Fenton Friday: Why, Hello There, Little Ground Cherry

I was clearing out some unruly tomato vines from my community garden plot this week, when I looked down and saw a small Ground Cherry (Physalis spp.) plant had self-sown among them. It had several fruits on it and even a few that were already ripe and on the ground (hence their common name). I gave them to the intern to try and they both exclaimed over how very deceptively sweet they are -- they are the best kept secret of the edible garden, in my opinion. Animals and other humans ignore them. They take zero maintenance. They grow literally like the native weeds that they are... and they taste like candy. Who can find fault in that?

By the way, you can find out all about sourcing and growing Ground Cherries in our September 2014 back issue of Washington Gardener Magazine posted here.

How is your edible garden growing?

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 5th year in the garden. (It opened in May 2011.)

Beautiful Abutilon in the October 2016 issue of Washington Gardener Magazine and much more...

  

The October 2016 issue of Washington Gardener Magazine is now out.

You can view it online at http://issuu.com/washingtongardener/docs/washingtongardeneroct2016?e=0

 Inside this issue:

• Beautiful Abutilon
• A Native Alternative to Liriope
• Your Monthly Garden Tasks To-do List
• Transforming a Formal Garden in the Woods
• Boo! Watch Out for Stinging Caterpillars
• Local Gardening Events Calendar
• Meet the DC Scroger
• Growing Rhubarb in the Mid-Atlantic
• 10 Tips for Growing Great Perennials
• Four Seasons at Hillwood Estate
• 6 Tips for Fruit Tree Success
• And much more….

Note that any submissions, event listings, and advertisements for the November 2016 issue are due by November 10.

  Subscribe to Washington Gardener Magazine today to have the monthly publication sent to your inbox as a PDF several days before it is available online. You can use the PayPal (credit card) online order form here: http://www.washingtongardener.com/index_files/subscribe.htm

Two Upcoming Garden Talks

There are still a few openings for two local, seasonal garden talks I have coming up at Brookside Gardens. Here are the details:

• Wednesday, October 26, 2–3:30pm
Batten Down the Hatches! Winter Garden Prep
Beginner and intermediate gardeners are often overwhelmed by the long spring to-do lists of garden tasks. Learn what chores are essential and which can you safely skip as you prepare your garden for winter. Discover cost-saving tips and tricks and how to “batten down the hatches” in case we have a really bad winter. Held at Brookside Gardens, Wheaton, MD. Fee: $22. Register at https://apm.activecommunities.com/montgomerycounty/Activity_Search/batten-down-the-hatches-winter-garden-prep/18440.

• Wednesday, November 2, 2–3:30pm
Conquering Cool Season Edibles
There are many edible plants that grow best in cooler weather.Try your hand at growing them and enjoy the “fruits” - or veggies -  of your labor during the winter months. We’ll cover techniques for lengthening the growing season and what edible plants do best in our Mid-Atlantic climate. Held at Brookside Gardens, Wheaton, MD. Fee: $22. Register at https://apm.activecommunities.com/montgomerycounty/Activity_Search/conquering-cool-season-edibles/18463.

Savory Sunday: Spinach Mushroom Quiche with Fish Peppers

Guest post by Shelby Smith

A perfect recipe for Sunday brunch is quiche—it’s warm and comforting. Quiche can be filled with anything. The fillings can be made in advance and can be both vegetarian and for meat lovers.

    To give this recipe a little heat, I adding a bit of chopped 'Fish' Peppers from the Washington Gardener Magazines community garden plot. These peppers are small and the darker the red color, the hotter they are. Adding a subtle heat to your recipes expands the flavor and can give the dish a whole different profile.    

This recipe was inspired by Chef John from www.foodwishes.blogspot.com. You can check out his YouTube channel at Food Wishes.

Ingredients

• Fresh or pre-made pie crust. (Tip: I used pre-made puff pastry for a flaky crust.)
• 4 large button mushrooms sliced.
• 1 cup of fresh spinach.
• 1 small onion sliced.
• 1 'Fish' pepper minced (or other hot variety).
• ½ cup of diced, cooked bacon.
• 4 eggs
• ½ cup of milk
• ¼ tsp of salt and pepper
• 1 pinch Herbes de Provence (a gift from local members of the Herb Society of America)
• 1 cup of shredded cheese.

Directions

• Preheat oven to 350.
• Blind bake your pre-made or home-made pie crust by baking it ¾ of the way until its not quite turning light brown. When done, let cool, but keep the oven on.
• In a medium pan, sweat the onions and mushrooms on medium heat until soft.
• Reduce heat and sweat your spinach until soft. Add half of your salt and pepper.
• Turn off heat and mix in your chopped 'Fish' pepper.
• Beat your eggs, milk, herbs, and the rest of your salt and pepper in a separate bowl.
• Layer 2/3 of your vegetables, 1/3 bacon, and 2/3 cheese in your crust evenly.
• Pour in your egg mixture until it just covers your first layer.
• Layer the rest of your veggies, bacon, and cheese, then pour over the rest of egg mixture to just cover your last layer. Don’t let the egg mixture go over your crust.
• Bake for 30-35 minutes until it is just set. Shake your pan gently. It should just slightly wiggle in the middle.
• Let the quiche cool a bit and serve when it’s warm.

This can be served with a side of toast for breakfast or a fresh salad for lunch. Adding the peppers gives it just the kick it needs. 'Fish' peppers can be added to anything, really, like broths, soups, or stews. You can even preserve them by letting them dry in the sun or store them in olive oil. I hope this recipe will leave you full and ready for a Sunday nap. Enjoy!

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

About the Author:

Shelby Smith is a senior double major in multi-platform journalism and film studies at the University of Maryland College Park. She was a sports copy-editor for a campus publication called Unwind Magazine and a writer at The Campus Current newspaper at Anne Arundel Community College. 

Late-flowering Salvia for Bloom Day

It is Garden Blogger's Bloom Day again! On the 15th of each month, we gardeners with blogs share a few bloom photos from our gardens. Here is the Mid-Atlantic USA (USDA zone 7) on the DC-MD border, the past month has been a dry and windy. We had a light frost one evening, but nothing was really affected by that.

I have lots of autumn color in my garden from the usual standbys like Mums, Toadlily, Nippon Daisy, etc.

One unusual flower right now is this hot pink salvia is named 'Heatwave Blaze' Sage. It is from Monrovia was sent to me as a trial plant and has finally started blooming and showing it was worth the container space -- long after our full summer of record heat!

 What is blooming in YOUR garden today?

Fenton Friday: Farewell to Tomato Season

Arugala seedlings

We had a touch of frost in the area this week, but my garden was unaffected. Still, it is time to start saying good-bye to my tomatoes and other summer crops.

Red Currant tomatoes

I pulled up the okra, sunflowers, and my lone, experimental corn stalk. All of these have grown unwieldy and annoying. Most of the branches on the sunflowers had already snapped off and hung off the main stalk by skin-threads, though surprisingly they kept on growing.

I yanked out a few tomato plants that were similarly breaking apart and getting in the way. One 'Sun Gold' tomato plant pulled out totally intact, so I took that home to hang in my sunroom to see if the remaining green fruits on it will indeed still ripen up, as I had read they would.

The 'Red Currant' tomatoes I have left alone. They are still producing tons of fruit and we are due for a warm spell next week, so I'll let them stay in until we get a real frost that kills them off.

Elsewhere in the garden plot, the interns re-seeded the radishes and some of the salad greens, where the first round had failed to germinate.

How is your edible garden growing?

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 5th year in the garden. (It opened in May 2011.)

ADVERTISER OF THE WEEK: GreatGardenSpeakers.com

The goal of GreatGardenSpeakers.com is to provide a better way for garden clubs, botanical gardens, and other venues to easily find and book speakers. "We noticed
 that program chairs of garden clubs and other venues have a hard time finding excellent speakers, and we see this as a useful service to the gardening and horticulture community. If you are planning a workshop, symposium, conference, or panel discussion involving plants and the natural world, we are your one-stop shop for premier speakers."

ADVERTISER OF THE WEEK Details:
Every Thursday on the Washington Gardener Magazine Facebook page, Blog, and Yahoo list we feature a current advertiser from our monthly digital magazine. To advertise with us, contact wgardenermag@aol.com today.

Savory Sunday: Roasted Root Vegetables

Guest post by Shelby Smith 

Roasted fresh root vegetables is a classic side dish for any meal and is one of the easiest recipes you could ever make. The focus of this recipe is 'Danvers half-long' carrots. Carrots can be used in both savory and sweet dishes.  They grow in a variety of sizes, shapes, and colors. They are ready to eat as soon as they form baby carrots or you can wait until they reach their full mature size. Carrots are one of the healthiest options when eating vegetables -- they are packed with vitamins and can improve your eyesight and promote health skin.

Ingredients

• 4 carrots chopped into 2-inch-long pieces.
• 3 small potatoes chopped into 2-inch-long pieces.*
• ½ small red onion diced.
• 4 cloves of garlic crushed or minced.
• ¼ tsp of rosemary minced.
• ¼ tsp of thyme minced.
• 1 tbsp. of butter or oil.
• Pinch of salt and pepper.

*You can peel these or not. Also it is important to cut all the vegetables into uniform pieces for even cooking time.

Directions

• Preheat oven to 350.
• Spread the chopped vegetables in an even layer in a 13-by-8-by-2 inch glass baking pan.
• Drizzle the oil/butter and cover every vegetable.
• Sprinkle the rosemary, thyme, salt, and pepper.
• Bake for 25 minutes or when the vegetables are tender.
• Serve when ready.

The vegetables should be sweet and aromatic. This dish can be an easy main meal or a side dish for any main course. I would recommend this dish as a healthier side for kids, instead of French fries. You can also add other vegetables to this dish, like bell peppers or butternut squash. Enjoy!

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

About the Author:

Shelby Smith is a senior double major in multi-platform journalism and film studies at the University of Maryland College Park. She was a sports copy-editor for a campus publication called Unwind Magazine and a writer at The Campus Current newspaper at Anne Arundel Community College. 

Fenton Friday: Carrot Seedlings

The intern's carrot, arugula, and lettuce seedlings are up and will need to be thinned soon. Their radishes are a bust as are the kale, leading me to think they were both batches of bum seeds.

I am ready to rip everything else out -- as soon as I work up the energy to do so. It is that time of year when everything is breaking off and falling over. The okra, sunflowers, and tomatoes are falling into the pathways or onto other plants and being straight up pains-in-the-ass.

Broccoli seedlings and garlic plus onions await their turns to go into those soon-to-be-open spaces.

How is your edible garden growing?

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 5th year in the garden. (It opened in May 2011.)

Advertiser of the Week: Trees Matter Symposium 2016

Wednesday, October 19, 7:30am-4:00pm
Silver Spring Civic Center, Silver Spring, MD

The fifth annual Trees Matter Symposium focuses on the health and welfare of trees in our increasingly developed landscapes. Learn from some of the country’s leading experts about innovative efforts to plant, protect and preserve trees in urban and suburban settings.

Trees provide many benefits: they cleanse and cool our air, stabilize our soils, provide wildlife habitat and beautify our urban and suburban areas. We encourage all arborists, landscape industry and environmental/green industry professionals, engineers, designers, housing developers and interested citizens to take advantage of this opportunity to learn new techniques and concepts on what can be done to ensure the survival of trees in our built environment.

Register at https://apm.activecommunities.com/montgomerycounty/Activity_Search/trees-matter-2016/19299

ADVERTISER OF THE WEEK Details:
Every Thursday on the Washington Gardener Magazine Facebook page, Blog, and Yahoo list we feature a current advertiser from our monthly digital magazine. To advertise with us, contact wgardenermag@aol.com today.

Toad Lily (Trycyrtis): You Can Grow That!

One of my all-time favorite flowers, Toad Lily (Trycyrtis), is a mainstay of the zone 5-8 shade garden in the fall.

It likes moist conditions, but not standing water. This summer's drought left my plants a bit crispy around the edges, but did not effect the blooming rate. The flowers are stunningly beautiful, but not large, so place these plants in the middle or front of the border for best viewing.

After planting, they take virtually no care. You can fertilize them, though I have only ever thrown some leaf mulch around their base a few times a year and called it a day.

If you want to divide and share them with gardening friends or relocate them around your own garden, do so in early spring to let them settle in before the autumn bloom cycle.

The only other advice I can share is that they can get a bit tall and lanky, which makes them easy to knock over. Putting them near something they can lean on is a good idea and keeping them out of prevailing winds helps too. I have mine planted next to the base of my gazebo and against an old birdbath where they are happy to keep company with Solomon's Seal and Lungwort.

All who are involved with You Can Grow That! (YCGT!) believe that plants and gardening enhance our quality of life. We want people to be successful with what they grow and to become more aware of the many gifts that horticulture brings. Find out more at http://www.youcangrowthat.com/.