Over the past few weeks I have had several in-depth conversations about plant names. Specifically, why I chose to include scientific plant names across the front of Jewellgarden’s new note cards and how these names are determined - why are they so confusing? All of these conversations got me thinking about plant names - what purpose they serve, why it is important to me to learn them and thus why they proudly embellishing my new cards. Photo: A black and white note card depicting the California black oak acorn (Quercus kelloggii) from my Natives in the Garden series. (more…)

Lunch began with a warm bowl of palest green cream of spring asparagus soup (created from a combination of local asparagus and Berkeley Farms cream), green onions from the garden garnished the top as well as a swirling line of red smoked paprika from Sawmill Creek Farm in Paradise. Crunchy bread from Chico’s Tin Roof Bakery was passed around for dipping, and plates of regional goat cheeses and soft butter filled out the first course. A hearty salad of tender, multi-colored spring greens from the garden was tossed in local olive oil and balsamic vinegar, accompanied by some more goat cheese served as the entrée. Homemade chocolate chip cookies (the carmel-brown, thin crisp kind, which I like) were dessert. Photo: Home grown blueberries.
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Wolfgang Rougle is a young woman with a sharp mind, an engaged spirit, a strong work ethic and a big vision. She is also the owner and market-farmer of 20 acres west of Cottonwood, named Twining Tree Farm, which she describes as: “a small farm located in the foothills of the Coast Range in the northern Sacramento Valley, at about 700 feet, in a sea of blue oak savannah.” Photo: A fleeting glimpse of Wolfgang Rougle, hard at work on her Twining Tree Farm west of Cottonwood.

A community activist for good locally grown food, and sustainable small farms, Wolfgang is also an eloquent writer and has authored a small book/manifesto entitled “Sacramento Valley Feast: How to find, harvest and cook local, wild food… All Year Long!” as well as being a regular contributor to edible Shasta Butte. (more…)

It’s mid- February and even in the colder sections of the North State the time is now for planning and even planting your spring and summer vegetable seeds and starts – inside and out. On Monday evening February 15th, I hosted a special edition of I-5 LIVE on Northstate Public Radio (91.7 fm KCHO in Chico and 88.9 fm in Redding) from 8 to 9 pm to chat about edible gardening and getting ready for the spring vegetable garden.

My guests for the evening were David Grau, owner of Valley Oak Tool, former market gardener and organizer of the Chico Organic Gardening Series; also, Wayne Kessler, co-owner with his wife Laurel, of Shambani Organics, a specialty herb and vegetable start grower based in Shingletown, California.
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Wow – How about that rain and snow? And more is on the way. Which is wonderful for our plants, soils and watersheds, but when it comes in long stretches of gray days, it can play havoc with my mood (and the power in much of our region). Even a few minutes of fresh air and weak sunshine does me a world of good. You don’t want to walk on planted ground when it is very wet if you can help it, because you will compact the soil to the point of harming its structure. But you can get out and walk on unplanted ground – such as paths. I got so stir crazy in the latest long gray stretch that in the pouring rain I rebuilt my whole compost system and weeded all my pathways. Weeds come out of wet soil so nicely – slick as snot as my father likes to say. Photo: Gray skies hand low and tulle fog fills in the valleys looking southwest from Mt. Shasta in January. (more…)

Planting a vegetable garden just seems to go along with spring, doesn’t it? Like an instinctive and seasonal rite of passage. But, says George Winter, owner of Wyntour Gardens in Redding and the Red Bluff Garden Center in Red Bluff, “if you want a vegetable garden, the fall and winter garden is generally easier and less maintenance than the spring and summer one. Time seems more measured in the fall garden - not so hectic,” in George’s opinion. “Temperatures will still be hot when you plant your garden planted in late August early September, but they cool off pretty quickly so you won’t be working in blazing heat; the lower temperatures also mean fewer bugs, and of course your chances of rainfall are much better. So if we have a normal fall and winter, you will be watering your fall-planted garden far less than you had to water your spring-planted one. Planning and planting a fall and winter vegetable garden is very similar to planting your spring/summer one, except the odds are stacked in your favor, so your chances of success are very good.”

Now, of course there are some caveats. You are unlikely to get fabulous tomatoes or cucumbers from your fall planted garden unless you have a greenhouse or other pretty serious protection from cooling temperatures. But most fall-planted crops enjoy the North State’s warm August and September weather for germination and getting established followed by the cooling nights and days of October and November for steady growth. Most fall planted crops can withstand the light frosts of late October and early November fairly well and in many cases a light frost will actually improve the health, vigor and taste of certain crops - like chards and beets.
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“Food, food, food - it all comes back to food. Being able to grow your own food, understanding where your food comes from and having access to good, healthy food.” Max Kee tells me this as we walk around a two acre plot of land on which he and his fellow workers are cultivating vegetable and herb crops for a second year. Max, and fellow-CSU Chico classmates and friends Dresden Holden, Francine Stuelpnagel and Lee Callendar founded the Chico-based group known as GRUB in 2007. GRUB stands for Growing Resourcefully Uniting Bellies.

“It started with a bike ride…Well, it started with three of us wanting to attend a sustainability conference in Santa Barbara in the spring of 2007 and realizing that it would be counter-productive to drive a car to a sustainability conference. So we decided to ride - and on the way we talked a lot about what it meant to be sustainable and how best to be engaged in solution-oriented sustainability. And as we talked we kept coming back to food.” Max is walking me through fields where irrigation lines are being set up by two people, while others are seeding llong straight furrows and still another comes along behind the seeders and top-dresses with a layer of rich, dark fine compost. The sun is already warm early on this May morning and the next field over is already producing strawberries, while another field has asparagus plants now gone to fern. “When we got to the conference, Francine and Dresden attended a workshop led by a woman from San Jose, who had started a cooperative vegtable and fruit sharing program by cooperatively gardening in people’s unused back-yard space. Francine and Dresden were so fired-up, that our bike ride home from the conference was all about how to start such a cooperative of our own.” I should note that while Francine and Lee, a married couple, had always intended to start their own vegetable garden, none of GRUB’s founding four had any gardening or agricultural background or education to speak of. I should also note the importance of the bike ride in the inception and evolution of GRUB: it all started with a bike ride and all aspects of GRUB continue through bike rides as the primary sources of transportation, beasts of burden and, of course, fun.
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Even though many of us in the North State can and do work in our vegetable gardens year-round, March, April and May are such traditional vegetable seed and seedling start times that I have been focusing a lot of my energy on my raised vegetable beds these past few weeks. Finishing up the winter-grown veggies like bok choy, winter lettuce and the last of the bulbing fennel (which was delicious braised in a light chicken stock), gave me room for carrot, beets, spring lettuce, snap pea seeds as well as potatoes. I have just enough room left to put out my tomato plants and basil seeds when the night temperatures stay reliably above 50 degrees. Photo: Bulbing fennel.

Vegetable gardening, growing fruit and nut trees, berry vines, etc. - any gardening you do that results in an edible item, is often termed Edible Landscaping. I think the use of this “fancy” term was introduced in order to 1. Make it clear that you’re talking about gardening for food production, and 2. Suggest that vegetable and fruit gardening is every bit as attractive in the landscape as “ornamental” flower and tree-type gardening.
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In 2003, Shasta College in Redding became a host college for the California Extension Master Gardener Program. Leimone Waite, who has been a Horticulture Instructor at the college since 1998, is the administrator of the very successful Master Gardener Program there. At Shasta College, a member of the California Community College System of schools, the program is a collaborative venture between the college and the University of California system’s Agricultural Extension offices, which officially oversees and is responsible for the Master Gardener program throughout the state of California. Butte County began hosting a Master Gardener program in 2008 and will run the training every other year.

The Master Gardener program was originally conceived and started in Washington State in 1972 by David Gibby, Ph.D, a horticultural Extension agent for the University of Washington.
But wait. To truly understand the Master Gardener program, you need to understand a little bit about the history of the agricultural or horticultural Extension Agent system, and to understand that, you need to understand a little bit about American history.

If that sounds almost Epic - it is. The rigorously trained, enthusiastic volunteer corps we now know as Master Gardeners are at the end of one thread of the history of Westward Expansion, the Industrial and Agricultural Revolutions, and the subsequent suburbanization and even more recent Technological Revolution of the United States. In my humble opinion, the Master Gardener program is one shining example of a good and effective marriage between government resources, educational institutions and those of us at home on the farm – or in the garden as it were.
According to what is now known as the Cooperative State Research, Education and Extension Service:

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Warm, smoky, mouth-watering and full-bodied. That was the dominant sensory experience on a walk around Nancy Heinzel and Brian Marshall’s market garden, Sawmill Creek Farm, in late summer. The entire garden was scented with the heady aroma of Hungarian peppers smoking over hickory chips at one end of the garden.

Nancy Heinzel and Brian Marshall are truly avid gardeners. That love and passion became much of their livelihood, “like all good things, by accident!” says Brian, “about 10 years ago,” when they decided to allow their 1-acre garden to continue on its ever-expanding way and become not just their garden but an outstanding market garden. Today, Nancy tends to the farm as her full-time job and Brian pitches in half time, his other half-time is spent as landscape designer and installer. Much of the goods from the farm are grown to sell at various markets around the area – including the Chico Thursday night Market and the Saturday Market in Oroville, April to November.
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