Palo Alto Demonstration Garden

The First Six Months' Report - December, 2003

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The summer of 2003 was the first growing season in our new demonstration garden, located in the Eleanor Community Garden within Eleanor Pardee Park at the corner of Channing Avenue and Center Drive. On this site we started work on our project's goal of creating two gardens that each emphasize pleasing design and best practices for home gardening.

Our initial focus was on getting the Edible Demonstration Garden started. There we planned to grow edible and decorative plants together in one garden, showcasing new and unusual varieties of flowers, vegetables and fruits. Our Water-Wise Nature Garden of drought tolerant ornamental plants that attract birds and beneficial insects would be started in the fall.

The first tasks were to establish weed control and to fence in the garden on a large site that was formerly a meadow. We covered the entire growing area with a thin layer of Palo Alto city compost followed by a thick layer of cardboard sheets and topped with a thick layer of wood chips. The covering materials were all available to us at no charge and they generally have smothered the weeds. We fenced the garden using wire fencing stretched between metal T-posts. Friends of our project made wooden, locking gates for the fence.

With the space enclosed, we opened three beds in the Edible Demonstration Garden establishing a permanent, circular herb garden and two annual beds that were planted in summer vegetables. All three were prepared for planting by digging, removing as much weed material as possible and amending with composted horse manure.

The herb bed is at the center of the entire edible garden. It is populated with at least thirty kinds of culinary herbs, laid out in pie-shaped sections. This summer there were six varieties each of basil, thyme, sage and oregano growing with dill, lovage, bronze fennel and clary sage providing height. Perilla, epazote and lemon grass are some of the non-European herbs included in the bed.

The annual garden beds surround the herb bed. One of these was planted with three vegetables of the solanaceae family: tomatoes, peppers and eggplants. Tomato varieties included Crimson Carmello, Black Zebra, Ernie's Plump, Indische Fleish and Copia. Pepper varieties included Corno di Toro, Golden Marconi, Aji Amarillo, Pimiento de Padron and French Cayenne. Neon, Snowy and Long Red were the eggplant varieties planted. As companions to the solanaceae plants, we planted several varieties of nasturtium and basil including African Blue basil, that also attracts pollinators.

The other annual bed was planted with the vegetables traditionally planted as companions by Three Sisters vegetable bed gardeners of the indigenous North American people. These are corn, beans and squash, often called the Three Sisters. In this ancient planting combination, squash runs along the ground shading out weed competition with it's large leaves; beans planted by each corn stalk run up the cornstalks and fix nitrogen that can be used by the corn. We grew Serendipity, a bicolor, hybrid (Se-synergistic/TripleSweet) corn, Painted Lady runner beans, two varieties of vining, French pumpkins or winter squash, Galeuse d'Eysine and Potimarron and three varieties of bush summer squash, Baby Round, Gris de Algiers and Zapallo del Tronco.

The first 75 feet of our fence line was planted with a couple of roses, Rosa happenstance and Rose of Ophir, some sunflowers and annual vines for this summer. Here the seeds were planted into 5in of composted horse manure placed on top of the cardboard and wood chips. The vining plants included Painted Lady runners and yard-long beans, cucumbers Chelsea Prize and Que ho, Queen Anne's Pocket Melon, Charantais melon, Rouge Vif d'Etampes the Cinderella pumpkin and vining nasturtium.

On September 6, just as the Edible Garden was at its growth peak, we hosted Open Garden Day for the Eleanor Community gardeners, neighbors of Eleanor Pardee Park and interested Master Gardeners. About 30 gardeners and friends visited the garden where they strolled the beds that were marked with plot plans and identifying plant name tags. Visitors participated in a tomato tasting and learned about our summer's project results. They could see a newly opened fourth annual bed and observe our technique and progress at weed suppression in the Water-wise Garden.

By mid-September, the third and newest annual bed was planted with seeds and seedlings of winter green leafy vegetables and the decorative, circular planting pattern was clearly visible. We have chards, kales, chicories, leeks, mustards, bok choys, gai lan, peas and mache growing there; varieties include Giant Red, Osaka Purple and Purple Wave mustards; Bright Lights chard; Sui Cai mizuna; Red Winter, Dwarf Blue and Nero Toscana Italian Lacinato kales. Production was heaviest during October with plant growth slowed in November's cool, short days.

Weed suppression and soil preparation work were completed in the Water-Wise garden in mid-November and we began to plant the mounded beds with donated and purchased drought tolerant plants. We expect to add more planting in Water-Wise beds plants as they become available and will manage the garden with no added fertilizer and minimal water during the dry summer months once the plantings are established.

The Palo Alto Demonstration Garden is open each Monday morning during our weekly project workday and visitors are welcome.