The Three Amici

The Three Amici

Posted by Heather Harris

The gravel is in! Now for the tomatoes...

Greg and I celebrated Valentine's Day yesterday. Yes, I know it's April, but we're like that. A holiday is just a recommended time for celebration.  It can be enjoyed anytime. Birthdays are known to go on for weeks. Thanksgiving is a 5 day family extravaganza in Sunriver. Our tenth anniversary hasn't even happened yet, but we've already been to Belize! As long as the event is noted, it can really go anywhere on the calendar.

Anyway, for Valentine's Day Greg and I got each other tickets to Shovel and Rope, the best band ever. Well, actually, the tickets were for Drive-by Truckers. Anyone heard of them? Me neither. So, in true Portland hipster fashion, we went for the opening band, and then mocked the bland, monotonous guitar jamming of the main event. We didn't even stay for them to finish. We're so cool.

When I wasn't mocking the band, because honestly it was exhausting to yell witty comments over the blaring guitar solos for very long, I was sipping my IPA dreaming of, naturally, tomatoes. Tomorrow is the big day, the true main event. Tomorrow is the Tualatin Valley Garden Club's Annual Plant Sale. Row upon row, stall upon stall of gorgeous, green, leafy tomato starts will be glistening in the morning dew, their peppery scent wafting through the air, waiting for my eager fingers to pick them up, put them back. No wait, pick that one up, put it back. Oh wait, that one looks good! No, what's THAT over there?! This is not an event that I take husbands or children to. It can take awhile.
               
There are three darlings that never get put back on the saw-horse supported table. My three amigos (amici?): Lemon Boy, Speckled Roman, and Principe Borghese. Now how they ended up in my wagon the first time is just pure luck, but I will now knock over grandmothers, dogs, and chubby toddlers to snatch them up.

 Lemon boy is the most delicious, yellow tomato ever, and it ALWAYS produces lots of tomatoes. It is the first to ripen up as well, even before the so called "Early Girls". I don't know about you, but my "early" girls like to party the night before and sleep in. Not Lemon Boy. He's up bright and early.








Speckled Roman is my newest find. It produces huge, beautiful red plum tomatoes with yellow, marbled speckles. I've never eaten one raw, because they are so perfect for canning. I swear one tomato can fill a quart jar. They are also wonderfully reliable, but unfortunately a true delight for the loathsome slug. I can't tell you how many giant, perfect tomatoes I've angrily chucked across the yard because some nasty invertebrate found it first. Slug bait-it, people.

The last, Principe Borghese, is my oldest friend. Originally chosen solely because of the romantic name (not a strategy I would suggest for selecting the best tomatoes. Do as I say, not as I do), this large cherry tomato is great for drying and freezing. I've also had them re-seed in my garden and come back all over the place the next year. They produce early and keep going until late October. They're not real tasty fresh, but again, great for preserving.



Of course, this is just the start of my wagon load. Many, many more will eventually pile in. The boys will have to move over and make some room. Last year the checker laughed at me and said, "That's probably too many tomato plants. You know they get pretty big, right honey?" Oh, silly man. There is no such thing as too many tomatoes.

Italian Dreaming on a Wet, Northwest Day

Italian Dreaming on a Wet, Northwest Day

Posted by Heather Harris

I have a problem. Its origin is a term abroad in Italy when I was the very romantic age of 20. One should never taste their first glass of wine under a jasmine covered pergola on a warm evening at a 500 year old Tuscan farm with fire flies and a locally sourced five course meal.It really does a number on your head. Your expectations for life blow way out of proportion. And you can't get the warm, reddish glow of the sun setting on the rosy stone and gravel paths out of your head.

And thus begins my problem. My dream garden design is a  Mediterranean, warm, drought tolerant, geometrically precise, gravel strewn masterpiece. Something like this:

My reality is a Northwest, damp, water-logged, chaotic, grass choked field.  A yard much more likely to yield a garden like this:

It's lovely and all, but I'm not sipping wine on that bench. I'm drinking a hot coffee, bundled up in four layers with an outer rain parka.  

So, I have started my experiment of creating a Northwest Mediterranean garden on a small scale with the vegetable garden. Of course, there are five redwoods at the southern end (yes, someone planted five of the fasted growing, largest trees in the world in my yard) , but the color of the branches exactly matches the needle thin Italian cypress trees growing all over Tuscany, so they'll do. And alas, there is no rosy pink crushed rock at Portland Sand and Gravel, but they do have every imaginable size in gray, so I will just have to compensate with copious amounts of terracotta pots. Greg laid out a perfectly rectangular plot using Ed Smith's "Magic Triangle" (well really the Egyptians came up with it, but I'll give Ed the credit.) Thank God I have a husband with the patience to measure, because Lord knows I don't. We have the square vegetable beds laid out geometrically, and I left room in the center of the garden for a black, iron bistro set, so that hopefully, I will be sipping wine on a summer evening, surrounded by the bounty of my raised beds, while delighting over a caprese salad made with my own heirloom tomatoes.  I'm thinking a Chianti...

                                                Luke helping shovel all of the dirt.

                                Dirt in, April seeds planted, gravel ready to go in this weekend!

Garden Pests

Garden Pests

Posted by Heather Harris

As I have begun to move from the anticipation stage of my vegetable garden into the actual realization of it, the giddy excitement of imagining a perfectly manicured and abundantly productive french potager is giving way to anxiety, fear, doubt and exhaustion. A bit like leg three of my recent journey to Belize.

So far, my little seeds, that should have germinated two weeks ago, have just barely poked their feeble heads above the cold, clammy earth, only to feel the cruel pelt of sleety rain. Many have been severed by the slimy munching of adolescent banana slugs. How easily I have forgotten the forces of evil that ooze up out of the ground at the exact same time that life is trying to spring anew. 

Below I have outlined all of the problems that I imagine will completely destroy my garden this year. Of course this never happens, but right now, as the rain drips down, and the slugs build their forces on the perimeter of the raised bed, it seems like the only possible outcome. I have also rated them as "Certain Threat", " Possible Threat", and "Just in my Head" to help you with your anxiety level as well.

Slugs and snails

Rating: Certain Threat

Since I have begun vegetable gardening I have seen these spineless, gooey devils destroy an entire crop of strawberries, munch off the tops of all my pea starts, and suck out the juice of only the ripest, biggest, most beautiful heirloom tomatoes. They are the only menace that has made me forgo organic practices, and dump copious piles of slug bait wherever they are likely to strike next. I hate slugs.

Deer: 

Rating: Possible Threat

Last year in our new house, I had just one little raised bed with mostly tomatoes in it. The deer would come out and sniff around, but left it alone, apparently hoping to get drunk off of fruit that was fermenting on the ground instead. I know I should scare them away, but they are so beautiful to watch. This will probably come back to haunt me...

Gophers:

Rating: Possible Threat

I'm pretty sure that you can see the gopher hills in our yard on Google Earth. If gophers had maps, our house would be their New York. When I was digging out the raspberry bed, I became concerned that I might just fall right through the ground because everywhere I dug, I found another tunnel. I have yet to see one destroy any plants, but we put chicken wire on the bottom of the raised beds just in case. Our cat has also developed a talent for catching the little diggers, so maybe there's hope!

Children:

Rating: Certain Threat

Not only do kids like to climb on raised beds, launch balls into raised beds, and dig in raised beds for hidden treasures, they love to eat things that are growing before you even know they are there. I have tasted three raspberries, one blueberry and two sugar snap peas in my ten years of gardening. The kids assure me they're great.

Ducks:

Rating: Possible Threat

Ducks are awesome pets, except when the lettuce has just reached it's peak deliciousness. One year I went out early in the morning with my scissors in hand to harvest the first crop of lettuce, only to find an entire row of massacred stubs that had been marauded by the ducks a few minutes earlier. They do, however, eat their weight in slugs so I guess I can't be too mad. They are also pretty lazy, and jumping up into a raised bed is like a marathon for them, so I think the lettuce should be pretty safe...

Weather:

Rating: Just In My Head

Every year I'm certain that this is the year that summer won't come. Rain will last forever, the soil will never reach that magical 70 degree mark, and dark clouds will forever keep the sun from shining on my tomatoes. And yet. every year, summer does actually arrive, even if it's August 1st. That doesn't keep me from worrying.