flowers & gardens

the show was fantastic. i spoke to strangers. i gathered a ton of great information (which i hope to share soon). i took a ton of pictures. and best of all, it will be coming back next year.

i was especially excited by the huge number of edible gardens and living walls. here's a little taste.

edible green wall

i've posted before about the living wall planters where you can take advantage of unused vertical space to garden, but today a friend sent over a great link showing a woman who created her own living wall using an old riddling rack to plant a wall of edible greens. now that's a great idea!

sad news for bay area gardeners

this will be the last year for the san francisco flower and garden show -- the third largest show in the country behind philadelphia (#1) and seattle (#2) which had its last run last weekend. the event planners who have run the seattle and san francisco shows for the past 20 years have decided to move on to other things and have been unable to find responsible folks to take over where they are leaving off.

this is sad for so many reasons:

- exceptionally creative gardens built by some of the best in the field
- a marketplace featuring tons of plants, products and people to help you make informed purchases
- fantastic seminars on everything from containers to sustainable design
- a kids' craft area
- an amazing networking opportunity for gardeners, designers, landscapers, etc.

this is especially sad for me for even more reasons:

- this year one of my favorite fellow garden bloggers, ellen zachos will be leading two seminars both on topics close to my heart: small space gardening and container gardening. unfortunately i won't be able to attend because i have to work.
- i had hoped to use the show to help advertise my new site once it's up as well as to connect with local food gardening enthusiasts and professionals; unfortunately, the site won't be ready in time for this year's show and next year, well, it won't be there anymore

i do plan to try and make it out to philadelphia next march to feed my flower show appetite, but it just won't be the same as a local show with my local community.

great idea

recently the park seed garden journal ran a contest asking for readers' best homemade seed starting ideas. they got some great ones, but my favorite was transforming old, mate-less cotton socks into compostable grow pots. i've been wondering what to do with old socks once their useful life is done. (thanks to harley frederickson and park seed.)

the three sisters

yes, i'll admit it: when you live in one climate zone too long, it's easy to get complacent. you know which plants will grow and which won't, you find the ones you love and you stick with them.

which i did, with the exception of my complete unwillingness to give up on the idea of garden-fresh tomatoes despite the fact that they failed every year until i discovered the resilient little "stupice" (whose nick-name "the apocalypse tomato" only made me love it more). but then, i suppose that's only further proof of my stubbornness.

so here i am, my second planting season away from my beloved fog belt, and what am i doing? dreaming of artichokes. not that i've actually moved that far -- 25 miles, 1 zone (from 10 to 9), and from the ocean to the bay, but micro-climate-wise, i'm in a whole different world. my huge, tree-shaded yard has been replaced by a covered cement porch surrounded by a parking lot. where before, ocean breezes kept temperatures a near-constant 55 degrees and cool fog kept even the tenderest lettuce from scorching, here, afternoon sun piles the heat into my little convection oven baking everything that wasn't designed for the heat.

luckily i do have some measure of shade to protect the ferns and pygmy date palm i brought with me, but i also realize all this heat and sun open up a whole world of possibilities that i was denied all those years in the fog, most excitingly for me: corn. even more exciting, you can now buy dwarf varieties suitable for growing in small spaces, including containers.

and that corn brings us back to the subject of this post: the three sisters. according to native american legend, the three sisters, corn, beans and squash grow best when inter-planted, providing support and nourishment for each other and, when eaten together, a complete protein for the person eating them.

now the fog did yield a bounty of squash and even a few beans, but this will be the first time i've lived somewhere i could grow corn so the sisters can finally come together in my garden, even if it's just in one large pot.