Saturday, August 2, 2008

Potager update in shades of green and gold and purple

Today was a most inspiring sort of day. A very exciting thing happened here in Seattle. Well, in West Seattle to be precise. It was the 1st Annual Edible Garden Tour organized by Community Harvest of Southwest Seattle. It was a day full of seeing and learning new things, exchanging information and anecdotes with other gardeners, getting refueled and revitalized.

On the tour there were well established gardens decades old and gardens in the making only months old. There was a garden in a reclaimed alley and a garden growing food in the shade. Several gardens donated produce to local food banks. One garden had an espaliered fig tree and another a Belgian fence. There were worms and chickens and mason bees, oh my!

We visited one well-established garden with a seasoned experienced gardener and one fairly new garden consisting almost completely of containers. At the well-established garden we saw in practice things that we have only just begun to explore in our own fairly new garden: a worm bin, succession planting, companion planting, permaculture beds. a hive for mason bees. The newer garden we visited was a wonderful example of what you can do in a small space. You can grow a jungle! At this garden we had the great pleasure of meeting fellow bloggers, the Shibaguyz. They garden on their 20x30 patio. And boy do they garden! I think I heard someone say they're growing 21 types of tomatoes. And that's not the half of it. There is a potato condo. What is a potato condo you ask? Check out their blog to find out.

When we got home we were all fired up to get back to our own garden. We found all manner of surprises waiting for us.

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tomatillo

 

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sungolds

 

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san marzano

 

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Bulgarian carrot

 

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corno di toro

 

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serrano

 

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shallots

 

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Beets and carrots and cabbage, oh my! And some garlic to go along with the shallots.

7 comments:

Anonymous said...

I love those little round carrots. Great post.

Katarina said...

Your vegetables look delicious! I must admit I envy you - I have hardly any vegetables in my garden yet - my tomatillos are in bloom but no fruit so far. Maybe our climate is too cool.
/Katarina

Anonymous said...

Wow! Your veggies look great! I'm just back from the veggie-sparse (but, of course, fresh seafood-rich) shore in North carolina, and am busy buying out the local farmers' markets to compensate for veggie deprivation while waiting for our own stuff to come in. Thanks for sharing!!! And how fun to meet the Shibaguyz!

Libbys Blog said...

Its lovely to go visiting and come back all inspired!
You have a veritable harvest there!!!

Annie in Austin said...

Your produce is so beautiful it's making me feel faint, WWWenches.
We're getting a few little tomatoes and a few peppers but too many days over 100°F without rain are killing our little vegetable patch.

The beets look especially tempting...I cooked WA beets from Pike Place when in Seattle a few years ago and never had any that matched them since.

And the shallots! Oh, my!

Annie at the Transplantable Rose

VP said...

Yum!

Unknown said...

That all looks wonderful, but I am particularly drooling over the beets. I need to go out and plant a few more, I think... :)