editor's note: show and tell!

savvy classes: free and easy

garden hotline: winterizing the garden

feature story: grow some backbone

savvy advice: digging deeper--sustainable container food
savvy advice: gardening

Show and tell in the garden
Show us! Photo competition guidelines: In our summer edition we told you about our container food gardening photo contest. Simply send us your favorite photo of a container your household planted. Plants must be organically grown edibles, and may also include ornamentals. The photo must be emailed as a jpeg to Nota Lucas, and no larger than 18 MB. Please include your name, as well as whom we should credit with the design and photo. The winning photo will be included in the 2012 spring Savvy G., so please let us know if you prefer to remain anonymous.

Tell us! Dear readers, please help us by answering a few questions about your Savvy Gardener experience. Take the Savvy Gardener Reader Survey so we can provide the information you seek!

These free classes are brought to you by the Saving Water Partnership and our nursery partners. Pre-registration is not required for these popular classes, but arrive early to make sure you get a seat!

Inspiration from World Class Gardens
Marianne Binetti
Saturday, September 10 - 10:00 a.m. to 11:30 a.m.
Molbak’s
13625 NE 175th St., Woodinville  
(425) 483-5000

Carefree Color for Fall and Winter
Peggy Campbell
Saturday, September 17 - 10:00 a.m. to 11:30 a.m.
Sky Nursery
18528 Aurora Ave. N., Shoreline 
(206) 546-4851

Plants that Transform a Garden
Peggy Campbell
Saturday, October 1 - 10:00 a.m. to 11:30 a.m.
Swansons Nursery
9701 15th Ave. NW, Seattle 
(206) 782-2543

The Forgotten Seasons: A Landscape for Fall & Winter
Marianne Binetti
Saturday, October 8 - 1:00 p.m. to 2:30 p.m.
Furney’s Nursery
21215 International Boulevard, Des Moines 
(206) 624-0634

The Garden Hotline Corner is prepared by staff of the Garden Hotline, the experts who answer your gardening questions at (206) 633-0224 or help@gardenhotline.org.

Winterizing the Garden

This is the time of year to prepare your yard for the coming winter.

Garden Tasks:

• Taper off watering to allow plant growth to slow and prepare for dormancy. This will help plants weather an early frost.
• Apply mulch to garden beds, which helps moderate soil temperatures, protecting plant roots during freezing weather. Mulching also helps to keep winter weeds out, and helps prevent soil erosion in rainy weather! Good mulch choices include leaves, wood chips, manure and/or compost for garden beds; leaves, straw and/or compost can work well in a food garden.
• Fall leaves left on your garden beds can provide ready-made mulch for the winter. Rake them off existing plants, especially groundcovers and lawn, but allow them to cover the soil between plants. Leaves can also be raked into a pile, bin or other container for use next spring.
• Fall lawn care includes fertilizing with an organic or slow-release fertilizer, aerating if needed, and top-dressing with compost. This will help to encourage soil fertility and reduce compaction, both of which will help the lawn grow more robustly next spring. Apply lime to sweeten your soil and discourage moss growth.

Tool Tasks:

• Drain water from hoses, coil them, and put them away for the winter.
• Winterize automatic irrigation systems to avoid freeze damage. This includes draining water from the system; other steps will spend on your specific system. Check your owners' manual or contact us for more information.
• Protect outside faucets from freezing by using insulated covers.
• Clean, sharpen and oil hand tools and store them in a dry place for the winter.

For more winterizing garden tips please contact the Garden Hotline at (206) 633-0224 or help@gardenhotline.org or visit www.savingwater.org.

Grow Some Backbone!

Fall is coming, and winter will be here before we know it. Instead of heading inside until spring, autumn can be a rewarding time for gardening! In addition to the important fall garden clean-up—see this issue's Hotline Corner for tips—now is a perfect time to take stock of your landscape, including looking at its "bones," the woody plants that provide your garden's structure throughout the year.

Structural plants — the backbone of the garden

Many of us rely on the color and rampant foliage of perennials and annuals for visual delight. When these plants have gone dormant or died, you can more easily see the "bones" of your garden. Woody plants—trees and shrubs, evergreen or deciduous—can provide year-round structure. Selecting plants that fit your site and style brings character and visual interest to your garden no matter how many flowers are in bloom.

A green rule of thumb

In her Organic Garden Design School book (2001), local author Ann Lovejoy explains an informal "rule of thirds" in the garden. Using her recipe, garden beds would consist of these ingredients, in about equal proportions:

• Evergreens—conifers or broadleaf evergreens.
• Structural deciduous plants—trees or woody shrubs.
• Seasonal color plants—perennials or annuals that provide color and visual interest, whether through flowers, foliage, or both.

Plan for success

No matter the size of your garden, woody plants provide structure for the garden and attract the eye, even when bare of flowers or leaves. As always, your plant choices should consider your soil and the sun or shade available in your yard. A little research goes a long way! Where aesthetics are concerned, you may want to consider:

• The mature size of a plant so it doesn't outgrow its spot.
• Using a pleasing mix of layers — tall (trees), medium (shrubs), and short (low shrubs, evergreen groundcovers).
• A diversity of plants so that some "shine" in every season.

Our Resources section includes books and websites with information on garden design and plant lists for the Pacific Northwest.

Cool-weather planting is best

If you decide to plant this fall or winter, the good news is that you can safely plant trees and shrubs in the cool weather. (Of course, you always want to select plants that are recommended for our climate!) Fall is also the best time of year to start plants in your garden since they are less likely to be stressed than during the warmer, drier seasons. Many nurseries bring in new stock for fall sales, and nursery staff are happy to help you select the right plant. As the growing season wanes, fall is a prime time to build your garden's backbone—to support its color and bounty throughout the year.

Horticulturist Peggy Campbell, one of our Savvy Gardener nursery class presenters, shares a few of her favorite structural plants, and other outstanding performers:

Evergreens

• Arbutus unedo (strawberry tree)
  
• Chamaecyparis obtusa (Hinoki cypress)
  
• Garrya elliptica (silk-tassel bush)
  
• Sarcococca (sweetbox)
  

Structural deciduous plants

• Acer circinatum (vine maple)
  
• Hamamelis (witch hazel)
  
• Stewartia pseudocamellia (Japanese stewartia)
  
• Styrax japonicus (Japanese snowbell)
  

Seasonal color

Bulbs

• Cyclamen coum (winter-blooming groundcover)
  
• Allium (ornamental flowering garlic)
  
• Lilium (late summer colorspots)
  

Groundcover

• Arctostaphylos uva-ursi (kinnikinnick)
  

Perennials

• Lavandula (lavender)
  
• Heuchera (huechera)
  
• Sedum spectabile (sedum spectabile)

Resources

Plant List (pdf)

Choosing the Right Plants (pdf)

King County's Native Plant online database

Great Plant Picks online searchable data base of favorite plants for the maritime Pacific Northwest

Digging Deeper – Sustainable Container Food Gardening

Amy Ockerlander, Adult Education, Seattle Tilth.

The Summer Savvy G. covered the basics in Eating Out of the Container, Sustainably. Here we dig deeper by looking at how two essential food gardening topics relate to containers: soil management and crop rotation.

Protect the soil and boost fertility

If you are not overwintering crops:

• Remove dead plant material from your containers. Pests and diseases can overwinter too!
• Protect the soil from winter rains. Raindrops compact the soil and the water leaches out valuable nutrients. Apply a deep and fluffy mulch on the soil surface.  Commercial or homemade compost is a great choice for feeding the soil. Fall leaves are too as they contain trace minerals and are free!  Grass clippings, non-diseased plant trimmings, straw, burlap or even wood chips also can be effective.
• Plant a cover crop to protect and feed the soil!  Cover crops aren't just for the farm—you can reap many benefits from these useful plants in containers as well.  Seed the cover crop in the fall and chop it into the soil in spring. Some—like crimson clover and fava beans—will provide much needed nitrogen next season.  Grains such as winter wheat and oats are extremely cold tolerant and provide a grass-like appearance all winter long.  Choices for cover crops can be found in many vegetable seed catalogs and in Seattle Tilth's Maritime Northwest Garden Guide.
• Purchasing new potting soil each season can be costly, is not very resource-efficient, and is unnecessary!  In the first year of use, a good quality potting soil will be fertile enough to grow most crops without additional fertilizer.  Each spring after that, you will want to replenish the organic matter that is used up each year by adding 2 to 3 inches of finished compost to your containers, mixing it thoroughly into the soil. For added fertility and increased biological activity add a handful of worm castings, organic fertilizer, or replace regular compost with fully composted animal manure such as dairy or chicken manure.

Crop rotation in containers

Experienced food gardeners know that crop rotation—varying the crops you grow in a given area—is essential to managing pests and diseases. Why?

• Pests don't adapt to finding their host crops in the same location each year, which helps limit infestations.
• Lingering pathogens have nowhere to grow since their preferred plant host is no longer present.
• Soil management is enhanced since nutrients in the soil are depleted at different rates.

As you dream of next year's crops it's easy to factor this into your plans. Here's a systematic approach to crop rotation:

• Most of the vegetables we grow belong to one of six plant families: onion, pea, cabbage, beet, carrot or nightshade (includes tomatoes, potatoes and peppers). It's best to avoid planting crops from the same family in the same soil year after year. The Maritime Northwest Garden Guide is an excellent local resource for seed selection and crop rotation and is available from the Seattle Tilth website (see publications below).
• Treat each container as an individual bed and have some fun mapping out a sample plan that includes two different plantings each year—one in spring and one in summer/fall.  In spring you might plant lettuce in one pot and peas in another.  In the summer kale can follow the lettuce and chard can follow the peas.  Write down what you plant and when, so you can track your choices and learn from your experiences. Start simply next spring and build on your success.  You will begin to discover rotations that work well for you based on what you like to eat!

Resources

Classes

Organic gardening and sustainable landscape classes offered by Seattle Tilth.

Publications

Growing Food in the City (pdf), the City of Seattle's newest brochure covers the basics of urban food gardening.

Maritime Northwest Garden Guide, Carl Elliot and Rob Peterson, Seattle Tilth, 2008.

Your Farm in the City: An Urban Dweller's Guide to Growing Food and Raising Animals, Lisa Taylor, Seattle Tilth, 2011.

Gardening Questions

The Garden Hotline has your answer! Contact them at (206) 633-0224 or at help@gardenhotline.org.

We welcome your suggestions. Please share them by emailing Nota Lucas, Seattle Public Utilities.

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