Jennifer Adamson - Articles about Gardening and Travel

 

Contributing writer to Astoria Magazine. Jennifer has a love of gardening and all things natural. We hope you will enjoy Jennifer's whimsical, yet informative articles.

Look forward to more articles about interesting places to visit and things to do. Read on and you will have a sneak peak at what HRH Her Majesty Queen Elizabeth II will be doing on her trip to Canada this May!

 

“Edible Landscaping!?”
Article and photographs by: Jennifer Adamson

“What are you getting yourself into this time?!” my husband said to me with a chuckle and a smile as I told him the topic of the speaker I was going to hear that night.

Yes, it’s true, if it has anything to do with gardening I am willing to boldly go where I have never gone before, on cold and moonless nights over dark and treacherous roads to seek strange new places and people united in earthy endeavours.

The seed of this new adventure started germinating one Saturday morning listening to “Let’s Get Growing” with Marjorie Mason on CKDO 107.7FM/1580AM. 

Marjorie was announcing her upcoming lecture to the Brooklin Horticultural Society entitled The Edible Garden – making gardening edible AND ornamental incorporating fruit trees, berry bushes, herbs and flowers along with all the basic staples that you would normally think of in a garden. 
 
So, it being the appointed 3rd Wednesday of the month off I went.  It looked like Election Night by the number of cars surrounding and people entering the Brooklin United Church for the meeting. The place was packed!  People were lined up to pay for membership twenty people deep, there were raffles, BHS logo’d gardening clothes and hats, sweets and beverage table par excellence, bulbs, pots of crocuses, huge potted indoor plants, people catching up and talking gardening, and most mysterious of all were the crazy hats adorning the heads of many of the members.

I was impressed to learn from Dena that the Brooklin Horticultural Society has been in existence since 1921 boasting close to 300 members, with a few “happily driving from as far away as Enniskillen, Greenwood, Locust Hill, Pickering and Toronto”.  From novices like Brian, an accountant with no background in gardening, but plenty of interest, to lifetime gardeners like Faye who as a child helped her dad as he planted row upon row of tomatoes, and to Fred, an avid orchid aficionado, all entwined by a common bond – the love of growing living plants.

Jone Webster, president, came to the podium in what I call her “Mother and Child Reunion” hat – eggs and feathers mostly, and welcomed back the members and explained to the newcomers the reason for all the hats - gardening and otherwise - was to get people back into the gardening mood after the winter hiatus.

Our guest speaker Marjorie Mason, of Mason House Gardens in Coppin’s Corners, proved both well informed and inspirational with her lecture about Potager (from the French potage – soup) or kitchen garden.  She described in words and with a slide show how a potager is traditionally a small plot, frequently a pinwheel shape, close to the house, heavily planted and continually harvested throughout the season. As one crop finishes the next grows to fill the space left by the first.  The ground is never walked on and harvesting and planting takes place by leaning into the garden.

The challenge and exhilaration of a potager is to make it as colourful, unusual, long lasting and beautiful as possible.

• parsnips left in the ground to harvest in March
• garlic planted in the fall and pulled up in July
• citrus marigolds nestled right up to broccoli to confuse cabbage moths
• early dark red lettuce leaves picked until the plants bolt into beautiful tall dark red conical shapes
• multicoloured mesclun planted in three different spots, weeks apart, grazed on all season long instead of being pulled up by the roots
• a fruit tree, sundial or pole bean teepee is often the focal point in the middle of the potager

...And beyond the obvious beauty of a potager and the delicious bounty it can provide, try these potager delicacies to enhance your meals.

• calendula flowers for rice dishes
• orange, purple or green coloured cauliflowers
• nasturtium leaves for sandwiches
• lavender for cream sauces and desserts

…the possibilities are endless!

Marjorie is a guiding force behind the Fairmont Royal York Restaurant’s rooftop potager. Not only do they grow vegetables but also boast fresh berries, herbs, fruit, six bee hives and wine grapes for their own teeny tiny winery. Their wonderful honey won 2nd prize at last year’s Royal Agricultural Winter Fair.

To add another dimension of excitement to Marjorie’s task this year, the rooftop garden in all its glory is the vista viewed by distinguished guests staying in the Royal Suites of the Fairmont Royal York. 

This year none other than Queen Elizabeth II will be feasting her eyes on the bounty of the Fairmont Royal York rooftop from the Royal Suites during her visit to Toronto in May 2010.  
  
So there you have it, a quick peak into the Brooklin Horticultural Society and a brief introduction to Marjorie Mason and potager.

For more information click here to see the Brooklin Horticultural Society’s quarterly newsletter for all the details of the future meetings and events. (upcoming seed swap March 24th)

Visit: Marjorie’s Mason House Gardens, opening for the season April 1st.
 

Email Jennifer Adamson

Garlic: Ready, Set, Grow!

By: Jennifer Adamson

...The ad reads: 

Wanted:  Vegetables for my garden.  Interviews to take place in person Thursday, October 14th 2PM

Gardener: “You’re not a vegetable, you’re an herb!”

Garlic Clove:  “Actually, I’m classified as both herb and vegetable”

Gardener: “So, tell me, garlic clove, what makes you think you are qualified to become a candidate for a spot in my garden?”

Garlic Clove: “My main attributes, besides my unique and highly prized flavour are my high yield and low maintenance”

Gardener: “Hmm, You don’t look very big . . .”

Garlic Clove:  “True, but for every clove like me that you plant, I yield one big bulb with many cloves, and we can be planted quite close together, also increasing yield in a small area”

Gardener: “Well, I’m looking for low maintenance candidates too”

Garlic Clove:  “Then I’m perfect for you – I don’t  mind a few weeds, you don’t need to water me; I get by on what the rain brings me, and because you plant me in the fall, you don’t have to spend any time on me in the spring when you’re busy planting other vegetables”

There’s nothing quite like pulling the tall green spikes out of your garden in July reaching down into the ground and discovering that the one little clove, all but forgotten from last fall’s planting, has miraculously turned into a plump, deliciously pungent, weighty, juicy bulb of garlic.

In Southern Ontario planting takes place toward the end of October and into early November.  Garlic (like flower bulbs) needs that cold hibernation period and months of frozen slumber in the earth to prepare it for the growth that takes place in the warm weather.  The rule of when to plant garlic is this:  The weather needs to be warm enough that the roots will set, but not so cold that the ground is frozen and past the time of hot weather when garlic could sprout and the tender new green shoots be killed off by frost and snow. Some say the very best time is just after the first frost of fall.

What kind of garlic to plant, ah, that’s the question!  There are two main types of garlic, soft neck and hard neck. You can tell which type you are holding by bending the stem down near the bulb.  If it bends, it’s soft neck and if it is very rigid, it’s hard neck.  Soft neck is the kind you see braided and hanging in the background in old vampire movies while hard neck garlic is often gathered in a bunch and tied with colorful string by the stems. Soft neck has an outer ring of big cloves and an inner ring of smaller cloves while hard neck garlic has a hard stem right down to the bottom of the bulb with one row of big cloves circling around it.  Soft neck garlic is said to store better, and is usually the kind you will find in the grocery stores. Hard neck garlic needs more care taken in storage, but in my estimation the amazing flavour is well worth the effort.  

Now, the quest is to find that perfect clove for planting.  It can be as easy as looking in your pantry and picking a plump good sized clove (though unless it has partially sprouted it may have been sprayed with a growth inhibiter); going to a gardening centre or farmer’s market or, my very favorite way - going to a country fair and talking to the farmer/gardener who grew the garlic on display for sale.  Farmers and hobby gardeners are usually willing to share all kinds of tips for growing and storing their particular type of garlic.

At the moment I am planting mostly the Siberian Purple Hard Neck organic garlic that I got on Manitoulin Island eight years ago.  It has nicely altered it’s DNA to grow well in my soil and weather conditions, yielding bigger and bigger heads every year.  I’m experimenting for the first time with three other kinds: two hard neck varieties I acquired at the Milford fair – Russian Red and Korean Purple and a soft neck variety local to Prince Edward County called Fishlake 40, or as I like to call it “Forte” as it is a very hot and spicy variety.

Garlic is very easy to plant.  Find a sunny location, minimum 6-8 hrs sun is best, if you’ve got a garden, you’ll already have the best spot picked out.  You don’t need too much room; a mere eight inches between plants will suffice.  Turn the soil over, and with a small trowel, plant the garlic two and a half times as deep as the clove is tall. Roughly two to three inches deep.  Plant the round end down and pointy end up.  Cover it up and Bob’s your uncle.  I usually put some crushed egg shells on top of the ground above the clove so I know exactly where the plant will come up.  Eggshells nourish the soil and slugs and snails don’t like to crawl over them.  I sometimes save up my eggshells all winter, crush them up and border my whole garden with them to deter those slimy slitherers. 

While you are waiting for spring and summer to come, start saving the mesh bags you get from onions and lemons/limes, they are excellent for storing the garlic once it’s harvested.

More about harvesting in an upcoming article.  There are actually three different crops you get from garlic at different times of the year, my spring garlic article will be about harvesting scapes and will have harvesting tips and even a few very creative and yummy recipes from amazing restaurants in the area.

For now acquiring cloves and waiting for that perfect planting period and plot is all you need to think about. 

Happy planting!

_________

Jennifer Adamson, is Co-Creator with Garth Riley of  "Sticks and Stones May Break My Bones" and provides, In school Character Building, Bully Defusing presentations, peer mentoring, teacher training as well as parent night presentations.
www.sticksandstonesmaybreakmybones.com
 
Co-Creator of "The Face Factor"
Facial Recognition (profiling) for sales, HR, and personal relationships
www.thefacefactor.com