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Palo Alto Demonstration Garden
Fourth Year Report
January 2007
(1st year | 2nd year | 3rd year)

Overview:
Now at the end of its fourth year, the Palo Alto Demonstration Garden is truly becoming what it was originally conceived to be: a resource for sustainable gardening information for the community.  In 2006 we focused work at PADG on supporting the strategic goals adopted by the Advisory Board in late 2005.  Specifically, we have sought to increase our educational contacts with the public at the garden and to focus those contacts on demonstrating and teaching sustainable gardening practices.

2006 events at PADG included a monthly workshop series, open garden, plant sale, Going Native Garden Tour, a post-conference tour for Master Gardeners, and more.  These events brought more than 800 people to the garden.  Visitors, many of whom return to the garden again and again, express their appreciation for the opportunity to learn more about how to grow both familiar and unusual vegetables, herbs, and flowers and to see how colorful and graceful a low water ornamental garden can be year round.  Elements of the garden that draw special interest are the Mediterranean and native plants in the water-wise garden, the 3-in-1 fruit tree plantings, the ethnic vegetables, the blueberries, the unusual garden structures and plant supports, the drip irrigation system, the composting effort, and the use of wood chips and mulch throughout the garden.

Water-Wise Garden:
The water-wise garden showcases plants and cultural techniques for summer dry gardening that we want to encourage home gardeners to try in their own gardens.  Our strategy is to be as thrifty as possible with water, plant nutrients, and gardener labor, while striving to have an attractive and colorful ornamental garden.  Each season we have showy plants blooming while others are growing or dormant.

Many of our original plantings have matured.  We have begun using the garden for Master Gardener presentations, teaching organic, sustainable approaches for home gardening.

Planting and Care:
We plant using little or no soil amendment or fertilizer.  In their first year, plants are given weekly water during the dry season.  Pruning, dividing and deadheading are done as needed.  No plant receives special care.

We constantly evaluate the garden and remove plants that have not been successful.  We also look for new plants to showcase that should thrive in our climate.  This year we were fortunate to become involved with plant trials through the University of California at Davis.  Eventually we will trial six different types of native plants supplied by this program.  This fall we planted Heuchera rosada, Carex spissa and Bouteloua gracilis.  During 2006-07 we will evaluate these plants for garden worthiness.

Outreach:
The water-wise garden is unfenced and available to the public at all times.  To provide learning opportunities for those interested, we have used the kiosk at the garden entrance to show pictures of our garden's progress.  We provide plant lists and handouts that will help homeowners plan their own gardens.  Last spring we were invited to participate in the annual Going Native Garden Tour, sponsored by the California Native Plant Society.  Approximately 200 visitors came to PADG on that day, making it a wonderful opportunity to gain more visibility for our garden.  The spring plant sale at PADG also brought more people to the garden.  During our summer Open Garden, we had a tour of the water-wise garden and an irrigation tour that included the drip irrigation we use in the water-wise garden.  In addition we had several small groups who requested garden tours.  Finally, included in our workshop series was a "Fall In the Ornamental Garden" presentation.

Lessons learned:
This was our first year using our new drip irrigation system in the water-wise garden.  Unfortunately, we have had trouble with the timer, resulting in many of our plants getting either more or less water than intended, depending on where they were in the bed.   We need to replace the timer to insure that plants aren't over watered next year, and we will add drip emitters as required.

Our battle with bindweed is increasingly successful.  We continue to smother weeds with cardboard and mulch, and we have seen much less bindweed this year.  We applied Round-up midsummer to the remaining bindweed, but found that it was much less effective than when used earlier in the season.  If we decide to use Round-up again, we will  apply it before the bindweed becomes dusty and dehydrated.  We now apply Round-up with a commercially available sponge applicator that simplifies the process a great deal.  Sponging the Round-up onto the plants prevents the drift that occurs with spraying and requires far less material.

Edible Landscape Garden:
In 2006 this garden included four international vegetable beds (African, Asian, Latin, and Mediterranean), a central bed that changed from annual flowers to cool season greens, space-saving fruit tree plantings, and a blueberry bed.  Two small beds were planted in everlasting flowers through the summer and have been replanted with alliums for the cool season.   Five half-barrel containers were added this year, planted with a mix of edibles and ornamentals.  A summary of each of these beds follows.

African Bed:
A cover crop of fava beans was incorporated into this bed in April and allowed to decompose prior to adding Wheeler compost and alfalfa meal in preparation for planting.  Drip irrigation was added in place of the Accurain system used in 2005.  Having established the amazing vigor of many of the African vegetables grown in 2005, the bed was redesigned to improve light and space utilization.  Egyptian white squash was out (too large for the bed), and African horned cucumber was moved to the North end and sorghum limited to one clump to prevent these two oversized plants from blocking the sun to everything else.

Sweet potato and watermelon were added as new crops.  Pigeon peas were given plenty of room on the nandina trellis, in hopes of coaxing this semi-tropical legume into production. Our efforts were rewarded by a highly productive and amazingly ornamental garden of edibles.

Comments on a few specific plants:

• Peanuts, out of the shadow of the horned cucumber, produced prolifically.
• Pigeon peas (toor dal in India) bloomed in late October and formed some pods.  As beautiful as the plants are (the "trunks" are two inches in diameter, the plants 7 feet tall, and the blossoms a lovely yellow and mahogany combination), our warm season is apparently not long enough to get a crop from this semitropical plant.
• African chilis (Fataali and Ivorian Piment, both habañero types) produced heavy crops of scorching hot, bright yellow and red pods, respectively. The heirloom annual pepper Fish was prolific and particularly ornamental with its variegated leaves and fruits.
• Two vines of Blacktail Mountain watermelon produced 12 fruits, averaging about 10 pounds each.  The vine was extremely ornamental, and the fruits were quite tasty.
• Eragrostis teff is the staple grain of Ethiopia.  We grew the variety Ruby Silk Love Grass, a gorgeous ornamental with fine, drooping satiny red seed stalks.
• Ethiopian yellow lentils were prolific.  We thought these large lentils (half-inch when green) were fabulous eaten as green shelling beans, rather like edamame but nuttier in flavor; and they are also delicious cooked after drying.
• Roselle was again a standout ornamental, producing a bumper crop of calyces, which were dried and used to make a beverage popular in Africa, as well as Central and South America.
• Sweet potatoes grown from slips provided by McClellan Ranch were the surprise of the season.  Two plants gave us 24 pounds of purple-skinned sweet potatoes with dense, sweet, white flesh.
• Sorghum is a striking ornamental, but became the nursery plant of choice for green stink bugs late in the season.
• African horned cucumber again swamped its ladder support, and again none of its dozens of fruits ripened.  In fact, even two weeks in the compost pile didn’t faze them!  As this vine is on a “watch list” as a feared invasive escapee, we don’t plan to grow it again.

Peanuts, Roselle calyces, and sweet potatoes from the African bed
 

Asian Bed:
Cool season -  The bed displays vegetables widely used in Asian countries (China, Japan, India, and Thailand).  Every week we harvested Nan Fong mustard, Japanese spinach, and the beautiful red Giant Mustard.  All through spring we also picked snow peas and sugar peas.  Did not have to amend the soil at all.  In all empty spots we planted fava beans.  By the time they were starting to bloom in April we already had other seedlings growing in patches.  There was no room to dig in the cut fava beans; instead we cut them up for the compost bin.   At the end of April the bed looked great for the Going Native Garden Tour.

Had trouble with slugs eating the small bok choy and some of the mustard leaves.  We frequently used Sluggo.  The cardamom had to be covered during the cold weather.  Seedlings were hand watered until we turned on the automatic watering system on May 1.

Warm season 2006 -  In April and May we harvested most of chard, peas, carrots, coriander, celery and broccoli to make room for the warm season plants.  We started seeds at home during January and February with varying success.  By April we had more than enough seedlings ready to transplant.  We used Dr.Earth fertilizer at planting time.  In 2005 we had eaten Chu Chu eggplants and found them delicious, so we planted five kinds of small eggplants for a comparison (Black Baby, Chu-Chu, Tiger, Panda and Kyoto).  Numerous flea beetles found the leaves irresistible but we still harvested many eggplants. 

Since we had a large bamboo structure already in place, we covered it in yard-long cucumbers and Humani, an Indian white cucumber.  With an even taller tripod bamboo structure we created a beautiful tower of red yard-long beans (Red Noodle), much admired by the visitors at our open garden event in July.  Another crop they found interesting was the Japanese rice (Koshihikari) planted in a half-barrel "rice paddy". 

The Japanese tomato plants got enormous and produced over a long time, while the Japanese Shishito pepper plants near them were disappointingly slow.  They had performed very well the previous year.

Cool season - As we harvested the summer crops, in September new plants were seeded directly in place: carrots, daikons, snow peas, and red-stem choy sum.  In October we planted some seedlings that were started at home as well as some store bought ones, e.g. daikons, bok choy, Chinese cabbage, snow peas and cilantro.  Since the weather was sunny and warm we continued to seed directly the beautiful Red Giant mustard so popular last year, as well as radishes, and garden peas.

Latin Bed:
The Latin Bed was planted to demonstrate the main food crops that were used by Native Americans at the time when the Europeans arrived.  We used native flowers to provide color and attract beneficial insects.  At our open garden event, many visitors were surprised to learn there are different types of corn and were even more surprised to learn that the Native Americans actually ground the corn seeds into flour.  They had no idea how potatoes grew.  In general there was a lot of interest in the plants growing in this bed.  It would have been more meaningful if I had more items to harvest and pass around.

Quinoa and Hopi pink corn in tassel
In January, the large yacon was dug up and some of the tubers replanted.  Favas planted on one side of the bed in the previous October were chopped into the soil in February.   Wheeler compost was added to the whole bed in March, and alfalfa pellets were used in the corn patch.  Most of the annual plants were transplanted in April through early May.

In general most plants did well.  All the plants that had problems were located in the same area of the bed.  The Purple de Milpa tomatillo was severely damaged by flea beetles, and the leaves were very yellow.  It produced flowers, but no fruit set.  Wenk’s Yellow hot pepper did not thrive. Two of these peppers planted in another garden also were slow and did not look healthy, but they finally produced some fruit. Perhaps the seed was bad.  Planted two Bolivian Rainbow peppers, of which one survived.  Three of these peppers in my home garden grew well.  The tree pepper, grown from seed did well in all three places they were planted in.  The Tomate de Andes plants produced, but were not as robust as the tomatoes in the Mediterranean Bed.  The quinoa ripened faster than I thought it would, perhaps because it was too hot for this crop.  The Hopi pink corn patch produced a good crop of ears with kernels in various shades from magenta to pale pink. 

The tithonia plant donated by a master gardener grew into a spectacular plant covered with dozens of velvety orange flowers.  The bees and butterflies loved it.  The Thumbelina Zinnias produced an endless supply of pastel colored blooms.

Lesions learned:
A lack of nitrogen caused some of the plants to struggle.  A more detailed log of soil preparation would have helped to identify the problem.  In retrospect, the plants that were struggling should have replaced sooner; and planting new seed potatoes would have been preferable to allowing the previous season’s leftover potatoes to re-sprout.

Mediterranean Bed:
The Mediterranean Bed is an example of year-round gardening.  Normally vegetables are planted in amounts that could be used by a small family.  As they are harvested, other seasonal crops are added.  Throughout the year we usually have cool season crops like radishes, lettuces, onions, leeks, chard, cabbage, kale, broccoli, and artichokes.  The artichokes were particularly delicious this year.  Favas were grown for eating, not as cover crop.  In keeping with our edible landscaping theme, flowers are grown among the vegetables for beauty and to attract pollinators.  There is an arbor to provide a cool respite for the gardener.  Kitchen herbs are tucked among the vegetables.

Beds are prepared by digging in composted horse manure (Wheeler Farms), and alfalfa meal or packaged vegetable fertilizer is used for heavy feeders (peppers and cole crops).  The composted manure is also used as mulch around the plants.                                                                                              Violetto artichokes

Summer 2006 - The summer garden was planted in May.  We planted an abundance of tomatoes and some peppers, basil, and winter squash.   Celery root was planted in June and is still growing as of November.

The tomatoes were supported by a variety of cages to show what is available, commercially and home-made.  Several of the commercial designs can be stored flat.  One cage was made of 2”x 2” wood with bamboo rods.  This square wooded cage can be completely disassembled for storage (instructions are shown on our MG website under "best picks"), and it was the only cage that didn't require additional staking to take the weight of the top-heavy indeterminate plants.

Tomato cages in May...	and in August

The tomatoes were not particularly tasty, perhaps a result of too much water.  In the future the irrigation lines should be located to make it possible to turn off summer water when fruit starts to ripen.

In September and early October the beds were cleared and cool season crops were planted again. These had been started from seed in mid- to late-July.  Fennel, various lettuces and chicories, cabbage, kale, broccoli raab, and leeks have started the next cycle of year-round gardening in the Mediterranean bed.

Fruit Tree Plantings:
PADG has two plantings that demonstrate space-saving techniques for having a number of varieties of fruit in a relatively small space.  Four 3-in-1-hole groupings of stone fruit are planted at the north end of the garden.  A row of espaliered pears, Asian pears, and apples form a visual boundary between the vegetable beds and the utility area of the garden and provide visual interest.  All these trees were planted in January 2004, as was a quince tree in the Mediterranean bed.  Varieties were selected to extend the fruiting season.

In January, all fruit trees were sprayed with horticultural oil, and in February, the stone fruit trees were sprayed with micro-cop.  Summer pruning was done on all plantings.

While the stone fruit trees have not yet come into production, several of the pome fruit trees began producing this year;

• Pink Pearl apple gave approximately 6 fruits in August
• Seckel pear gave approximately 8 fruits in late August/early September
• Shinko Asian pear gave a heavy crop of delicious, perfect pears in September.
• Winter Pearmain apple produced 3-4 fruits in September
• Fuji apple gave approximately a dozen fruits in late October/November
• Ashmead’s Kernal apple produced a handful of small, misshapen fruits.
• The red Barlett pear 'Sensation' produced no fruits in 2006.

Center Bed:
Spring/Summer:  Annual Flowers. This bed was created to show how a small bed of annuals can become a showpiece in an overall garden scheme.  It is planted in a mix of annual flowers in a broad range of colors.  Annuals require regular water, but a small bed of this type can be incorporated into an otherwise low-water landscape to add color and punch to the landscape without greatly impacting the total amount of  water used. 

The plants chosen can be quickly replaced with the changing seasons -ornamental edibles in the fall, bulbs in the early spring, etc. - to maintain the bed as a highlight of the garden.

Fall/Winter:  Ornamental Edibles.  The bed was replanted in September with a variety of lettuces, leeks, kales, cabbages and chicories selected for their ornamental qualities. All have interesting forms and/or colors. Violas and nasturtiums, both edible flowers, were planted to add color interest.

Blueberry Bed:
Thanks to the protective folds of a super-sized piece of bird netting, the blueberry bushes at PADG produced an abundant crop of delicious blueberries this spring.  The six varieties in the planting extended the harvest from early June (Earliblue and Sharpblue) to late July (Berkeley and Ozark Blue).   Only Chandler, a mid-season variety, was a disappointing producer; but Bluecrop, the other mid-season variety more than made up for it.  Individual preferences for taste and texture varied considerably among those who enjoyed these berries, but all were consumed with great pleasure.

The plants were fertilized with alfalfa in March and again in mid-summer.  Soil sulfur  (1-2 pounds over the bed) was added in March.  A 2-3 inch layer of Wheeler compost was put on in March and November,  and an additional layer of oak leaf mulch was added in late fall.  The bushes were planted in March 2004 and will get their first complete pruning in January 2007.

Everlasting Flowers:
In 2006 the two narrow beds previously used for a small pepper trial were planted with everlasting flowers to provide color at the entrance to the vegetable beds and to demonstrate the process of growing and preserving these colorful flowers that keep their color and shape after they have been dried naturally (without the use of chemicals).

Seeds were planted in early May.  Although some did not germinate and others may have been become bird and insect food, the seeds that did germinate produced plants that were very healthy and provided a great many flowers.  Of the two small beds, one was planted with blue and white flowers and the other with warm oranges, reds, and yellows.  Flowers used included:

• Blue flowers:  Bachelor Button Blue Boy and Larkspur Shades of Blue and Galilee Blue Double.
• White flowers:  Baby’s Breath Covent White, Bishop’s Flower White Lace Improved, and Yarrow White Milfoil.
• Red, Yellow, and Orange flowers:  Strawflower Mixed Colors, Celosia Orange Temple Bells and Pampas Plume, Basket Flower, and Fiddleneck Tall Fernleaf.

Results of this project are summarized below:

• Of all the everlastings the most prolific, easiest to dry, and best for keeping shape and color were the strawflowers and the celosias.
• The larkspurs were able to hold their lovely blue color, however, they were not very prolific.
• The bachelor buttons consistently failed to keep their color, although they did keep their shape very well.
• The yarrow and the bishop’s flower did not produce enough blooms to test, due to lack of seed germination.

Events at the Garden:
In 2006 we worked to greatly increase the use of PADG as a educational resource through tours, workshops, and other opportunities to visit the garden.  The table below summarizes the events held at PADG this year.  In some cases, attendance is estimated.

Our third annual open garden drew many visitors to PADG.  Most attendees stayed for an hour or two, taking tours, talking to master gardeners, and reading the new informational signs we had posted throughout the garden.  In addition to tours, produce displays, and information tables, popular additions to the event this year were a seed starting table and an activity to introduce our composting system to children and their parents.

Many people come back to the garden again and again, either for events or to visit while the garden is open on work days.  People have told us how grateful they are for this garden and the opportunity to see first hand what crops are possible here in north county, to pick up ideas for making their gardens more attractive, and to learn about sustainable gardening methods

Fall Vegetable Gardening Workshop

Several events in the table represent interesting collaborations with other organizations.  We have twice made the garden available to John Jeavons to demonstrate double digging.  We provided a workshop for Palo Alto community gardeners to support the City’s efforts to reduce water wastage at the gardens.  We were a very popular tour site for the Going Native Garden Tour, and hosted a tour for master gardeners attending the state conference in early October. 

For the third year, PADG hosted a plant sale one week after the Spring Garden Market.  Attendance this year was very high (estimated at 250), and all plants were sold.  A workshop on tomato attracted a large crowd.

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