Palo Alto Demonstration Garden

Palo Alto Demonstration Garden
Second Year Report
January 2005
(1st year | 3rd year | 4th year)

Overview:
The second year of the PADG project has been a productive and rewarding one. To fulfill the goal of demonstrating attractive edible landscaping, the Edible Garden was divided into three international-themed beds; Asian, Latin American, and Mediterranean. A fourth bed was dedicated to testing various varieties of lima beans. The four beds were planted with appropriate vegetables and enhanced with ornamental flowers. Decorative structures to support climbing plants were constructed in each bed.

Fruit trees were added in a high-density orchard area, an espaliered fruit tree row, and along the fence line. A raised blueberry bed was also made. We were able to obtain donations of fruit trees and several varieties of blueberry plants.

Additional perennials were added to the Water-wise Garden, and the beds were "adopted" by team members to assure their weekly hand watering. The Santa Clara Water District has donated funds for an irrigation system, that will be installed in 2005.

Two local newspapers published very nice front page stories about PADG in 2004. We feel that publicity was responsible for the 250 visitors that came to the July Open Garden event, and for the continued weekly visitors that drop in during our work mornings.

Below is a brief summary of our year's activities. Details can be found in the sections that follow.

2004 Activity Summary:
January:	Donated fruit trees were planted and pruned.
February:	Harvested winter greens. Planned summer theme beds.
March:	Pulled out winter greens bed. Started Mediterranean bed with radishes, lettuce and onions. Constructed a raised, wattled bed for growing blueberries.
April:	Dug in the cover crops. Continued to plant the Mediterranean bed. Constructed garden trellises and arbors. Installed drip irrigation systems in vegetable and blueberry beds. Spring plant sale held.
May:	Planted lima beans, Latin American and Asian themed beds. Hosted compost workshop. Los Altos Growing Circle visit to garden.
June:	School tour.
July:	Two front page newspaper articles published. Open garden event held.
August:	Harvested summer vegetables.
September:	Harvesting continues. Pruned fruit trees. Tomato tasting event. Florets Garden Club of Palo Alto visit.
October:	Final harvest of summer vegetables.
November:	Transition to winter vegetables in Mediterranean and Asian beds. Planted winter cover crops in Latin and lima beds.

We welcome visitors to view the gardens on Monday mornings. The garden is in the Eleanor Pardee Community Garden on Center Road, just north of Channing, across from Martin Street in Palo Alto.

Mediterranean Bed:
This garden bed contains many vegetables used in the Mediterranean regional cooking: tomatoes, chicory, fennel, broccoli, beets, leeks and garlic. The addition of herbs and flowers add color and interest to the bed. Whimsical, but functional, structures were constructed from birch and curly willow branches. In March most of the plants were started indoors from seeds. Seeds were donated by several sources: including Renee's, Franchi and Kitchen Garden Seeds. After spading the soil was amended with alfalfa meal and Wheeler Farm compost. Seedlings were planted out into the garden in April. Hand watering was replaced by a drip irrigation system installed in June. By early June we began harvesting lettuce, squash and cucumbers.

Comments about flowers and vegetables in the bed:

Beans: Planted early May. Last of bush beans picked early August. The pole beans were all prolific. 'Emerite', 'Spanish Musica' and 'Super Marconi' had great flavor, tender, no strings.
Cardoon: Attractive garden plant. Grows quite large size.
Chard: 'Argentata' produced all summer, heat did not bother it, but summer was not very hot.
Cucumber: 'Amira' - not very prolific, taste was sweet and delicious.
Eggplants: Did not pick soon enough, some were too ripe. They were sweet early in the season.
Lettuce: Early plantings of 'Cardinale', 'Brunia', 'Jerico Romaine', 'Rouge d' Hiver' and 'Rouge
Grenobloise' grew attractive lettuces. 'Brunia' was especially nice.
Peppers: 'Lombardo' and 'Nordello' were low producers. Should be fed regularity.
Tomatoes: 'Pompeii' was a good producer and tasty. 'Crimson Carmelo' had good taste, but low producer. 'Costaluto Genovese' - watery tasting. 'Principe Borghese' - not very tasty.
Zucchini: 'Romanesco' - everyone liked it, not as prolific as most zucchini. 'Clairmore' - very prolific, pale color, sweet and delicious. 'Trombochino' - the hit of the Open Garden day! Also tasty.
Flowers: 'Signet Marigold' - very colorful and bloomed all spring, summer and fall. Zinnias - perfect in a summer garden, need to plant them next year. Other good choices: cosmos, sunflowers, hollyhocks, lisianthus.

Latin American Bed:
The bed was created to showcase vegetables and flowers with Latin America origins. We picked vegetable varieties not common to the Bay area home garden. The flowers were chosen to attract beneficial insects and for their hot colors to compliment the brightly-painted pots, bean pole and tomato supports that accent the garden. Most of the plants were started from seed and then transplanted to the garden. Drip irrigation supplied water to the garden very efficiently.

We were very pleased with the delighted response this bed got from the color and whimsy of our teepee, painted pots, and the colors of the bright flowers. All of the flowers met our expectations by providing bright, bold color to the garden as well as attracting beneficial insects.

Comments about specific plantings:

The purple and green tomatilloes were prolific, and were excellent tasting in salsa recipes.
Purslane, 'Aztec Red' spinach, and the Papalo were tried as salad greens and were okay but not great. 'Aztec Red' spinach is a beautiful ornamental plant that is recommended for border planting.
'Guatamalan Blue' squash did well. Prepared with proper seasonings, the orange flesh is tasty.
'Oaxaca Long' radish grew very well, but was a novelty. They were used for a Mexican vegetable carving project.
Jicama, produced a crop about the size of small to medium beets. Probably would have gotten bigger if planted earlier.
Yacon was successfully grown and multiple, good tasting tubers were harvested late in the year.

Asian Bed:
Asian bed preparation began in early April when the winter cover crops were dug into the bed as green manure. After cover crop decomposition three inches of composted manure was incorporated into the bed. Alfalfa pellets were added in planting holes and broadcast in small areas that were direct seeded. Drip irrigation, specifically, in-line turbulent flow emitters (half gallon/hour emitters at six-inch spacing) was used. Watering frequency was 45 minutes three times weekly throughout the warm growing season.

The Asian bed combined many vegetables widely used in Asian countries (China, Japan, India, and Thailand) with flowers and bamboo structures to support plants and add interest and beauty to the garden. Many of the plants in this bed require considerable summer heat and humidity to perform well. We wanted to see which plants could be grown successfully in our Mediterranean climate without extraordinary measures to create a hotter, more humid microclimate. Seed were obtained from Evergreen Seeds. Kitazawa, Ornamental Edibles, Redwood City Seeds, Seeds of Change and other sources.

Most of the plants were vigorous and productive throughout the season, with no added fertilizer. Varieties particularly recommended for quality and productivity are:

Asian Cucumber: 'Soarer' - plants grown on a 4-foot tall pyramidal trellis produced 4-8 sweet (never bitter) fruits per week through September, and were still producing in October.
Eggplants: 'Chu Chu' & 'Black Chu Chu' - each plant produced weekly 10 to 12 oval baby eggplants, sweet, tender skin, from mid-July to mid- October. A third variety, 'Violet Prince', was slightly less productive, but the 1" round eggplants, white with lavender streaks, were tender and delicious.
Pepper: 'Shishito' - A Japanese sautéing and pickling pepper, similar to 'Pimiento de Padron', but producing 3 to 5 dozen peppers weekly throughout the season. One week's harvest at the peak of the season produced 125 peppers.
Okra: 'Red Velvet' - Plants were striking, the tallest reaching more than 10 feet by the end of the season. The bright red pods were tender and sweet even at up to 5". All but two of six healthy seedlings planted on May 1st succumbed during an unseasonable three-day cold snap. Five plants that were direct seeded in mid-June soon caught up with the survivors, to become the ornamental stars of the bed.
Gourds: Our bamboo trellis (4 six-foot poles placed at the corners of a four-foot square, with a six-inch grid fastened on the top) could have been swamped by any one of the four edible gourds we planted on it. In the end, the bottle gourd prevailed, and while beautiful with its huge velvety leaves, it severely stunted the other three gourds. We harvested only a few angled luffa and bitter gourds, and only one fuzzy gourd, though we did demonstrate that these plants could be grown successfully in Palo Alto's moderate climate.
Asparagus beans: A 4 ft bamboo pyramid was not sufficient for these vigorous beans, and one variety (green pod) quickly swamped the other (purple pod) as well as the sword bean planted on the same trellis.
Sesame: These beautiful, lush plants grew taller than expected (6-7 feet) and produced seed pods. However, early rains may prevent the seeds from drying on the plant, as is preferred.

Lima Bean Bed:
One PADG bed was devoted to growing nine varieties of lima beans to introduce growing limas as fresh (or green) shell beans for the home gardener in Santa Clara County. We grew six bush varieties and three pole varieties. We also seeded some chick peas (garbanzo beans) to observe how they grow, and added the traditional bean companion plants of summer savory and a petunia relative called Calibracoa. We also planted flowers for ornamental interest. Two were annual flowering vines and flowers, including Cypress Vine (Quamoclit pennata), Scarlett O’Hara (Ipmoea nil), zinnias, globe amaranth (Gomphrena), and marigold 'Lemon Gem'.

The lima beans were irrigated by a porous, weeping soaker hose that was controlled by a battery-operated timer. When we observed spotty germination of the beans, we discovered an over-irrigation problem and once corrected, the beans grew well and began blooming. Bloom and pod set began in mid-July, followed by harvest starting in late August and continuing through the end of October. The long harvest period reflects the varying maturity dates of the nine lima bean varieties.

The chick peas grew well and produced enough chickpeas to make three prepared dishes. Growing chickpeas at home generally will not produce large quantities of dry peas for winter but the plants are interesting to grow for their cut and fuzzy foliage and balloon-like pods. Each small white pea blossom produced a pod that usually contained one chickpea. There was predation of much less than 1% by larvae that we found eating the chickpeas inside the pod. So far we’ve been unable to identify a known pest of chickpeas that matches it, and with such a low rate of loss from the pest, we didn’t find it worrisome.

Nearly all volunteers at the demo garden took home harvested limas to try, even those who had to fight back childhood memories of over cooked, starchy canned limas. For the sweetest, non-starchy eating, our trial showed 'Thorogreen', 'Eastland', and 'Burpee’s Best Bush', all bush varieties, and 'Burpee’s Best Pole', to be the best. 'Henderson" bush was a heavy producer were much less popular due to their dry, starchiness.

Top flowering plant performers were the zinnia varieties (especially Raggedy Ann and Blue Point) that grew to about 3.5 feet in height and bloomed from mid-July into November, globe amaranth, Lady in Red salvia, all blooming for especially long periods.

Fence Planting Summary:
The fence line at PADG is 300 feet long and is a marvelous place to plant. There are two types of plantings on the fence: the permanent plantings of trees, shrubs, vines, and bulbs and annuals that change each year. In 2004 'Nancy Garrison' passion vines, a Chilean guava, a fig tree, a sapote tree, a California grape, and night-scented jasmine were added. These plants are not the mainstay of the fence plantings though. When one walks into the garden in the spring, the roses strike the eye first, later the clematis’s and then the dahlias. These three kinds of plants make up the skeleton of the fence line.

Planted between or under the perennials are the annuals. In early April, we planted ornamentals like sweet peas, ipomeas and a few exotics like cup-plant (Silphium perfoliatum) and prickly caterpillar (Scorpiurus muricatus). Later in June, we planted some edibles. Franchi Seeds donated five kinds of melons for us to try, plus we put in a luffa and an Armenian cucumber. A vigorous chayote covered about 30 feet of fence, clambering over the roses and beans along the way. Two cotton plants were planted along the fence and the beauty of their flowers and seed pods were enjoyed by everyone.

Summers are cool in Palo Alto due to the marine air and the afternoon breezes that we get. Melons need hotter days and definitely hotter nights. During Aug and Sep we harvested the melons. Whoever was in the garden that day tasted them and the results are summarized below:

'Sugar Baby' watermelon: Picked August 16th. There were only 2 small melons to harvest but the taste was sweet and the flesh crunchy. We all agreed the taste was excellent.
'Ugly But Good': Picked August 22nd. The size was like that of a cantaloupe with a very warty shell, an exotic-looking melon. Taste was sweet, but not fragrant. Some did not like the texture, which was firm. The rind was thick so there was not much melon.
'Climbing Sugar': August 22nd. Taste was sweet and flesh fragrant. The rind was thin and the melon size that of a softball. We liked the flavor.
'Pineapple': Picked September 9th. Smelled like pineapple, very fragrant. Taste was mildly sweet but disappointing. It was the size of a cantaloupe and had a thin skin.

Water-Wise Garden:
Our goal of creating a strolling garden that remains interesting all year and requires very little summer water once established, is becoming a reality. The garden is planted with California native and Mediterranean plants, many of which are now one year old. The gravel-filled soil with which the raised beds are constructed, is providing the good drainage that is so important to these plants. Our plant selections are doing well. Of all the perennials and shrubs planted we have lost only one plant.

The garden selection of plants is providing what we planned - something always in bloom. In order to let the plants establish good root systems, we started small, most plants being in one gallon or 4-inch pots. The Rhus was about ten inches tall when it went into the ground last fall, it just sat there not growing. Then, this spring it seemed to double in size. We expect to see many such changes during the winter growing season.

Last year we planted several different types of wild flower seeds, very few of these were successful. However this year, California poppies are just starting to grow. We will try seeding again adding a little more organic matter to those areas. Our most difficult challenge is the Convolvus (bindweed) that previously existed on the site. We may never eradicate it but are successfully keeping it at bay. We covered the pathways with cardboard and wood chips. The bindweed finds the overlapped spaces in the cardboard and emerges. We will be pulling back the mulch and adding double layers of cardboard this winter and covering that with at least 4-6 inches of chips.