Gardening in Portland

Garden Update October 2024

Dear Liza,

Well, this summer’s growing season is over. I went to the garden yesterday and took out the mass of green that were my three tomato plants. They had overwhelmed my upright supports weeks ago, and were sort of leaning on each other.

They still had a few pounds of cherry tomatoes, especially the orange Isis Candy, but none of them were getting riper or sweeter. I picked a bunch as I cut through the tangled stems.

I took down the dahlia plants that were finished blooming and laid them on the trellis to dry. I’ll fetch them on our next dry day.

My busted wheel wagon did a good job of corralling most of the cuttings, including a fine, tall dahlia.

I covered the tomato and lettuce beds with burlap sacks to rest for the winter, and stopped before I was completely worn out.

I even got home with enough energy to put the tomatoes in to simmer for a sauce and put the dahlia in some water. Then it was time for a crossword with Grandpa Nelson.

Love,

Grandma Judy

Garden Update, April 2024

Dear Liza,

Once spring gets going here, it ramps up fast!

We headed over to Portland Nursery the other day and fetched six lettuce starts and a packets of zucchini seeds. The seed will wait for this weekend, but the lettuces are in and very happy. Look at that color! It is a variety called “Merlot”.

They will start giving us lettuce in a few weeks.

And in Tiny Green Gals news, our dahlias are coming up! Laverne and Shirley, as Bridgett has named them, are growing from rhizomes I planted last spring. They are just a few inches tall, but I have already put tomato cages around them. Last year they got too tall to stand on their own.

The bearded irises I picked up in a FREE bucket haven’t done much yet, but I’ll be patient. Near them, the lavender we planted years ago is getting lovely and green.

Stay tuned for more garden fun.

Love,

Grandma Judy

First Day in the Garden

Dear Liza,

Don’t worry, I’m not planting any veggies yet! But this week is going to be bright and cool (rather than cloudy and cold), and I just couldn’t stay out of the dirt.

I unfolded my red wagon, loaded up three tubs of ground up egg shells, put on my grubbiest clothes, and headed off. First, I pulled the protective burlap off and laid it down in the path between my plot and Melanie’s.

The pitchfork from the shed came in handy for opening up the clumps so they can dry out a bit, because it has less of a chance of chopping the sleepy worms in two. I tossed some leftover manure from last fall and the eggshell powder and shifted it around.

It will need more turning as the soil dries, but this first step is important.

I am so pleased to be getting out in the garden, and can’t wait until the spring really arrives so I can put some lettuces, tomatoes and zucchini in the ground.

Love,

Grandma Judy

A Little Spring Gardening

Dear Liza,

As we start to see the end of winter, gardens can need tending to. It is too early for me to start in my vegetable patch at a Blair Community Garden…. I have tried pushing the seasonal limits and been disappointed there before.

But Auntie Katie’s garden at Books with Pictures doesn’t grow vegetables. It is full of hardy perennials like rhododendrons, irises and roses. She uses this lovely spot the other three seasons for story readings, lectures and book signings, performances, and as part of her Books with Pictures Comic Con.

This is me reading to some munchkins a few summers ago.

The garden has been through its second winter now and is well established.

But our week of especially cold weather took its toll on her irises, killing off the tallest leaves and even some early buds. Old weeds have died and need to be dealt with, and the last of the fall leaves have turned to slimy muck on the ground. So I get to go over and get my hands dirty.

I love playing in the mud!

Love,

Grandma Judy

Free Association Summer

Dear Liza,

Here we are in almost- August. Summer has been full of big events, most of which I have written about. But it’s also been full of smaller things that make life delicious and serendipitous.

The variety of summer squash I planted this year is called Early Yellow Prolific. I chose its bright yellow color so I could see them ripening more easily, but the real benefit is the sweet flavor and how wonderfully they pan fry with garlic and olive oil.

With all our summer salad eating, Auntie Bridgett and I were wishing for a salad spinner, but were too cheap to pay for one. This week, one magically appeared as a gift of the sidewalk when lady down the block was cleaning out her kitchen. We gave it a good wash and now use it whenever I harvest lettuce from the garden, about four times a week.

Going for long walks has always been one of Grandpa Nelson’s and my favorite things. When we were dating we would walk for miles along the beach in Southern California, talking about our future. Now that our future is here, we are more aware of how far from home we are and what spaces are available for rest and re-hydration.

Ice cream has become life support.

Or maybe it always has been.

Love,

Grandma Judy

July Garden Update

Dear Liza,

It has been such a busy summer, I feel like I am squeezing gardening in between everything else! But veggie plots are relentless, both in the care they require and the joys they give.

This week, I have good news and bad news. Some of my yellow squash are being hit with a blossom end rot. I have looked it up and the solution seems to be ‘maintaining a consistent moisture level’ in the soil. Easier said than done, but we’ll try. We have harvested several of the tasty squash and want more!

The good news is that we are having free salads every day from the curly lettuces and raddichio, which we combined with that lovely squash and some basil from M.J. down the way. The currents and anise are from the community plots of the Blair Community Garden.

Our first tomato, “Isis Candy” by name, came ripe and was delicious.

We are finally seeing success in pumpkins, with “Ribsy”, our fourth named pumpkin. His predecessors (Beezus, Ramona and Henry) shriveled, but this fellow is resting on a step of the ladder and seems happy. The newest pumpkin, “PickyPicky”, had started forming four feet off the ground and needed shifting to the top of the ladder. We’ll see how he adjusts.

And finally, the two gigantic dahlias, Laverne and Shirley, are ready to pop! They are both nearly four feet high and were threatening to topple over last week, until we improvised a support from an old tomato cage.

Now, it looks like they will stay vertical long enough to bloom, feed some bees, and recharge their roots for next year.

And that’s the news from the garden!

Love,

Grandma Judy

Garden Catch-Up

Dear Liza,

Our trip to Los Angeles was sad, wonderful, and busy. It also kept me away from my veggie garden for a whole week! Auntie Bridgett did a wonderful job keeping everything watered through some of our hottest weather, and boy, did the plants appreciate it!

Here was my pumpkin growing ladder set up just before I left. Healthy, right?

And here it is now, as tall as the ladder I have for it to climb on, and using its little tendrils out to anything available for support, including the nearby tomato plants. You can see the tiny yellow tomato blossoms trapped by the pumpkin tendrils. These plants mean business.

The zucchinis are growing too, and the cucumber even has a blossom on it. Since cucumbers aren’t squash, their blossoms are very different from zukes and pumpkins.

The tomatoes are now officially taller than me and ripening up nicely. We had a half dozen on our salad last night. Fresh veg!! Hooray!!

Going to be eating well this summer!

Love,

Grandma Judy

Finally, a Real Gardening Day! Part 1

Dear Liza,

Months ago, I decided to start my garden early this year. I thought I could outsmart the weather. I had squash and cucumber starts in my window in February!

Then came the wettest Spring on record, complete with an April 15th snowfall. My super-early transplants survived the snow but got eaten by wet-loving slugs and I ended up with nothing. Zip. Nada. Bupkis.

So much for rushing things.

But now it is mid-May, and weeks of mostly sunny weather are predicted. So, back to the nursery and we’ll try this again!

Fortunately, Portland Nursery is there for me. Auntie Bridgett drove me down and after getting side-tracked by cool sculptures and Fairy Moss, we picked out five different organic cherry tomato plants, a Delicata squash, some dahlias and a begonia.

We delivered them to the garden, went home for lunch, and back to the garden for the digging fun! More about that tomorrow.

Love,

Grandma Judy

Next Steps in the Garden at Books with Pictures

Dear Liza,

The work has continued on the garden behind auntie Katie’s bookstore, Books with Pictures. I showed you before how the planting areas were filled with rich topsoil to create low berms and beds.

On a recent Saturday, eight women and girls aged 14 to 66 (and one helpful male teenager) worked for three hours creating the surfaces of the new garden just behind Books with Pictures. There were two tampers, which are heavy tools for flattening and compacting soil, and they were in constant use. First, the original soil was raked and tamped to make it solid and even. Plastic edging was laid in and staked down.

Then interlocking gravel was wheelbarrowed in to place, raked flat, and tamped down (twice) to make sure it was perfect.

Auntie Katie, who is injured and cannot work, was in charge of quality control and keeping us all fed. She did a fine job!

Finally, pea gravel, which will be pleasant to walk on, was wheeled and raked and tamped in place.

The walkway in the garden was extended beyond the space to the parkway, which makes for a nice entry from the street through the big wonky gateway.

And this weekend, the plants go in!

Love,

Grandma Judy

They’re IN!

Dear Liza,

This week we had our first really warm, sunny day. I took advantage of the almost 60 degree weather and took all those seedlings I have been nurturing in the kitchen window up to their new home.

I loaded them, along with the garden tool bag from Auntie Bridgett’s momma Donna and an onion that had been in the pantry too long, into my red wagon and walked the two blocks up to the Blair Community Garden.

First I pulled out all the fallen camellia blossoms, which are very pretty, even when they are in the way.

I decided where the plants would go weeks ago when I put in the terraces and supports. Now I just needed to do the stooping and digging work to get them in the dirt. Donna’s nice skinny trowel was just the right size!

I put in the seedling lettuces on the east side, where they will get some shade from the camellia bush. The cucumbers are also on that side, but they will climb up the white trellis and get more sun as the season progresses.

The zucchinis are planted under the ladder, so they will have something strong to climb on and keep the zukes off the ground. I will add pumpkins later in the spring.

When everything was planted, I packed up the wagon with the empty pots and droopy camellias and just sat there for a while, enjoying the warm spring sun. I listened to the birds fluttering, people walking by, and far off trains.

I thought about Momma and how much joy her garden gave her. We should all be so lucky as to have something that makes us that happy.

Love,

Grandma Judy