Fenton Friday: Growing My First Salad

Guest Post by Skylar Drew

This semester at Washington Gardener, I finally got down in the dirt and learned the basics of edible gardening. After so many years of watching the adults in my childhood neighborhood constantly planting and weeding, my turn had come!

In early March, I planted 'White Globe' Turnips,  'New Zealand' Spinach, and 'Frosty' Peas in the community plot and anxiously awaited their sprouts. Unfortunately, my spinach never made an appearance, but seeing the tiny green leaves peeking out from the turnip and pea rowss filled me with awe. We eventually planted Carrots, Radish, Lettuce, Onions, Arugula, and Cilantro in the following weeks to make for a more plentiful harvest. The turnips grew ferociously, and a few (returning) potato plants even sprouted in the same bed! (We harvested a few mid-sized turnips on my final visit to the plot. The peas are still growing and may be ready to harvest in a month.)

I was shocked to find how simple it can be to grow your own food, especially since I was often only in the garden once a week. Still, I have plenty to learn. The vegetables really took off during April and on the first of this month, we were able to harvest some of the Lettuce and Arugula! Bringing it home to make a small salad was one of the highlights of my semester, and I was so proud to have helped raise something from seed into sustenance.

Even on the days where I felt I was dragging, I was always excited to see how much each plant had grown from the last time I had been there to weed or water.

As spring closes in on summer, I’m looking forward to beginning my own garden back at home with the knowledge Washington Gardener editor Kathy Jentz has given me. I’m especially excited to one day start a small pollinator garden. I’ve always known gardening to be extremely important, but it’s one thing to know and another to do. I’m so grateful that I was able to have this experience of growing something myself, and I see myself in a long line of people to spread the word: plants are life!

What are you growing in your edible garden this week?

About the author: Skylar Drew is an intern this spring semester with Washington Gardener. She is a senior journalism major at the UMD College Park. She is from Bel Air, Maryland, where she watched her mom grow her garden.

About Fenton Friday: Every Friday during the growing season, I'll be giving you an update on my community garden plot at the Fenton Street Community Garden just across the street from my house in zone 7 Mid-Atlantic MD/DC border. I'm plot #16. It is a 10 ft x 20 ft space and this is our 14th year in the garden. (It opened in May 2011.) See past posts about our edible garden by putting "Fenton"  into the Search box above (at the top, left on this blog).

My Intern Experience

By Christine Folivi

This fall, I had the opportunity to work at the Washington Gardener Magazine. I was able to experience two fields in one – gardening and journalistic work. With Kathy Jentz, I was taught how to grow Arugula, Round Black Spanish Radish, and Beets. Gardening was something I didn’t know how to do properly, but in just six weeks I saw arugula grow out of the ground. Every week it was sprouting more and more which was fascinating to see. I also had the opportunity to sit in on some podcasts about gardening, which introduced me to many plants I didn’t know before. The gardening community is a lot bigger than I had originally thought. Kathy introduced me to many people around the world on her podcast, which I helped edit. I also attended gardening clubs that Kathy spoke at and to other area garden-related events My favorite experience was definitely going to the Gramercy Mansion and writing an article on the owner. I was giving a tour of the property and it inspired me to create my own garden.

The garden books that Kathy had me review gave great insight into the gardening community and the gardening lifestyle.

About the Author: Christine Folivi is a senior at the University of Maryland College Park. This fall semester, she was an intern at Washington Gardener Magazine.

Peak Bloom is Coming Soon for DC's Famous Cherry Blossoms

Mayor Muriel Bowser at the Cherry Blossom Festival kick-off event.

By Dorvall Bedford

Springtime is on its way, and that means so are the cherry blossom flowers! Editor Kathy Jentz and I were able to attend the opening press event for the National Cherry Blossom Festival on the terrace floor of the 1331 Maryland Apartments building, which had a stunning view of the Jefferson Memorial and the Washington Monument. Though the room where it took place was quite small, it was packed with government officials, representatives from the Embassy of Japan, and many reporters.

Before all the announcements and speeches, they provided officials and reporters alike with pastries and drinks. And once the event really began, they announced upcoming events like the Blossom Kite Festival and the second annual Petal Porch Parade, which Washington Gardener Magazine plans to participate in again,

But you’re probably wondering about one thing: the actual cherry blossoms. Rest assured, National Park Service Superintendent Jeffrey Reinbold announced when the peak bloom of the cherry blossoms will happen soon. After an amusing performance by a juggler dressed in pink from her hair down to her toes, Reinbold said March 22 to 25 will be the time of peak bloom (if the weather over the next 3 weeks cooperates).

There was also another interesting announcement that happened during the event. Ryo Kuroishi from the Embassy of Japan said that 2022 marks the 110th anniversary of Tokyo gifting the cherry trees to Washington, DC. Kuroishi said the trees have become a lasting symbol for the friendship between the U.S. and Japan as well as the root for springtime celebrations.

“I’m sure that when people gathered at the Tidal Basin in 1912 to plant the first tree, they had no idea what an impact the effort would make,” he said in his speech.

I was able to talk to Mike Litterst, spokesperson for the National Mall, who told me about what goes into taking care of the cherry blossom trees. The National Park Service has a full-time arborist and tree crew responsible for mulching, pruning, watering, and more. Litterst said taking care of the trees is not too different from what people do with trees on their own property, but just on a larger scale.

And when he said larger scale, he meant over 3,700 trees!

The National Park Service receives money from different sources to pay for all the maintenance, according to Litterst. Part of it comes from their operating budget while other money comes from the fundraising efforts of partners like the Trust for the National Mall and the National Cherry Blossom Festival.

I spoke to President Diana Mayhew of the National Cherry Blossom Festival, who said they’re trying to raise $1000 for every tree this year through the Endow a Cherry Tree Campaign. People can adopt one of the many cherry trees, which Mayhew said you could do for an anniversary, special occasion, or to honor someone.

Litterst said people can also help keep the cherry trees safe by not picking the blossoms, climbing the trees, and staying on paths when they can.

Now that it’s been announced when the cherry blossoms will bloom, it’s time to start planning your trip to the Tidal Basin. I know I’ll be there when the flowers are out!

Also, be sure to check out our popular post on "17+ Cherry Blossom Viewing Alternatives in the DC Region" for other places to visit blossoming cherry trees in the DC-region.

About the Author:
Dorvall Bedford is a journalism major at the University of Maryland, College Park, and an intern this semester with Washington Gardener. He is a native of Frederick, MD.

Garden Film Review: Taming the Garden

By Khloe Quill

[This film is part of the Environmental Film Festival in the Nation’s Capital (DCEFF) 2021. Read reviews of several other garden-related films from this year's festival in the March 2021 issue of Washington Gardener Magazine.]

Taming the Garden is an engrossing experience from start to finish, though those looking for a traditionally informative documentary may find it off-putting when they’re met with zero voice-overs or talking-head interviews. All of that being said, if you’re willing to do a little mental leg-work, the story being told is unique, heart-wrenching, and worth a watch.
Former prime minister of Georgia, Bidzina Ivanishvili, has taken up a strange and expensive hobby: digging up ancient and rare trees from around the country to add to his personal collection. There’s something mind-boggling about moving gigantic and centuries-old trees that can’t just be told, which is why Taming the Garden can get away with showing instead of telling a story. The film’s iconic scene used as its screener preview is a tree, on a boat, in the ocean. It seems comical until you actually see it in context and then it feels… lonely. But you have to see it to understand what I mean.
Most scenes focus on the lives of those directly related to the trees as opposed to the collector himself. It’s an intimate portrayal of how one man’s incomprehensible access to a community’s environment can impact them at an emotional level. In the first 20 minutes of the film, a group of workers laugh and joke as they chip away at the earth surrounding a few of the trees slated for relocation. These shots continue throughout the 90-minute film, interspersed with interviews from said members of the town inside their own homes. It feels casual, even for a documentary, but the casualness of the interviews creates a sense of intimacy and closeness that wouldn’t be achievable in a more formal set up.
“If they force me, they’ll get it. Because I won’t compromise,” says one man about whether or not he’ll cut down his own trees. Often, smaller trees need to be cut down to make a clear path for transporting the desired trees. In this instance, the man refuses to bend to Ivanishvili’s will. As the man continues the interview, a family member pleads with him to stop talking.
In another scene, there’s a crowd gathered to witness one tree’s removal andthere seems to be a mix of emotions. Some seem detached: they take pictures and laugh in a mixture of wariness and amazement. Others are visibly upset. An elderly woman bemoans the tree's removal as it is taken away in the dark of night, saying it won’t survive in Ivanishvili’s garden. She races towards the tree as her family urges her to stay away. 
Though most of the film is dedicated to the taking of the trees themselves, we are eventually introduced to the massive arboretum for which they were taken. The reveal is astonishing and sort of wonderful, but it’s hard to forget that just a few scenes before, a whole town marched behind their tree as it was taken away forever. Taming the Garden accomplishes something rare in the silence where narration should be: the space left behind leaves room for the viewer’s own thoughts, and urges the film’s impact to exist beyond its end credits.

About the Author: Khloe Quill is a journalism major at the University of Maryland, College Park, and an intern this semester with Washington Gardener. She is a native of Frederick, MD.

Savory Sunday: Baby Kale Side Salad with Apple Cider Vinaigrette

By Anastazja Kolodziej

Welcome to the newest edition of the Savory Sunday column! I’m Anastazja, and I’m interning at the magazine this summer. The recipes that I’ll post on this column will be made using produce grown at the Washington Gardener’s community garden plot. Whether you’ve just started growing your own food or are simply seeking some inspiration, I hope my recipes will give you some new ideas on how to incorporate your produce into your meals!

This week, I got baby purple kale from the garden. The best part about baby kale is that it’s much more tender than when it’s fully grown. The kale had grown enough to harvest, but it was not enough to use as the main part of the dish. I decided to make a salad because, even though I used different greens as the base, kale helped me choose the natural pairings for the salad.

Ingredients:

Salad -

·        Purple kale (I had 35g from the garden)

·        Salad greens (I used romaine lettuce), as desired

·        1 apple

·        Dried cranberries, handful

·        Feta cheese to sprinkle on top

Apple cider vinaigrette -

·        5 tbsp olive oil

·        2 tbsp apple cider vinegar

·        2 tbsp maple syrup

·        2 tsp Dijon mustard

·        Salt/pepper to taste

This amount of ingredients made enough for 4 side salads. Adjust accordingly if making this dish as a main meal.

Directions:

1.    Wash and prep the kale, ripping the leaves off the stems. Discarding the stems makes the kale easier to eat.

2.    Add desired salad greens. I used romaine as the base of my salad.

3.    Add apple slices. For four side salads, using one apple came out to three slices per salad.

4.    Add dried cranberries.

5.    Make the vinaigrette by combining ingredients. Make sure all ingredients are room temperature so the vinaigrette emulsifies properly. 

6.    Drizzle vinaigrette onto salad.

7.    Top with feta cheese.

Pin this for later:

"Savory Sunday" is a weekly summer blog series with seasonal recipes from the garden.

About the Author:

 Anastazja Kolodziej is a rising senior at the University of Maryland, double majoring in multiplatform journalism and the classics (Ancient Greek and Latin). On campus, she serves as an assistant managing editor at The Diamondback.

Dutch Tulip Days in DC

the entrance staircase

By Charlotte Germane

While we waited for the cherry blossoms to bloom, a flood of intense spring color arrived in DC’s Kalorama neighborhood when 15,000 tulips filled the residence of the Dutch Ambassador for #DutchTulipDays.

Ambassador Henne Schuwer has an enviably direct pipeline to tulips; his home country is the second biggest agricultural exporter in the world, and that includes the 450 million tulip bulbs sent to the U.S. each year.

This week his official residence was a floral showcase for Tulip Days, to celebrate the horticultural ties between the Netherlands and the U.S. After an early morning press preview, the Ambassador hosted a series of diplomatic lunches and receptions.

Ambassador Schuwer said that Tulip Days “is an old tradition that we picked up three years ago to fill the house again with flowers.” He mentioned Keukenhof, the 500-acre Dutch park where seven million bulbs bloom each spring, and his wish that the D.C. display could “bring a little bit of Keukenhof here.”

The 17th-century-style tulipiere

Van Gogh reproduction

Fifteen thousand tulips certainly made a start in recreating that floral experience. The design expertise behind the modern and traditional arrangements came from florist Susanne Schrijvers, based in France and the DC-area. Schrijvers banked the imposing staircase in orange blooms, the Dutch national color, packed closely in rectangular containers.

Simple modern displays around the edges of rooms included groups of metal buckets with bunches of multi-colored cut tulips, or windowsills lined with glass cylinders of water holding blooming tulips — stems, bulbs, roots, and all.

Console tables beneath Old Master paintings featured airy arrangements of tulips especially grown in France for their long stems, combined with branches of cherry blossoms. Each round table in the dining room was centered with a silver bowl containing just one variety of tulip, with no repeated colors from table to table. The dining room and library fireplaces had “flaming” mixtures of tall red and yellow tulips.

An unusual container was the 17th-century-style tulipiere, a tower from the days of Tulipomania, created to spotlight the wildly expensive tulips of that era.

The living room stars were two Van Gogh reproductions, loaned by the Van Gogh Museum in Amsterdam, with harmonizing tulip tributes at their feet.

Schrijvers wanted a knockout display, to honor the culmination of the Ambassador’s service in Washington. She not only increased the number of tulips over past years, but added living walls of tropical plants in the library, and out-sized Boston ferns in the stairwell.

The floral tribute echoed the Ambassador’s reflection that “a bouquet of flowers was never given in anger, a bouquet of flowers is a gift of love and a gift of respect.”

You can see many more photos from the Tulip Days event at the Washington Gardener Facebook page.

About the author:

Charlotte Germane recently jumped the Potomac from the American Horticultural Society to Georgetown's Tudor Place, an historic house museum and garden. She spent four years as the first Digital Communications Manager at the AHS, following three crunchy years in communications and public relations for the largest organic gardening supply company in the U.S.

Dealing with Deer and Other Creatures in Your Garden

By Ashley O'Connor

“Managing deer and other wildlife in your garden;” that was the topic of Kathy Jentz’s recent class at Brookside Gardens in Wheaton, MD. The publisher and editor of Washington Gardener told an attentive audience of 16 how to humanely handle pesky animals destroying their home gardens. Some of her tried and true tips are below.

For Managing Deer:

• Cage small saplings during the fall to protect them from antler rubbings
• The first line of defense is your dog, just make sure he/she is leashed and no closer than 15 feet from a deer
• Use mesh fencing around property perimeters, but be sure to bring the mesh to the ground (This will prevent the deer from slipping under)

Rabbits:

• Sprinkle the border of your garden with used cat-litter; they hate it!

Moles and Voles:

• Use peppermint essential oil on a cotton ball to deter these critters

Rats:

• Clean up rotting fruit on the beds of your gardens

Crows:

• Scare these birds off with fake rubber snakes

Groundhogs:

• Plant chicken-wire in an L-shape facing out around your vegetable beds

Squirrels:

• soak bird seed in a "flaming squirrel seed sauce” like Cole's brand

Chipmunks:

• Incorporate sharp gravel or Chicken grit into your garden, it won’t hurt them, but the texture will irritate their paws

Dealing with multiple creatures at once? Try an activated motion sprinkler. It’s a great way to scare off any creature, just remember to move its location every few weeks during the season.

About the Author:
Ashley O’Connor, a senior multi-platform journalist at the University of Maryland. This autumn, she is an editorial intern at Washington Gardener.

tips for creating native plant container gardens

By Rosie Kean

Photographer and garden designer Marcia Tate shared tips for creating native plant container gardens during a presentation to the Silver Spring Garden Club at the Brookside Gardens on Monday, June 18.

There are many benefits for choosing native plants for your garden, Tate said. These plants can better adapt to local conditions, require lower maintenance, and handle stress well. In addition, once established, native plants can help conserve water and provide natural habitat for other critters.

A native plant is one that grew naturally in an area before humans introduced different plants. In this case, “native” means anything that naturally grew between the Rocky Mountains and along the Eastern Seaboard, Tate said.

Containers can showcase these native beauties and serve as points of interest throughout a garden. Pots and other containers are the perfect place to experiment with a new plant or variety of flower. They also keep plants that like to spread contained.

Some of Tate’s favorites to put in containers include heuchera and phlox. A good list of native plants for our region can be found on Bowman’s Hill Wildflower Preserve’s website.

Many different types of materials can be used to create a container garden. Some options include terracotta, ceramic, plastic, or metal pots or buckets. Tate encouraged gardeners to be creative—feel free to spray-paint a pot or use odds and ends like old tires or boots as containers. You do want to make sure there is a hole for drainage in whatever container you choose.

When it comes to choosing what to put in your container, consider color, texture, fragrance, and how the plants will look in each season. Tate likes her containers to have at least “a couple seasons of interest.”

When planting in a pot, don’t use the same soil from your garden. Fill your container with potting soil (without added fertilizer/salts) and mix in compost. To care for the plants, Tate recommends cutting them back in spring and adding a bit of extra compost every once in a while.

An important part of making container gardens is experimentation. Tate often stuffs a container to the brim with different types of plants and “lets them duke it out.” When she was demonstrating how to make a container garden, she packed in about 10 different plants in one average-sized pot. Some will do better than others, but piling in plants helps you get a sense of how they will grow, and it mimics the way they would grow in the wild.

Experimenting with native plants is especially important with climate change affecting local temperatures, Tate reminded the audience.

“You are all now citizen scientists trying to determine what will grow in your gardens,” Tate said.

About the author:

Rosie Kean is a senior multiplatform journalism and English major at the University of Maryland, College Park. She is from Macungie, PA. This summer, she is an editorial intern at Washington Gardener.

Fenton Friday: Cilantro Stand-off

By Kelly Zheng

The smell of cilantro (corainder) has always intrigued me. It smells so pleasant and adds such flavor to dishes, especially Mexican food. I was happy I was able to grow my own this semester. I grew two different types: 'Long Standing' and 'Slow-bolt'. I planted the 'Slow-bolt' first and then the 'Long Standing' a few weeks later because of the different seed packet instructions. Whether the brand or the timing played a role or not, the 'Slow-bolt' grew more than the 'Long Standing'. I had to re-seed both of them once as well.

After re-seeding, weeding, and watering, I saw 'Slow-bolt' cilantro emerge within weeks. I was able to harvest some last week and used them in chicken tacos. It felt surreal that I grew an herb, as it tasted like store-bought (#beginnergardener). The 'Long Standing' was just making progress then, and fortunately, I was able to harvest some also yesterday. Even though the 'Slow-bolt' was taller with larger leaves, the 'Long Standing' was starting to catch up. I also harvested more of the 'Slow-bolt' to compare the two.

Both 'Slow-bolt' and 'Long Standing' cilantro leaves looked identical. When I tried them by themselves, they tasted basically the same, too. They also smelled the same. I was hoping for an actual difference, whatever that might have been, but I was also happy they tasted the same. This meant I did not have to favor one over the other. I mixed and chopped both of them together and added them to another round of chicken tacos! And they added great flavor as expected.

How is your vegetable garden growing this week?

About Fenton Friday: Every Friday during the growing season, I'll be giving you an update on my community garden plot at the Fenton Street Community Garden just across the street from my house. I'm plot #16. It is a 10 ft x 20 ft space and this is our 6th year in the garden. (It opened in May 2011.) See past posts about our edible garden by putting "Fenton" into the Search box above.

About the Author: Kelly Zheng is a junior multiplatform journalism major, with a minor in technology entrepreneurship, at the University of Maryland, College Park. This spring semester, she is an editorial intern at Washington Gardener.