'm exhausted just from writing about all the unnecessary work that some people do."

These recently discovered videos are astoungdingly wonderful. I love Ruth's no-nonsense New Englander attitude and now hear her voice as I read her book. She was a rabble-rouser from her youth and used to garden on her Connecticut plot buck-naked!

Foraging in the Garden :: Rosehips

Last winter was not a good winter for ailments around our house. We were pummelled by cold after cold brought home by baby. Worn out by general busy-ness, working and being a mama, my immune system wasn't in tip-top shape. So there was a nice bit of suffering and a good bit of whinging.

Friends and family were very sympathetic and super helpful. After a mid-winter hike with one dear girlfriend, she took care of me by brewing some rosehip tea - so yummy and sky-rocketingly high in vitamin C. Rose hips have so much vitamin C in fact that one teaspoon of pulp equals four or five navel oranges.

So, during a recent morning walk, I picked rosehips while Willa giggled and watched. I dried them in the oven - at 250 degrees for about an hour. I have them in a sunny windowsill in a glass container right now - if I see any moisture, I will dry them some more - to avoid mildew.

I'll probably just pop one dried rosehip in my pre-bedtime herbal tea for most of the cold season. Keeping the cooties at bay as best I can!

Present Obsessions :: Foraging and Stalking

I'm doing research for a Virginia Living Magazine article and have been madly pawing away at these books in the evenings - Stalking the Wild Asparagus by Euell Gibbons and Gather Ye Wild Things by Susan Tyler Hitchcock. I plan on collecting some rose hips this evening . . .

The Charlottesville Cooking School :: Canning Class!

Learning how to can has been on my wish list for a very long time. The thought of winter pantry shelves stocked with rows of Ball mason jars makes my heart race.

On August 29th, I will be taking a class at The Charlottesville Cooking School with Leni Sorensen. Here's a description:

Learn the art of canning peaches and tomatoes at this fun and interactive class with Leni Sorensen. Leni is a culinary historian at Monticello. Each student will leave with one jar of tomatoes and one jar of peaches.

I especially love that it is interactive, as that is the only way I absorb anything these days.

Thinking I might treat myself to this, too. I hear that it is the bible of all-things-canning-slash-preserving.

Eat Your Edibles. Flowers, That Is.

Sunflower petals are bittersweet and can be used in salads.

A potential garden coaching client got in touch with me about growing edible flowers. Which reminded me about this great list that I came across during my mid-winter garden reading.

Here are details on each (taste-wise) and when you can start them from seed or buy them as transplants.

Bachelor's Buttons (Mild and sweet - Salads and desserts) - Early spring from seed.

Calendula (Tangy, slightly bitter - Baked goods, rice dishes) - Early spring from seed. Or, you can find transplants at the farmers' market and nurseries.

Dianthus (Mild clove - Garnish for vegetables, fruit salads, cold drinks) - Buy as a transplant now.

Marigold (Spicy and citrus-y - Salad garnish) - Very easy from seed right now or as a transplant.

Nasturtium (Spicy and peppery - Stuff flowers with soft cheese (yum!)) - Very easy from seed right now.

Salvia (Slightly sweet - Add leaves to soups and cooked greens) - Buy as a transplant now.

Hyacinth bean (Bean-like - Use in soups, sandwiches and salads) - Very easy from seed now. Only use edible flowers from the Ruby Moon variety.

Squash blossoms (Sweet and savory - Fry 'em up) - Start your summer squash plants in early May from seed.

Sunflowers (Bittersweet - Salads) - Start from seed in early May.

Violas (Wintergreen - Dessert and salads garnishes and decorations) - Buy as transplants now.

Also, this season's issue of The Herb Quarterly has a fantastic section on meals with edible flowers. I have the candied violet vanilla cake dancing around in my head as a possible experiment. It's always nice to have a cake dancing around in one's head, I must say.

Late-April :: Garden To Do's

Allo! Allo!

Feeling a tad slumpy these days, yet with so much to do.

I still have my head in the dogwoods - mildly obsessing over the pink variety. Need to remember this obsession for next year's wishy-want list for understory trees.

1. We are coming up on that apex of spring-time . . . the last frost date. I usually stick to Mother's Day for our blustery, mountain region, but it is a little earlier for those of you living in Charlottesville-proper. Have at it - seed, transplant, repeat!

2. Veggies that can be started from seed these weeks - bush and pole beans, Chinese cabbage, cucumbers, muskmelons, okra, pumpkins, radishes, summer squash, sunflowers, swiss chard and watermelons.

3. You can start transplanting your tomatoes, eggplant, peppers, hot peppers and all your herbs. Keep a watchful eye on the possible freak late frost, just-in-case.

4. Shrubs and perennials can continue to be planted. Give them a hearty dose of compost with the backfill. And water deeply for a few weeks.

5. Try a native or two. They laugh in the face of our droughts (and general gardening adversity) and forge on when the going gets tough. My favorite native right now? Virginia Sweetspire (more on that soon . . . )

6. Some simple edibles to try out - juneberries and mulberries (the shrub variety). Visit my new haunt - Edible Landscaping to purchase a plant. Not much land? Try blueberries in a big container. The container will give you the advantage in that you can perfect the growing conditions needed for blueberries.

Feeling Satisfied In The Garden

Hmmmmm. A whole-lotta doing and not much blogging these days.

Finally, here's a sneak peek at our new play area - for Willa and myself (note the baby camp on the blanket - Click on the photo for a larger peek). Earlier photos that I had promised just looked brown and gray.

But now-a-days, the pale greens make for a satisfyingly-verdant show. It has been a nice change from this, remember? Tho' there is still a lot to do, I am relishing the challenge.

I've been busy planting daylilies and putting seed down for bachelor's buttons, cleome and love-in-a-mist. An Easter trip to Edible Landscaping included a juneberry purchase, which was also planted. *Sale alert* - All of the plants at Edible Landscaping are 20% off right now.

The bulbs that I planted in the fall dot our landscape in such a cheerful way. Tulips and daffodils here and there. Some of my native plantings are coming back, too - Virginia Bluebells, spring beauties and mayapples. Scattered around The Blue Bench.

In the veggie beds, the greens, radishes and rhubarb are flourishing. The kale, however, seems to be somebody's evening snack and has been munched down to pathetic nubbins. Thank goodness for the upcoming CSA deliveries!!

I am hurrying along spring these days. As I do every year. That last frost date can't seem to come soon enough. And then, of course, we'll shoot straight to bug-swatting madness accompanied by 80 degrees and humidity.

At-The-Ready In The Garden

"Stretch Out and Wait" - April 2009

A soppy, soaking week here in the Piedmont. The promise of a warm, sunny weekend has my gardening heart racing. Weeding and digging will be that much easier and things can happen at a nice clip.

The dayliles arrived in the mail and I will start to plant them, to help curb erosion in one spot on our land. I may try and save the wilder dayliles that sprout up along the roadside on our property and transplant them to that same hillside. These tend to get hacked - mid-summer - by some state-mandated clean-up. I also bought some pale violet and white pansies for containers. Maybe we'll prep a spot for the expected fig tree purchase, too.

Something about spring also includes a deluge of new music . . . The recent Decemberists' album The Hazards of Love; Elvis Perkins in Dearland; Neko Case's Middle Cyclone and Casa de Chihuahua are on heavy rotation.

The post-rain time offers a clean slate. An open mind. In other words . . . another good start to spring.

Edible Landscaping :: Flavor Magazine Article!

Thrilled and honored to be a part of the April/May issue of Flavor Magazine. My article "Backyard Buffet" is all about a local nursery, Edible Landscaping. Thank you to Jennifer (my editor) for including me in her gorgeous magazine. Don't you just love the cover photo?

Edible Landscaping :: The Article

In the Garden
Backyard Buffet
Tracey Crehan Gerlach

Your landscaping can be both beautiful and edible.

It started with a hardy kiwi—more importantly, with the keen ability to propagate a hardy kiwi. And Michael McConkey, owner of the Edible Landscaping nursery and a lifelong gardener, was propelled into the world of harvest-able landscapes.

With a love of nurturing things going back to his childhood (he tended his own garden before the age of 10), McConkey found himself amidst the “grow your own” movement of the 1970s. He spent time traveling, learning, exploring.

And then he met Dr. Elwyn Meader, a rare-plant specialist and fruit breeder from the University of New Hampshire, who gave him his first cutting of the hardy kiwi. When an article about Meader and the kiwi variety came out a year later in a well-known gardening magazine, McConkey was listed as a go-to source for plant.

From Hobby to Vocation

Things took on a farm-to-table meaning when McConkey became a vegetarian and relied on his green thumb to supply him with his own food. That was when, he said, he realized what fun it all is.

And even on a late-winter visit to his 25-acre nursery, I too realized what fun it all is. Perched atop a foothill of the Blue Ridge Mountains in Afton, the backbones of the nursery’s orchards and the silhouettes of the fig trees showed the promise of spring as well as the potential for edible options in Virginia that weren’t even on my radar.

Starts of herbs like chocolate mint and fruit trees such as flowering apricot prepare for the upcoming season in the mist and the humidity of their respective greenhouses. Shiitake logs sit stacked at-the-ready for their first spring flush. Visiting the citrus greenhouse filled with Meyer lemons, Kaffir limes, and mangoes is like a mini-vacation. My mental wish list for my own garden kept growing.

But I quietly admit to Sonja Reid of the Edible Landscaping staff that I am intimidated by fruit trees and the more unusual offerings. I am primarily a vegetable gardener curious about branching out.

Contrary to what I originally thought about Edible Landscaping, it is not just for the wizened, weathered, know-it-all gardener. It is the perfect place to start learning, and many plants can be grown and tended by new gardeners. According to McConkey, juneberries, persimmons, mulberries, and pawpaw are “dummy proof”—yes!—in terms of planting and cultivation requirements once they are established.

Choosing native plants is also a good start for beginners. “Natives understand our [weather] swings,” McConkey explains. All of the beginner plants mentioned above are natives to our area, as are filberts (hazelnuts).

The Cornucopia

Open 7 days a week from 9 a.m. to 5 p.m., Edible Landscaping truly brings horticultural resources and confidence to the people. Customers are sent home with a succinct care sheet for each plant that they buy. The nursery’s online “Plant Talk” forums offer support from seasoned gardeners living across the country. Events like All About Fruit Days—offered in June and September—include tastings of some of the more unique plants, such as the pawpaw. And the nursery ships plants: in fact, a majority of their business is mail order.

For the more intrepid gardener, McConkey suggests Edible Landscaping’s Russian pomegranate trees, descendents of one of Dr. Gregory Levin’s labors-of-love. After the disbanding of his benefactor, the USSR, Levin lost funding for his project. A pomegranate breeder for 4 decades, Levin dispersed his best selections to various horticultural institutions across the globe. You can find trees from this same line in Afton.

You will find a hefty selection of plants that are closer to what you would expect in Virginia, like blueberry, blackberry, apple, fig, passionflower, rhubarb, strawberry, apricot, and raspberry plants. I also learned about a Virginia-hardy orange (meaning that it will live through our winters), the Flying Dragon. The fruit is not meant to be eaten as-is, but it is ideal for citrus-ades, marmalades, and jams.

And then, if you have the outfit to replicate the tropics, there are bananas, dragon fruit, coffee, guava, star fruit, pineapples, and mangoes to be had. And, of course, the hardy kiwi.

Edible Landscaping has another interesting plant, especially for an avid cook—saffron crocuses. Collect the center stigmas of these fall bloomers, and you will have this very expensive spice at your fingertips for your favorite sauces or risottos. Chefs will also appreciate herbs such as horseradish, sweet bay laurel, lemongrass, Thai ginger, and garlic chives.

The pawpaw appears up on several of McConkey’s recommendation lists (see sidebar). Having never tasted one, I am told it is like a very ripe banana. And in the Edible Landscaping catalog, I learn that “George Washington’s favorite dessert was chilled pawpaw.” Well, then.

The shiitake logs, Reid tells me, are very popular and hard to keep in stock. White oak logs, about 40 inches long, have holes drilled into them and are then plugged with shiitake spores. To maintain this super-low maintenance, just place the log in dappled shade and water regularly. It can produce shiitakes for 4 years.

The nursery’s choices are delightfully dizzying and my own wish list starts to flesh out. Mulberries for cobblers, a shiitake log, supersweet Caroline Everbearing raspberries, and a fig tree. Phew.

Well Within Reach

I am a gardening coach and more and more, I am hearing requests for edible backyards from clients and friends. Function over form. No matter the size of their plot, property, or deck. They want fresh vegetables and fruits within fuzzy slipper distance—as one of my favorite horticulture teachers used to say.

It’s a good time of year to rethink the garden and swap out some of those fussy ornamentals for something that’ll show up on your plate that evening without burning fossil fuels, without questionable pesticides, without the middleman. With Edible Landscaping right here in the Piedmont, getting involved in your own “grow your own” movement doesn’t need to involve a daunting initiation.

For McConkey, a sense of accomplishment is bringing home a bushel of Russian pomegranates. For me, this season, it will be a handful of shiitakes and maybe a bowl of mulberries.

Willa's Vintage Virginia Apple Tree

Our very dear friends, Dave and Leora, surprised us with the sweetest of gifts last weekend. An apple tree for Willa. For her first birthday.

It is an Ashmead's Kernel - with origins going back to the 1700's in England. It is one of Dave's favorites. From Vintage Virginia Apples.

On Wednesday, Dave stopped by and planted our tree. Near the vegetables raised beds. For our growing edible spot in Sugar Hollow.

What made this gift so awesome was having our friends show us something new. Something that would have normally intimidated me. But now, there it is. An apple tree. Willa's Apple Tree. On our land. The best!