Gardening In LA
  • Home
  • About
  • Services
    • Garden Coaching
    • Speaking
    • Photography
    • Writing >
      • List of Articles
  • Blog
  • News
  • Monthly Tips
    • January
    • February
    • March
    • April
    • May
    • June
    • July
    • August
    • September
    • October
    • November
    • December
  • Events
    • Submit Your Garden Events
    • Botanical Gardens' and Other Organizations' Garden Events
  • Jobs
  • Web Links
  • Newsletter

 AH, THE FRAGRANCE OF HOLIDAY TREES!

12/8/2015

2 Comments

 
Picture
     I’d gone to my local nursery in search of some veggie transplants.  Even before I got out of the car, I was overwhelmed by the spicy piney fragrance of the newly delivered trees.  Boy, did I time it right!  Our family usually can’t think about purchasing a tree for at least another week – and we also gauge our choice by weight and fragrance – so I was completely overwhelmed with the intensity, even toying with the thought of purchasing one immediately even though it’d be sitting in a bucket of water in the shade for more than a week.  But, I took a deliciously deep breath and moved on to the six-packs.
     Success!  For weeks I’d dropped in at various nurseries in the hopes that someone had some baby bok choy or tatsoi, asparagus, artichokes, celery, and some lettuce varieties besides the usual suspects.  I love the baby bok choy (pak choi) and tatsoi to add to salads and soups.  My husband doesn’t like kales or chard when cooked (how can anyone not love them stir-fryed with garlic and leek in butter and sesame oil?), but he does enjoy them raw in salads and doesn’t object when I add some (not a lot!) to soups with other strong flavors to camouflage the greens. 
     I also found additional asparagus six-packs and 4” artichokes to replace plants that hadn’t resprouted following their late-summer dormancy (I stick short stakes near the root bases so I know where to look). 
     I was especially happy to find a six-pack of celery.  This is one of the great food producing plants - if soil is kept moist but well-drained and perhaps a bit of late-afternoon shade during the really hot part of the summer, it'll produce right through summer.  The trick is to keep it fast-growing through sufficient water to "thin" the concentration of strong flavors.  Also, as pictured above, slip half-gallon milk containers around the transplant to help blanch the stalks for a more mild flavor.  The two really amazing things about growing celery for the first time is the amount of leaves - up to half of the plant (which is a wonderful resource for soup-makers) - and that there are so many stalks that keep coming after you harvest some (twist and rip from the base, don't cut!).  So much more worth growing than purchasing!
     My favorite lettuces are bibb and some buttercrunches, but both are labeled so generically these days in addition to being grown so fast with so much overfeeding, that I can’t really tell if they’ll result in the tasty firm crunchiness that I’m looking for, once they’ve “slown down” in my garden. Another great reason to grow your own from seed!
     Which of course I do, but I also want to plant some seedlings to fill in and produce before my own starts are large enough to transplant and produce.  Years ago, I felt too loyal to my own seedlings and consequently didn’t have much production since various critters munched many of the plantlets before I could, and then nurseries no longer carried seedlings so I was completely out of luck.  So now I go any way I can, overplanting in several areas! Besides, I like patronizing my local nurseries every way I can by discussing my preferences and purchasing plants, even one six-pack at a time!


2 Comments
Ariana link
5/1/2021 11:22:11 pm

Great readinng this

Reply
Yvonne Savio
5/2/2021 02:42:01 pm

Hi, Ariana -- So glad you enjoyed the info!

Reply



Leave a Reply.

    Archives

    January 2023
    December 2022
    November 2022
    October 2022
    September 2022
    August 2022
    July 2022
    June 2022
    May 2022
    April 2022
    March 2022
    February 2022
    January 2022
    December 2021
    November 2021
    October 2021
    September 2021
    August 2021
    July 2021
    June 2021
    May 2021
    April 2021
    March 2021
    February 2021
    January 2021
    December 2020
    November 2020
    October 2020
    September 2020
    August 2020
    July 2020
    June 2020
    May 2020
    April 2020
    March 2020
    February 2020
    January 2020
    December 2019
    November 2019
    October 2019
    September 2019
    August 2019
    July 2019
    June 2019
    May 2019
    April 2019
    March 2019
    February 2019
    January 2019
    December 2018
    November 2018
    October 2018
    September 2018
    August 2018
    July 2018
    June 2018
    May 2018
    April 2018
    March 2018
    February 2018
    January 2018
    December 2017
    November 2017
    October 2017
    September 2017
    August 2017
    July 2017
    June 2017
    May 2017
    April 2017
    March 2017
    February 2017
    January 2017
    December 2016
    November 2016
    October 2016
    September 2016
    August 2016
    July 2016
    June 2016
    May 2016
    April 2016
    March 2016
    February 2016
    January 2016
    December 2015
    November 2015
    October 2015
    September 2015
    August 2015
    July 2015

    Categories

    All

    RSS Feed

© 2015 Yvonne Savio. All Rights Reserved.                                                                                                                                                         Web Design by StudioMAH.