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Peppers, Basil, and Bees in the Garden

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‘Sweet Banana’ peppers mature, when grown from seed, in about 72 days. ‘California Wonder’ bell peppers mature in about 75 days. I have seeds for both of these in my “seed stash” in the fridge. When I was planning my summer, I knew that we would be gone for 77 days. Can you see where this is heading?

I learned that peppers can survive without much attention in my summer garden

Pepper plants can survive a lot of neglect in the summer garden. These were on their own for 77 days and still made peppers!Last spring, in mid-April, I started one each of the two kinds of peppers and planted them in my small garden before we left home. They both had just four leaves. They were too tiny to need any kind of support at the time, but I pushed an assortment of wire things into the ground around them, to hold them up as they grew.

No one watered them while we were gone. No one fertilized, and no one weeded.

When we got back, the two plants were in the middle of a weed patch, but they both had produced peppers. They were easier to weed than the chicory.

The pepper production increased after I poured some dilute fish fertilizer around them. As usual, the ‘Sweet banana’ is making many more peppers than the ‘California wonder’. They both will continue to provide peppers until the first hard frost.

Basil, ‘Red Rubin’, is another survivor

Another crop that went into the garden before we went away was ‘Red Rubin’ basil.

'Red Rubin' basil is beautiful, flavorful, and easy to grow.
‘Red Rubin’ basil is beautiful, flavorful, and easy to grow. PHOTO/Amygwh

I planted these in two separate patches. One patch already had flowers when we returned, but the other still is flower-free. That is the patch I am harvesting basil leaves from, to use in the kitchen.

‘Red Rubin’ has dark purplish leaves and a good basil flavor. The pesto made from it isn’t green, but that is ok.

This variety is resistant to basil downy mildew, which has been ruining basil harvests around here for a few years now. The disease resistance is why I chose this basil as the one to grow while we were away.

Native bees on native plants

Native bee on native coneflower.
Native bee on native coneflower. PHOTO/Amygwh

At last year’s Pollinator Symposium (described on the events page of Monarchs Across GA), I picked up a native coneflower seedling for my garden. The plant grew, and it seems happy; it was flowering when we got back, almost four weeks ago, and it is still making more flowers.

The flowers are attracting some very cute, tiny native bees. These are not the kinds of bees that live in hives; they are more likely to live alone in burrows underground. The one in the picture has pollen caught in the hairs on its back legs.

Are there “survivor” crops in your garden?

If you’ve planted a garden and then not tended it for several (or 11!) weeks, what crops have survived the neglect and managed to produce food?

Many Kinds of Chicory

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My family has been growing and eating chicory for years.

Some of the many kinds

The first variety I grew may have been ‘Italiko rosso’, a loose-leaf type with red leaf-veins running through its dark green leaves. Others have been ‘Pan di zucchero’, a less bitter variety that makes a head like Romaine lettuces, and ‘Catalogna’, an all-green loose-leaf type. Including chicory in our meals turns out to have been good practice for traveling in Italy, because at restaurants we visited, the cooked greens served with the second course of a meal often were chicory, not spinach.

Emptied seed packets for two kinds of chicory.
Bringing home seeds from Italy isn’t allowed, but these two  packets were emptied prior to travel. The packets are 7.5 x 4.5 inches — huge!

Radicchio, a heading-plant that is usually red instead of green, is also a kind of chicory. Endive and escarole are other forms of chicory that are familiar in the U.S.

These are all good to think about right now because they are cool-season crops that we can plant in our fall gardens. In general, the loose-leaf forms mature in 45-55 days, and so do most of the radicchios. Those can be planted in my area (zone 7b, with a first frost around Nov. 1) in a couple of weeks.

The heading type ‘Pan di zucchero’ takes 80 or more days to mature — it should already be coming up in the gardens of anyone nearby who wanted to grow it. Gardeners south of Atlanta, with later frost dates, still have time to get that variety started.

All of the above chicories are grown for their leaves, which are a lot less bitter in fall/winter/spring than in summer.

Chicory in the kitchen

I haven’t served chicory as a pile of cooked greens, Italian-style, at home, even when they haven’t been bitter. I am not a huge fan of cooked greens. Instead, I usually add raw leaves to a salad or  to soups or sauces, where they end up cooked.

If I were going to cook chicory as a “mess of greens”, I would drop them into boiling water, let cook for about half a minute, drain off the water, then finish cooking in fresh water, just like for any other potentially-bitter green (collards, mustards). When we cook greens this way (because Joe does like greens), much of the bitterness goes down the drain with the water that we pour off.

The chicory in my garden right now

This year, I planted seeds for ‘Magdeburg’ chicory, a variety that has a bigger, tastier root for making chicory coffee.

Chicory in the garden that has been nibbled by the wild yard bunnies.

The seeds went into the garden a few weeks before we left town, but the seedlings were not big enough for me to mulch their patch before we left for the summer. When we got back, the patch was a weedy mess. Among the weeds, though, were some chicory plants.

I weeded as carefully as I could but ended up  pulling some chicory plants with the weeds in spite of the care. A few days later, yard-bunnies found the patch and nibbled it nearly to the ground. Wild yard-bunnies can be hard on a garden.

Deciding what to do about wildlife damage is not easy. There are many options for “pest control”, most of which don’t work. In the end, I poked some sticks into the ground near each plant,  thinking that the sticks would be an annoyance for the bunnies.

As the plants regrew, the bunnies returned. Last week, I added a lot more sticks to the bunny-blockade. The more-crowded assemblage of sticks looks strange, but it seems to be working.

If all else fails and the bunnies are undeterred, I may be able to find a patch of wild chicory to use in making coffee. The bright blue flowers are easy to spot. The hard part will be finding a patch in an unpolluted place (not by a road, for example), where I can get permission to harvest the roots.

Chicory flowers are the same here as in Italy.
Chicory flowers in Italy are the same as those that grow wild here. PHOTO/Amygwh

 

Planting Begins for My Fall Garden

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The first seeds in the ground for my fall garden are two kinds of carrots and a winter radish. I also planted one last round of basil, so there will be more pesto in my freezer to use in wintertime meals.

First seeds planted for my fall garden, plus one last summer herb.
First seeds planted for my fall garden, plus one last summer herb. PHOTO/Amygwh

This year’s carrots: ‘Bolero’ and ‘Short Stuff’

The two varieties, ‘Bolero’ and ‘Short Stuff’, are shorter carrots that will do well in the clay soil of my in-ground garden.

‘Short stuff’ is also recommended as a good choice for container plantings. The fully-mature carrots will be only about 4-inches long, but wide at the top.

‘Bolero’ will be longer, closer to 6-inches at harvest, but slender all the way down.

I amended the soil by adding a nearly-full bucket (5-gallon size) of yard compost to the garden bed before planting. This addition will loosen the soil and improve the odds that the carrots will grow as they should.

The seedlings have not yet come up, but when they do, they will get a dose of the kind of fish emulsion fertilizer that promotes root growth (higher phosphorus than nitrogen).

You may be wondering why I already planted seeds for carrots, in mid-August. The reason is that crops mature more slowly in fall than in spring. If I want to harvest carrots before mid-December, they need to be in the ground, in my garden, now. (For more details, read my book.)

The first winter radishes

‘Watermelon’ winter radish seeds also are in the garden. The current packet says they take 60 days to reach maturity, but older packets from other seed companies have claimed 70-days, which is closer to the speed they grew in my garden. I decided to use 70-days as my working number to determine the planting date, as a result.

Most of the winter radishes will only make good bulbs in fall, in the time of shortening day length. I don’t know why. Some plants are just like that.

That means, though, that this is a crop that can ONLY be had from a fall garden. If anyone in your family loves radishes (a rare thing, I know), plant these soon!

Heat sink surprise

Raised bed planted with beet seedlings and young onions, in mid-August, in Chicago.
Raised bed with beet seedlings and young onions, in mid-August, in Chicago. PHOTO/Amygwh

When I was in Chicago last week, I noticed that many vegetable gardens already contained plenty of cool-season seedlings. Considering how much further north Chicago is from here, it made sense that fall gardening would already be well-underway.

However, when I looked up its hardiness zone, I was surprised. Chicago is in plant hardiness zone 6a, according to the newer USDA Plant Hardiness Zone Map. The plant hardiness zone where I live, north of Atlanta, is 7b. That difference in hardiness zones, between Chicago and north-metro-Atlanta, is less than I expected.

Most of area around Chicago (all the northern half of Illinois) is in plant hardiness zone 5, according to the USDA map. That seems more reasonable than 6a. Chicago, which is a large city containing a lot of concrete, must be the same kind of heat-sink that Atlanta is (most of Atlanta is in zone 8a). That could account for part of the difference. Lake Michigan could account for the rest, since enormous bodies of water also help keep nearby air temperatures more moderate.

Update on the ‘Astia’ zucchini

Flower buds forming on young 'Astia' zucchini plant.
Flower bud on young ‘Astia’ zucchini plant, in the “v” between two stems (main stem and leaf petiole). 

The ‘Astia’ zucchini that is growing in my half-barrel planter is still alive. There are no signs yet of leaf-mildew-diseases, which is good news. The other good news is that, even though the seedlings have only been up for a couple of weeks, I can see the buds of flowers forming on the plants.

These flower buds will keep growing, until the flower buds open. Some flowers will be “girls”, which are the ones that make the zucchini that we eat. Some flowers will be ‘boys’. After the boys have done their job of pollinating the girls, I plan to harvest those boy flowers to use in cooking.

While in Italy over the summer, Joe and I enjoyed fried squash blossoms at the Sax Wine Bar in Montepulciano. We are going to make those ourselves, since the good ladies at Sax Wine Bar are in Italy and we are not.

 

Edible Jewels of Opar is Beautiful, too

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Jewels of Opar is coming up in my yard, just now in late summer. I would be surprised, but purslane is coming up, too. I tend to forget how late the purslane arrives! Jewels of Opar and purslane are in the same plant family, and the food qualities of the two are similar, as well.

The leaves of both are a little slimy inside, and they both have a mild flavor.  I snack on both as I work in my garden in late summer. Jewels of Opar in my yard is missing that slightly tart quality of purslane, but both make good additions to a salad.

They both also are reported to contain some oxalic acid, like spinach does. Anyone who is troubled by oxalic acid in food should probably cook them first. When you pour off the cooking water, most of the soluble oxalic acid will go out with the water.

Edible jewels of opar is beautiful, making it a good choice for a front yard food garden.

However, if you are looking for a “stealth” food crop to grow in a neighborhood that doesn’t allow edible plants in the front yard, Jewels of Opar is one to try.

Southern Exposure Seed Exchange  (SESE) sells seeds for this plant. In my yard, Jewels of Opar acts like an annual, tossing its seeds at the end of summer to come up as plants, in random locations, the following year. The SESE information says that the plant is perennial in zones 8-and-warmer. Other sites suggest that it is perennial beginning in zone 9a.

The traits of self-sowing and being perennial in warm-enough areas might make this plant a useful addition to a permaculture planting.

I transplanted my first Jewels of Opar plant years ago from our Plant A Row for the Hungry garden, where it was a consistent volunteer (just like I was!). Since then, it has popped up around the yard every year.

 

Urban Garden Ideas from Garfield Park Conservatory

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I know, Garfield Park Conservatory is outside the Southeastern US, but the ideas offered in the garden in Chicago transfer to Georgia easily. I visited there this past week and brought back pictures to share.
Urban Demonstration garden in Chicago uses containers and trellises to grow more food in less space.

Crops in containers

Containers for garden crops were enormous, and this is probably for the best. Smaller containers heat up faster on sunny summer days, and roots are in danger of overheating as a result. With larger containers, roots are more protected. The soil may also dry out more slowly in a huge container, since there is so much of it.

Different structures supported plants throughout the garden. In containers, plants like eggplants and peppers need support just to keep from falling out of the pots as their fruits get large and heavy.

For smaller plants, like some of the peppers, supports were slender bamboo canes pushed into the soil around the plants. This can be enough to keep them from falling over.

For tall, heavy plants, like some of the eggplants, four  bamboo poles (sturdy ones) were set firmly into the soil near the edges of the pots. Then heavy twine tied those all together, to hold up the plants.

For tomato plants, which can become very heavy, twine is insufficient to hold up the crop. Tomatoes in containers had four bamboo poles stuck into the pots like for the eggplants, but instead of twine, metal fencing (field knot fencing, I think) with a wide mesh was wrapped around the poles to create a tomato cage.

Trellises for vining crops

One in-ground trellis in the garden was built from wood. The wood pieces were wide enough that squashes could be set on the slats, like shelving. This is a brilliant way to protect developing crops like squash and melons from soil-borne funguses, like Southern blight, that could rot the fruits!

Cucumbers were vining up some of the same metal fencing that supported the tomatoes, but the cucumbers were planted in the ground, not in containers.

Other small garden ideas from the park

'Burgundy' okra is a good choice for small gardens.
‘Burgundy’ okra is a good choice for small gardens. PHOTO/Amygwh

Smaller varieties of some crops were being grown, like ‘Burgundy’ okra, which is both beautiful and shorter. I grow ‘Cajun Jewel’, which is also short, in my small garden, but it doesn’t have the amazing red stems that ‘Burgundy’ has.

The demonstration garden also showed an alteration of one raised bed, with a little ground-level area created at one end. Strawberries were growing in that space. Since they are a shallow-rooted crop, strawberries don’t always need to be in a deep, raised bed. A picture is in the photo-collage above. It looks like a wading pool for toddlers built next to the big-people pool.

Meanwhile, in my own garden

This is my weekend to start some fall crops. For me, the first will be carrots and winter radishes. If you are in the Southeastern US and are not sure what to plant or when to plant it, there is a book (!) available that can help.

If you already know, but have just one or two questions, please feel welcome to use the contact page to send me an email. I would be happy to help.

-Amy

 

Do You Have Your Fall Garden Seeds Yet?

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If you don’t already have the seeds you need to plant a fall veggie garden, and you live near me (one county north of Atlanta), it would be a good idea to go find them soon. I was checking my own planting calendar, and any crop with a days-to-maturity of 70-80 days needs to be planted within the next week or so.

A lot of fall crops will mature in less time, so they don’t need to planted quite so soon. Also, if you are planning to buy plants, you have oodles of time. Fall vegetable plants won’t show up in garden centers for a few more weeks. When they do, that is the time to purchase and set them into the garden, providing a bit of shade to ease the transplants into their new lives in the ground.

Seedlings of 'Astia' zucchini for containers, coming up in my half-barrel planter.
Seedlings of ‘Astia’ zucchini for containers, coming up in my half-barrel planter. PHOTO/Amygwh

There’s still time for a late planting of some summer crops

If you have not yet had enough summer vegetables, bush beans are a crop that matures quickly. Bush bean seeds planted now, in metro-Atlanta, will yield plenty of delicious beans before the first frost.

Last year, I planted bush beans in early August, and I was very glad that I did.

This year when I got back from Italy, I planted a few seeds of a different warm season crop that is supposed to mature quickly. The crop is a kind of zucchini, ‘Astia’ (from Renee’s Garden), bred for growing in containers. The little plants are supposed to produce harvest-sized veggies in about 50 days. Harvest-size for ‘Astia’ is smaller than for most zucchini, but that is ok.

In the past, when I have planted a second crop  of zucchini, they have avoided being attacked by the squash bugs and squash vine borers. Sadly, a mildew-fungus killed the plants before the veggies were big enough to harvest. I have never planted zucchini this late, though, so I am curious how the experiment will turn out. You will be among the first to know!

Presentations and workshops

In other news, I gave a Fall Garden Planning presentation at a local community garden (Hyde Farm) on Saturday, and the gardeners there were awesome! It is great to know more people who value good food and want to grow some of their own.

Garden spider (Argiope) has caught something big for dinner!
Garden spider (Argiope), has caught something big for dinner! PHOTO/Amygwh

On Saturday, August 25th, at 7 (note new time!!!) 3 pm, I will be giving a similar presentation at TruPrep. One great thing about this particular store is that it stocks seeds from Baker Creek Heirloom Seeds.  Also, unlike many garden centers that are associated with home improvement stores, TruPrep is likely to still have plenty of seeds in the store. If you need seeds and are in the neighborhood, check there.

Other upcoming events for me include a Pollinator Symposium in Conyers, GA, at the Monastery of the Holy Spirit, on September 22. Monarchs Across Georgia, a group I volunteer for, is putting on the Symposium. I am scheduled to talk about pesticides (imidacloprid in particular) in half of an hour-long afternoon session that I am sharing with a person who will talk about growing milkweeds from seed.

Hoping that all your gardens are growing well!

 

-Amy

Large Black Wasp on Flowers

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We finally returned from our summer in Italy, to find the garden full of weeds — no surprise there — and large black wasps on the milkweed flowers. The same flowers also were buzzing with carpenter bees, which looked almost small compared to the wasps. If you are familiar with carpenter bees, then you know that, in the world of bees, they are giants.

Great Black Wasp and Carpenter Bee on milkweed.

To see such large wasps flying among the giant bees was, at first, alarming. When I realized what they were, though, I moved in for a closer look.

The name of the large black wasps is Great Black Wasp.

What do Great Black Wasps eat?

As adults, these wasps are vegetarian, eating nectar and pollen. When they move from flower to flower, the wasps carry pollen on their legs and bodies and pollinate the flowers. This means they are yet another of our beneficial garden insects.

As larvae, they are not vegetarian. They eat grasshoppers, cicadas, and katydids. When a female adult Great Black Wasp finds an insect like a katydid, it paralyzes the insect/prey using its stinger. Then, it carries the insect/prey to a burrow it has dug in the ground, where it lays an egg.

When the wasp egg hatches, the larva that comes from the egg will eat the insect. A hatched wasp larvae can eat more than one insect, so the adult will stuff at least one more insect down the burrow, and as many as five more, for each wasp egg.

Where do Great Black Wasps live?

Great Black Wasps live across much of the United States and into Canada, but they are not commonly seen in the upper part of the Western U.S.

Great Black Wasps are in the group of wasps called Digger Wasps. These are mostly solitary wasps, each female digging its own holes in the ground for its eggs. Digger wasps don’t live together in one place, they are not honeybees in a hive, but they sometimes congregate. In a way, they are kind of like the suburbanites of bees, each with its own space, but grouped in a way that feels less lonely.

Are they really as big as I think they are?

If you are like me, when you see your first Great Black Wasp you will think it is at least two inches long. If you have seen a female, the surprise will trick your mind into believing the fish tale — “it was THIS BIG!” In reality, even though females are larger than the males, the biggest Great Black Wasps are closer to an inch and a half long.

Do Great Black Wasps sting people?

If you do something crazy like chase one around with a camera, it might (or it might not!), but these wasps are busy with their own agendas. If you leave them alone, they will keep doing their work of eating nectar and pollen, digging burrows for their babies, and hunting insects.

The time of greatest activity for these large black wasps is now. By the middle or end of September (depending on where you live), the adults will no longer be flying. Their job of laying eggs and providing food for their larvae will be done. The babies, though, will emerge next summer, and then there will be more Great Black Wasps on my flowers.

Other beneficial wasps you may see at the end of summer include the potter wasp and blue winged digger wasp.

Beneficial Garden Insects: Flower Flies

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While I’ve been walking outside our little town in Italy, missing my vegetable garden, I have paid attention to the local plants. On good days, I see a lot of flowers and pollinator-insects. At first, I thought the pollinators were all bees. Then, I looked closer. Many of them are actually flower flies, a different group of beneficial garden insects.

Flower flies, which are beneficial garden insects, look like bees but without the sting.
Flower flies are beneficial garden insects.

What are flower flies?

Flower flies really are flies, but a lot of them look like bees. It is possible that looking like a bee prevents some predators from eating them. I don’t know if that mimicry really works, though. We used to have a dog that ate carpenter bees when she could catch them. The stinging inside her mouth didn’t seem to stop her from catching and eating more.

Flower flies do not sting or bite, but they do eat nectar and/or pollen as adults. As they visit flowers to gather food, they pollinate the flowers.  Flower fly babies (larvae) eat aphids and other small insects. These are definitely beneficial garden insects!

Organic gardens, in particular, rely on pollinators and predators in the garden to increase harvests and reduce pest problems. We can wait for our helpful predators (like flower flies, wasps and ladybugs) to eat the aphids, no spraying required!

Flower flies are also known as syrphid flies and as hover flies.

How can I tell which is a flower fly and which is a bee?

With only a brief glance, it is not easy to tell bees and flower flies apart. If you have the fortitude (and lack of bee-allergies) that allows you to look a little longer, you might see the difference.

Flower flies are beneficial garden insects that can look like bees.

Check the antennae

Flower flies have short, straight, stubby antennae. The antennae may be so short that they are hard to see. Bees have longer antennae, and their antennae are more likely to bend.

Check the wings

All flies have only two wings (one pair), and you can easily see them. One wing is on each side of the body.

Bees have fours wings (two pairs). The larger front pair of wings is easy to see, but the hind-wings can be hidden below the front pair. You might not be able to see that there are four wings.

Check the eyes

Eyes of flower flies are larger, and more on the front of their heads. Bee eyes are shifted a little to the sides of their heads.

Check the back legs

Flies do not collect pollen in clumps on their back legs. Some kinds of bees, especially our native, solitary bees, also do not collect and carry pollen on their back legs.

However, bumble bees and honeybees often store clumps of pollen on their back legs, to carry back to their colonies. If you see a bee-like insect that has pads of orange, or red, or yellow on its back legs, that is a good sign that the insect is some kind of bumble bee or a honeybee.

How can I attract flower flies to my garden?

University of California has published an easy-to-use table of plants that attract flower flies (see page 16). The table is deep within a document that is not super-easy to read, and not all the plants will grow well in the Southeastern US, but many will.

Here is a short list of plants that are known to attract and/or support flower flies to your organic garden, that I know will grow in the Southeastern US:

buckwheat, coriander/cilantro, thyme, Italian oregano, sweet alyssum, fennel, tansy, white-flowered yarrow

Stale Bread Plus Tomatoes and Basil Equals Great Food

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One new favorite food that I found while in Italy uses stale bread as its base. The dish is called panzanella locally, but in English the name is bread salad. I know — the name “bread salad” isn’t inspiring. The appearance isn’t, either. However, the flavor explains why so many people keep basil plants growing in pots on their windowsills and doorsteps. Bread salad taught me that stale bread plus tomatoes and basil equals great food.

Doorstep gardens in Tuscany, like this one, often include a pot of basil.
Doorstep gardens in Tuscany, like this one, often include a pot of basil. PHOTO/Amygwh

After being served bread salad a few times here, I asked one of my new Italian friends how to make it. This is what I was told:

Traditional panzanella, or bread salad, recipe

Start with stale bread (3-4 days old) that is dry and hard.

Break up the bread, then drop the pieces into water for brief saturation. Then, squeeze out the excess water as much as possible.

Mix onion, white vinegar, and a LOT of chopped basil into the bread in small amounts. Keeping adding and mixing until the flavor is good. Then, add olive oil.

Chop tomatoes, drain them, add salt, and continue to drain them until they are fairly dry.

If cucumbers are available, chop them to add to the salad, but do not use the gel/seed part.

Tips to make the generalized recipe work

The standard, soft, sandwich-style bread that is prevalent in the U.S. might not work well in bread salad. I think that the bread needs to be the kind made of just 4 ingredients – flour, water, yeast, and salt. Whole wheat works, but so does bread made from white flour. Joe and I have made the salad with both kinds, with good results.

We don’t have a basil plant on our windowsill in Italy, but our friend makes herb-infused olive oils. She gave us a bottle of basil-infused olive oil to use instead of fresh basil, and it is glorious!

Notice that there are no guidelines for amounts of anything. Either Joe and I have been very lucky, since this is good every time we make it, or bread salad is nearly foolproof.

Less obvious (maybe) benefits of bread salad

  1. It uses an ingredient — old, hard bread — that might otherwise be wasted.  As a person who prefers to use up leftovers, even hard, stale, leftovers, rather than waste them, finding recipes for good food that use old bread well is a gift. Another way we have noticed that hard, stale bread is used is as a thickener for soups. Tomato soup, bean soup, vegetable soup — all contain bread that has been soaked, broken up, and dispersed throughout the broth.
  2. When tomatoes are in season and piling into the kitchen in large numbers, having an easy recipe (like this one) that uses them well is helpful. Ditto for cucumbers.
  3. If your basil is growing into an enormous plant, you can use that, too.

Let me know if you try making bread salad at home, and if you love it, too!

I hope your gardens are all growing well.

-Amy

Wood Pallet Gardens

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Using wood pallets for plant display and support can be a low-cost option for creating a vertical garden. Wood pallets can also be re-constructed into garden benches. You already knew that, right?

I knew that, too, before visiting Italy, but I hadn’t seen so many wood pallet gardens in public spaces. This blog post shows some ways wood pallets have been put into productive use in small towns in Tuscany.

wood pallet creates vertical plant display at restaurant entrance
Wood pallets create vertical plant display at restaurant entrance. PHOTO/Amygwh

Wood pallets as vertical gardens for small spaces

Small businesses use wood pallets to make their storefronts more attractive. The pallets don’t need much construction work to re-fit them as vertical gardens. When placed by a shop’s entrance, the pallet-gardens of living plants, and especially flowers (which are mood enhancers), give a signal to shoppers that the store is a good place to visit.

The vertical gardens created with wood pallets are usually stained or painted to match or complement other parts of the storefront, and they always look good.

They also look pretty easy to set up. A homeowner, or apartment renter, or condo-dweller, who has a narrow planting space could use wood pallets in a similar way to create a vertical garden for food plants.

In these vertical gardens, the planting spaces are not always packed solid with potting mix (I checked). Instead, in some, the plants are in individual pots. This would make replacing mature/finished plants an easy task. Just replace a pot containing an old plant with a pot containing a younger, less mature plant!

Small crops that could grow in the small spaces in this plant-support system include salad greens, small herbs, strawberries, and edible flowers.

Wood pallet for plant display and support by a storefront.
Another wood pallet for plant display and support by a storefront in Tuscany. PHOTO/Amygwh

One of our local, posh restaurants has its sign mounted on stacked wood pallets. The wood has been sanded, then either stained or painted with chalk-paint (I can’t decide which), then distressed by sanding again.

The stacked pallets include a couple of wood planting boxes, complete with the living plants that we find so appealing, wedged between slats. It looks much more elegant than it sounds. See the image in this post for La Briciola Ristorante.

The particular version pictured below doesn’t allow for as many plants as the ones above, but gardeners are creative. There is probably a way to increase the number of planting boxes supported by the pallets.

Wood pallet benches as plant supports

The red bench made from wood pallets in the “inset image” at the top of this blog post is one of many brightly painted benches in the town of Chianciano. We first saw them last summer, and they still are all over town this summer.

Wood pallet re-used as plant display and restaurant sign.
Wood pallets re-used as plant display, restaurant sign, and leaning post for my Joe. PHOTO/Amygwh

The benches create cheerful spots of color in the mostly-stone town, and each one supports a container-plant display.

The overall impression created is one of welcome. I suspect that was the the goal.

Another wood pallet bench in the same town isn’t brightly painted, but it supports container plants in a completely different way. The plants are in a “holder” along the top of the back, leaving more room for people to sit on the bench! Tiny wood pallet gardens on bench-backs could be useful for spaces where sunlight might not reach the ground.

Wood pallet bench includes built-in space for container plants.

The back of the bench is supported by a post, so any sitters who want to rest against the back can do so without tipping over. It’s a pretty clever design, and space for plants is a great addition.

The bench also provides advertising space for the store it sits across the sidewalk from. The name of the shop is stenciled across the upper piece of wood on the bench’s back. It is possible, though, to create your own garden logo to stencil across that upper piece of wood. You can advertise your personal garden philosophy instead of a store.

Are you short on garden space? One or more of these wood pallet creations may spark an idea of a way to create more space for garden crops in your own yard. If repurposed wood pallets work for these towns in Tuscany, for shops and for restaurants that serve Amazing Food, then they might be ok for suburban Atlanta, or Birmingham, or Laffayette.

Best wishes for great — and creative — gardening!

 

-Amy