New gardening courses to be offered on the Hill

3 gardening minicourses will be offered through Portland Adult Education this spring at East End Community School. All courses from 6-8 pm. Registration information below.

Gardening Green. Make your gardening activity “greener”. This short, three-session course will introduce the basics of integrated pest management, avoiding invasive plants, using the sun as an energy source to fertilize your plants, and the role of plants in slowing global warming. A speaker from Friends of Casco Bay will talk about traditional vs low-impact lawn care. 3 classes, May 1, 8, and 15. Cost $21.


Right Plant, Right Place. No more dead plants! This course will help you make decisions about what plants to buy this year as well as how to plant them. Topics include soil tests, basic plant anatomy and physiology, and a field trip to O’Donal’s with discount for class participants. 3 classes, May 22, 29, and June 5. Cost $21.


Garden Makeover. Make your garden look good. Learn basic planning techniques like site surveys, elements of design, and plant selection. Explore pruning and transplanting as garden makeover techniques. Bring your own garden problems to class. Includes field trip to a local garden tour, followed by lunch (cost not included in class fee). 5 classes, May 31, June 7, 14, 21, 28. Cost $28.

To register for these courses, visit Portland Adult Education on the web or call 775-0432 or check your Portland Adult Education brochure (mailed this month; available at stores and libraries around town). Instructor: Nini Mc Manamy, Master Gardener, horticulturist, and educator.

Sooo cunnin'

My tomato plants are nearly 10 inches tall under growlights, and these Asian eggplants, planted just a few days ago, are already up. Their colleagues the lipstick peppers--peppers are slow to germinate--have yet to appear. After viewing the amazing success my neighbor Mary Roy had in her ripstop grow tunnels with wintering over greens and the early growth of seeds planted in the fall, I planted out my cold frame this week. After I installed the digital thermometer, I discovered that even on a cloudy day the temperature of the soil was 67 degrees. To avoid cooking the seeds and young plants, I propper the cover open slightly and covered the whole bed with remay inside. I am hoping for the first appearance of seedlings by weekend.

Schoolyard greening at East End Community School

On Monday March 12 students, parents, staff, and community volunteers gathered at East End Community School for a school grounds design workshop. Funded with a grant from Portland Trails, the process began by assigning participants to teams, who brainstormed ideas for activity centers, fitness equipment, and nature study areas around the school. Kids, including one fifth grader who arrived with a carefully constructed model for a fish pond complete with waterfall and safety fence, did the brainstorming and adults assisted with recording and facilitating. There were great snacks available to help fuel brain cells and design professional volunteers helping with technical matters like how to read a three-dimensional model and site plan.
Then each of the design teams located its suggestions on a large plan of the grounds. Plans have been hung in the hallway between the East End lobby and the cafeteria for review by the public and the East End school community. Next steps: the East End parent teacher organization, the school's landscape architect, Carroll Associates, and Portland Trails will develop a plan for bringing some of the ideas to life.

Flower show delights

This year's Portland Flower Show on March 8-12 at the Portland Company property was a definite improvement over last year's. Several local garden centers, missing from last year's show, were back, with lovely and instructive displays on the theme of All Around the World. We especially liked the increasing attention to educating customers, with plant matter carefully identified and staff available to explain cultural information. Some displays won numerous Flower Show awards, and Best of Show went to Seko's Garden Design of Buxton for a tea house in a Japanese moss garden with reflecting pool nearby.

Also winning several awards was O'Donal's Nursery of Gorham which recreated plantings at the Tower Hill Botanic Garden in Worcester, MA, using Cary Award-winning plants. This flowering cherry tree is readily grown in southern and coastal Maine, and to its right is a small Centennial magnolia--very early flowering, very hardy, eventually about 12 feet tall.
As usual, there was some stunning stone work, and one stoneworker was building walls and cutting stone in a fascinating exhibit. This arch and meditative stone plaza was created by Aronson stoneworks. The least satisfying feature of the flower show was the development of the theme All Around the World by some exhibits. A few included the kind of lush escapist tropics that many winter-weary show visitors came for; others looked unsatisfyingly like Maine gardens.

Time to buy a CSA share

This is the season for purchasing CSA shares, and last weekend the Portland convivium (chapter) of Slow Food, along with the Maine Organic Farmers and Gardeners' Association and the First Parish UU Church on Congress Street sponsored a fair bringing together consumers and farms offering CSA shares this year.
A CSA share is a prepaid voucher for locally grown produce from a nearby farm--CSA stands for Community Supported Agriculture.

I bought a share from Rippling Waters farm in Standish, which is offering the perfect deal for a home gardener. While most CSAs require you to take a bag of groceries selected by the farm each week, Rippling Waters allows you to buy what you want, when you want, from the Portland Farmers' Market or Rippling Waters' own retail market. For me, this means I can grow salad and stirfy greens, tomatoes, garlic and herbs in my own garden on North Street, and buy the crops I don't have space for--squashes, corn, root vegetables--from Rippling Waters later in the season. And I can buy a box of tomatoes for canning in the fall. Check it out.

Rising of the sap

With temperatures this week predicted to be consistently above freezing during the daytime, below at night, we have the perfect conditions for sap movement in sugar maples here in southern Maine. Personally, I am a great fan of the light amber syrup, the first run syrup which seldom makes its way into the grocery stores--I buy it at Ted Greene's sugar house in East Sebago, but you have to get there before Maine Maple Sunday.

Last year, I put a tap on this sugar maple at the corner of Willis and Melbourne Streets here on Munjoy Hill. It took constant attention from two households to keep our collecting buckets--milk jugs--from overflowing. It took a lot of hours to boil the sap down to so-so syrup on the stove, with the primary beneficiary being Northern Utilities. This year it's Ted Greene's for me.

Though it's about ten degrees colder in Vermont than it is here, you can click on this link to track the movement of the sap at the University of Vermont's Proctor Research Center website, where they have maple trees rigged up with temperature and pressure sensors. Not incidentally, the sensors track the reverse of dormancy, as they monitor temperature in twigs--the first to unfreeze--trunk, and ground, along with the sap pressure in various locations (sunny side of the tree, shady side). Also tracked is air temperature, and if you check during the day, you can see how midday temperatures affect the tree's metabolism. All in all, this site is a treasure for plant geeks. And it reminds us the best days of winter are just ahead.

Whole Food, wholly different

The new Whole Food store opened amid much fanfare on St. Valentine's Day. It's down the block from the former Whole Grocer, which it bought last year, but couldn't be further away from a consumer perspective. The old Whole Grocer steadfastly featured locally grown produce, including greens and root vegetables in winter, and a large selection of bulk foods. The new Whole Foods has no local produce--not even Maine potatoes--and doesn't even sell the basic ingredients for home-made granola. Also missing is the WG large bulk tea and medicinal herbal selection. The largest section of the new Whole Food market is devoted to a food court, with a stunning array of ready to eat foods such as soups, salads, prepared meats, and Indian and Mexican food. Whole Food brand goods have replaced some old staples, like Little Lad's wonderful almond butter (still available from the Little Lad Bakery on Congress Street.)

Wild Oats is looking better than it used to. On the upside, Whole Foods staff seemed to respond positively to specific requests for products previously carried by WG.

Update: Whole Foods now carries the basic ingredients for homemade granola, after customer requests. But it looks like Big Fish has eaten Little Fish, with this week's purchase of Wild Oats by Whole Foods, and the rumored closing of the Wild Oats store just a few months after it opened.

Backyard Beauties: Are they really as good as summer's tomatoes?

The new

Backyard Beauties

, greenhouse-grown in Madison, Maine, are at Hannaford's, and they are gorgeous to look at. Medium-sized tomatoes, good tomato color, nice shape and feel. A bit thick-skinned, a bit dense in the flesh, but not important. What is important is the flavor, and they have a pretty good tomato flavor for a winter tomato. They are not as sweet as I like, but a few more days sitting on the kitchen table should take care of that. They slice extremely well, and appear to keep well. At $2.99 a pound they are cheaper than a lot of other winter tomatoes, though they are not organic. Will I buy 'em again? Definitely. Do I still like a winter Roma, well-ripened on the kitchen table for a few days, in the winter. Yup. And neither is as tasty as an Early Cascade just off the vine in the last week in June, warm and dripping juice. But I have to hand it to the folks at Backyard Beauties for taking a giant step in the right direction.

Why Madison, Maine? Apparently it is cheaper to heat greenhouses in winter than to cool them in summer (I know, hard to believe this week especially, and Madison is a very cold place in winter). And Madison enjoys very low electric rates due to the presence of the New York Times newsprint reprocessing plant there. Though Madison is only about a half hour from I-95, you have to wonder why the growers didn't set up shop in Eastport--zone 6 winters, a lot warmer than Madison, and cool summers. Maybe the nearest airport is too far away, but isn't local what Backyard Beauties is all about? They shouldn't need an airport.

So good for Backyard Beauties. I look forward to the first cuke crop. I hope Whole Foods buys their product, and I look forward to seeing their trucks on the interstate.

Time to begin anew

The Early Cascade tomato seeds I bought last week at Allen Sterling and Lothrop are awaiting planting this weekend, right on schedule, the first weekend in February. They will be ready to set out for hardening off by the end of April, and will go in the ground in early May. Early Cascade (pictured at left) is a marvelous eating tomato--small, perfectly round, staying on the vine without cracking for a long time, and the flavor is acid, rich, full and tomatoey--second only to Brandywine in my opinion. Best of all, it absolutely thrives in a coastal climate, producing fruit even in cold, wet summers.
The links at the right under "Seeds and Gardening Supplies" have been updated to include the best of Maine and national seed and perennial and shrub resources. Tonight I attended a talk at Southern Maine Community College by Bill Cullina of the

New England Wildflower Society

. Cullina, reflecting the general consensus of horticulturists all over the northeast, is strongly advocating planting native plants wherever possible in the ornamental and food garden. He has demonstrated in the NEWFS greenhouses that seeds from local plants simply outperform those from plants just a couple of hours north or south, due to the adaptations by plants to their own local climate conditions.

The appearance of winter

Winter appears to have arrived. It has taken the form of a skimpy layer of frozen granular snow and temperatures in the teens, perhaps dipping to the single numbers tonight. Mary Roy of North Street is well into her second winter of four season gardening, with a new high tech cold frame and a thriving crop of mustard, lettuce and other greens. They have thrived in the season's warm weather, though they do not grow when the light is low from November to early February. It remains to be seen whether they will survive the new cold temperatures. The lettuce is just scrumptious looking.
Is it winter, or only the appearance of winter?

Enough already

It's January 3, and I decided to kill my remaining Tuscan kale plants after one last harvest. These are the kales in the garden plot next to mine, which belongs to Peter Blackstone. In the background are some conventional curly kale plants. The view from the garden at sunset--which is SOOO early at this time of year--was beautiful tonight, with the cloud formations coming out of the southwest along with the wind.

Here is a great recipe for Tuscan, or other, kales. It makes a fantastic hors d'oeuvre and comes from Michael De Angelis (for a picture of Michael, see Market Farewell.)

Recipe: Tear the kale from its ribs in pieces several inches long. Toss the kale with generous amounts of chopped or crushed garlic and olive oil. Add salt and pepper. Place the kale pieces in a single layer on a broiler pan under the broiler. Broil for about five minutes, turn, and broil until mostly crisp. Let them cool slightly. Serve with a nice wine.

A gardener's season never ends

Over the holidays, I started making these boxwood trees as gifts. I hope to sell them next year. This one is make of boxwood sprays, plus some incense cedar and eucalyptus for aroma and texture, and holly for color. It is decorated with gold-painted spruce cones as well as a painted dried cattleya orchid flower. The core is a shaped block of Oasis foam, in a dish with spikes to hold the foam, and the greens were sprayed with leaf polish before decorating. It needs regular watering to stay fresh, and still looks great after two weeks in the dining room.

My new blog art

I never knew. Renoir had a favorite model called Nini, which happens to be my name. This is a new acquisition at the Metropolitan Museum of Art, Renoir's "Nini in the Garden." I will be using this as my official blog art. I found out about this painting when I happened upon a bottle of Shiraz with the label "Nini" last month, and learned about the painting from the label. The wine I am not so crazy about--a bit sour for $14--but I am delighted with the painting. I even found a reproduction house online and ordered myself a reprint, which I will frame and put over my desk.

Time to turn the heat on--or is it?

This morning, the temperature was 60 degrees; tonight it's 40, and by all accounts, will stay cold. Winter is here at last, and the heat, which was turned on briefly on November 20 but has been off ever since (with the assist from the occasional fire in the wood stove), will now be on until spring.
This is not normal. Our first frost, a light one, was November 20. When I started gardening in my house twenty years ago, the first frost was in late September. The creeping phlox (phlox subulata) above is in the garden of Paul and Dottie Rodney on Walnut street; it has completed its chill cycle (which normally happens during the winter) and broken dormancy--the phlox thinks it is spring. Yesterday Paul was outdoors in his yard and remarked to me as I walked by, "I'm out here watching my phlox." A couple of doors down, Susan Shaw's forsythia has started to bloom. Sometimes this happens during the January thaw--but never before in the late fall. Usually, we are deep in the early stages of winter chill by now.
Last year's frost date was November 8. Full moons usually bring northwest winds and cold clear weather, but we went through the November full moon on the 5th without having a frost.
What is the meaning of this phenomenon? Having plants bloom out of season upsets the process of seed production, and threatens the survival of the species. It also deprives nectar-seeking insects of their spring food supply--they are not active at this time of year, and some time their migrations with the bloom period of their food source. They will be looking for these flowers next spring, and they will not be there. Plants in our climate have evolved over tens of thousands of years in response to a certain length of winter followed by the other seasons in order, and can't adapt quickly. Some may disappear over the next few years if this climate change persists.
Global warming is a terrifying and powerful phenomenon. And unfortunately, turning on the heat adds to the problem.

No frost yet

It's November 19 and this clematis greeted me this morning, a newly opened bloom, although the flower is a bit ragged around the edges. There has not yet been a frost in my yard, and the neighborhood is full of leggy annuals and perennials bravely soldiering on in the face of increasing chill and rapidly declining light--nasturtiums, snapdragons, dianthus, and mums. There is a large bed of mesclun lettuce still growing in the community garden. Last year we had a similar season, with the first frost hitting two days before Thanksgiving. The lateness of the frost makes garden chores difficult, since mulching can't be done until the ground freezes and the piles of leaves we have been collecting are getting old....

Market farewell

The Portland Farmer's market has ended for the season leaving Deering Oaks to the squirrels and whoever goes there at night. On this particular day in late October, the market was overflowing with late season crops and happy gourmet cooks. These baskets of shallots were particularly beautiful.
Unfortunately, the shallots are among the more exotic offerings at the market--most of what the farmers sell is very conventional stuff. This year saw two noteworthy innovations--a fruit grower sold some fabulous peaches for the first time, and the Mineral Springs mushroom people really expanded their offerings. But regardless of what is for sale, the gourmet cooks patrolling the aisles always seem to find something to bring home. Michael DeAngelis of Grant Street shops with his cart.
Later the same day, Michael turned his market finds into two fabulous dishes: his nonna's stuffed artichokes, and oven crisped kale, which he was kind enough to bring to dinner that night.

Last rose of summer

This gorgeous tea rose is making a last stand before it just gets too cold for any more buds to form. Called Wild Blue Yonder, the rose is really raspberry colored, not the strong pink it appears to be on my screen. And it has a strong, delicious, spicy rose scent.

Other last stands around the neighborhood include the laggard monarch butterfly hiding in the middle of this lush border, at Louise Little's on North Street. He should have gone south several weeks ago.

Finally I just noticed the Green Man guarding this gate entrance at 31 North. The Green Man is the traditional, pre-Christian deity of growing things and the forest in Britain. Not a late flower, but certainly a reminder throughout the winter that April is just 6 months away.

Chihuly does New York

Glassblower Dale Chihuly has done it again, with his installation of organic glass forms at the New York Botanic Garden. Chihuly showed his work at the Portland Museum of Art a couple of years ago, but glass objects on black tables at the museum looked disappointingly like jewels in a showroom case. They really shine at the NYBG, where the exhibit is on display until the end of October.
Among his most successful installations are suspended clusters of colored glass over pools of water. Both these photos are of the inverted reflections of works with the grace of flowering vines, the first being inside a glass house, the second outdoors.





Also stunning were his boats filled with glass floats in a pond next to the glass houses. The glass floats were inspired by floats used by Southeast Asian fisherman to hold their nets in the water, the installation in dories by the Finnish volunteers who helped Chihuly disassemble an installation in Finland by loading glass floats in their boats.

Fall color is extraordinary this year

There is no doubt about it: the color is terrific this year, undoubtedly due to the ample rainfall in the spring. Here on the Hill, the last of the tomatoes and summer squash are limping along in the fading light waiting for the first frost to occur. Fall flowers such as mums, impatiens, Montauk daisies, snakeroot and asters are at their height--and high they are, again due to spring rains. Woody plants are just beginning to show red--maples, burning bush, and the native enkianthus (below), which will eventually be about 8 feet tall and wide.


Also beautiful at this time of year are the subtle beauty of buds, already set for next year's show of flowers, and visible throughout the winter months. Especially lovely are the cigar-shaped leaf buds of beech trees, the cascading sprays of pieris andromeda flower buds (below), and the upright buds of florida dogwoods, little pagoda-shaped packages holding the glorious huge white flowers of May.

Harvest fair fare

The Cumberland Fair featured a smaller than expected display of prize winning and giant vegetables this year. However, this food art display made up for it. It appears to be a collection of birds carved from fruits--a swan, a turkey trussed and ready for the oven, and a bird in flight--plus a tropical beach group, including a shell, a palm tree, and something with a wave pattern on the side, perhaps a beach hut.

Shine on shine on harvest moon

Today, on the last day of September, the garden is still bearing copious amounts of food, especially greens. The tomatoes and peppers are on their last legs and the tomato plants will be terminated tomorrow. The cucumbers and melons were terminated today. The Roma pole beans, on the other hand, are as prolific as they were a month ago. With the freezer full, the excess is now going to the "share" basket on the community garden gate. Also bearing in abundance are beets, carrots, frisee, arugula, scallions, broccoli, chard and kale. Fall spinach is just sprouting, and the brussels sprouts look like a gawky alien.
Tonight's dinner featured lots of locally grown food, plus some excellent wine harvested in far off Spain. The mussel chowder (local milk, mussels grown in midcoast Maine, potatoes, parsley, onion and celery from my garden), and the salad (from my garden--frisee, arugula, kale, sorrel, mizuna, beets, scallions, carrots, sungold tomatoes and beans) were accompanied by a locally baked rosemary roll. All were followed by Camembert from Smiling Hill Farm and a Sweetser Orchards Cortland apple baked with non-local sugar and raisins but definitely local cream. Yum.

Cereus-ly in bloom

The night blooming cereus (epiphyllum oxypetalum) has just finished three glorious nights of bloom, with eight flowers opening on the first night, two the second, and one on the third. A final flower failed in its efforts to fully open the last night. The flowers have a 30-centimeter throat, matching exactly the tongue length of the hawk moth which pollinates the flower in its native climate. We measured the largest flower across its face, from sepal to sepal: eleven inches. The heavenly clove and baby-powder scent emerges from the fat buds just as the petals begin to pull apart, revealing a quarter inch opening pumping out the sweetness. This year, the plant has bloomed a month later than usual, and the process has been slower, with blooms starting to open slightly later in the evening. The last two nights, blooms opened after 9 and were still open at daybreak. Usually they have closed and withered by sunrise.
Last night we observed the plant from the third floor deck of my neighbor, overlooking the linen-draped table where the plant has been displayed. Some neighbors dropped by the yard to admire the plant--something that has been happening all week. Two have given me beautiful photos of the blossoms, one mounted onto a greeting card.

The harvest continues with behind-the-scenes activity

The annual good gardening awards have been distributed at the North Street Community Garden by Portland Parks and Recreation staff, and Henry (rear) and Andrew (front), shown here with their ribbons, are recipients of two awards. As in the past, tidy gardens with unusual growing systems drew ribbons, along with those which used a diagonal path or planting layout. Critters, too, follow the progress of the gardens with interest, and squirrels, skunks, woodchucks and opossums spend their days or nights stalking grapes, peaches and pears. This cage was bought a couple of days ago to assist with the removal of a pair of fruit loving squirrels, now relocated to East Deering. Today I came home from work to find no chewed fruit on the patio, for the first time--maybe the peaches will make it to harvest.

Weeds on the roof?

Anyone who has ever fought moss on a wet, shady old roof might wonder why the school department is letting green stuff grow on the roof over the entrance to the new East End Community School. The green stuff is a collection of sedums, native grasses, and flowering plants installed in a specially designed bed on the roof over the entrance. It is designed to combat global warming by reducing the amount of heat the flat roof reflects back into the atmosphere, and also by soaking up carbon dioxide (used by plants to make food). Plant geeks will be interested to know that the sedums include: sedum album, sedum acre, sedum reflexum, sedum seramentosum, and sedum linare.

Night blooming cereus draws near

The night blooming cereus in the yard has 11 huge buds on it, and should open soon. The flower buds open at sunset one evening and close forever at sunrise the following morning. Not likely the appropriate pollinator will be in the neighborhood when this subtropical cactus finally blooms.
The cactus shares yard space with two other subtropical exotics--a passionflower vine and a brugmannsia--as well as with my summer camp for orchids, which takes place on a lattice fence under the dappled shade of the pear tree.

Photos from the community garden on North Street

The Red Sox may have feng shui, but the North Street garden has red tomatoes. This specimen is an Early Cascade, an excellent tomato for coastal gardens. It produces medium, very tasty fruit that never split and are just the right size for one sandwich or salad serving.

The North Street garden is lush in early August with green beans, cucumbers, zucchini and yellow squash, herbs, scallions, garlic, eggplant, potatoes, carrots, green peppers, beets and even corn. And of course, salad ingredients of all kinds as well as chard, kale, and other healthy greens.

Some of the gardens have beautiful flowers growing among the vegetables, such as this wildflower selection featuring annual poppies.

Red Sox tomatoes: some kind of feng shui?

Alerted by an eleven year old friend to the tomatoes growing in the Red Sox bullpen, I did some internet research to find out why they are there. Is it some kind of feng shui or good luck token? Here is what I found on a blog post dating from the summer of 2001:

Red Sox bullpen coach John Cumberland, who grew up on a farm in Westbrook, Maine, has started a tomato garden in the home bullpen at Fenway Park. He has dug 18 plants, and put sweet basil between each one.

"We haven't won since 1918," says Cumberland, "so there's the magic number. I'm trying to change the karma around here, get some sweet tomatoes and basil in the soil and change it. Hopefully, we'll have a nice, bountiful crop by October."

My young friend noted that the tomatoes aren't yet ripe; they should try Early Cascades--I have a steady supply of delicious red tomatoes now.

This blog is back

After a long hiatus, this blog is back. Let me begin with a report on the annual Munjoy Hill garden tour, Secret Gardens of Munjoy Hill. This year's tour netted $4000 for a number of local non-profit ventures, including a collection of gardening books for the new Munjoy Hill library. Thumbs up for the many gardeners who shared their hard work with visitors on July 9, a hot and sunny day. Thumbs down for the occasional lack of grooming in some of the gardens as well as those where plants were installed just prior to the tour. Especially enjoyable were the repeat gardens, which are clearly developing and maturing year to year. Among the outstanding locations: Aurelia Scott's stunning use of stone dust to create a fragrant English style herb garden, in which thymes, lavenders, dianthus, johnny jump ups, and other old fashioned favorites were growing as ground covers. And, Peter Blackstone's riot of tropical plants, with orchids hanging from trees and other tropicals on shelves around the garden's perimeter. The photo shows Peter's pond, with a mirror reflection of one of the low voltage lights placed around the garden.

Trees of Munjoy Hill III

The tulip tree (liriodendrum tulipifera) is covered with yellow tulip-shaped flowers, and each petal bears an orange streak near the base. The tulip tree was the subject of a visit by Maine Audubon's annual tree tour last week. Tulip trees are reputed to produce excellent honey, and this one was expecting a turn at bat thanks to a friend with hives: unfortunately this spring's bad weather made them too crabby to travel, so tulip tree honey will have to wait for another year.